Filesharing: Mandelson Aims For Absolute Power
Peter Mandelson has gone a step too far:
Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson — or his successor in the next government) the power to make “secondary legislation” (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).
What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright.
Of course it’s not unusual for New Labour to sidestep the rule of law. They did it with the Extradition Act, for which Gary McKinnon is paying a price, they’re doing it with the Independent Safeguarding Authority, for which we’re all paying a slow price, and they did it with Iraq, for which the whole world has paid a price. Unelected Peter Mandelson plans to give himself unlimited power to make laws and not have them subjected to scrutiny or approval by a single elected representative. It’s not just unfair, it’s a crime against democracy. To expand:
1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a “three-strikes” plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)
2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to “confer rights” for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)
3. The Secretary of State would get the power to “impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement” (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright “militias” can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)
These are all basic constitutional infringements – and for what threat? With the ISA it was to combat paedophilia which is apparently so widespread it threatens every vulnerable person in or around a workplace. Except it doesn’t. With Iraq it was to protect us all from weapons of mass destruction. Except there weren’t any. Now Mandelson is gunning for absolute power because piracy threatens what? Our culture? No. Our creative industries? Have you seen just how well the film industry is doing? He’s been told file sharing threatens the excess profits of New Labour’s corporate friends, and he’s making an unprecedented power grab to stop it. Andy Robinson of the Pirate Party UK asks:
What exactly is the ‘first tier tribunal’ referred to in the Digital Economy Bill? If that phrase does not mean ‘a court of law with a judge, jury and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty’, what is the justification for throwing out one of the major pillars of the British legal system?
Why should consumers not open their internet connection over wifi as a service to the community, and why shoul they not be treated as common carriers when they do so?
Why are libraries being given the right to ‘lend’ audio books digitally, but not the right to lend music and films digitally?
Why is file sharing good when libraries do it and bad when the public does it?
How will disconnecting people from the internet possibly help the bill’s stated goal of ‘securing the UK’s position as one of the world’s leading digital knowledge economies’?
Why did the text of the bill appear on a record industry owned website before it appeared on any government site?
The bill includes a provision for unappointed, unelected, monopoly collecting societies to “assume a mandate to collect fees on behalf of rights holders who have not specifically signed up to that society.” Why should doing this be considered anything less than criminally defrauding the people these fees will be collected from and stealing copyright (in the true sense of claiming ownership, not the way it is misused as a synonym for infringement)?
Why does the government see file sharing as both to trivial that it can be dealt with by just sending a letter and simultaneously so serious that it warrants the imposition of a new £50,000 fine?
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, why does the bill not even mention the concept of ‘fair use’?
These are vital questions which should concern us all. In addition to constitutional norms, Mandelson is attacking basic cultural norms. My question is this – why should the concerns of Big Media trump a) the rule of law and b) the concerns of internet file sharers, whom it has been shown spend more on films and music? Rupert Goodwins quite rightly says:
industry bodies, such as the BPI, FAST and so on, [will be given] powers of investigation tantamount to those of the police force. The risk of copyright infringment would be enough to force any company to patrol its actions and offerings, closing down anything that might land them in the dock. The freedom of the Internet would be gone. It is placing the future of the Net, with the force of law, in the hands of those who depend on artificial scarcity. It is antithetical to everything that matters in the digital world.
Freedom in the real world has been under concerted attack by these people, and they’re now extending their control to the digital world. They must be stopped at all costs.
Pirates: Fringe Politics or What We’ve Been Waiting For?
A group largely comprised of techie nerds sitting in a treehouse may not sound like a mainstream political party meeting (it’s the season for them) but that was exactly the scene at the initial public meeting of the newly-incorporated Pirate Party UK. Andrew Robinson, party leader, declared that ‘the law isn’t keeping pace with technology’ and that the party, recently acknowledged as such by the Electoral Commission, was there to bring this fundamental issue to the top of the political agenda; he hoped that this would be achieved by winning a sizeable proportion of the vote in the contests in which it could afford to run. With the general election fast approaching, the size of the mountain they have to climb became quickly apparent; they have a lot to prove, and quickly. But they want to get their policies right first.
In the last month, the Pirates have come a stone’s throw away from becoming more popular on Facebook than the Labour Party. They’re barely up and running but already have 500 paid members and are growing very quickly. There was definitely a sense that, unlike many recent attempts to form new political parties to challenge the ‘big three’, reluctant politician Robinson’s party had formed organically, that certain specific issues close to the heart of a sizeable, young, technologically aware generation of largely young people, were not being addressed by the other parties, and there was a gap that the Pirates could fill. Their meteoric rise has meant much of the detail is still being worked on, but they are determined to be positive. This is a party which is happy to assert what it stands for, rather than what it opposes.
