The Ten most important points for copyright reform according to the German Pirate Party

n.b. This translation was not done to a professional level and is only meant to be informative. Also the German and EU laws are different to those applicable in New Zealand. However, this will give a reasonable account of the position taken by the German Pirates.
The original text can be found here http://www.piratenpartei.de/2012/05/21/die-zehn-wichtigsten-punkte-einer-urheberrechtsreform/

In light of the continuing debates about copyright the German Pirate Party would like to list ten concrete demands for this a reform of copyright law according to the agreed program. The copyright laws should be renewed through these changes and so be adapted to the requirements of the information society.

1. Shortening of the copyright term to 10 years after the death of the creator. The curreent copyright term(70 years after the death of the creator) are of use to and serve, primarily, the legal owners. The problem of the non-availability of many works is not leastly also based in this excessively long period, as many works are not rereleased or marketed anew but not released into the public domain.
2.We want to strengthen the rights of the creators over the legal owners. Thus, in the case of non-use the rights should return to the creators more quickly and the assignment of exclusive rights of use are limited to maximum of 25 years. Then at the end of the term these rights fall back to the creators.
3. Concerning public educational institutions, the use of works of any media should be free from copyright when acquired outside normal. Here, in addition, new commercial models should be developed on the basis of free licenses.
4. Up to date archiving of works in libraries must be permitted. These are to be available and guaranteed free for educational purposes.
5. The rights on private copy should be formulated and be established so that the production of "Remixes" and "Mashups" is easier. We want to abolish copy preventive measures and digital legal management (DRM).
6. We want more rights for creators compared with legal owners, for example a second utilization right or a temporal limitation of "Buy-Out" contracts (reform of the creator's law of contract).
7. The private, direct, non-commercial file-sharing and the passing on of works should become decriminalized. File-sharer are the better customers and the need to "try before buying" is an genuine need.
8. New commercial models: All models functioning up to now, as well as new possibilities like micropayment, crowdfunding and crowdivesting, however, also the option of the all-inclusive deliveries which are of benefit for the creator. All-inclusive deliveries must correspond to our concepts of data protection and the private sphere in the net. We want to guarantee a fair and adequate reimbursement for creators. Mutual trust is a factor here, nevertheless, it is an important component in the functioning and new distribution channels.
9. The current use of spamigation for copyright infringement by private individuals must be ended as well as the carrier's liability be abolished in favour of free WLAN nets.
10. The copyright laws must do justice to the requirements of the media-competent user of today and may not limit them in their creative needs.


Andrew

My personal thoughts on some points:

I don't think it really makes sense to base the length of copyright on the remaining life of the creator. I think this just increases the complexity of the law, especially if there's still a flat term for 'work for hire' or 'corporate authorship'. Better to have a single flat term, I think.

This would be problematic for collaborative works (e.g. large software projects) unless we allow companies to side-step it with 'work for hire' or 'corporate authorship', in which case there's no point. Something like this was part of the Statute of Anne, and I wonder if it was dropped for practicality reasons.

I don't think schools should be indoctrinating students into the use of copyrighted works at all, and I'd be concerned that making copyrighted works free for educational use would increase this, locking society further into such works.

Abolishing DRM anti-circumvention is good, but banning DRM would be problematic. There's not point banning ineffective DRM (e.g. DVD CSS that's already been cracked), and banning effective DRM would simply make covered works unavailable within the country that bans them (which would be very unpopular), unless the ban is done globally (or on a large enough scale) and simultaneously. Placing warnings and/or a tax on DRMed copyrighted works may be other possibilities.

I agree almost entirely with the above points. I think we reached the conclusion that the best approach to DRM was that there should be no legal restriction on breaking it or sharing information about how to break it, and possibly warning labels where products are restricted. 'banning' DRM entirely isn't really practical.

Agreed. BTW educational use is already free under existing fair use law. That doesn't stop the copyright trolls tho.

(EDIT: IANAL and don't know the case law, but the fair use exceptions in the Copyright Act 1994 are surprising)

It is hardly indoctrination. Students can discriminate between school and home quite well.
This point is to address absurdities such as a teacher being able to call up, for example, a news report video online for his class but not being able to burn it on a CD for later off line. In NZ fair use should cover this but clarity does not exist internationally. Could a teacher in NZ copy a German news report containing the work of a Japanese singer doing a cover version of a US pop song?

Yes, news reports aren't so much of an issue, but if a school trains students in the use of commercial software, then they are providing a free service to commercial interests to the detriment of society. These students will become future employees, managers, etc., and they will bring with them a set of skills that is applicable to a work that someone else has a legal right to control the use of. If the students were instead trained in the use of free works, then they would be empowered to break the lock-in cycle.

I have to agree with that in the current climate but I would like to see no political interference with schools leaving such decisions up to the teachers. Schools should be given an adequate budget and learning goals. How these targets are reached is up to the teaching staff. The choice of software would be up to them and not dictated by politicians, propriety software providers or the cost of using required materials.

Teaching children how to evaluate and choose software - especially taking into consideration open source vs proprietary - should be one of those goals.
Empowerment to choose instead of restriction is, IMO, the pirate way.

Andrew

Teachers are civil servants. They are paid by the government, which is funded by the public for the public benefit, so teachers should act in the public interest, and indoctrinating children into copyrighted works is not in the public interest. If people want to indoctrinate children into copyrighted works, then they can work for Microsoft, no-one is forcing them to be teachers. So long as they decide to be teachers, they should do what's in the public interest. (My view.)

Leaving the decision up to individual teachers/schools won't work. If individual teachers/schools decide what to teach students, they will indoctrinate their students into copyrighted works, because that's what all the other teachers/schools will be doing, and if some students are not learning what all the other students are learning then they are outsiders. There is no incentive to be a prime mover.

If teachers/schools have an incentive to teach the use of free works, or a disincentive to teach unfree ones, then many schools will teach the use of free works, breaking the chicken/egg problem. Because other teachers/schools will be doing it too, students learning the use of free works will not be outsiders. This will effect real change to actually allow people freedom in a practical sense.

I agree we don't want to get too heavy handed with micromanagement, but there's an easy solution. Disallow copyright holders from price fixing. If schools have to pay commercial licensing fees, then they have a disincentive to use copyrighted works that is proportional to the burden they would be imposing upon society.

Uhh, what?

New Zealand doesn't have Fair Use .. and "Educational Use" is very, very far from except of copyright in just about any country. Ask any teacher, they get regular lectures about complying with copyright.

We don't call it that, but it's the same idea. Part 3 of the Copyright Act 1994 "Acts permitted in relation to copyright works". The part specific to education is http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/link.aspx?search=ts_act_copyright_resel&id=DLM345963.