Cory brings attention to a new Swedish documentary titled Steal This Film!. The documentary is well worth downloading since it provides a powerful illustration of the pressure that the U.S. exerts on other countries on copyright policy. Further, the film demonstrates that Sweden's political parties have begun to recognize that file sharers are also voters (comments reminiscent of pro-user zealots also voting) with an important shift in their policies.
Steal This Film
2 Comments
Recent Posts
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 231: Sara Bannerman on How Canadian Political Parties Maximize Voter Data Collection and Minimize Privacy Safeguards 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 230: Aengus Bridgman on the 2025 Federal Election, Social Media Platforms, and Misinformation 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 229: My Digital Access Day Keynote – Assessing the Canadian Digital Policy Record 
Queen’s University Trustees Reject Divestment Efforts Emphasizing the Importance of Institutional Neutrality 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 228: Kumanan Wilson on Why Canadian Health Data Requires Stronger Privacy Protection in the Trump Era
Copyright climate
I think that with such an extreme (and stupid) administration that the U.S. has now, people do not want to take their advice anymore. In Scandinavia, we have something called \”allemannsretten\” – meaning everyone should feel free to pick berries, mushrooms, and utilize the common forest space. Now people should be free to share culture. The file-sharers want to redefine copyright as something different from American predatory gangster capitalism. As the young Swedish woman says, she feels quite the opposite of the Americans about them loosing their work – first of all they obviously that they are sick to their stomach with American culture, which is seen as superficial and unsophisticated by many Europeans. And apart from that they want a diversification of the music business with more local acts and less commercial speculation – leading to better music. How can they be said to be the ones that are wrong, and labelled \”pirates\”? They hardly can. In fact, the Europeans are right to think that the American capitalists that want a nazi copyright regime are as much \”pirates\”, if not more. The MPAA has even borrowed the ridiculous vocabulary of the Bush administration \”no safe harbors for pirates\” – I hope Hollywood goes bankrupt, to be frank. I don\’t want a commercial nazi regime pressured on me by WTO fanatics. Reform the WTO, accept Europeans as they are. After all, we are the most cultivate people on the planet, and a far older people than the unexperienced teenagers in the U.S.
More
Do you think it’s a coincidence that Canada has implemented some of its most liberal laws ever during the reign of the Bush fanatics? I don’t, and I hope it won’t stop there. If it wasn’t for the elitocracy in the EUropean Union. So I hope people resist, and continue to do so. We won’t accept this undemocratic trampling on our right to feel free and share culture. Copyright needs to be abolished. Intellectual property is a terrible concept. Noone has the right to own my thoughts, to erect a tent around thoughts that can be thought by other people. Then people become shallow. We need to be allowed to borrow. This has gone too far!