Parley with the Pirate Party

[Poker99]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/oct/23/pirate-party-rick-falkvinge

 

 

Nick Griffin isn't the only controversial party leader to head into a debate this week. This past Sunday I was on a panel debating with Rick Falkvinge, the leader of the Swedish Pirate party. The event was part of the In the City music conference in Manchester, and with me on the panel were Jon Webster (chief executive of the Music Managers Forum), Paul Saunders (ISP Playlouder), Patrick Rackow (CEO of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors) and Andrew Orlowski (the Register). As with Griffin, many people didn't agree with Falkvinge being included in the debate, nor getting a platform to peddle his agenda. Though I believe in free speech and problem solving by engaging in dialogue, I admit that the difficulty in challenging extremist views is that you have to come way over to their side of the pitch. Still, I'm convinced that you have to face these people head-on to be able to expose the huge gaps in their reasoning. Key issues for the Pirate party are civil liberties, privacy laws, getting rid of copyright for all non-commercial use and limiting copyright for commercial use to five years. Jon Webster opened the panel with a speech rallying the music industry to make it easier to license music and also easier for fans to access music legally. Before handing over to Falkvinge, he pre-empted the argument that touring and merchandising will make up for the loss in revenue from recordings (an argument that Falkvinge tried using in a previous debate with me), saying that would only apply to bigger stars. Falkvinge's took over with a "history lesson" accompanied by a Powerpoint presentation (he is a politician, after all), cherry-picking events that would support his argument, claiming 300 years of copyright had only been used to suppress democracy and freedom of speech. He pointed out that inventions such as the paper press, libraries, cassette tapes and CDs had not been the death of the creative industries – failing to acknowledge that creators were protected by copyright through all these innovations. He went on to say that dwindling record sales would actually mean much more money for artists as it would get rid of the evil record companies. Again, he failed to deal with something rather significant: the fact that, these days, more and more artists are retaining their copyright instead of signing it away to labels. When I questioned him on this, he couldn't really substantiate his claim. I asked how he proposed artists would earn a living in his "utopian" civilisation. Though repeatedly stating that he was an entrepreneur (incidentally, he used to work for Microsoft before becoming a politician), he answered: "That's not for me to figure out." Falkvinge also used the free newspaper Metro and television as examples that free was indeed a profit-making avenue to go down, ignoring the fact that these industries are in serious trouble (the London Paper folded last month, for example). Then Falkvinge got "hip with the youngsters" and said that the Pirate party wanted to encourage the mash-up culture. I don't agree that artists (who are increasingly the copyright holders) are enemies of that culture – they just want a say in the process and to get paid when someone exploits their work. It may surprise some people that the debate did not end up becoming a screaming match. In fact, most of the panel focused on finding a solution to how creators would survive in the future. Incidentally, I told Falkvinge that I was thinking of starting a political party that would protect the livelihood of creators. When I said I was going to call it the Pirate party, he said I couldn't – since the name is trademarked. I guess the Pirate party cherry-picks rights according to their own agenda.