Those Nutty Scandinavians: P2P in Norway

Filed in archive Government , International on May 1, 2007

First it was PiratPartiet (the Pirate Party) in Sweden. Now it's Venstre, the Norwegian Liberal Party, which passed a P2P resolution that supports personal file sharing. The resolution also proposed the legal use of music samples and a ban on DRM.

The resolution states "Copyright law is outdated. A society where culture and knowledge is free and accessible by everyone on equal terms is a common good." Trine Skei Grande, Venstre chairwoman, said "We managed to make compensation models when the photocopier was invented, but we haven't managed to do anything about modern technology."

Venstre has 10 seats in the 169-seat Norwegian Parliament and captured 5.9 percent of the latest national vote. Norway has been an active fighter against Apple's iTunes music, which is secured through DRM and can't be used with other music systems.