I can’t deny that I was hoping/expecting to see the results that I got, and I did attempt to put a favorable spin on even some results which could have been interpreted as unfavorable. But on the other hand, I did also honestly report the disfavorable results, and I had arrived at this position because I’d seen a bunch of similar evidence before I started writing the book. I had been a proponent of strong copyright enforcement before, until I read an early draft of Against Intellectual Monopoly which made me drastically revise my view. If the evidence had been completely unlike what I’d expected, I would have been honest about it and revised my view again.
Also, some of the evidence I found before and during the writing process made me revise my position about commercial copyright away from the official party line. At the time of writing, the Finnish Pirate Party—which I was the spokesman of—officially advocated limiting the duration of commerical copyright to 5-10 years from the creation of the work. I became increasingly convinced that it would be better to either have a duration of 15 years or a two-stage scheme. The two-stage scheme would involve a very brief commercial monopoly, followed by an extended period during which others could resell or build on the original work without acquiring permission from the original creator, but still had to pay royalties for it. Either way, non-commercial use, including file-sharing, would be permitted from day one.
Good question.
I can’t deny that I was hoping/expecting to see the results that I got, and I did attempt to put a favorable spin on even some results which could have been interpreted as unfavorable. But on the other hand, I did also honestly report the disfavorable results, and I had arrived at this position because I’d seen a bunch of similar evidence before I started writing the book. I had been a proponent of strong copyright enforcement before, until I read an early draft of Against Intellectual Monopoly which made me drastically revise my view. If the evidence had been completely unlike what I’d expected, I would have been honest about it and revised my view again.
Also, some of the evidence I found before and during the writing process made me revise my position about commercial copyright away from the official party line. At the time of writing, the Finnish Pirate Party—which I was the spokesman of—officially advocated limiting the duration of commerical copyright to 5-10 years from the creation of the work. I became increasingly convinced that it would be better to either have a duration of 15 years or a two-stage scheme. The two-stage scheme would involve a very brief commercial monopoly, followed by an extended period during which others could resell or build on the original work without acquiring permission from the original creator, but still had to pay royalties for it. Either way, non-commercial use, including file-sharing, would be permitted from day one.