Piratpartiet i media i Brasilien

Den brasilianska sajten Fohla Online, som är nätversionen av en av Brasiliens mest inflytelserika tidningar Folha de S.Paulo, publicerade en artikel om svenska Piratpartiet i september.

Jag svarar på frågor om hur vi ser på copyright och patent, och vad vi tror att vårt program skulle kunna innebära för fördelar för ett land som Brasilien.

Rubriken på artikeln betyder “Kejsaren är naken”, “EUA” betyder “USA” och “sanções comerciais” betyder “ekonomiska sanktioner”, men resten av texten lämnas som en övning för den som vill brusha upp sin portugisiska.

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Uppdatering: Jag hittade mina intervjusvar på engelska, så jag postar dem här:

Circuito Integrado – To change the copyright laws, with non-commercial copying completely allowed, wouldn’t that demotivate creators, and especially those who finance cultural production?

Christian Engström: – As you point out, we do not want to remove the copyright laws completely. We want to set non-commercial copying free, and we want to limit the copyright term to 5 years from publication, but we want to keep copyright law when it comes to commercial distribution of new works.

For musicians, this will change very little compared to how it is today. The top superstars in the world will probably make a little less money under our system than they do today, but they will still be able to make millions of dollars on concerts, just as they do today.

For “normal” successful musicians, our proposals will probably make it a little bit easier to make money. It is already concerts that is the main source of income for all kinds of musicians. The trend that we see in Europe is that when music fans spend less money on CD:s (because they download instead), they will spend more money on going to concerts and listening to live music.

This is very good for the artists, since they get a much larger share of the money from concerts than they do from CD:s. In Sweden, an artist will typically get 5-7% of the money from the sale of a CD, but around 50% of the money for a concert ticket.

The record companies will of course lose revenues when people spend their money on live music instead of CD:s, but that is their problem.

Artists and fans can find each other directly via the internet now, and no longer need the record companies as a middle man. If the record companies cannot come up with ideas on how to add value that people want to pay for, they should go bankrupt and disappear. Nobody will cry about that. This is how the market economy works, and how it should work.

For the film industry, a copyright term of 5 years is more than enough. Most Hollywood films are expected to make back the money it cost to produce them within the first couple of weeks after they are released. Very few films continue to bring in money 5 years after they were made, and the few mega-hits that do, will have made back their money long before the 5 years are up.

It is true that legalized file sharing of movies might hurt DVD sales for the studios, but 50% of Hollywood’s current revenues come from movie theatres and commercial TV licenses. The market for movie theatres and TV licensing would remain the same even if our proposals were adopted, so there would still be a lot of money available for new films to be made. If the current big studios are unable to run a profitable business on that money, there will be other more efficient film makers that are more than happy to take their place.

Circuito Integrado – In your party’s web site, I note that most of your arguments are directed towards Europe. How do you see the rest of the world?

Christian Engström: – Our goal is to change the copyright and patent laws worldwide, but it is true that when we present our arguments, we do it from a Swedish and European perspective.

We believe that Europe is the best place to start global intellectual property reform right now, and that Sweden in particular is the best country in Europe to set the stone rolling. The international copyright and patent systems only work because everybody agrees that copyrights and patents represent a value. If one country breaks this agreement, it will start a chain reaction in other countries. It only takes one country to say that “the emperor has no clothes”, to set off global change.

The problem for a country that wants to reduce copyright and patents, is that the US will almost certainly want to punish that country with trade sanctions. This is problematic even for a fairly large country like Brazil. If Brazil (on its own) goes to far in relaxing copyrights and patents, the US could (and would) hurt the Brazilian economy a lot.

But the US cannot threaten Sweden with trade sanctions, because Sweden is a member of the European Union. The European Union is as strong as the US in economic terms. The EU and the US both have a gross domestic product (GDP) of 12 trillion dollars. The US cannot win a trade war against the European Union.

For Sweden, this represents a unique opportunity. Our national parliament can change our
copyright and patent laws, because Sweden is an independent nation, but at the same time we are protected against trade sanctions because we are members of the European Union.

The goal of the Pirate Party is to change the intellectual property laws in Sweden, Europe and the rest of the world, but we think that the best way to do it is to do it in that order.

Circuito Integrado – What advantages could a country like Brazil get from a platform like yours?

Christian Engström: – There would be several.

First of all, it would be a great benefit to Brazil to be able to produce pharmaceutical drugs without having to care about patents. Brazil is already famous for its successful generic pharmaceutical industry. If patents were abolished, the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry would be allowed to produce new drugs as well, and not only drugs that are over 20 years old, as the patent law says today.

Apart from saving possibly millions of lives both in Brazil and in other developing countries, this would make it less expensive for the Brazilian government to provide its own population with the necessary drugs. It would also be a source of income for the Brazilian economy when the drugs are exported, either to other developing countries, or to Europe after the patent laws have been removed.

Second, our platform also contains strong support for Open Source Software, such as Linux. As I understand it (although I am by no means an expert on Brazilian politics), Brazil is already pushing very strongly for the use of Open Source Software, both within the government and in society at large. This is entirely in line with the Pirate Party platform, and there are very good reasons for doing it.

By using Open Source Software, Brazil can save foreign currency that can be better used for other things. Open Source Software is also better for the local economy, since local IT entrepreneurs have access to the source code and can make modifications themselves, without having to rely on foreign companies to do it for them. And Open Source is also better from a national security point of view, since there is always the risk that the US could install spyware and backdoors in products like Microsoft Windows, that might be used as a weapon if there is international tension between the two countries.

Third, we believe that less strict copyright laws are good for all culture, but in particular for culture that comes from countries other than the US and the UK. As long as the big film studios and record companies have control over most of the distribution of culture, most of what is available internationally will come from the English speaking countries, especially those two.

But with file sharing on the internet, anybody from any country, including artists in both Sweden and Brazil, can find a global audience without having to go through the traditional channels. This presents new opportunities for musicians, film makers and other artists, and creates greater cultural diversity for all of us.

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