Norway Liberal Party On Copyright Law: politics meets clue

The manifesto is unambiguous, and worth posting in full.

Copyright law is outdated. A society where culture and knowledge is free and accessible by everyone on equal terms is a common good. Large distributors and copyright owners systematically and widely misuse copyright, and thereby stall artistic development and innovation. Therefore, the Liberal Party wants to reinstate the balance in copyright law through these following changes:

Free file sharing: Technical development has made it possible to spread culture, both popular and niche, across the globe at minimal cost. We need new ways of compensating artists and copyright holders, to make free file sharing possible. Laws and regulations, both national and international, need to be changed so they only regulate limitations of use and distribution in a commercial for-profit context.

Free sampling: The Liberal Party’s opinion is that today’s restrictive laws regarding copyright creates a difficult situation for musicians, movie producers, writers and other artists when they want to recreate and rework old works and productions. In principle, this is illegal without consent from all original copyright holders. The Liberal Party wants to simplify the situation. Recreation of old works should be regulated as fair use, and the existing laws against plagiarism are more than enough to protect the rights of copyright holders.

Shorter commercial copyright life span: Currently, Norwegian copyrights remain valid for 70 years following the original holder’s death. This is unreasonable; copyright terms should be at a level that more properly balances innovation and widespread use of culture. The Liberal Party wants a shorter copyright life span.

Ban DRM: The Liberal Party states that anyone who has bought the right to use a product needs a technologically neutral way of using it. This means that distributors can not control how citizens wish to play back legally bought digital music. The Liberal Party wants to prohibit technical limitations on consumers’ legal rights to freely use and distribute information and culture, collectively known as DRM. In cases where a ban on DRM would be outside Norwegian jurisdiction, products that use DRM technology need to clearly specify their scope of use before they are sold.

Norway is cool. It has the world’s biggest pension fund, managed more successfully than most private sector funds, and the guy who runs it is a civil servant on $200k a year. Wall street fund managers probably spend that on a weekend party…

via cardboard spaceship.