The Piratre Party

[Harley Sachs]

Imagine a store where you don't buy anything, but just go in and help yourself. That seems to be the viewpoint of the Pirate Party which began in Sweden and is now in 33 countries. They are opposed to intellectual property rights, namely rophright. HEre's a column I wrote on the subject:
MS# 1610pirate/750 words
October 13, 2009


The Pirate Party Phenomenon
a column copyright by
Harley L. Sachs
www.hu.mtu.edu/~hlsachs
In the beginning there were computer programmers who shared everything, compared notes, and helped each other with open source software. It was something of a shock when the capitalist entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates put proprietary locks on their systems. But the generation of youths who teethed on computer keyboards doesn’t share that attitude toward intellectual property. They indulge in file sharing, primarily music, and have clashed with NAPSTER. NAPSTER has won some punitive lawsuits fining a few people who blatantly shard copyrighted music with friends and, eventually, customers. It is that generation that has taken Sweden by storm with the creation of the Pirate Party. It’s a movement that has spread quickly to thirty-three countries, including the United States.
The Pirate Party, whose primary interest is in file sharing, has taken Europe by storm. In a matter of days, the Swedish Pirate Party garnered enough votes to get a seat in Parliament, and they even have a seat in the European Parliament, passing other parties, such as the Green Party. In Sweden the Pirate Party has the third largest membership of all the political parties in the country, surpassing Folkepartiet.
By extension, the insistence on file sharing is interpreted as a movement for freedom of information. The goal is to limit copyright to five years, unlike the current US terms of the author’s life plus seventy years, an extension of the international copyright law Sonny Bono succeeded in getting passed. The Pirate Party insists that everything on the internet be free, and that any constriction of such freedom smacks of, well, let’s call it fascism.
Besides decriminalizing file sharing of music, the Pirate party wants to do away with patent rights, particularly in pharmaceuticals, replacing privately funded r&d with state support.
For me as an author the reduction or elimination of copyright is a genuine threat to my ability to make a living. It’s as if a farmer who grew a crop had to give it away. Though some books like Palin’s Rogue story have a limited shelf life, soon to be remaindered, others can become classics. That’s the gamble an author takes, that a book may gradually take off and acquire a broad readership.
Unfortunately, though electronic books are now taking off, showing the fastest growth in the publishing industry, the members of the Pirate generation regard anything that can be digitized as fair game. Members of the electronic book organization EPIC are constantly watching for file sharers who believe that once you have paid for an ebook you can share the files with anyone. But sharing an ebook is not the same as lending a friend a copy of a hard cover novel you bought at a bookstore.
With the advent of copy machines like Xerox, it became easy to duplicate copyrighted material. Hence we got the Fair Use Doctrine that says you can make a copy for your own personal use, but not make, say, twenty copies of a chapter to hand out to your class so they don’t have to buy the book.
It’s no secret that the digital world including sites like Craig’s List is killing newspapers and magazines. Editors and publishers are scrambling for ways to generate income when everything on the Internet is free.
The Pirate Party may kill the goose that laid the proverbial golden egg. If no one can earn a living by their musical performances or by writing their books, the sources will dry up. You can’t distribute free a book that isn’t written. Free books don’t pay the author’s bills or feed her children.
I wonder if the members of the Pirate Party are willing to work for nothing, which is what’s happening if you have to give away your intellectual property.
Defined at it is today, the Pirate Party is essentially a one issue party. They admit that they are not interested in discussing issues like taxes, health care, insurance, etc. which they leave up to the other parties. They seem doomed to be, though a loud voice of their generation, ultimately a minority party. It’s as if we had a Right to Life Party whose only platform was abolition of abortion.
I haven’t yet seen a breakdown of the demographics of the Pirate Party. What are the ages of the members? Certainly, they are old enough to vote. Their mantra is “Freedom” but that’s a buzzword easily manipulated for the wrong purposes.