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The Swedish Pirate Party was recently elected to the EU parliament. New EU MP Christian Engström of the Pirate Party says that copyright law could threaten online freedom and erode the sense of a "common culture heritage".
"Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down", says Christian Engström, "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 copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored."
I think Mr. Engström is spot on. I think we're giving away too much of our basic rights without putting up much of a fight. The talk is all about three-strikes and about people getting thrown off the Internet, the but the real distressful fact (that isn't debated as much as the actual act of cutting people's Internet connections off) is that in order to allow this to happen, monitoring must occur. And this is not monitoring by a government agency that has legal right to do so and follow due process. No. This is by a corporation at the behest of another corporation, and the goal is not for national security or protection of society, rather, it is for the protection and security of profits for these mega corporations. If people, rightly, are outraged that the government is spying on its citizens to fight terrorism, then they should be even more outraged that corporations get to do the same. At least government (well some of them) are elected!
ZeroPaid has more on this here:
"Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down", says Christian Engström, "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 copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored."
I think Mr. Engström is spot on. I think we're giving away too much of our basic rights without putting up much of a fight. The talk is all about three-strikes and about people getting thrown off the Internet, the but the real distressful fact (that isn't debated as much as the actual act of cutting people's Internet connections off) is that in order to allow this to happen, monitoring must occur. And this is not monitoring by a government agency that has legal right to do so and follow due process. No. This is by a corporation at the behest of another corporation, and the goal is not for national security or protection of society, rather, it is for the protection and security of profits for these mega corporations. If people, rightly, are outraged that the government is spying on its citizens to fight terrorism, then they should be even more outraged that corporations get to do the same. At least government (well some of them) are elected!
ZeroPaid has more on this here:
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