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Free File Sharing On Political Platforms? Pandering To Young Voters Or Serious Policy Position?
from the seems-a-bit-desperate dept
Slashdot points us to an article about the relatively small Liberal Party of Norway is including some interesting positions on its platform concerning copyright issues. Specifically, it wants to make sure that free file sharing for non-commercial purposes is legal, it wants to allow sampling, it wants to shorten the length of copyright and finally, it wants to ban DRM. The statements backing these up point to the importance of having a free flow of culture and how that these changes will help spread culture more easily through the country. Of course, being a relatively small political party, this has the feel of a somewhat desperate attempt to appeal to younger voters. Also, while I tend to agree with many of the positions, it's not clear how well the policy makers in question actually understand what they're suggesting here. Banning DRM, for example, doesn't actually make that much sense. While we think DRM is bad for everyone the real effort should be in convincing the content owners who insist on using DRM that it's harming their business prospects by limiting their market potential. Doing an outright ban just seems to be going too far. Also, in terms of encouraging free file sharing, they should be pointing out how such things can expand someone's market (making it a true win-win) rather than acting like it's a some sort of tradeoff between the consumer and the producer of content. We're all for artificial monopolies on ideas through intellectual property laws becoming a point of political debate, but the understanding of what it entails needs to go even further than what's being presented by the Liberal Party of Norway.
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I will support any party making a serious statement about any issue they choose. What I am getting sick of is parties making ridiculous statements about positions that are minutely related to hot button issues just to get people riled up.
i.e. Forcing women to get a sonogram right before an abortion somewhat helps the pro-life cause (I am looking at you shameless Republicans in Georgia)
or an assult weapons ban that merely changes the way the end of an assult rifle looks (I'm looking at you Mr. Clinton)
I am picking on both parties to hide my preference of which party I prefer. My point is they both do stupid crap that will change NOTHING!
If they are serious about file sharing and they plan on acting on it if and when they get some power - put it on every ad you buy!
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I'm really not surprised by this. Its common knowledge that Norway leads the way in file sharing. This is probably just a really small political party with no chance of winning any election. This is not news
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C'mon Mike - give us an explanation.
If DRM is bad for everyone, why is banning it ''going too far"?
Plainly, the content producers have gone too far (killing fair use) by using shallow simplistic arguments.
If only the simplest of arguments will be understood, then my argument is, "kill DRM".
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hmmm...a bit too extreme
Sounds a bit extreme...copyrights are necessary to renumerate artists and authors...and banning DRM is as bad a making it mandatory...free markets flourish from choice, let the consumers decide and let supply and demand determine who wins and who loses. Don't get me wrong, I still support file-sharing, but not so much the wild ones where you exchange poluted files with thousands of strangers, encrypted file-sharing between friends is the wave of the future (see http://www.gigatribe.com for an example of a saner methode of file sharing). Ah Norway, I should visit it sometime!
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Proportional Representation
It's probably worth pointing out, for those accustomed to winner-takes-all political systems, that under proportional-representation voting there's nothing "desperate" in having a niche political party promoting niche policies. So they only win a handful of votes, that might still be enough to get a seat or two in parliament.
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