The Swedish Pirate Party is a member of the Green Group in the EU parliament. It's not really that strange that the Pirate Party has a huge influence on the Green Group's copyright policy. Rick Falkvinge (the previous leader of the Swedish Pirate Party) declares this as a huge victory for the Pirate Party.
The German Green Party is only a part of the European one, it could very well be that the European and German Party have different opinions on the matter.
In multiparty systems, a minority party (like the Green Party) will often compromise on issues that are not on their core platform in order to get support on their one or two key issues.
One of the key issues for the Green Party in Germany was the banning of nuclear plants. They've had an enormous influence in actually getting Germany to make a drastic change and abandoning nuclear energy. This was no small feat as Germany is the leading European manufacturer and the home of Siemens, a major producer of nuclear technology. Although Fukushima was the tipping point, there had already been significant pressure on the German conservative party to at least prevent additional construction of new plants.
Nevertheless, this success for the Green Party was due in part to them forming coalitions to support non-core issues such as the one you've mentioned.
Try to think about yourself as a movie creator, for example. Or even an investor.
You are sweating your blood, doing everything to get your movie made, believing it will make you money in the future. Taking huge risks, if you are an invetor, or spending huge amounts of time, if you are a moviemaker.
And then some asshole, who pays cheap buck for hosting, will make money on YOUR creation, without you seeing any of the money he makes.
You have to balance the rights of the copyright holders and consumers' rights.
(Note: up voting you to counter the idiotic down vote you received)
That asshole who puts the movie up on cheap hosting and tries to make some money off it will be swamped by all the people putting it up on cheap hosting for free or on P2P networks for free.
That's my point--legalizing non-commercial file sharing but not legalizing commercial file sharing has pretty much exactly the same outcome as legalizing all file sharing without distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial. All that distinguishing them accomplishes is make the law more complicated because there will need to be some kind of definition of "commercial" and that can get tricky.
I suspect they are making the distinction to try to make people think that legalized non-commercial file sharing would not have much impact. They want people to think of it as the kind of sharing you do when you loan your neighbor a DVD, or borrow a CD and rip it...perhaps technically illegal but because it is on such a personal level it isn't going to have a hugh impact.
Filesharers may offer files on P2P networks for free, but they don't print books or burn millions of DVDs for free. That would still be a privilege of the copyright owner (and its licensees).
All that distinguishing them accomplishes is make the law more complicated because there will need to be some kind of definition of "commercial" and that can get tricky.
That already exists. For example, in the US copyright infringement is a civil case, unless it's done for "commercial advantage or private financial gain", then it becomes an actual crime¹.
The EU law has also a bunch of exceptions/fair use clauses that only apply to "non-commercial" use.
I suspect they are making the distinction to try to make people think that legalized non-commercial file sharing would not have much impact. They want people to think of it as the kind of sharing you do when you loan your neighbor a DVD, or borrow a CD and rip it...perhaps technically illegal but because it is on such a personal level it isn't going to have a hugh impact.
I doubt it; anyone who even considers voting for them knows that's not really true. It's just to differentiate the intention, which is already extremely important in most laws.
> in the US copyright infringement is a civil case, unless it's done for "commercial advantage or private financial gain"
Unfortunately, the NET Act, passed in the wake of David LaMacchia leaving a writable FTP directory on his server that was also world-readable and failing to be convicted of anything, has redefined "private financial gain" to include the expectation of receiving copies of data in return.
Because people still have to make money. IT is a multi-billion dollar business. If you can afford it and you're making money off it, they feel you should pay for it.
This is not surprising and actually a textbook example of how single-issue-parties see their ideas absorbed by parties with a more complete program.
It is actually a good thing, not a bad thing, as long as a political party actually delivers on their campaign issues.
And therein lies the crux, more often than not these items become bargaining chips.
Maybe democracy could be strengthened by putting penalties on the breaking of campaign promises and non-performance on issues from the various programs.
It'd be great to see politicians and party bodies held accountable to the promises they made to the electorate.
Already at least one party has written their program in the form of a 'contract', in that case there ought to be a penalty for breach of contract too.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 35.1 ms ] threadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greens%E2%80%93European_Fre...
Interesting from a UK POV is that as well as the Green Party, the SNP and Plaid Cymru are included, as members of the European Free Alliance.
One example is that with their help one of the largest scale surveillance acts were pushed through the German parliament in 2005 ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Großer_Lauschangriff GER).
Makes me really sceptically if this is is a heartfelt issue for them or just some attempt to win voters of the pirate party over.
http://falkvinge.net/2011/10/07/huge-pirate-victory-as-eu-pa...
One of the key issues for the Green Party in Germany was the banning of nuclear plants. They've had an enormous influence in actually getting Germany to make a drastic change and abandoning nuclear energy. This was no small feat as Germany is the leading European manufacturer and the home of Siemens, a major producer of nuclear technology. Although Fukushima was the tipping point, there had already been significant pressure on the German conservative party to at least prevent additional construction of new plants.
Nevertheless, this success for the Green Party was due in part to them forming coalitions to support non-core issues such as the one you've mentioned.
You are sweating your blood, doing everything to get your movie made, believing it will make you money in the future. Taking huge risks, if you are an invetor, or spending huge amounts of time, if you are a moviemaker.
And then some asshole, who pays cheap buck for hosting, will make money on YOUR creation, without you seeing any of the money he makes.
You have to balance the rights of the copyright holders and consumers' rights.
That asshole who puts the movie up on cheap hosting and tries to make some money off it will be swamped by all the people putting it up on cheap hosting for free or on P2P networks for free.
That's my point--legalizing non-commercial file sharing but not legalizing commercial file sharing has pretty much exactly the same outcome as legalizing all file sharing without distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial. All that distinguishing them accomplishes is make the law more complicated because there will need to be some kind of definition of "commercial" and that can get tricky.
I suspect they are making the distinction to try to make people think that legalized non-commercial file sharing would not have much impact. They want people to think of it as the kind of sharing you do when you loan your neighbor a DVD, or borrow a CD and rip it...perhaps technically illegal but because it is on such a personal level it isn't going to have a hugh impact.
All that distinguishing them accomplishes is make the law more complicated because there will need to be some kind of definition of "commercial" and that can get tricky.
That already exists. For example, in the US copyright infringement is a civil case, unless it's done for "commercial advantage or private financial gain", then it becomes an actual crime¹. The EU law has also a bunch of exceptions/fair use clauses that only apply to "non-commercial" use.
I suspect they are making the distinction to try to make people think that legalized non-commercial file sharing would not have much impact. They want people to think of it as the kind of sharing you do when you loan your neighbor a DVD, or borrow a CD and rip it...perhaps technically illegal but because it is on such a personal level it isn't going to have a hugh impact.
I doubt it; anyone who even considers voting for them knows that's not really true. It's just to differentiate the intention, which is already extremely important in most laws.
¹ http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506
Unfortunately, the NET Act, passed in the wake of David LaMacchia leaving a writable FTP directory on his server that was also world-readable and failing to be convicted of anything, has redefined "private financial gain" to include the expectation of receiving copies of data in return.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act
Makes sense to me.
It is actually a good thing, not a bad thing, as long as a political party actually delivers on their campaign issues.
And therein lies the crux, more often than not these items become bargaining chips.
Maybe democracy could be strengthened by putting penalties on the breaking of campaign promises and non-performance on issues from the various programs.
It'd be great to see politicians and party bodies held accountable to the promises they made to the electorate.
Already at least one party has written their program in the form of a 'contract', in that case there ought to be a penalty for breach of contract too.