A Constructive Proposal For Copyright Reform - The Pirate Party's approach

It's no secret that copyright is a mess: between impossibly long copyright terms to draconian rules that treat corporations and natural people the same, the laws that rule over our right to intellectual property are outdated, eschewed and sometimes just plain wrong. The Pirate Party, which was born out of the Piratbyrån of Pirate Bay fame, has some very interesting proposals on copyright reform that I'd like to discuss here.

First, they'd like all non-commercial sharing to be free, meaning that if you're not basing your business around making copies of other people's intellectual property, your copies are not illegal. That seems a bit broad at first glance, but it's actually a very sane proposal - we have made personal copies before copyright was even defined and have since been protected by fair use rules. But 1976 was a greedy year (remember Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists?)  - Walt Disney and friends managed to get US law to protect copyright for the life of the holder + 50 years (to be fair, the Berne convention had already done so in 1886) and Universal tried to stop fair use by suing Sony into copyright violation by manufacturing VCRs. From then on, corporations have been working very hard to reduce the reach of fair use and to restrict it through non-legal means, like Digital Rights Restrictions Management. My take? Fair use should get proper legislation - the fact that there's no proper written definition of the limits of fair use makes it more of a nuisance than a right.

Which brings us to the next proposal, which is reducing commercial monopoly to 20 years. Again, we've been giving life + 50 years as the standard copyright term for most of the world for almost 130 years, so this sounds harsh at first glance. But corporations have been working very hard to extend copyright indefinitely, not coincidentally passing new laws as soon as Mickey Mouse's copyright protection is about to expire - 50 became 70 and in some cases protection can go to 120 years or more(!) The Pirate Party has a very fair point - no investor in their right mind expects a return on investment of 120 years, so why are we giving copyright protection of over a century (in fact, it goes against the spirit of copyright, which is to protect the creator, to give rights that extend after their death). So here's my take personal spin on their proposal - copyright protection should last the life of the creator OR 20 years, whichever comes latest.

Next issue is orphan works - copyright starts counting at the moment of creation, but the fact that it counts automatically creates a legal issue in that since the creator doesn't need to register his creation to be protected, some never will so you have a whole universe of orphaned works whose copyright protection is fuzzy because no one knows if the author is dead or alive or even who (s)he is, so you never know if this has reached the public domain or if you're in violation of copyright. Their proposal is very sane - copyright counts automatically from the moment of creation and if you have any commercial interest in protecting it, you have five whole years - not from the moment of creation but actually from the first publication, which can come many years later - to register. If at the end of this period you have not tried to protect your work by registering it with the proper authorities, it goes into the public domain. Sounds fair enough and I have nothing to add to it.

Then comes free sampling, which is the right to make derivative works, to cite existing works and to parody. I point to my original take early on that the limits to fair use needs to be properly codified and should contain these rights. Which brings us to the last important part, which is the banning of Digital Rights Restrictions Management. I say good riddance, as the law should be all protection that copyright needs and any external restriction to hard-coded legal rights should be illegal in the first place. While they're at it, they should also ban clickwrap/shrinkwrap agreements (where you enter into a licensing contract simply by installing a piece of software) and End User License Agreements which restrict user rights further than what's in the law, like the 'newish' trend between commercial software developers to state that you don't own the software you paid for, but merely have a license to use it which can't be transferred, sold or even moved between two of your own machines.
So yes, the Pirate Party has my vote, definitely ;)