Originally written .
I wrote this in an email to the EU Commission and some relevant people around its recent response to Stop Destroying Videogames. For those who haven't read it, see the link above. It's the short version, but you don't need to read more to get the jist of it. If you want to the full version because you hate yourself and need more fuel to help you burn all that is bad in the world, see COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION on the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) ‘Stop Destroying Videogames’. Funnily enough, Henna Virkkunen and Michael McGrath's emails gave me a 550 (Address rejected) error when I tried to mail them. I doubt they'll be available for comment. Everything from here on down is what I wrote.
My disappointment in the EU Commission's recent response to the Stop Destroying Videogames initiative is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
The Commission's response reads as if it hasn't even read or listened to anything the initiative has to say beyond the headlines. Even cursory research would quickly dispel the many misunderstandings the response is founded upon, such as the fact that intellectual property rights prevents what the initiative wants from being possible. Alberto Hidalgo Cerezo, PhD, and many others within the movement, have told you many times that intellectual property is completely irrelevant to the problem at hand. Intellectual property doesn't make books disappear the instant the licence you had to expires, and yet the opposite is the case for some games (but far from all!). All we ask is that we be able to keep playing our games after we buy them, the same way we keep reading our books after we buy them. The fact that I left the game on the shelf for 10 years doesn't imply it should stop working. Books don't do that. Video doesn't do that. Yet a minority of games do that, and that's all we want to be fixed. If intellectual property rights prevents that from happening, it's the intellectual property rights that are wrong, not our initiative.
I am left with no other impression but a negative one. It's clear to me that the EU Commission is not interested in practising democracy, and on the other hand has been coopted by the industry, as is clear by how many meetings the Commission has been in, as compared to members of the initiative. I had faith in the EU as being a strong beacon of democracy in a world otherwise falling into authoritarianism. It's clear to me now that the EU is falling down the same hole. A simple win like this is not much to ask to sustain hope for a better world, and yet the EU Commission chooses to make the world worse. If this is the best the EU Commission has to give, it's better we burn it down and build something better in its place.
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