WALKING THE VIRTUAL PLANK

Dick Pountain/17 August 2009 14:51/Idealog 181

So the UK is to get a Pirate Party and the online philosophy of "free" information is to have proper representation in the political arena. Andrew Robinson, leader of the UK Pirate Party has officially registered the party here, hoping to emulate successful launches in Sweden and Germany, and plans to run in the next general election. In an interview he told our sister publication IT Pro "I'm a musician, so I've been interested in copyright for quite a few years now". The party will campaign on just three policies: reform of patent and copyright law; the curbing of excessive surveillance; and freedom of speech, both on and off line. I won't be in the queue to join the party, supposing there is one, but I still welcome its launch because that first policy position will bring up for public inspection one of the most important issues of our time, the effect digital technologies are having on property rights, and might just stimulate sensible debate about it. The problem is of course that digital information/property can be copied for virtually nothing, by anybody.

Despite its swashbuckling name the Pirate Party is actually taking a rather moderate approach to copyright reform: it wants to head-off those swingeing £50,000 fines proposed for piracy in the government's Digital Britain report, and to decriminalise the act of copying music, books, films and so on for non-commercial purposes. It accepts that when a copy is made for commercial use a portion of the proceeds must go to the author/artist, unlike those net anarchists who demand that all intellectual property be abolished and all information be distributed for free. Of course the end result is pretty much the same, because if people can copy, say music, legally, then there won't be very many commercial transactions for the artist to share in. Being a musician, writer or computer programmer would cease to be a job you can make a living out of and become either a hobby, or in some scenarios perhaps a public service paid for state subsidy.

I've said several times in previous columns that I share Dr Johnson's opinion that "no man but a fool ever wrote except for money" - I've lived by writing and editing for 25 years, and I hope to continue for a few more yet. However I'm also sensitive to the predatory way that our contemporary art industries operate: when publishers (plus a tiny handful of their stars) can accumulate billions that's a long way from simply making a living, it has to mean the vast majority of "lesser" artists don't receive a fair whack and entry to artistic professions becomes a sort of lottery. In short it's inefficient rather than immoral.

Private property is the touchiest of all subjects, more so even than sex. Marxists and anarchists want to do away with it and for all property to be held in common. What that has meant historically is the state owning it all, as otherwise it will simply be grabbed by the most thuggish (which in fact has happened in Russia). Situationists toyed with the notion of a "gift economy", similar to the tradition of Potlatch practiced by certain North American Indian tribes - that results in catastrophic positive feedbacks that totally impoverish the givers, which made for a good rhetorical flourish but is unlikely to woo many voters in a democracy. And of course those on the Right, who by-and-large own most of everything, have an interest in pretending that property rights are a simple fact of nature and in avoiding any too close examination of them.

So it could be rather jolly if the Pirate Party raises the matter of property rights at the next election, given the enormous financial incompetence we've barely survived (and which ain't over yet) and the shattering of faith in extreme market solutions among everyone outside the City of London. There is in fact a "Third Way" between state ownership of everything and a free-for-all-biggest-stick-takes-all, that has nothing to do with New Labour. Producers, that is the people who do the work, could own a substantial portion of the enterprise they work in. The exact details are terribly hard to design, striking a balance between the interests of founders and later comers, what happens when people leave, the balance between ownership and control, but it can and has been done and has been proved successful from bus companies and factories, to the John Lewis Partnership. There is however what amounts to a conspiracy of silence about such successes, which are largely ignored by the media. In Italy there's an old saying "Don't tell the peasants how good pears are with pecorino", and the case is somewhat similar with employee shareholding: it wouldn't do for everyone to find out that it can work. Were the Pirate Party to expand its world-view a little, highlighting alternative forms of property holding, then its inevitable lost deposits might be worthwhile. If it just sticks to being what amounts to a party for consumers, beggaring the interests of the producers of artistic products, then it will just fade into that procession of monster loony parties that provide light relief on election night, and I'll be awarding it the Black Spot rather than a tick.