This House Would Recognize 'The Pirate Bay' As Wrongly Convicted.

My opponent is marring the crossroads with fog, spooky trees, werewolves and whatnot at this point. He keeps re-routing and confusing issues. Allow me to illustrate: Artists /do/ have a right to sign their work over to a public domain -- if they have not already signed an exclusive contract for recording and distribution of that work, of course, which is what record companies are and do -- they sign for exclusive contracts with certain artists. The record companies did not automatically gain this right to control distribution of an artist's work; the artist had to sign those rights over for that to happen. Artists are generally free to do stuff outside of the recording contract, and several do and release songs for free -- but not all, and it is vitally important to maintain respect for an artist's wishes even if you don't agree with them. Sadly, my opponent has long lost sight of this, but I know a lot of people have when they think nothing of downloading songs they have never purchased rights to own and worsen it by redistributing those songs to others. How much respect do you have for an artist if you do this? Not much. The Pirate Bay was not working for any musician whose works it seized and took distribution control over without authorization. Such a claim, in fact, is plagiarism. Re-read what my opponent wrote and figure out for yourselves if I in any way mis-quoted him. I'm not sure about Canada, but here in the U.S., changing the law takes more than a simple majority. That a lot of people would like to undo centuries of copyright laws does not make such an action right, and here in the United States, it is also not legitimate. After claiming that The Pirate Bay works "for the artists," my opponent then claims that artist's copyrights are nothing but "a roadblock for change." Someone should be able to copy your creative works without your permission and do whatever they wish "for personal use." How does that feel? My opponent tries to marr the issue with claims that the internet has somehow "murdered, chopped up and buried" intellectual copyright. Apparantely, my opponent has failed to read my arguments regarding the Berne Convention, which has been in effect in international agreements since the 19th century. 19th century ... the Internet was NOT around in the 19th century! I doubt my opponent could even recite the conditions regarding 'fair use' in regards to music. Copying a song for "personal use" NEVER constituted "fair use." My opponent has failed to prove this, failed to show why a Swedish court was wrong to uphold Swedish copyright laws, when and where The Pirate Bay acquired distribution rights to the songs it distributed ... in short, my opponent has failed to make anything of a case. A lot of people download copyrighted songs illegally. My opponent was right about something, but not in the way he meant ... the Internet -has- destroyed copyright law. Where my opponent was implying that new copyright laws were being invented for the Internet, in actuality its the reverse -- for far too long, the Internet was granted immunity to very long-standing copyright laws that protected artists from unauthorized distribution of their work. Suddenly, you didn't need professional equipment to copy a record or even a CD, you just click with just about any computer with the right software, wait a few minutes for a CD or movie to "rip," stick it in your peer-to-peer archive and voila, you now have taken control of an artist's work. The Internet has made it way too easy to violate artist's copyrights, and only in recent years have efforts started to try and take back control. Unfortunately, it may be too late ... there have been thousands of lawsuits in the U.S. alone, but that pales in comparison to the sheer volume of piracy that's ongoing. Just imagine, if you will, that you recorded a song. It takes months to write and record, especially trying to choreograph a band. It takes much longer to develop the talent to produce something anyone wants to hear ... and yet in a couple minutes, someone can take that song away from you, out of your distribution control. Its your life's work, down the digital drain! Its about money, yeah, but there's more to it than that. See, yours truly here has written a song and its been recorded by a professional artist. Yours truly! I've also written stories, and I've found myself disgusted over the years where I've found those stories have wound up, on websites I loathe. I've also taken a few photographs that have circulated well beyond the "Hey friend, these are personal pics, don't redistribute, mmmkay?" I'd rather not detail what the photos were nor where they wound up, but suffice it to say, I was upset my friends did not respect my wishes, and whether its enforceable or not, I believe my friends were wrong to copy something of mine against my explicit wishes. I haven't been paid a dime for any of my creative works, but it doesn't matter, I still believe I have a right to control distribution of my own work -- even though, unfortunately, for me its extremely unlikely I'll ever get distribution control back over my work. When you hear a song you love on the radio or on a CD, that's fantastic, you get 2 or 3 minutes of joy in your life. I realize its hard to keep in mind how much hard work goes into making every single song an artist performs, but I wish everyone would give this consideration at least once in awhile. I hope you will set aside your personal habits and take a serious regard on this debate as to who is actually correct. Does an artist have a right to control distribution of their work? Or do sites like The Pirate Bay have a legal right to take that authorization from those artists without their permission?