“Pirate Party Australia is delighted to see the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy and Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull embrace the Pirate ethos yesterday with both openly defying copyright laws more boldly than we could hope for,” said Pirate Party Deputy President, Simon Frew. “We try to change copyright policy by campaigning for changes in the law and running candidates for Parliament, while they have both decided to openly defy the law and breach copyright on social media platforms.”
Malcolm Turnbull posted a clip of the Coalition NBN launch from ABC News24 on his YouTube page today[1] and Stephen Conroy opened his Twitter account using a Dalek as his avatar.[2] The use of a Dalek by Senator Conroy is a minor breach and most likely of no concern to the BBC who aren’t known for suing fans over minor infringements of copyright. The news clip posted by Malcolm Turnbull is a larger breach of copyright: when users post clips of sports broadcasts or news segments, broadcasters often issue take-down notices to enforce their right.
“Perhaps it is an attempt to chase the file-sharer vote,” Mr Frew continued. “Taking statistics from anti-piracy groups, approximately a quarter of Australian Internet users engage in illegal fiesharing.[3] While we view these reports with a healthy degree of skepticism, perhaps both major parties have decided to stop treating Internet users like criminals and have started to chase the ‘pirate vote’. Maybe they’re concerned about the possibility of Pirate Party Australia’s election campaign being successful.”
“If this is the case, we hope they go further and embrace the rest of our platform by legalising non-commercial file-sharing, relaxing patents, strengthening privacy, improving transparency, and ending censorship. While Pirate Party Australia hoped to implement these policies ourselves, if the major parties did it we could retire from politics satisfied with a job well done,” he continued.
“It is good to see such high ranking ministers of our government embrace not only illegal downloading but also illegal distribution,” said Pirate Party President, David W. Campbell. “This bold move shows all other countries currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Australia is done with archaic notions of distribution monopolies upon culture and information.”
Jokes aside, both Senator Conroy and Malcolm Turnbull have accidently demonstrated how easy it is to breach the arcane and draconian copyright restrictions in place in this country and demonstrated exactly why the Pirate Party exists.
Pirate Party Australia will be competing for Senate seats in the federal election this year. The Party expects to announce the results of its first preselection round in the coming weeks, as well as a raft of new policies decided at a recent policy development meeting.
[1] https://pirateparty.org.au/media/press_releases/misc/mturnbull_youtube_clip_infringement.png https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2QUvcShNzg&list=UUOYUOwClHjweriDcsHX6mTQ&index=1
[2] https://pirateparty.org.au/media/press_releases/misc/sconroy_twitter_avatar_infringement.png https://twitter.com/ConroyMO
[3] http://www.bsa.org/country/~/media/Files/Research%20Papers/enAU/piracyimpact_australia.ashx
