Rick Falkvinge, pirate

Social Democrats on the wrong track with IPRED again

(Original post published on November 3rd, 2009)

At the party congress of the Social Democrats, there were a few decisions-in-principle made on the matter of IPRED (Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights.) Earlier this spring, the party took a stand in favor of the new law, voting for its adoption. Those at the congress moving for a change of direction were quickly subdued, and there was nothing to be found in the resulting documents to indicate a change to this policy.

SD state that,

[Our] position is that the police are the ones responsible for investigating crime, including those pertaining to copyright.

However, as Mark Klamberg and others point out, IPRED is not about investigation of crime. It is rather about lawsuits under private law, whereby it grants a private interest (such as the copyright lobby) authority on par with that of the police, as if had it been a crime investigation. The above quote does not in any way change this fact.

Ravenna further underlines the backwards thinking of SD, when they state that “we have now achieved a balance between the integrity of the individual, and the author’s right to compensation.” Interestingly, it so happens to be the case that the latter “right” does not in fact exist – not even under current copyright law itself.

Mattias Bjärnemalm also says that, as long as SD do not understand that copyright law is in fact hampering creativity – not encouraging it – they will remain lost [on their way.]