“understanding and supporting a liberal position on enforcement of copyright laws”

The most liberal position on copyright is to abolish it. Then there’d be no need to fine people on the basis of an accusation, bankrupt them, disconnect them, or censor their websites (or other ‘Internet locations’). However, as even the Pirate Party UK cannot yet bring itself to endorse abolition – so deep rooted are copyright’s tendrils in everyone’s cultural psyche – I recognise that there’s probably going to need to be a lot more suffering before even the Lib Dems dare mention abolition.

The most liberal position on copyright, that still involves both enforcement and the retention of copyright on the statute books, is to exempt the individual, i.e. make copyright apply exclusively to corporations.

An intermediate position would be to limit copyright’s applicability to the individual to cover only their illicit manufacture and distribution of material copies, i.e. any electronic communication or diffusion by the individual would be considered ‘copyright exempt’ free speech whether it involved copying or not, e.g. flogging illicit copies of movies on DVDs or memory sticks in a car boot sale would remain an infringement, but file-sharing would not be (unless by a corporation). In this way the traditional printer’s monopoly is maintained, but the new technology upon which copyright is completely ineffective, warrants the removal of that invidious weapon’s use against the individual. This is the effective situation today anyway, so legalising it doesn’t actually change anything except the random bankrupting/persecution of fundamentally innocent citizens.

NB None of this (even abolition) derogates from any individual’s moral rights concerning their intellectual work, nor their natural exclusive right to their private intellectual works.