Yes, firstly, before we can do much else, we need more members. A stronger line, like a shorter term or abolishment of copyright, could well help us in this first step of getting more members, but (my personal opinion) it would be a first step on a road to nowhere.

People's initial snap judgement of a suggestion is based on how easily it fits into their current world view (influenced by what they're used to). If we fail this initial snap-judgement test, then we have lost any chance of getting a message across. People will just basically switch off, and no matter how good your argument is, it won't really register. They will assume that there's some hidden or subtle flaw that they can't figure out right now, and won't bother spending the time to try to figure it out.

We don't have to win over the majority, but we must ensure that, at worst, they don't care too much. If we take a line that scares a significant proportion of the general public, or amuses them, then we're going to be sharing a corner of the political stage occupied by the Democrats for Social Credit, and no other political party will dare associate with us.

I think there's a big psychological difference between 10 and anything less--it's in the double digits order of magnitude--so I think it could make a significant difference in how many people switch off from the start.

I think it's probably fair to say that people are often cautious of radical upheaval (anything too far outside what they are used to). I think you generally only get radical upheaval when the mood of the general public has already shifted towards it, which is fairly rare, and that this is not such a situation, so we have to refrain from being too ambitious. If we can achieve a less ambitious goal, and people find that it works, then we've shifted the whole playing field. The new situation becomes the norm, and we've made progress.

While I am a strong fan of reducing the length of term of copyright (don't shoot me, Walt's ghost!), I'm even more in favour of having equal access to content for all. If a copyright holder actually made their content available to us, people in many instances would not resort to breaking the law to access that content.

I for example download a number of TV shows. I will likely continue to download those TV shows, regardless of what the law says. The law says I can't go over 40kmph down Ponsonby Road too, but on the odd occasions I may or may not have gone 41, or perhaps even 42. Anyway, I digress. Since those TV shows are not available in New Zealand, and likely won't be for a very long time, I pay about $50ish a month for a Giganews subscription to download those shows. I would be happy to pay that money to the copyright holders instead, but the way content licensing works just doesn't make that practicable. Unfortunately, content licensing - particularly for TV content - is stuck in the stone-age. Sadly, I can't think of any practical way that can be solved any time soon.

Until major content providers come on board and start providing equal access to content for everyone, regardless of their physical location, I guess we're stuck. So instead, I think we should rely on a growingly interconnected world - and allow people everywhere to non-commerically share content and information with their friends without fear of penalty from day one. As soon as the material is released it should be able to be shared. There's a reason why drug dealers give you the first hit free - you'll be back with the cash to buy some more. Same goes here.

As for commercial use, copyright should be limited to 15 years, or upon death of the author, IMHO.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with most of this, and I think we're essentially voting on the copyright term for commercial use here, because I'm pretty confident that the result of the vote on copyright reach will be to cover commercial use only.

For the length of commercial copyright, I'd be happy if the law was either 10 or 15 years, but I would prefer a policy of 15 years because I think this would be an easier sell (since we can cite economic optimality).

With regards to capping the term of copyright to the author's life though, I don't think this is necessary. Although it may be intuitive to suppose that people don't have an incentive to do something for the sake of a result that would happen after their death, I don't think this is actually the case. Someone nearing death may be motivated to publish a work by the offer of an income they could leave as an inheritance, so I think it makes economic sense to provide the same incentive to them as to an author with a longer life expectancy. Also, an author with a short life expectancy might sell their copyright for an immediate benefit, in which case the question of a posthumous incentive doesn't arise, and many works nowadays (such as movies and computer software) are highly collaborative, and are covered by the legal idea of 'work for hire'/'corporate authorship', whereby the copyright is granted directly to the company, without ever being held by the author. So even if the author doesn't live for another 15 years, I'm not sure it makes any less economic sense to offer a 15 year (commercial) copyright term.

The votes have been counted, and the winning option is:

[C] 10 year term

This is now official PPNZ policy (our first official policy).

Sorry for the delay in posting this, we (the policy committee) hadn't thought about how much information to disclose to make the process transparent without disclosing so much that people's votes are no longer secret, or how to present this information. In the meantime though, we should at least announce the winning option.

Here is the official summary of the results.

The winner was: [C] 10 year term

Votes cast: 9 votes

The unadjusted Condorcet (head-to-head) results can be summarised as follows:

• 1st: [C] 10 year term
  (the above option beats every below option by at least 2 votes / 22%)
• 2nd: [B] 15 year term
  (every above option beats every below option by at least 2 votes / 22%)
• 3rd: [D] 5 year term
  (every above option beats every below option by at least 5 votes / 56%)
• 4th: [E] abolish copyright (requires 75% majority)
  (every above option beats the below option by at least 1 vote / 11%)
• 5th: [A] no policy on copyright term

Because E is classified as non-core policy, it would require 75% vs. 25% of votes (a 50% lead) to win the vote. Because E is not first in the unadjusted results, we don't need to perform the adjustment to check for this.

Condorcet (head-to-head) gives us a winner, so Schulze is not needed as a tie breaker.