While I was away for Easter, Handelsblatt, a leading German business daily, published a twelve-page scathing dismissal of the Pirate Party’s call for reforming copyright law. They back their opinion piece with statements of 100 purported “creatives”, most of which are actually managers and politicians.

Marcel Weiss of neunetz.com rightly derides the stance in his blog post „Die komplette Selbstdemontage des Handelsblatt“. (This terrible machine-translated English version really doesn’t do his contribution justice.)

It’s really a shame how little this quality newspaper as well as the cited “creatives” seem to understand the not-so-new digital reality. For example, the op-ed asserts that “in a market economy, something that doesn’t have a price isn’t worth anything.” Marcel Weiss quips: “Google’s offerings are free to use, just like those of Facebook and Twitter. All completely worthless. Somebody should call Wall Street.”

Also, what the journalists and editors at Handelsblatt fail to see is that the market economy is not everything. Many things very well create value for society even without a price. Like coaching your kids’ soccer team (instead of relying on professional coaches) or raising your own children (instead of having them brought up by a nanny). My German readers should go read Götz Werner’s Einkommen für alle.