What excites them most of all is the question of copyright reform — don’t call it ‘intellectual property’ — and the way in which, since its inception, copyright has moved from lasting a simple 14 years to a staggering 90 after the death of the author of the work. They are incensed at the idea of locking up culture forever and, unlike Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems, talk a great deal about communities; largely virtual ones, of course, but it fits in with their technological background. The government and the law haven’t kept pace with technological change? Robinson and his audience most definitely have.
According to the party the principle is the sharing of knowledge and enhancement of cultural life. They point to studies which show that, when it comes to music filesharing (‘try before you buy’), the music industry can enchance its profits; that copyright theft has nothing to do with ‘illegal’ downloading but, rather, everything to do with artists signing the rights to their own work away to record companies in return for access to the mass market. And, therefore, it’s these corporate entities, with their objective of maximising profits, they maintain, who are responsible for the real theft. They don’t submit artists’ work into a free market but artificially determine the market themselves, and therefore reap the majority of the rewards. It’s a surprisingly Marxist analysis of the music industry, which Adorno himself would be proud of. Will the Pirates need to sell an anti-capitalist argument in order to effect the change they insist is needed? Robinson claims the party exists outside the traditional left/right split, yet it exists in a society now dominated by a neo-liberal paradigm which has no interest in compromising with the Pirates. Small in number, they run the risk of being defeated by being outnumbered and outgunned by an opposition which holds financial cards they currently can only dream of.
Where does the party go from here? If the numbers are anything to go by, and if the speed of their upward trajectory continues along the same line since the Telegraph announced their arrival, then they are as uniquely poised to capture the votes of disaffected, technologically aware youth as their Swedish counterparts. There’s the sense that the attempts in recent years to form parties to capitalise on dissent have failed: arguably because they didn’t know how to walk the line between protest movement and political party. However, this closely-knit and highly intelligent group seems to have its head screwed on far tighter. It’s about more than just protesting against Peter Mandelson’s suspiciously abrupt volte-face from the Digital Britain report’s recommendations; it acknowledges that the social shaping of technology is real, and that the internet has moved issues such as copyright, surveillance and privacy on. Gone are the days where politicians could get away with claiming to be experts in such subjects; now the Pirates are coming to prominence because politicians have not kept pace with the technologically advanced, virtual lives and sophisticated communities of young people. If the Pirates really do successfully keep the issues which motivate their supporters in the mainstream and prove, even through saving just one deposit in the general election (a stated objective for the next year), that there’s a wellspring of feeling here, then they really could be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come.
The Pirate Party Meets!
There’s a public meeting of the Pirate Party UK this coming Saturday (5th September):
For those living around London, we have an ideal opportunity to meet each other, meet leader Andrew Robinson, and help recruit new members to the party, all at the same time. Put this date in your diary:
5.30pm, Saturday, September 5th
and come to
The Treehouse Gallery, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4NU (see Google Map here)
Andrew has been invited to give a talk as part of a series run by the organizers of the Treehouse Gallery. His talk will be on the topic of “How technology is changing the rules for the economy and our communities”.
I’m certainly going to go – I’m quite excited. Everyone who’s interested in going as well is welcome to let me know on this thread. At the speed the PPUK is growing, it’s certainly going places quickly, and I’ll be interested in talking to other new members.
The Pirates are Just Rebels?
John Harris makes a curious case in support of Peter Mandelson’s proposals on filesharing:
In the backstory to all this lurk arguments that will not go away: artists, writers and inventors should be paid; the traditional creative industries have their uses; and the great chaotic utopia envisaged by some online evangelists would be culturally impoverished – a world that would create millions of buskers, but no Beatles.
This kind of libertarianism gives off the same whiff as the pro-freedom politics once espoused by acid house party organisers – not just politically empty, but off-puttingly spivvy.
Pirate Party UK leader Andrew Robinson says in response:
The party does not want to abolish copyright but it needs to be balanced and fair, Robinson claims.
“At the moment, big businesses is saying that we steal handbags, and we say let’s talk about what copyright is about,” he says. The original purpose of copyright, created by the Statute of Anne of 1709, was to encourage the creation of artistic works by granting a right to copy for 14 years. Copyright for written works now stands at life plus 70 years, and copyright for sound recordings is 50 years after the recording is made, or 50 years after publication. The EU has extended copyright to 95 years for performers and sound recordings.
The term of copyright has been marching forward but along the way, the purpose of it has been lost, according to Robinson. Instead of encouraging artistic creation, modern copyright has made certain companies cultural gatekeepers, he argues, adding, “copyright is serving the needs of music labels, not the needs of the public, the public domain or even the artists“.
In other words the argument isn’t about whether or not to pay, but who benefits from it. And look at those statistics. Harris is being disingenuous when he uses the term ‘pirates’ pejoratively – the European Pirate parties’ popularity isn’t politically empty and ‘spivvy’. The large number of young people joining them in enormous numbers understand the arguments, and have the technology to do something about it. Politicians like Mandelson should be wary of patronising young voters – they don’t have enough of their own as it is!
