Today we celebrate the 11th World Intellectual Property Day, the day when we celebrate all the good that copyright has brought our society.
In several countries World Intellectual Property Day is used by pro-copyright groups to educate the public that strong copyright protections are needed. In Australia, however, the local Pirate Party is doing something different.
To celebrate different approaches to copyright, members of the Pirate Party Australia will be handing out free CDs outside the main entrance of Sydney’s University of Technology Broadway Campus.
Pirate Party Australia produced a Pirate Sampler CD to distribute for free, promoting various artists who share their work under a Creative Commons licences.
“Intellectual property is a term used to lump together a range of different concepts in an attempt to conflate them with physical property,” Pirate Party Acting Secretary Simon Frew commented on the action.
“Ideas and culture can now be shared at a trivial cost, yet companies rely on government imposed legal restrictions to maintain their advantage through creating a false scarcity.”
“There are quite large differences between trademarks, patents and copyright, yet today is a celebration of corporate interests having successfully passed them all off as a single concept. We are coming out to oppose this and show that information should be freely shared,” Frew added.
