theOven

At the moment, in my home country of Norway, there is no laws against downloading or sharing mp3. Infact; “Current Norwegian law allows users the right to make copies of material they own”, this according to one of the biggest newspapers in Norway, Aftenposten. However, there is soon to be proposed a new legislation, after pressure from the European Union, that will ban all downloading and sharing of music, to prevent the usage and sharing of mp3. So they are going from one extreme to another. The legislation will make it illegal to copy your own CDs onto your mp3 player, and to quote Ulf Erik Knutsen, spokes person for one of the political parties who are agianst this law, Fremskrittspartiet: “that would be like baning taking your Coke out of the bottle and into a glas.” Dagbladet.no (sorry all in Norwegian..couldn’t find it in English)

First of all, there is no way the Norwegian goverment can police such a law. It bothers me that they want to incriminate young boys and girls who can’t afford buying CDs or just want listen to a song before they go and buy the CD in the store. Norway also have one of the highest prices on CDs and DVDs in the world, and this is contributing to the downloading more than anything else, but this is not an issue that is being discused. The only thing this law is good for is to waiste offical sources to investigate cases that isn’t even a real crime. When Norway, and all other counties in the world, are having issues with increased crime, violence and corruption, why do they make this useless laws….?!??

So who is making these laws? My guess is that it is the parliaments, goverments and senates around the world. And what kind of people is sitting in this institutions? Old people, and I mean old people who don’t have a concept of New Media or the technical revolution that is happening around the world. If you are around 50, you’re in a political perspective, not old, your average or even young in some countries. However, in a New Media perspective; in most of the cases you’re old.

Norway’s biggest newspaper went to the Norwegian Parliament and ask the people who will be the people that vote for the new legislation, if they could explain to them the concept of mp3 and how an iPod works. Only one representative could give a proper and correct answer. Most of them said; “an iPod can have tousands of songs on it…” or “mp3 is a music file on a computer…” which just is correct, but also shows us that they have no idea beyond the obvious. How can we allow people that have no clue about new technology be the one to decide how we should be able to use it. Australia has the same issue with the battle over digital television and digital radio, they can’t make up their minds, because they don’t know what they have to decide on.

If they did some proper research (and I think they try to..) they would discover that all the legislations and laws in the world would never be able stop mp3, filesharing or digitalisation of the media. To qoute my friend Butch: “It’s like blowing against the wind.” They are just waisting time and money.

PS: I’m sorry for the lack of links in this blog, but it’s hard to find english sources for this topic.

I have this good site that I use from time to time, mainly because English is not my first language. When there is a word or some semi-famous Austrlian person that I don’t know or never heard of, I don’t google them, but I use www.googlism.com. This “search engine” doesn’t give you websites to browse through, but explantions and definitions on words, people, places, and time-periodes. I find it handy, quick and easy to use. Just a little tip for everyone, english speaking or not.