22.6.2006
Dagens Nyheter: "First step: cancel the new copyright law!"
Dagens Nyheter, one of the major Swedish newspapers, joins the hot Swedish filesharing debate with a
critical editorial where they demand a thorough re-evaluation of copyright laws on several grounds. "Much too long the question of copyrights has been left to the side lines of the political debate. What we need now is a proper time-out to discuss whether there exists other and better ways to protect intellectual creations."
For starters, the newspaper proposes shorter rather than longer protection times for copyrighted works and warns of the privatization of the common culture. Further they demand that the needs and interests of libraries, universities, archives and museums are secured in copyright legislation. These institutions are created to spread culture effectively to the people, so copyright laws should help rather than hinder their work.
The editorial also points out the important differences between material products built of limited material resources and intellectual property built of virtually unlimited resources.
"To try to stop the technical development with dragonic copyright is a wrong way. As a first corrective step Sweden should go back to the copyright law we had before 1. July 2005", concludes Dagens Nyheter.