Berlin-bound - the Pirate Party
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A BAND OF PIRATES sailed up the Rhine last Sunday. They proceeded to storm the state parliament building in Düsseldorf and effortlessly seized a respectable 7.8 percent of the seats. While that figure might not sound particularly impressive to American ears, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia the Pirate Party blew the struggling Left Party straight out of the water and ended up less than one percentage point behind the Free Democrats, which rule Germany in a coalition with Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. They also came in well ahead of the five percent of the vote necessary for parliamentary representation - a clause inserted into the constitution after World War II to keep out communists and Nazis (nobody back then foresaw a movement like the Pirates). After laying waste to Germany's North Sea and Baltic coast last weekend, where they won 8.2% in the Schleswig-Holstein state election, these latterday buccaneers have clearly set their sights on the Bundestag in Berlin (where they are already represented in the city-state parliament).
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For a new and largely untested party, this was a remarkable feat. But aside from the rambuctious computer nerds and young, disaffected voters who make up the bulk of the Pirates' clientele, one group most certainly did not vote for them on Sunday: Visual artists, musicians, writers, and other creative persons who depend on copyright for their livelihood.
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Unlike their counterparts off - say, the Horn of Africa - who are committed to plundering booty-laden freighters and tankers, Germany's sweetwater Pirates are aiming their cannons on copyright laws. And you have to admit they have a point. For example, did you know that you should theoretically pay royalties every time you sing "Happy Birthday"? (Movies containing the song regularly pay up.) And what about the software and computer platforms we have all come to depend on like the oxygen we breathe? And how about those Youtube videos that keep getting taken down due to alleged copyright infringement. I mean, that's all a drag, isn't it?
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The Pirates think so. That's why they have committed themselves to trashing copyright as the rest of us know it. Specifically, the party's program calls for the following:
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Since the copyability of digitally available works cannot be restricted in a technologically meaningful way, and since we must regard the blanket implementability of prohibitions in the private sphere as having failed, the opportunities for the general availability of works should be recognized and utilized. We believe that the non-commercial reproduction and utilization of works should be regarded as natural, and that, contrary to opposing claims by certain interest groups, they do not negatively impact the interests of most copyright holders.
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Instead, the Pirates not only want to legalize but "actively promote" such private reproduction in order to make all information available to all people at all times and at all places on earth.
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O brave new world!, as Shakespeare - and Aldous Huxley - might have put it. Well, what could be wrong with freedom for everyone and everything? A lot, if you ask creative artists.
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On May 10, 100 German artists and authors published a manifesto in the weekly DIE ZEIT "against the theft of intellectual property." (An additional 6,000 artists and authors have added their signatures since.)
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With concern and incomprehension, we authors and artists have been observing the public attacks on copyright law. Copyright is an historic achievement of civil freedom against feudal dependency, and it guarantees the material basis for individual intellectual activity.
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The authors and artists go on to say that
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Copyright law allows us as artists and authors to live from our work, and it protects all of us, also from globally active Internet companies, whose business model takes the disfranchisement of artists and authors in stride. The daily presence and the practicality of the Internet in our lives is no justification for theft and is no excuse for greed and stinginess.
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"They're pissing in our faces" - author and musician Sven Regener
(Source: Wiki)
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Speaking on the radio station Bayrischer Rundfunk, best selling novelist and musician Sven Regener put matters more bluntly:
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They're acting as if we're creating art as a hobby. The whole song and dance that we are uncool because we're insisting on the fact that we created these works is basically the same thing as pissing in our faces and saying: "Your stuff is worthless. We want to have it for free." A society that treats its artists this way is worthless.
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But the Pirates see the issue differently. Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last week, Pirate Christopher Lauer argues that from the point of view of the Pirates, expecting their movement to ignore the copyright issue would be equivalent to expecting Christians to abandon the cross:
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The search for a copyright law adjusted to the technological realities of the 21st century is the founding core and myth of the Pirate Party. "Pirate" was a battle cry for content providers, which has been picked up by a political movement: If you call us pirates, then we will call ourselves pirates, and there you have it. This is the origin of our entire folklore, complete with its nautical metaphors. But it also contains self-evident features, such as setting foot on virgin territory, doing something wild, breaking rules.
