How to propose legalized file-sharing in the Commission consultation on copyright has taken up many of my thoughts in the last few days. At Exile6e we did a basic answering guide for the consultation here. Please share, remix and re-do and put on your own website! :-) If you want to read the original questions, please find them here, and a very pedagogical tool for making consultation reply documents from Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland can be found here. The future awaits!

What is needed to legalize file-sharing is a right to privately or without profit incentives make works available. You can put this down in reply to question 8 of the consultation, but also in question 23. The question is rather how to motivate this proposal.

Question 8 is about potential problems with "the making available right". You don't have to bother that the Commission's question is asked in a cryptical way. It works splendidly well to explain that you are disappointed, sad and upset as a European citizen that torrent-trackers, streaming sites, direct connect hubs, lyrics and subtitles websites, et c are being blocked, that their owners and users are criminalized and hunted by both police and aggressive copyright lawyers. Listing examples is important - find personal examples or historical examples that tie back to EU countries!

Swedish website 5101.se maintains a list over file-sharing verdicts in Sweden starting from 2005. It shows that more and more people are afflicted by the copywrong lawyers who criminalize ordinary citizens for finding natural and sociable ways to interact and make friends with other. I'm not currently aware of similar compilations from other member states, but such examples should be pointed out to the Commission.

Swedish Pirate Calandrella made a blogpost in 2009 which compiles the following list of relevant materials to show file-sharing and piracy is neither bad nor undesirable:

• A Harvard report from 2004 which shows downloaded music does not affect record sales.. Source, Harvard.
• A report from EU research project Music Lessons which shows music sales are affected positively by file-sharing. Källor: SvD, Expressen, Aftonbladet. [Recommendation from Music Lessons to the Commission, 2008].
• An investigation by Göteborg University media lab from 2007 showing that downloading movies does not affect cinema visits negatively, but rather positively. Source: IDG, SvD. [The investigation as such, (Swedish)]
• A report from the Dutch government 2009 shows that piracy is good for the music industry, but also all of society. Also a downloaded file is not a missed sale. Source: IDG, Metro, SvT, [The report as such].
• A thesis from Norwegian School of Management from 2009 shows that people who illegally download also buy a lot of music. Source: Nyhetskanalen, TorrentFreak [Link to the investigation]
• A report from British thinktank Demos from 2009 shows that people who download music also are the people who buy music. Source: Metro, IDG, Mailonline.

But to this list can also be added:

• A report from London School of Economics in 2013 shows that the copyright industry appears to be doing well, that pirate copying doesn't appear to harm the industry and that the struggle against piracy may harm innovation and entrepreneurship. [Link to report]
• A study from Northwestern University School of Law in 2013 says that as many artists find file-sharing helps them, as find file-sharing does not help them. Source: TechDirt [Link to study]
• The book Media Piracy in Developing Economies by Sean Flynn and Joe Karaganis at Columbia University from 2011 argues that it's socially normative to pirate copy, that stopping piracy seems to have failed, that there is no connection between piracy and oragnized crime and that the legal market for copyrighted works seems not to be particularly competitive.
• Swedish project "Cybernormer" has made a big number of publications (also in English language) supporting the idea that people consider it normative and acceptable to file-share on the internet.

If you know of more studies that say pirate copying is good and that supports its legalization, please be in touch!