bjelkeman's Journal: Copyright concerns more than pirates

Original article in Swedish [www.dn.se]

[This is a quick translation from Swedish to English of the above linked article. The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published this the other day and I thought it was a real shame that it couldn't be read by a wider audience than the Swedish speaking one. I mailed the newspaper and asked them to translate it. They replied that they haven't got time. But the journalist encouraged me to spread the word. So I do. This translation probably breaches copyright. However, it would be quite amusing for the newspaper publisher to come after me with a copyright argument after publishing this article.]

Copyright concerns more than pirates

The failed action against The Pirate Bay shows that the end of the road has been reached for Bodströms [Minister for Justice] hard-line copyright approach. It is time to review last years changes of the law and start discussing the real problems.

The raid against the file-sharing web site The Pirate Bay has ricocheted into the election campaign. Instead of becoming a forceful blow against illegal file sharing quite the opposite has happened.

A question which primarily concerns young internet users has now landed high on the agenda of the political debate. Essentially all the political parties and a growing number of citizens are starting to question the sense in using the police to track down people who distribute software that makes it possible to download movies, music and other copyrighted materials.

Even Minister for Justice Thomas Bodström, otherwise an un-flappable character, has started humming and hawing, maybe in the insight that his uncompromised approach can become a burden for the social democrats during the election process for this autumn.

All of this is excellent. All to long the copyright question has been dealt with in the outskirts of the political debate. The risk is that many perceives the conflict as a battle between lawless net pirates and fat media moguls. But the situation is more complicated and if we are going to progress in the issue we have to get rid of some delusions that mar the debate.

Firstly, the policy of copyright is not on the defensive, at least not in a judicial sense. On the contrary, during the last decades there has been a gradual strengthening of the copyright across the world, strongly supported by the USA, whose entertainment business has strong economical interests in protecting its products.

The time which a work is protected by copyright has been increased in several countries and the ability to copy materials for private use has been curtailed. There are many reasons to be critical against the hardening copyright regime without actually proposing to abolish the copyright. What is needed now is rather a substantial timeout to discuss if there are other and better ways of protecting the production of intellectual works. Bodströms enthusiasm for stronger laws and to hunt file sharers has been the wrong approach.

Secondly, it is not the anarchic internet pirates who have been hit the hardest by the new stronger copyright laws, but law abiding librarians, university teachers, archivists and museum workers. Their ability to teach and to make the cultural heritage more accessible to people has in one blow been made substantially harder since the new copyright laws came into power last year.

On paper there are many possibilities to negotiate with the originators of the works or their representatives, about permission to copy and publish their works. But in reality it is essentially impossible, as the cultural institutions do not have the resources required to gather all the necessary permits. The consequence is a privatisation of our commonly owned culture.

Thirdly, the comparisons between copying of intellectual property and theft of private property leads the discussion away from the real issues. There are important differences between right of possession over physical objects and copyright. Intellectual property is as opposed to material property not a finite resource.

Einsteins theory of relativity or Marcel Prousts writings do not run out because someone else shares them. What is important is whether the creators has a sufficiently strong incentive, if the reward is in proportion to the actual work.

On the other hand we have the issue of freedom of expression, the intellectual commons. If ideas, theories and artistic works are easily accessible we increase the possibility of improvements, new discoveries and creation of new works.

The argument that we can do without patents and copyright are not convincing. The risk is that we go back to the situation where artists, scientists and other intellectuals will become dependent on a rich benefactor is acute.

But the efforts to turn back technical development with ever increasingly strong copyright equally leads in the wrong direction. Sweden should as a first step go back to the copyright law which was in place before 1 July 2005.

DN 20 June 2006