Reforming Copyrights

The second chapter of ”The Case For Copyright Reform”  written by Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström in 2012 is straight forward and interesting but doesn't answer to all the needed questions. The chapter’s name is ”A Constructive Proposal For Copyright Reform”.

The main point of the chapter is stated at the very beginning: 

”The Pirate Party does not want to abolish copyright; we want to reform it. We want to keep copyright for commercial purposes, but we want to set all non-commercial copying and use free.”

My first though about it was mostly positive and that it could work, but also when non-commercial usage and copying would be free it just can’t work as it’s meant to be. It sounds too good to be true to everyone basically be able to use material if they somehow prove that they use it for non-commercial. In this case also how do you define what is non-commercial usage and what’s not ? And who makes the decision for it?

They give detailed and interesting overview of the current situation and tell why their proposal would be effective and should be taken in to a careful consideration.

It explains the situation and the idea from and for both parties.

I like the idea of reforming the copyright laws, because noways usually if something is wrong it gets banned pretty easily. I’m happy that they found possible solution for the ”problem”.

Also the concept freedom of information was mentioned at the beginning of the chapter and it’s interesting how some information should be free to use and also to be restricted at the same time. It made me think how the information we share is and should be classified, who decides what is worth of copyright laws and what’s not.

Their proposal was divided and explained well into six points, which were mortal rights unchanged, free non-commercial sharing, 20 years of commercial monopoly, registration after 5 years, free sampling and a ban on Digital Rights Management 

(DRM).

They also state that the peer-to-peer sharing should be legalized. Which is interesting point, because in that it’s easy to break those copyright laws pretty easily and share data/information that shouldn’t be shared.

Question at the end: ”But how will the artists get paid, if file sharing is set free?”  Is tricky one and I think it’s one of the issues that come across while reforming the laws. 

In general I like the proposal and the idea they proposed that there should be created a specific business model for it to work properly and I agree with that. Without special agreements and arrangements it wouldn’t work as its meant.