Hanno's blog

Yesterday, I read a news about the green party's proposals for a copyright reform (strictly speaking, there's no copyright in Germany, it's called "Urheberrecht", but I'll stick with the term copyright, because it's commonly understood). One point was that they claimed they don't see any perspectives for a so-called cultural flatrate due to EU law. The basic idea of a cultural flatrate is that it would legalize private filesharing while putting a fee on internet access.

My point is more the reasoning than the issue itself. Because that's a repeating pattern. Whenever someone makes a proposal to change something relevant in copyright or patent law, this is pretty much always the conclusion: It's not possible due to one or another international law or treaty. The discussion ends before anyone can make any real argument why some copyright change might be a good idea or not.

The EU directive that, according to the green party, forbids a cultural flatrate is the EU Copyright Directive from 2001. This directive is itself an implementaiton of the WIPO Copyright Treaty from 1996.

Other treaties that are often relevant are the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement of the WTO from 1994.

What all of those treaties have in common and what I find - in its combination - very troubling:

• They've been created at a time where many people affected by it today weren't allowed to vote or even weren't born.
• They were created in a time where the Internet as we know it today and the issues related to it simply didn't exist.
• It's hard to impossible to change those treaties.
• There has never been a wide public discussion about any of those treaties, the terms TRIPS, Berne Convention or WIPO copyright treaty are mostly unknown to the general public.

To put it simply: There's something terribly wrong. In so many ways. As I already said above, this is not about the question whether the cultural flatrate is a good idea. It's about the fact that it's almost impossible to make any proposal for a change in the way copyright works. That can't be good, no matter how you feel about copyright issues in general.