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There’s a fascinating debate going on behind Facebook’s walled garden at the moment on the alleged link between those who find copyright as it stands a resistible idea and the far political right, especially that which might be found in Europe.

It’s been kicked off by a reference to a post which argues that the dynamics of the anti-copyright lobby, in particular the Pirate Bay, in many cases feed off the same impulses as such right-wing movements – and may, indeed, even be funded by related players. I have no means of verifying whether these assertions are true – and I am open, as always, to publishing any clarifications or corrections by the parties involved.

Neither can I reveal too much of what is being conducted in that irritatingly semi-private universe of Zuckerberg’s, as this would impact on the privacy of those participating. But here’s my – to date – only contribution to the debate in question, as I try and express my unhappiness with the tone of the conversation – as well as whither all this might be leading us:

“The Pirate Party UK was founded on similar angry-bloke disaffection, and feelings of victimisation and powerlessness, which far right parties have traditionally exploited.” You start with this [...], it seems to me, in order to type a whole range of serious and considered thinkers as practically National Front members. I think this is massively unfair to the thoughtful people in this debate and would simply ask you again to answer the question you didn’t answer the other day: why does modern copyright need to extend to seventy- and hundred-year periods instead of the original 14 years I believe the American Constitution initially established? In a world where thought develops and flies like no other time in history, surely – in order to balance the needs of innovation against return on creative investment – we need *shorter* periods of copyright and not longer ones. (Especially when digital technologies allow us to hit a much larger market much more quickly.) When I see you proposing 14 years or 20 years or even 30 years as a maximum for all publishers and owners of content, then I’m entirely with you on this matter. But whilst you insist the real problem is that the concept of copyright is not fully taken onboard in its entirety as it stands – and that the first battle must be to reimpose a broken version *before* repairing its functionality – I’m afraid your logic has utterly lost me. Re-engineer copyright for a digital age, by all means. But re-engineer it …

As far as the quote from the original post linked to above is concerned, the “angry-bloke disaffection” and sense of “victimisation and powerlessness” alluded to have been exploited just as much by the triangulatory instincts of parties like New Labour and the Conservatives of recent times as they have been by the real far right: this, then, hardly provides significant evidence for believing the serious thinkers I mention are acting out of a nationalistic “angry-bloke disaffection”.

Unless, of course, you believe corporate bodies are taking over the world with the avowed aim (or accidental side-effect) of making a laughing-stock of the very idea of representative democracy – as well as its power to protect the people from transnational abuses.

Which might, in the light of economic crises and other recent matters various, just be the case after all.

Yes indeed. Whilst they tell us that “Sharing is caring” – something which I believe, as a natural and primary instinct and impulse of all human beings from birth, it most certainly must be considered – they also understand the need to maintain copyright for commercial purposes: to maintain it in such a way as to allow existing business models to continue on their constructively productive and creative ways. So here we have a summary of the Pirate Party’s thoughts on the case for copyright reform, reproduced freely from this downloadable book:

Our proposal can be summarized in six points:

• Moral Rights Unchanged
We propose no changes at all to the moral right of the author to be recognized as the author.

Nobody should be allowed to claim that they are ABBA, or have written all of Paul McCartney’s songs, unless they actually are or have. To the extent that this is a real world problem, it should still be illegal to do so. ”Give credit where credit is due” is a good maxim that everybody agrees with.

• Free Non-Commercial Sharing
Until twenty years ago, copyright hardly concerned ordinary people. The rules about exclusivity of the production of copies were aimed at commercial actors, who had the means to, for example, print books or press records.

Private citizens who wanted to copy a poem and send to their loved one, or copy a record to cassette and give it to a friend, did not have to worry about being in breach of copyright. In practice, anything you had the technical means to do as a normal person, you could do without risk of any punishment.

But today, copyright has evolved to a position where it imposes serious restrictions on what ordinary citizens can do in their every-day lives. As technological progress has made it easier for ordinary people to enjoy and share culture, copyright legislation has moved in the opposite direction.

We want to restore copyright to its origins, and make absolutely clear that it only regulates copying for commercial purposes. To share copies, or otherwise spread or make use of use somebody else’s copyrighted work, should never be prohibited if it is done by private individuals without a profit motive. Peer-to-peer file sharing is an example of such an activity that should be legal.

• 20 Years Of Commercial Monopoly
Much of today’s entertainment industry is built on the commercial exclusivity of copyrighted works. This, we want to preserve. But today’s protection times – life plus 70 years – are absurd. No investor would even look at a business case where the time to pay-back was that long.

We want to shorten the protection time to something that is reasonable from both society’s and an investor’s point of view, and propose 20 years from publication.

• Registration After 5 Years
Today, works that are still in copyright, but where it is impossible or difficult to locate the rights owner, are a major problem. The majority of these works have little or no commercial value, but since they are still covered by copyright, they cannot be reused or distributed because there is nobody to ask for permission.

Copyright protection should be given automatically like it is today to newly published works, but rights owners who want to continue to exercise their commercial exclusivity of a work beyond the first 5 years after publication should be required to register the right, in such a way that it can be found by a diligent search of public rights databases. This will solve the orphan works problem.

• Free Sampling
Today’s ever more restrictive copyright legislation and practice is a major obstacle to musicians, film makers, and other artists who want to create new works by reusing parts of existing works. We want to change this by introducing clear exceptions and limitations to allow remixes and parodies, as well as quotation rights for sound and audiovisual material modeled after the quotation rights that already exist for text.

