14 DAY TRIAL // The Swedish Pirate Party celebrates its first big victory as they recently convinced the Greens group, the fifth largest from the European Parliament, to adopt their view on copyright monopoly matters, which implies openness, transparency and accountability.
“It must be made absolutely clear that the copyright monopoly does not extend to what an ordinary person can do with ordinary equipment in their home and spare time; it regulates commercial, intent-to-profit activity only. Specifically, file sharing is always legal,” revealed Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party, as being one of their positions on the copyright monopoly.
Ever since they were elected in the EP in 2009, they promised to show the world the good side in the alleged piracy acts and this is their first occasion when they really made their point.
They claim that with the newly adopted paper, they wish to restore the meaning of copyright to its origins. The Pirates strongly militate to make certain things that are now considered to be acts of piracy to be seen as legal by the authorities and media industry representatives alike.
The document compares downloading a song or a movie from the internet to when people copied poems to send to their loved ones, or cassette tapes to give to friends.
UK Pirate Party leader, Loz Kaye, stated for the The Inquirer that each country that has a such a group will benefit from the fact that they fight for the “right to a shared culture and civil liberties“.
"With the recent election victory in Berlin and now the Green EU Block adopting key Pirate Party positions, the movement continues to grow in its influence. This is because of the strength of our ideas. There are real challenges to digital rights world wide - site blocking, '[three] strikes' laws and ACTA and people are looking to us to stand up to the industry lobbyists. It's vital that we work at an international level combat these threats to the open web."