Ásta Helgadóttir, reserve MP for the Icelandic Pirate Party, writes, “The European copyright reform is here — and we have the chance to influence policy reform in this area for the first time in at least 15 years, and there is no way to say when this chance will come around again. The European Commission has opened up for consultation on their proposal for legislation (which then will be sent to the European Parliament) and you, as an individual, alien or organization can give your honest opinion about whatever copyright has done, good or bad, for and to you in the past decades.
The European Commission does not want too many replies at all. The EC has given an extremely short consultation period: only 60 days for 80 questions. It has not provided any translations of this document, and in addition the language used is very technical. Not all Europeans are able to read English, and one thing is for sure: The upcoming copyright reform is going to affect them. The timing, Christmas and holiday period, when people are sure to be busy with other matters, is also strategic. The Commission has rejected pleas on extending the consultation period and providing translations at least in French, German and Polish.
I believe this consultation is important for the future of culture and knowledge in Europe. We cannot make peer-to-peer filesharing illegal — that is how we, in modern times, share culture, information and knowledge. To make people liable for the content of webpages they link to is just absurd. The objective of copyright should not be to make normal usage and sharing of culture criminal — but that is a likely outcome of the European copyright reform, unless we make ourselves heard.
Go to www.copywrongs.eu and answer the questions which are important to you. You do not have to answer all the questions, only the ones that matter to you.
The original consultation can be found here, and there’s a simplified version here.
The deadline is 5 February 2014. Until then, we should provide the European Commission with as many responses as possible!
Amelia Andersdotter, MEP for the Swedish Pirate Party, and I, Ásta Helgadóttir, reserve MP for the Icelandic Pirate Party, had a workshop on the Copyright Consultation at the 30C3 in Hamburg. We didn’t have a clear idea of what the results should be, just that we wanted to motivate as many as possible to answer the consultation. One of the outcomes of that workshop was www.copywrongs.eu, something way beyond what Amelia and I had ever dreamt of. The great people from the Pirate Party Austria, Wikimedia in Germany and Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, all really deserve lots of praise for such hard work.
(Thanks, Ásta!)