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Much much better is for everyone who consider this court abuse by BPI to join their local Pirate Party. We're represented in over 40 countries, and if there isn't one in yours you're welcome to copy what you need from another Pirate Party to get started ;)

http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/

http://wiki.pp-international.net/Main_Page

Disclaimed: I'm a proud board member of the Swedish Pirate Party. Changing the world, one byte at a time.

It will end as more and more people vote for their local Pirate Party (represented in over 60 countries) - the political solution when it comes to privacy and your rights online.

http://www.pp-international.net/

Since the politicians won't let us alone, we're interfering in the political sphere (rather successfully in some places) just as they've interfered in the Net sphere. It's payback time.

Well it depends on you for a big part : http://www.pp-international.net/
Sweden has exceptional political conditions. Germany is coming up to speed. But tentative national pirate parties exist in many countries.

I don't see any hacker's solution a la GPL to get out of this situation (GPLv3 tries a bit but doesn't get the momentum needed. Maybe an LGPL version forbidding patents ?). So the only solution that I see is to do some politics. In US support Lawrence Lessig's efforts against lobbying (Fix Congress First) anywhere else, get involved in your local pirate party (International Pirate Party)

Sure.

http://www.pp-international.net/

yupp, they are well organized and there will be a meeting held by all leaders of the pirate parties in europe afaik
http://www.pp-international.net/

You'd be able to help out best by joining your local Pirate Party.

Pirate Party Canada
Pirate Party International - Find your own country's here.

The best outcome might be if this bill pass as it is right now. Then the UK Pirate Party would get some more voters love!

We can hope so. More likely the majority of the population will be happy reading about a bill aimed at "cutting off those evil illegal downloaders clogging up the intertubes" and vote Labour or Conservative (or even Lib Dem) just because they did last time.

Still, the Pirate movement is growing, both in the UK and the rest of the world; maybe things will start to change. [Disclaimer: Yes, I am a member of PPUK and currently work for Pirate Parties International.]

How do you stop being a mathematician? (you don't seem to have stopped).

By being forced to graduate from university and getting caught up in politics and law. It must be at least 3 months since I did any proper maths (and the stuff above doesn't count - any suitably well-taught 8 year-old should be able to derive the answer; and it is all on Wikipedia anyway). But still, I guess one never quite recovers from spending 5+ years almost entirely devoted to the subject...

Wish people would stop fussing that college actually makes them learn things outside their field of study.
If you get through college and don't understand why they made you take those classes you missed the point of college and need to go back because you still have a LOT more to learn about the world.

How do you stop being a mathematician? (you don't seem to have stopped).

By being forced to graduate from university and getting caught up in politics and law. It must be at least 3 months since I did any proper maths (and the stuff above doesn't count - any suitably well-taught 8 year-old should be able to derive the answer; and it is all on Wikipedia anyway). But still, I guess one never quite recovers from spending 5+ years almost entirely devoted to the subject...

...and if you are not in Australia, sign up to your local party!

The Pirate Party will only become a major force in politics if people are prepared to put in the time, effort and cash needed to make it work. Here in the Pirate Party UK, we are facing a huge challenge to raise enough money to put up a significant number of candidates in the next general election. We have 650 constituencies, each requiring a £500 deposit before we can give voters the chance to vote pirate.

The Pirate Party has been founded in a lot of countries, and is currently being founded in a lot more countries.

A slightly outdated list can be found here: http://www.pp-international.net/

The Pirate Parties are quickly gaining ground in Europe, in particular among young voters. In the European Parliament there are now two Pirate Party representatives, and the Pirate Party got also one seat in the German Reichstag. Despite its rapid growth the Pirate Party is a fringe party that will only shape the debate. The Pirate Party aims for a 5 year protection period. Economists estimate the optimal copyright duration should be around 15 years. Richard Stallman criticises the reform vision of a fringe party which understands that governments are bound by certain international treaties, so five years won't happen anytime soon.

Stallman's other mistake is that he does not understand how software copyright protection works in Europe.

EULA's are something American and they are defunct in continental private law. They don't have the effects Richard Stallman describes.

Proprietary software is restricted by EULAs, not just by copyright, and the users don't have the source code. Even if copyright permits noncommercial sharing, the EULA may forbid it.

And someone who has a software service contract can actually request disclosure of source code to make modifications. Richard Stallman lacks imagination. If a party manages to get the copyright term down to 5 years, it will also manage to enforce a legal obligation to disclosure all source code of proprietary software.

In the current environment the situation is more that you bet on a party where you expect that they will not make copyright enforcement worse. Think of ACTA for instance, the transatlantic anti-counterfeit agreement. The real madness is international.

http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/

(and - to be more generic - on http://www.pp-international.net/ all pirate party organisations are listed)

If like me you think this is absurd, let me suggest you join the Pirate Party in your country. We recently got 7.1% of the vote in Sweden, and it's likely that soon we'll be achieving this and more throughout the developed world.

In the UK, join Pirate Party UK; elsewhere look at Pirate Party International to find your national Pirate Party.

There are currently 7 registered pirate parties in europe, namely in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Some more are in the process of founding/achieving formal acknowledgement. See http://www.pp-international.net/ or if you prefer a colored map http://piratenpartei.de/navigation/partei/piratenparteien-weltweit (black: formally recognized; blue: active but not yet formally recognized; red: planned)

And which party is that?

Depends where you are, but they're usually called "Pirate Party of ..." in English. See http://pp-international.net/

Eva Lichtenberger is one of the EU parliament members with the best insight into this issue.

On June 10th, I saw her speaking at a public conference in Vienna, held as part of the first international conference of the pirate parties.

One of the things she said was about the importance of contacting parlamentarians to let them know what you think. Even if you get no reply (rarely happens) or a standard form letter in return, the politician you contact learns that somebody is caring about the issue and that the issue may move votes.

There is a real possibility to strike a hard blow to this nonsense now. The the elections for the europoean parliament is comming up.

This time one of the contenders is the http://www.pp-international.net/Pirate Party. Joining the fight now means you get to decide the agenda. Joining closer to the election atleasts means you've done something.

The current agenda is:
Reform copyright to support free cluture.
Abolish the patent system.
Defend the right of privacy.

It's nice to see a civil thread of discussion on this topic in this somewhat... acerbic... forum.

I'd just like to add that the Swedish Pirate Party (there are several others now) does not advocate the abolition of copyright, but limitation of its scope to only apply to for-profit copying, and limitation of the term to five years (which I personally consider a bit small for most types of works, but it's a tweak factor). In other words, the suggested reform would maintain the commercial monopoly on artistic works during the period when they are typically most profitable. It would also weaken the monopoly on derived works, in order to allow such things as collages and mechanime music videos, which are legitimate cultural productions (regardless of your estimation of their cultural value) which the current system actively suppresses.

• Austria
• Belgium
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Poland
• Russia
• Spain
• Sweden
• USA

There are Pirate Parties cropping up across the world, working together through the internet and having the same goals. I believe this is a step in the right direction: politics need to be globalized, because economies are globalized already - no big corporations gives a crap about national borders.

If you look at the forums (e.g. the Swedish one) it is inspiring to see people disregarding national boundaries and helping each other out as equals. Added to that the sentiment that 'You can use anything I create and vice versa it'll be interesting to see what will become of it.

The answer is to become a Pirate. We have our own political party here in Sweden, Piratparitet (Pirate Party) http://www.piratpartiet.se/
Our homepage is in swedish for swedes ofcourse. But ther is a Pirate
Parties International Network just forming, the page is here: http://www.pp-international.net/