Muutokset

The recently passed French bill allowing a special branch of government branchwithout connection a court order to the rest of judicial system cancel the disconnect internet-access to theinternet for users is without like in an unprecedented threat to civil liberties online.When will the legislators stop and ask themselves how much of society canbe lost to protect copyright holders? Ung Pirat, Piraattinuoret and JungePiraten ask themselves.

The struggle between net users and copyright holders has turned into abattle seemingly without end. Legislators have went to great trouble toenforce copyright in the digital environment, while net users all over theworld have claimed that copying, sharing and remixing of existing culturalgoods is something good and positive that should not be stopped.

The unfortunate conflict has its basis in the possibilities granted by newtechnology. Through a net connection, any person anywhere on the globe caneasily obtain and spread information to all other users. Via forums such asYouTube, torrents or fanfiction.net users all over the world have spread,remixed and shared thousands upon thousands of terabytes of movies, musicand literary works. In the process they have greatly added to the culturalwealth of our world.

For one reason or the other, the owners of intellectual property rightshave perceived this as something negative. They have purposefully andwillfully urged legislators to put a stop to creativity and activitiesinherent to our nature.

No society as yet has ever progressed without copying. We need to preservecopying as a phenomenon if our society is to keep advancing. Copying is theway we learn a language, it's the way we memorise a song. It's the way welearn to recite a passage from a loved book, or the way we tell a friendabout a movie we once saw.

The recently passed French bill tries to put a stop to that. And in theprocess, it stops not only a healthy part of citizens' creativity. It stopstheir access to communication, fruitful online services and an invaluablesource of news, information and knowledge.

It is most distressing that this is a realisation that has yet to reachthe corridors of power.

In a recent conflict between the European Parliament and the Council ofMinisters regarding the Telecoms package, the Parliament clearly indicatedthat they wished to preserve some kind of right for citizens' not to havetheir network connections arbitrarily removed by non-judicial branches. TheParliament, more prone than other institutions of the EU to listen to thevoice of reason of the citizens, realised that maybe it wasn't such a goodidea to cut citizens' access to communication, online services andinformation without limits without at least having a court order. TheCouncil of Ministers, set on ridding themselves of such a petty right,refused flat out. Now those amendments of the Telecoms package are up forthe Conciliation procedure this autumn.

We represent some twenty thousand European youth, and we urge the ministersof Europe and the Commission to protect the rights of citizens to not havetheir internet access by any other than a court order. As a society, we canonly go so far to try and preserve copyright in the digital environment.And this is quite too far.