Sorry - just to clarify - the "extreme language" I quoted was NOT from Sion Simon, they were from the industry representatives who were talking on a different panel.

----- "Brian McNeil" brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:

From: "Brian McNeil" brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, 27 October, 2009 17:56:31 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Notes from the C&binet Forum

On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 17:10 +0000, Andrew Turvey wrote: > - SIon Simon, another politician present, mentioned that the copyright > debate is highly polarised between the industry and free copyright > advocates, both sides are deaf to the other and they need to engage. > Despite this the discussions on copyright have been largely one sided, > unbalanced, with some fairly extreme language used - "copyright > warriors", "green ink brigade". "a generation of stealing" etc.

That's a complete and utter misrepresentation of the other side. It's a random representation from some file-sharer or other. He has obviously made absolutely any effort to talk to the other side. If you get the chance, suggest he talk to Richard Stallman, in fact, urge him to do so. I've been following the Pirate Party mailing list the past few days. They don't want the abolition of copyright; they've read what RMS has to say on the topic, and their interest is more in seeing a complete reevaluation of copyright in the context of it being a social contract. Not just rights granted to a copyright holder by society, but responsibilities that come with them - like not just letting things enter the public domain when copyright expires, put actually taking the time to put them out there, freely available. Creative works are, collectively, our cultural heritage; with regard to music, the vast majority creating it see little to no financial reward for doing so. The 'industry', on the other hand, has a long and shameful history of assuming they have a right to be paid over and over and over again for exactly the same piece of work. -- Brian McNeil Wikinewsie.org