Policies/Copyright

The Pirate Party proposes the following reforms in order to ensure that copyright law serves the interests of the general public.

Reduce copyright duration to 15 years.

 * All material to have been copyrighted for longer than 15 years will enter the public domain.
 * Moral rights entitling creators to be identified with their work will remain unchanged.

Remove copyright restrictions applying to publicly funded material.

 * Crown copyright will be abolished for all material produced by government, including:
 * Bills, statutes, regulations, ordinances, by-laws and proclamations, and explanatory memoranda or explanatory statements relating to those materials;
 * Judgements, orders and awards of any court or tribunal;
 * Official records of parliamentary debates and reports of parliament, including reports of parliamentary committees;
 * Reports of commissions of inquiry, including royal commissions and ministerial and statutory inquiries;
 * Other categories of material prescribed by regulation.
 * Open Access provisions will be for required for all publicly financed scientific and academic research.
 * Publicly financed institutions will be required to release all scientific and academic works under principles of Open Access.
 * Publicly financed institutions will be required to provide all raw data collected (anonymised as necessary) in an open and searchable format, via government infrastructure if required.
 * Repositories will be required to make publicly funded research available to the public under principles of Open Access, and free of charge.
 * Government funded software will be made open-source, excepting cases where disclosure threatens national security.

Safeguard current exceptions to copyright.

 * Material created in formats accessible to persons with reading disabilities will remain exempt from copyright restrictions, and the exemption will be codified to explicitly over-ride any international export/import restrictions.
 * The Copyright Act will be clarified to ensure that programming made available on-line by radio stations is considered a broadcast for licencing purposes.

Create additional exceptions to copyright.

 * A generic "fair use" exception will apply to commercial and non-commercial use of copyright material.
 * Use would be subject to a requirement for fairness and reasonableness, and would note:
 * The purpose and character of the work,
 * The nature of the work,
 * The amount of material used, and
 * The probable cost to the copyright holder.
 * A specific exception will be implemented to protect sampling and artistic quotation.
 * This will cover the creation of remixes and parodies, and will provide a legal basis for quotation rights on sound and audiovisual material (including musical compositions and theatrical scripts) modelled on the allowances currently applied to text.
 * A specific exception will be implemented to protect transformative use.
 * Transformative use would require the incorporation of a new creative element not present in the original work.
 * The moral rights of the original artist to be associated with the work would remain intact.
 * A specific exception would be created allowing consumers of copyrighted material to format shift and back up such material for private and domestic use.
 * This would be considered fair use and will override conditions imposed through product sale and licencing.
 * A specific exception would be created allowing libraries and digital archives to digitise their collections.
 * The requirement for archivists to consider documents individually, on a case by case basis, will be removed to enable large collections to be catalogued and stored.
 * A specific exception will be implemented to protect all non-commercial distribution, including file sharing.

Curtail attempts to restrict consumer rights.

 * The 'Technological Protection Measures’ within the Copyright Act 1968—which grant legal foundation to the enforcement of Digital Rights Management (DRM)—will be repealed.
 * Any restrictions or limitations on purchasable items enacted in the name of copyright protection will be required to include information to consumers on the nature of the restrictions, the additional software that will be installed, and any tracking or data collection that will be imposed.
 * A 14 day grace period will be legislated allowing consumers to return any product which includes DRM.
 * Products which include DRM will be considered as being licensed, not sold. Accordingly promotions and offers for such products will be obliged to state that the sale is for a licence only.
 * Restrictions on format-shifting will be banned in cases of:
 * Technological format-shifting, whether physical or digital,
 * Translation into another language, and/or
 * Adaptation for the blind, deaf or similarly impaired, including Braille translation, transcription of speech, or creation of spoken books.