Promoting the right to take part in our shared culture and increasing access to culture is a key Pirate Party aim. Libraries must be protected and developed for the 21st century, increasing the role of digital aspects and taking from the best practices of hacker-spaces and start up hubs. Wherever possible library, archive and museum content should be digitised and made widely available. Copyright exceptions should be made so people with visual impairments and print disabilities can access written material equally.
The place of music and the creative arts in education should be preserved and promoted. Culture should be at the heart of regeneration plans, and initiatives already underway to restore life to our high streets by bringing artists into empty shop spaces should be supported.
Our culture policy is about encouraging research and development in new thinking for our creative lives and the creative economy, not just box ticking and making the arts part of a narrow national agenda. Artists themselves are too often forgotten in the art funding picture; culture funding priorities must be to put artists first, not institutions, buildings or quangos. Let's support art and artists.
Art can be controversial, but it is vital we don't squash freedom of expression. After all, that is what so much of the successful culture of Britain has been about.
It's time to bring laws about how we consume film, music, TV and books into the 21st century. Outdated laws against "format shifting" (moving material you have bought from one device to another, for example a CD to an mp3 player) must go. Copyright terms are massively weighted against the public and must be rebalanced. We want to see a focussing of income on living, productive artists and encourage innovation. Audio books and e-books should also be zero VAT rated, to encourage more competitive pricing and the spread of knowledge.
We will encourage and support libraries, museums and other organisations that hold collections of artefacts or materials to digitise their content and make it available online, in open formats, wherever possible. This will both preserve access to culturally important artefacts and increase accessability. We would prioritise the digitisation of especially rare items.
In the age of the e-book it is important that we continue to find additional roles for libraries within our communities and increase their relevance for everyone. We will trial borrowing from the best elements of the hacker-space, and the maker movement, student unions, and citizen science initiatives such as Café Scientifique to bolster the reach libraries have in their local communities.
Under current copyright law it is unlawful to do various things aimed at circumventing effective technological measures that restrict access to copyrighted material, even if doing so is required for lawful use. This includes both civil liabilities and criminal offences. In the event that such a “technological measure” prevents permitted acts (i.e. what could be lawfully done anyway), the only current remedy is to apply to the Secretary of State for a permit.
The Pirate Party seeks to abolish these laws, making it legal both to circumvent “effective technological measures” and produce, distribute and possess tools to aid in doing so. This would not change existing copyright, law, merely remove the extra layer of illegality.
We would seek to remove restrictions from broadcasters on satirising footage of Parliamentary proceedings. Comedy can bring politics to a wider audience and we believe that MPs' and peers' actions in such an official forum should not be immune from humourous criticism.
UK copyright law currently does not currently provide for an exception for parody, pastiche or caricature. Anybody creating or distributing such a work is potentially liable for copyright infringement. We will implement the recommendation of the Hargreaves Report that an an exception for parody in UK copyright law should be introduced in order to reduce the cost and ‘chilling effect’ associated with relying on existing case law.
Paper books are free from VAT yet e-books are not. A book should be defined by what it provides not the material that is used to produce it, and any tax on books is a tax on reading. Like paper books, e-books should be zero-rated for VAT as soon as possible. We will remove VAT from e-books.
Artists should be the focus of culture sector funding, this is where the research and development of the creative industries happens. Success in increasing and protecting money going to artists, rather than administration or overheads, must be one of the key performance indicators of National Portfolio Organisations.