Policy Committee Proposals on Copyright Reach

From Pirate Wiki

This page is for the Policy Committee to collate proposals for and discussions about the official policy on copyright reach. Please post your ideas in Board index > Party Policy Development > Policy Committee Activities > Copyright reach <http://pirateparty.org.nz/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1031>.

Provisional options (from least extensive to most)

[A] No policy

[B] Unrestricted personal use of a legally obtained work (format shifting, backups, etc. allowed, EULAS don't apply)

[C] Not illegal to personally obtain or use a work without permission or payment (but conveying is still illegal)

[D] Personal conveying allowed if neither money nor P2P bandwidth is received for conveying ('mix tapes' for friends, etc. allowed)

[E] Personal conveying allowed if money is not received for conveying (P2P allowed)

[F] Personal conveying allowed and profit may be made through advertising

[G] Personal conveying allowed and copies may be sold to cover costs

[H] No restrictions on personal use or conveying (profit may be made through advertising or sales of copies, etc.) (requires 75% majority)

Option H requires a 75% majority because it goes beyond the policy of other pirate parties, so is not considered core policy. It is not clear whether options F and/or G go beyond the policy of other pirate parties. While other pirate parties have a policy of copyright not covering non-commercial use, it is generally not well defined what counts as non-commercial use. Because of this, options F and G will be given the benefit of the doubt, and not require a 75% majority.

Ideas from discussions

Against legalising P2P: Repealing the file sharing law (returning the burden of proof to the plaintiff and removing excessive punative damages) would effectively legalise P2P, so it would be nearly as good as actually legalising P2P, but would be a much easier sell. It would be easier to argue that people should be considered innocient until proven guilty and that penalties should not be excessive than to argue that copyright is not a moral right, which may mean more chance of success as a first step, and we can aim to legalise P2P later on.

For legalising P2P: The Pirate Party of Sweden has been involved in P2P, so it may show a lack of solidarity to not aim to legalise it, and they seem to have gathered support from this issue. Also, so long as P2P is illegal, the copyright industry can argue "people are getting away with breaking the law".

Against going further than legalising P2P: P2P conveying is a sufficient method of non-commercial conveying to make works available. Allowing people to receive money for conveying (through advertising or selling copies to cover costs) would likely risk opposition from artists such as in the Creative Freedom Foundation who may otherwise be sympathetic to our position. (Sites like the Pirate Bay provide indexes of hash files, but don't actually convey works, so do not require it to be legal to receive money for conveying, they only depend on it being legal to provide indexes of hash files.)