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Lauer calls for an open dialogue between creators and users. But what could that mean? On the radio station Deutschlandfunk yesterday, Pirate Bruno Kramm sought to clarify the situation:
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Here's the problem: If we really want to create a situation where precisely every title that is copied on the Internet has to be invoiced somewhere, then that means we're moving into an area where we need complete control over the Internet. And that is precisely what we all don't want to have. And particularly the copyright holders don't want the Web to be totally controlled on a totalitarian basis. That's precisely the point we have to think about, namely that other systems have to operate on the Internet.
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"Doing something wild":
Berlin Pirate Christopher Lauer
(Source: Piraten.de)
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Kramm admits that the "big" artists and authors have fared famously under current copyright law. But what about the others?
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Let's be honest: The majority of artists live as part of the precariat, and under frequently appalling conditions. They have nothing to do with the fact that conditions have changed so much. They have always lived under terrible conditions, because the industry has always dictated these conditions. So, we have to make very, very clear distinctions. Now, we also have this new market, which is called "the long tail." There is extreme differentiation, the spread of an incredibly large range of styles. And now - in statistics and studies - it has been shown that the field of many small copyright holders represents the largest portion. Which, however, is most poorly represented under the current system.
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Kramm calls for creating new structures, specifically the kind discussed on the French Internet advocacy website La Quadrature du Net, where new models of netsharing are discussed. They call for roundtables including Internet activists and creative artists. And who can deny that such models are needed in the twenty-first century?
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But not all Pirates - with a large and a small "p" - are so patient. The "Anonymous" activist group has gone on the offensive, publishing the contact information of many of those copyright holders who have denounced the Pirates' attack on copyright laws in their manifesto, and threatening to continue their activity if the artists and authors fail to desist. Today the German journalists' association published a formal protest, stating that
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this not only invades the privacy of the affected artists... but also represents an unacceptable attempt to strangle the discussion on the future of copyright law. It represents the absolute low point of tolerance!
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And so the battle rages on. Artists aren't ready to walk the plank just yet, but in the long run, do they have any choice? The Internet has made a mockery of the very notion of copyright law, and the concept of payment has become a sad joke. [For example, one of my novels ended up on "Google Books" with nary a word to me, let alone any royalty payments, and I've been writing this oft-reproduced blog, with its gazillions of clicks, for more than three years without so much as a penny in compensation ].
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A new age is dawning. It is wonderful for digital consumers, particularly for those who have had to pay through the nose for entertainment all their lives. But if you are among that creative minority that creates texts, images, or music for a living, keep your eyes on the horizo. In the words of Bertolt Brecht's Pirate Jenny,
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A ship with eight sails
And with fifty-five cannons
Will lie at the waterfront.
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So keep your head down. Pirates are near...
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Comments
Authors that speak out about this run the risk of retaliation by those that control the system, so they often omit these inconvenient facts and others have to come out with the truth. Since I aint getting paid anyway I'll do it.
There is a legitimate problem here and we should think of different ways of financing intellectual work but the primary culprits aren't the "pirates" they're the politicians and copyright lawyers!
Excellent points. It would clearly be wrong to blame the Pirates for the current dysfunctional system.
The political parties in Germany are correctly charged with having overslept the Internet Age and been caught off-guard by these new means of communication which they now try to catch up with in rather clumsy attempts. But I still marvel at the pseudo-logical conclusion of some of the newcomers: that NOT having overslept the Internet is political skill enough to justify a political party.
Perhaps this is the extreme of Marshall McLuhan's old axiom that as of any message, channel prevails over content.
Or perhaps it means that the Pirates should not be understood as a political party, but rather as an IT start-up company providing politics as an App for mobile devices.