engstrom
3-Strikes For Pirates Makes European Comeback Tour
The threat of 3-strikes based legislation had been reduced in recent weeks, with strong protests in the UK and proposed legislation elsewhere meeting stiff opposition . However, none of this stopped the lobby groups, or the politicians looking to push for the ruling. In the EU, the amendment , which would protect against 3-strikes laws by requiring due judicial process to occur before any sanction (such as cutting off Internet access), has been substantially watered down.
Continue reading »Swedish Pirate Party: “Copyright Laws Threaten Our Online Freedom”
Op-ed notes that govts, in order to enforce copyright laws, are slowly restricting our ability to communicate with one another online. Christian Engström, newly elected member of the Swedish Pirate Party to the European Parliament, has written an excellent op-ed article for the Financial Times criticizing the damage that copyright law enforcement is doing to the ability of individuals to freely communicate with one another, and that furthermore, is eroding any sense of a “common cultural heritage.” “What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not ‘ours’ at all,” he observes by noting that one can’t watch or hear anything by our great musical icons like Elvis Presley without paying a fee. Artists like Presley comprise part of our very cultural fabric, defining a whole generation of people and influencing artists that follow.
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