Re: Invalid acceptance of DRM requirement (was Re: walling of the web)

Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:

> Plus, pirate sites ask their
> users to participate in law-breaking in order to access the content
> (a much bigger ask than installing a CDM, surely).

That is not true in regard to all jurisdictions.

Under Swiss law, downloading for personal, private purposes is legal
as a matter of principle regardless of whether the person who uploaded
the content and the site operator are acting legally or not.

This does not mean that copyright holders are paid nothing. There is a
system of levies on empty media etc, the proceeds from which are
distributed to copyright holders. This system is explicitly intended to
compensate copyright holders for what their losses may be due to what
the Swiss system, as a matter of law, allows people to do.  

A major reason behind this system is that users are generally not able
to know whether a given site is a “pirate site”, or even on a site that
may strongly look like a “pirate site” whether the content was
uploaded legally, i.e. by a representative of the copyright holder
(that happens even on sites which are truly “pirate sites”, because this
is in a significant category of circumstances an effective form of
promotion), or illegally.

Going forward, for a variety of human rights related reasons, I think
that the system needs to be improved to make upload and “pirate site”
hosting also legal as a matter of principle as long as those
activities are done in an entirely noncommercial way. In my view, that
change however is not something that any country could reasonably do on
its own, as it will require a significant change to international law.
The process for making a significant change to international law
obviously cannot be easy or fast, especially when (as it will certainly
be the case in regard to this) it will be opposed by well-funded
lobbying.

So I'm certainly not going to hold by breath until the international
legal system has been updated according to what makes sense in the
Internet age.

However, given that it has not been possible (yet) to update copyright
law, internationally, to make it conform in the context of the Internet
age to the human rights requirements, it is not an appropriate strategy
to shape the future of the web on the basis of arguments about what is
or isn't currently considered to be “law-breaking” in regard to laws
which in the view of many people are simply wrong (in a variety of ways:
morally wrong, violating human rights, and failing to achieve the
intended purpose) in the context of the Internet age.

Therefore, in shaping and building the open web of the future, I
would suggest that the relevant legal arguments are not so much about
what is currently legal or illegal, but about what on the basis of first
principles, in particular human rights, should be legal or illegal. 

Greetings,
Norbert
FreedomHTML.org

Received on Wednesday, 10 July 2013 09:34:50 UTC