Vox Polis

I’m glad to see that Sweden are going to discuss the issue of intellectual property rights during their election this year. In January the Pirate Party was formed to push the agenda. They’re policies at first included abolishing all patents and decriminalising internet file sharing. This is based on the argument that if you can’t enforce it, then don’t legislate - and as we all know it is very difficult to enforce copyright on the Internet.

However as the General Election has been approaching they’ve moved towards a softer line -with the policy to reduce the lifetime of patents from 25 to 5 years. Sounds sensible to me. Looks like the kind of grouping we could do with in the UK - especially as people like Sir Cliff Richard are pushing for longer royalty payments (as we reported last month).

This is what I like about the European democratic system - if you’re annoyed by something, or don’t just think your politicians are listening to you, you don’t just write a letter to your MP or moan about it in the pub. No, you form your own political party. And the chances are you’ll win a few seats (see Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands). Ok, so it doesn’t make for good government (look at the mess Prodi’s in) but you can make a point. Similar attempts in the UK (Referendum party, Veritas) always seem disappointing to me.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 13th, 2006 at 8:11 pm and is filed under DRM, Europe, Politics, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.