The Traditional Media Industry Does Not Deserve To Survive

I’ve been following The Pirate Bay reality show in detail for a week, both professionally and by personal interest. The many turnabouts only strengthen my opinion that the traditional media industry does not deserve to survive. They are in desperate need of a restructuring. It has happened in all other industries. The media industry is no exception.

It also strengthens my opinion that politicians either do not care or just do as they are told by the multinational media companies. Just look at all the latest directives and law proposals: IPRED, ACTA, HADOPI, Q6/17. There are no proposal, except amendment 46/138, aiming to secure democracy, freedom of expression, or free information flow as a base for research and innovation.

Remember: A free flow of information and freedom of expression is an absolute condition – a sine qua non – for innovation and democracy. Without it copyright, patents and trademarks are irrelevant.

The worst stupidity is HADOPI. It’s ironic that it is a law proposed in France, the very origin of “intellectual property”. The term is a direct translation of the French legal term “droit d’auteur”.

The Swedish government do have commissioned an official report on changes in the intellectual property law: ”Översyn av vissa frågor om upphovsrätt (dir. 2008:37)” There are some interesting proposed changes, but the directive avoids the real challenges. It just routinely refers to international conventions, agreements and the EU, and does not show any intelligent opinion on how it should act in the information society.

The Swedish government is hopelessly lost in translation. They show a passive and apathetic political leadership on intellectual property issues. Apparently they don’t have any interest at all in economic or technological development.

I cannot stress this enough: it cannot be reasonable nor fair that solvency – the capacity to pay – determine how society is formed. But that is what is happening. All proposals are to protect the investments the big companies have done – none are to protect innovation or democracy.

We cannot let the ethical and moral development of society only be guided by money.