Pirate Party Declaration of Principles/3.0/Free Our Culture
Free Our Culture
When copyrights were originally created, they only regulated the right of a creator to be recognized as the creator. It has later been expanded to cover commercial copying of works as well as also limiting the natural rights of private citizens and non-profit organizations. We say that this shift of balance has prompted an unacceptable development for all of society. Economic and technological developments have pushed copyright laws way out of balance and instead it infers unjust advantages for a few large market players at the expense of consumers, creators and society at large. Millions of classical songs, movies and books are held hostages in the vaults of huge media corps, not wanted enough by their focus groups to re-publish but potentially too profitable to release. We want to free our cultural heritage and make them accessible to all, before time withers away the celluloid of the old movie reels.
Immaterial laws are a way to legislate material properties for immaterial values. Ideas, knowledge and information are by nature non-exclusive and their common value lies in their inherent ability to be shared and spread.
We say that copyrights need to be restored to their origins. Laws must be altered to regulate only commercial use and copying of protected works. To share copies, or otherwise spread or use works for non-profit uses, must never be illegal since such fair use benefits all of society.
We want to reform commercial copyrights. The basic notion of copyrights was always to find a fair balance between conflicting commercial interests. Today this balance is lost and needs to be regained.
We suggest a reduction of commercial copyright protection, i.e. the monopoly to create copies of a work for commercial purposes, to five years from the publication of the work. The rights to make derivative works shall be adjusted so that the basic rule will be freedom for all to make them immediately. Any and all exceptions from this rule, for example, translations of books, or the usage of protected musical scores in movies, shall be explicitly enumerated in the statutes.
We want to create a fair and balanced copyright.
All non-commercial gathering, use, processing and distribution of culture shall be explicitly encouraged. Technologies limiting the consumer's legal rights to copy and use information or culture, so-called DRM, should be banned. In cases where this leads to obvious disadvantages for the consumer, any product containing DRM shall display clear warnings to inform consumers of this fact.
Contractual agreements implemented to prevent such legal distribution of information shall be declared null and void. Non-commercial distribution of published culture, information or knowledge - with the clear exception of personal data - must not be limited or punished. As a logical conclusion of this, we want to abolish the blank media tax.
We want to create a cultural commons.