• A Ban on DRM
DRM is an acronym for “Digital Rights Management”, or “Digital Restrictions Management”. The term is used to denote a number of different technologies that all aim to restrict consumers’ and citizens’ ability use and copy works, even when they have a legal right to do so.

It must always be legal to circumvent DRM restrictions, and we should consider introducing a ban in the consumer rights legislation on DRM technologies that restrict legal uses of a work. There is no point in having our parliaments introduce a balanced and reasonable copyright legislation, if at the same time we allow the big multinational corporations to write their own laws, and enforce them through technical means.

Some interesting initial thoughts there, in what – in .odt format – is a 64-page booklet I still have yet to read in full.

I suggest, at the very least, that you might take it onboard and try and incorporate some of its common sense into your world view of what needs to be done next.

(Via PXDigitalGov’s Twitter feed this morning.)

I’m not going to try and give a comprehensive report on what happened today in the Kilburn Building on Oxford Road, Manchester. It’s not my strength to be fair to everyone; impressionism is probably a better description of what I do at my best.

So I will set down whilst they’re fresh in my mind the following thoughts which remain with me at the end of the day.

You can find the programme for the event in my previous post from this morning.

I’ll start with the penultimate session I attended, on the subject of “Whose Internet?” – hosted by Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group; Nishma Doshi, who I think works with the same organisation; and the effervescent Loz Kaye, leader of the UK Pirate Party.

The session was sparsely attended – in the event, sadly so. Jim walked us through a gentle and measured introduction to a series of issues relating to digital rights – but, far more importantly, relating to the rights of free peoples everywhere.

A couple of ideas of his which still stick with me. Firstly, he soundbited most pleasingly if worryingly that: “Governments are hiding behind corporations.” In particular, as they begin to get such organisations to block the flow of information without due judicial process – to do their dirty work if you like. One of the examples he gave was how mobile phone providers put on adult-content locks by default, and then proceed to automatically block certain sites without doublechecking if this has been done fairly. (In one instance, a church site bizarrely found itself on the receiving end of such a procedure – and when the fact was communicated to the provider in question, the answer came back that the unblocking of such sites wasn’t in principle contemplated.)

Secondly: three concepts which need to be weighed up together as we decide how to structure the future flow of information:

Legitimate private corporate rights to protect content and reap a return from such investments;
Legitimate government rights to track the kind of information which helps maintain a democratic environment to the benefit of everyone;
The public good;

The public good clearly being the one that interests the vast majority of us the most – though equally clearly not necessarily our politicos and their sponsors in the aforementioned corporations.

Jim also mentioned, towards the end of his talk, a less-than-entirely-nascent policy called the Communications Capabilities Development Programme. It sounds perfectly innocuous to the untrained ear but – if Jim is to be believed – is truly anything but.

Loz Kaye, leader of the UK Pirate Party, was anything but gentle or measured. He is an all-dancing flesh-and-blood equivalent of the Internet itself. Some thoughts he left me with as follows, in no particular order:

The Coalition has two answers to everything: “If it’s good, cut it. If it’s bad, blame the Internet.”
“These issues are not about free stuff but about freedom of speech.”
The instinct of our governments is not to find out and understand the true causes of our problems but simply “block the information”.
We need to ensure a “free and properly functioning Internet”.
This is essentially about information and controlling its free flow.

A quick overview of the rest. Clifford Singer was absolutely brilliant on the tensions currently operating at what has recently become the most popular online newspaper in the world: the Daily Mail. He was absolutely right, too, to highlight the good stuff the Mail has been doing recently – perhaps quite despite its ideological underpinnings. Political dissonance is definitely its order of the day.

Professor Rachel Gibson provided fascinating research into the history of political campaigning and how it morphed via radio in the Thirties and television in the Sixties into the full-blown technological exercise of today. If I remember rightly (I may be wrong), she had two hypotheses to share: the first, that campaigning might become more technocratic and centralised around political-party HQs; the second, that campaigning might aim to integrate and involve more and more the grassroots in organised and supportive structures. The most recent example of this being, of course, the Obama campaign of 2008.

Finally, to the first workshop I attended – on the subject of “Getting your voice heard online”. The general tonic seemed to be that whether you were sending emails or posting blogposts, you needed to be punchy, short and focussed. Something I’m afraid this blog doesn’t tend to offer. But don’t worry – I’ve been told this on a multitude of occasions in the past and still haven’t managed to get my discursive head around it.

Gregor Poynton was convincing on the use of email; Ellie Mae O’Hagan was straightforward on key tips for new bloggers; Laurence Durnan clearly showed why Political Scrapbook does what it does so well; and Katharine Segal – from the organisation Change.org – gave a couple of striking examples of how to petition the rich and powerful effectively and efficiently.

In short, plenty to occupy the mind. But – in conversations afterwards, whilst tippling a couple of drinks – it became clear to the people I spoke with that the seriousness of the task awaiting us was perhaps not being felt with the urgency it deserved. Coordinating the actions of thinking people never predisposed to singular mindspeaks was never going to be an easy objective to achieve. We are on the left precisely because we often disagree with each other. So are we prepared, after two years of Coalition ideology, to take our principles in our hands once more and entirely trust a political party? Or is the way forward some other different (and splintered) approach far more suited to the instincts of the 21st century?

I don’t know.

But I am inclined – if you ask me to bet on the future – that the answer for the progressive left will lie one day far more in the latter than it ever could any longer lie in the former.