"Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution," wrote Karl Sigfrid and six other Moderate Party Swedish Parliament Members in an Expressen article last week. "It’s the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet. Politicians who play for the antipiracy team should be aware that they have allied themselves with a special interest that is never satisfied and that will always demand that we take additional steps toward the ultimate control state."
In the rest of the world, the recording industry is gaining more and more of a foothold in government. In Europe, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and British Phonographic Industry pushed their way into an investigation of popular BitTorrent site OiNK. The two-year investigation culminated in a full-fledged police raid on the flat belonging to the operator, a 24-year-old IT worker. Here in the States, the RIAA kicked off the new year by declaring MP3s ripped from a purchased CD to the buyer's computer an unauthorized use.
It's no surprise that Universal Music's CEO Doug Morris told Wired in November that the music industry doesn't get the changing digital landscape.
"There's no one in the record company that's a technologist," Morris said. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"
And yet the industry is gaining sway.
Sigfird cites the example of France: "In France, government agencies, copyright holders and Internet Service Providers have been forced into an alliance. General Electric describes how it works: 'In reality it means that the Internet Service Providers must watch what their customers do on the Internet and report it.'"
He doesn't want Sweden to follow suit, but he doubts the copyright holders will have any of that. Instead, he argues, they'll continue to fight for more protection, which will be thwarted by new technologies, which will lead to more restrictions (the proposal on the table was to ban file servers from the Internet) and more surveillance.
Oh wait. Too late.
[Original Swedish article here, Sigfrid's translation here. Via BoingBoing]
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