socialmedian: Christian Engstrom Explains The Pirate Party's Position: Freedom To Communicate; Freedom From Privacy Invasion

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Christian Engstrom Explains The Pirate Party's Position: Freedom To Communicate; Freedom From Privacy Invasion

Source: Techdirt

Jul 08, 2009

Summary

Christian Engstrom, the representative from the Swedish Pirate Party who is now a member of the European Parliament has written an opinion piece in the Financial Times where he explains the basic rights he is fighting for and the worries about where society and culture go if we continue to allow a few small industries to overpower everyone else's rights:

If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not "ours" at all.

On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.

This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold ...Read the full article

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