Pirate Party Australia Condemns Copyright Industry Censorship

Pirate Party Australia is aghast at the closed-door meeting facilitated by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, where copyright holders have made demands that search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo actively censor search results[1][2].

“The lack of transparency is frightening, and echoes the opaque negotiations led by the Attorney-General’s Department between rights holders and internet service providers in Australia last September. Coupled with the secrecy surrounding ACTA and the TPP, we are beginning to see a clear picture of deliberate circumvention of the electorate in determining their future,” said Rodney Serkowski, founder of Pirate Party Australia. “We aim to lift the veil of secrecy that surrounds governmental decision making in both Australia and the rest of the world. The meetings here and in the UK are setting dangerous standards for the continued abuse of democratic processes.”

“What we are seeing is a total lack of willingness on the part of industry to adapt their business models to ’emerging’ technologies. Unfortuntately, these ’emerging’ technologies have existed for the past twenty years, but the copyright industry is still stubbornly refusing to reconcile change, and adapt to it. Rather than acknowledge the benefits that the internet and similar technologies are capable of bringing to cultural evolution, intellectual proprietors have generally become more tightfisted, attempting to control our behaviours to fit their ideals,” said Mozart Palmer, spokesperson for Pirate Party Australia. “The world doesn’t work that way. Our right to share culture and information is equally as valid as any intellectual property rights.”

This attempt to curb online copyright infringement highlights the fact that it is impossible to control piracy without monetary cost to the proprietors, but also the users. The Internet is virtually a free distribution method which allows greater value and service opportunities for consumers. But the copyright industry are not only still stubbornly refusing to adapt, they are raising costs for other industries, such as telecommunications and web services, that will be required to police people. Those embracing the benefits of new technologies believe that the copyright industry is now killing the rights of other industries’ and the consumer at large.

“This seems to be the latest tactic by the copyright industry to regain control over our culture,” said Deputy President Simon Frew. “Blocking search results weakens the ability of search engines to provide accurate results. If they intervened and “delisted” websites without the consent of the operator, or lowered their site rankings in search results, it would disrupt the impartiality of their service.”

“The Internet search engines provide links to popular websites via a process that determines content relevance. The fact that the copyright industry not only wishes to impose the extra costs upon search engines to remove content relevant to users for negligible benefit, they also want to artificially raise their website position in the results. The content industry already has form in attempting to de-list content they don’t own[3]. We believe they are trying to drown out potential competititors who are making efforts to adapt to the Internet and to embrace culture sharing. This is an attempt to stifle innovation in business, and directly hurts the digital marketplace.”

[1] http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2011/new-powers-over-search-results-proposed
[2] http://www.openrightsgroup.org/assets/files/pdfs/proposals%20to%20search%20engines.pdf
[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/12/pirates-of-youtube-cory-doctorow