Euro Anti-Piracy Group Calls Pirate Party Message “Criminal”

European Anti-Piracy Association says election of the Pirate Party to the European Parliament should serves as a “wake-up call for national governments and the European Commission to take a clear position on piracy matters.”

The European Anti-Piracy Association (AEPOC) met in Brussels, Belgium a few days ago and the main topic of discussion was apparently the recent success of the Swedish Pirate Party in winning 2 seats to the European Parliament.

“This should act as a wake-up call for national governments and the European Commission to take a clear position on piracy matters,” said AEPOC’s President Jean Grenier.

It’s particularly alarmed about the Pirate Party’s questioning of the concept of intellectual property and copyright, and calls for the general removal of patent protections.

The AEPOC is correct on the latter part, but the Pirate Party isn’t questioning the concept of copyright laws so much as it seeks to reform them.

For the Pirate Party clearly states that it only has three issues on its agenda:

1. Reform of copyright law – All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. We also want a complete ban on DRM technologies, and on contract clauses that aim to restrict the consumers’ legal rights in this area.
2. An abolished patent system.
3. Respect for the right to privacy.

Content has become a commodity bought and sold by corporations and current copyright laws only reinforce this relationship. It’s gone far beyond compensating artists for their work and the Pirate Party merely wants to realign this this “unacceptable” balance of control.

“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,” reads the Pirate Party’s Declaration of Principles. “We want to free our cultural heritage and make them accessible to all, before time withers away the celluloid of the old movie reels.”

This is the real crux of the disagreement between the AEPOC and the Pirate Party. The AEPOC ignores the fact that some of what they claim to own in many ways belongs to society instead. At what point does the music of Louis Armstrong or the movies of Charlie Chaplin become public property? Both have been dead for decades so renumeration is obviously not an issue.

“Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform,” said Chris Engstrom, deputy leader of the Pirate party last month. “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.”

It’s this message of reform that the AEPOC even dares to call “criminal at its core.” Since when did trying to balance the needs of artists and society become “criminal” action?

“This is particularly relevant with regard to the younger members of our society who are susceptible to the message of the Pirate Party, a message which appears romantic, yet is criminal at its core,” added Grenier.

The AEPOC blames the conviction of the Swedish BitTorrent tracker site the Pirate Bay for the facilitation of copyright infringement as the impetus for the Pirate Party’s success for which it says “upset users” cast “sympathetic votes.” An astonishing 19% of voters under 30yo are said to have voted for the Pirate Party.

Left from the discussion is the fact that many saw the trial as a sham. It pitted multi-billion dollar entertainment conglomerates against 4 people who never shared anything nor made any profit from the site. Worse still, the trial was presided over by a judge actively involved in many of the same anti-piracy groups as their lead attorney.

With the odds stacked against them from the beginning of course people were a little “upset.” However, it was over the perception that they didn’t receive a fair trial, and not simply over loss of the site.

Moreover, the only message that’s “criminal” is the one threatening teens for illegal file-sharing while doing all it can to make sure they don’t get their day in court.

Stay tuned.

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