Pirate in the Empire: Julia Reda at MIT Media Lab Defiance Conference
Nathan Matias and I will be alternately liveblogging this and the subsequent three talks (links to be added later) from the MIT Media Lab Defiance Conference.
Update:
Links to other liveblogs:
- Biohacking and the FBI: Ed You at the Defiance Conference
- Justice in the Judiciary: Adam Foss at MIT Media Lab Defiance Conference
- Escaping the Conspiracy Trap: Masha Gessen at the Defiance Conference
How do you be defiant from within “the institution,” and in particular, while working as the sole representative of the European Pirate Party in the EU’s law-making body?
Here at the Defiance Conference, we are joined by Julia Reda, who is a member of the European Parliament, which is the directly-elected legislative body of the EU. She represents the European Pirate Party, which focuses on fighting for digital and internet rights; her focus specifically has been copyright reform.
The Pirate Party
The Pirate Party originated in the early 20th century from a law-breaking tradition, fighting against copyright law, and now has found its way in the EU establishment. The story begins with Napster, which suddenly made it possible to copy information with practically zero marginal cost, without the need for investment in distribution techniques and media. In the beginning, the music industry was very reluctant to explore these new technologies; teenagers took advantage of the music industry’s lack of innovation, transforming the music sharing landscape. Some of you might have been these teenagers, thinking that you weren’t part of the bigger political issues that p2p technologies brought up, but we’d see these technologies have an effect on a wide array of topics including surveillance and the three strikes law.
Reda shows a German copyright campaign ad, which associates copyright infringement with severe punishment, including rape; the message Germany was sending about this punishment was “harsh but fair.” The ad also used the language of “pirate” to describe these infringers, and this term began to be appropriated, most notably manifested in Pirate Bay.
The Pirate Party, founded in Sweden, split off from this growing copyright pirate culture. Instead of focusing on merely “breaking the law,” the political party made its platform the democratic empowerment of people, enabled by (and not in spite of) our technologies and Internet. Civil liberty advocates, those interested in direct democracy, academics, librarians, and others interested and dealing with issues of freedom of speech began to join the Pirate Party.
I was mostly organizing protests against the multinational treaty Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Successful protests in the US spilled over to Europe, and eventually ACTA was dropped. Today, many people point to ACTA as an example of what happens when politicians ignore what people want.
I was inspired to run for the European Parliament in 2014. It is not as hard as people may think to become elected, because of proportional representation.
Reda’s work in the European Parliament
Julia shows a complicated flowchart of how to determine whether a piece of art is copyright protected under the EU, to show that there is no such thing as EU copyright law, but copyright law specific to each EU country.
The fair use system in the US is very interesting because it is built on norms, such that people can understand it fairly intuitively. For example, one of the requirements to be fair use is that you do not diminish the value of the original work.
On the other hand, EU copyright law is not so intuitive or encompassing: we must pick from a narrowly defined list of copyright exceptions to determine that something is fair use. And once you post something to the internet and someone in a different country sees it, you may be subject to a completely different set of copyright rules.
One of my goals is to increase access to knowledge and information. Another goal is to push for copyright law that is regulated at the appropriate level, and not at the country-by-country level.
My work is half policy wonk, and half public figure and organizer. In addition to doing that translating work, the other benefit to being part of the European Parliament is that I get a seat at a table. With this, I strive to represent my party and be the negotiator for all things copyright.
You might think that this is not very rebellious. And it’s not called disobedience when it’s the powerful doing it. What I see my role to be is to use laws in creative ways, to hold powerful people accountable when they do break rules. I also have pushed for greater public visibility of the European Commission (elected by the European Parliament, and not very visible to the public) by asking candidates to take questions from the public before elections.
I’ve also strived to increase transparency, by publishing the documents on copyright law that we would be voting on, making a calendar of lobby meetings, and using my speeches (such as at the MEP 2016 Awards) to bring visibility to these efforts.
Some of the issues that I’ve working on include the “freedom to link” campaign (in October, we are voting on whether it is legal to link to newspaper titles without asking for publisher permission), and geoblocking. I’ve also authored the most progressive report on copyright law. I’ve also fought for the obscure freedom of panorama, which allows you to take pictures of public places without asking for permission from the architect; this led to this amusing article title from Wired UK. I’ve also pushed for funding for the EP Pilot project Free and Open Source Software Auditing (FOSSA), and I’ve worked to strengthen protections for whistleblowers.
The most important thing I’ve learned in the European Parliament that it is not politicians that bring about change. You can have the most radical idea, but you’re not going to have that idea passed unless you convince your body to vote for it. We need the defiant people (Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Antoine Deltour of LuxLeaks) to bring about change.
As myself sitting in the Parliament, while having a seat at the table is great, what is most important to achieve anything is that there are people out there actually willing to question, and sometimes break, the laws we have today. And I’m happy to be a part of this.
