Joint Finnish-German-Swedish debate article for EUObserver
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Teksti
The recently passed French bill allowing a special branch of government to disconnect alleged filesharers' internet-access without a court order is an unprecedented threat to civil rights online. When will the legislators stop and ask themselves how much of society can be lost to protect copyright holders? Ung Pirat, Piraattinuoret and Junge Piraten ask.
The struggle between net users and copyright holders has turned into a battle seemingly without end. Legislators have went to great trouble to enforce copyright in the digital environment, while net users all over the world have claimed that copying, sharing and remixing of existing cultural goods is something good and positive that should not be stopped or restricted.
The unfortunate conflict has its basis in the possibilities granted by new technology. Through a net connection, any person anywhere on the globe can easily obtain and spread information to all other users. Via forums such as YouTube, torrents or fanfiction.net users all over the world have spread, remixed and shared thousands upon thousands of terabytes of movies, music and literary works. In the process they have greatly added to the cultural wealth of our world.
For one reason or the other, the owners of intellectual property rights have perceived this as something negative. They have purposefully and willfully urged legislators to put a stop to creativity and activities inherent to our nature.
No society as yet has ever progressed without copying. We need to preserve copying as a phenomenon if our society is to keep advancing. Copying is the way we learn a language, it's the way we memorise a song. It's the way we learn to recite a passage from a loved book, or the way we tell a friend about a movie we once saw.
This recently passed French bill tries to put a stop to that. And in the process, it stops not only a healthy part of citizens' creativity. It stops their access to communication, fruitful online services and an invaluable source of news, information and knowledge.
It is most distressing that this is a realization that has yet to reach the corridors of power.
In a recent conflict between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers regarding the Telecoms package, the Parliament clearly indicated that they wished to preserve some kind of right for citizens' not to have their network connections arbitrarily removed by non-judicial branches. The Parliament, more prone than other institutions of the EU to listen to the voice of reason of the citizens, realised that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to cut citizens' access to communication, online services and the largest source of information without at least having a court order. The Council of Ministers, set on ridding themselves of such a petty right, refused flat out. Now those amendments of the Telecoms package are up for the Conciliation procedure this autumn.
We represent some twenty thousand European youth, and we urge the ministers of Europe and the Commission to protect the rights of citizens to not have their internet access by any other than a court order. As a society, we can only go so far to try and preserve copyright in the digital environment. And this is quite too far.
