Like many new and rapidly growing parties, the Pirate Party has only a partially formed agenda, and undoubtedly means many different things to different supporters. However a general theme is clearly a support for the freedom of the internet. This means a rebellion against governmental efforts to track users, and against attempts to limit the flow of material over the web.

Near the top of the list of the Pirate Party’s demons is copyright protection, and rightly so. Copyright protection is an antiquated relic of the late Middle Ages that has no place in the digital era. It is debatable whether such government-granted monopolies were ever the best way to finance the production of creative and artistic work, but now that the internet will allow this material to be instantly transferred at zero cost anywhere in the world, copyrights are clearly a counter-productive restraint on technology.

As every graduate of an introductory economics class knows, the market works best when items sell at their marginal cost. That means we maximize efficiency when recorded music, movies, video games and software are available to users at zero cost. The fees that the government allows copyright holders to impose create economic distortions in the same way that tariffs on imported cars or clothes lead to economic distortions.

The major difference is that the distortions from copyright protection are much larger. While tariffs on cars or clothes would rarely exceed 20-30 per cent, the additional cost imposed by copyright protection is the price of the product. Movies that would be free in a world without copyright protection can cost $20-$30. The same is true of video games, and the price of copyrighted software can run into the thousands of dollars.

In total, hundreds of billions of dollars a year flow from the rest of us to those with government-granted copyright monopolies, such as Disney, Time-Warner and Microsoft. This government-directed flow of money dwarfs the size of the items that gets tends to get Washington politicians hot under the collar, such as the Bush-era tax cuts to the wealthy.

Of course we need to pay creative workers, but we should find more efficient mechanisms, where a higher percentage of the cost borne by the public ends up in the workers’ pockets. Some alternatives already exist. There is much creative work in the United States and around the world that is supported directly by governments or private non-profits. For this work, writers, musicians, and other creative workers are paid for their work at the time they do it. There is no need for copyright protection.

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