As Techdirt has reported, after a year of amazing successes, the German Pirate Party is going through something of a bad patch at the moment. One reason is that it seems to spend more time squabbling in public than on crafting policy documents that will win over the public. That makes the recent appearance of proposals for copyright reform particularly significant.
To be fair, one reason for the delay in producing them is that the Pirate Party has been involved in a major series of consultations with artists and publishers (original in German). These are also described at some length in a new brochure (pdf in German), whose last third consists of examples of new business models that seek to exploit rather than fight the shift to digital -- none of which will come as any surprise to readers of Techdirt. More interesting is the section detailing of the Pirate Party's core ideas for copyright reform, which aim to strike "a fair balance between creators and users" according to the text, and include the following proposals:
No online surveillance, blocking technologies or data retention
The reduction of the term of copyright
Legalization of DRM circumvention tools
More rights for creators when negotiating with publishers
Legalization of free, non-commercial copying of all creative works online
Digital archives for libraries
Exemption of educational establishments from copyright licensing fees
Open access to all publicly-funded academic work and broadcasting
Legalization of open wifi networks
It's a pretty restrained list, although it will doubtless be met with howls of disapproval from the usual suspects. Whether it's enough to win the German Pirate Party more favor with voters, especially the younger ones that are its heartland, remains to be seen. Moreover, now comes the even trickier task of drawing up a coherent political program for topics outside the world of copyright, where there is far less consensus about what -- if anything -- the Pirates are fighting for.
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