EU Article 13: one year later

April 1, 2020

In this recent video, Dr. Patrick Breyer, Member of the European Parliament of the Pirate Party Germany, talks about where we are a year after the EU adopted copyright upload filters: From the video description: Exactly one year ago the EU Parliament approved the copyright reform including upload filters, that are required by "Article 13", now Article 17. This means that the biggest protests ever for a free Internet have been simply ignored by many MEPs. Since then, a lot of things, r...
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Tell Senators Warren and Markey to put a hold on the CASE Act!

August 12, 2019

Thankfully, we haven't seen any advance in the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019 (CASE Act) since the Senate Judiciary Committee voted it out of committee. The House version is still being considered by the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. This bill would create within the Copyright Office a Copyright Claims Board which would have the ability to hear claims of copyright infringement and award damages up to $30,000. B...
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Say No to the CASE Act!

July 26, 2019

On July 18th, the Senate Judiciary Committee marked up and voted out of committee the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019 (CASE Act). This bill would create within the Copyright Office a Copyright Claims Board which would have the ability to hear claims of copyright infringement and award damages up to $30,000. This law is supposed to be an easier way for photographers and other artists to gain recompense when they claim their copyrights were infringed. However, ...
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Pirate News: Face Recognition, Equifax Settlement and More

July 22, 2019

Captain James, Quartermaster Joe, First Officer Steve and Activism Director Sam have a free flowing discussion of the latest news including: Orlando police once again ditch Amazon’s facial recognition software Here's The Most Complete Map So Far Of Amazon's Ring Camera Surveillance Partnerships With Local PoliceEquifax Hack $700 million settlementFSB Contractor Hacked13 year old US citizen detained in ICE campHOUSING AFFORDABILITY: What Can Citizens and Municipalities Do?August 4th P...
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#VotePirate in the European Parliament Elections!

May 23, 2019

Today the European Parliamentary elections start in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. They continue until Sunday, the 26th in sixteen member states. If you can vote in this election please vote for your country's Pirate Party. If you have friends or family who can vote, please urge them to vote for the Pirate Party. With the EU's adoption of a copyright law that imposes upload filters, a link tax, hinders the right to take pictures in public places and a number of other copyright chan...
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Pirate News: Running for elected office

March 6, 2019

Our newest Pirate News is up: In this Pirate News, Captain James, Quartermaster Joe and Activism Director Sam (Malt) talk about the latest news of interest to Pirates: Our upcoming meetups in Boston & Lowell Pirate Council Nomination Open Running for office in MA The good you can do as a Pirate town meeting member video Our how to run for office video Our running as an Independent video https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_elections,_2020 https://bal...
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Latest Pirate News: On Not Avoiding Big Tech, EU Upload Filters, Meetups and Pirates in Local Government

March 3, 2019

Our newest Pirate News is up: Captain James, Quartermaster Joseph, Activism Director Sam (Malt) and Arlington Pirate Town Meeting member Steve talked about the latest news of interest to Pirates: Petition to Implement a Moratorium on Arrests of Boston Sex Workers; Kashmir Hill's article: I Cut the 'Big Five' Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell; Pirate MEP Julia Reda: Council ready to continue negotiations on the worst version of Article 13 yet; Monthly Pirate Meetups Comin...
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Hollywood rakes in nearly $90 million in Massachusetts revenue

January 10, 2019

We have long opposed the Massachusetts Film Tax Credit. Two years ago we noted that in 2014, Hollywood took us for $64.5 million. In 2015, the cost in revenue was $72.5 million. The numbers are out for 2016 and we lost $88.8 million in revenue that year. Giving money to Hollywood is bad enough. Due to the industry's creative accounting, most films never make a profit on paper. As a result, the film tax credits are never used to pay taxes accrued on the films. Instead, many of them are sold o...
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Happy Public Domain Day!

January 1, 2019

For the first time in 20 years, new works will enter the public domain in the United States. Copyrighted works entering the public domain were put on hold by the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, aka the the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, which extended the term of copyright from the life of the author + 50 years to life of the author + 70 years. When the term of copyright was 28 years with a 28 year renewal, 85% of copyrighted works were not renewed since the profit from the work wasn't highe...
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