Slashdot Mirror


Swedish Filesharers Start 'The Piracy Party'

sp3tt writes "Tired of being called criminals, a group of Swedish filesharers have started a new political party, The Piracy Party (Piratpartiet in Swedish). The party wants to abolish all intellectual property laws, reverse the data retention directive passed by the EU last month, and protect privacy with new laws. The party expresses no opinion on other subjects. The Piracy Party's webpage is so far only available in Swedish, at piratpartiet.se The party's goal is to get into to the parliament, which requires 4% of the votes, or roughly 225000 votes. Elections are held in September."

8 of 723 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Two questions: by Carthag · · Score: 5, Informative
    Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and German have the same rules as far as compund words go. Either language can make as long words as the situation requires, but it seldom does require longer words than such as "masseødelæggelsesvåben" (Danish for 'weapons of mass destruction', it's similar in Swedish & Norwegian).

    Your two english examples are wrong though, we'd never combine words that way. It would be more like "You have to love languages where you can multiwordcombine in order to singleconceptexpress." Note that those two are the verbal forms of the (literally translated) words multiwordcombination (flerordskombination) and singleconceptexpression (enkeltkonceptsudtryk), none of which are used at all, but are readily understandable. See also Agglutinative languages for some more information on the topic of forming new words by combining others (which does happen in English as well).

  2. Re:Do Swede young males vote even? by fuvm · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.scb.se/templates/Publikation____47578.a sp

    Crash course in Swedish:

    Ålder = Age
    Röstande i % av röstberättigade = Voters as % of allowed voters
    Män = Men
    Kvinnor = Women
    Alla = All
    år = years
    Förstagångsväljare = First-time voters
    Samtliga = All

    --
    "Baka, baka, minna baka."
  3. The Bodström Shield by liangzai · · Score: 4, Informative

    Although I agree with many of their positions, they are a bit extreme in their desire to abolish ALL immaterial rights. Such rights, given that they are implemented the right way for a limited period, are useful to encourage invention and artistic production. The main problem of today is the excessive implementations of IM, not IM in itself.

    One of their goals is to fire the current minister of justice, Thomas Bodström, and I whole-heartedly support this. He has implemented the "Bodström filters" in Sweden, and the country has thus joined the club of filter regimes (Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Bahrain etc.). He is also the man behind increased surveillance of phones, e-mail and other means of communication in Sweden, and he has been labeled as dangerous to society by many leading newspaper columnists.

    The sad reality is that this "Bodström Shield" probably will be implemented in most of Europe rather than be dismantled. This is the unfortunate political trend of today, initiated by the Bush administration.

    The Pirate Party says it will allow Mr. Bodström selling hotdogs outside the parliament building, at least in the winter.

    The party stands no chance of reaching the required 4% to reach parliamentary seats, although Sweden has many such fringe parties. They may, however, affect the attitude of other parties, which may take a ride on the popular train of file sharing.

  4. Re:Tricky! by kidtwist · · Score: 4, Informative

    It would be like naming Al Capone for the US senate to ban the Dry Law.

    Al Capone did not want to repeal prohibition. It's what made him money. Professional racketeers usually like the laws they're breaking, it means they're performing a service for which others will pay them.

  5. Re:Two questions: by Enigma_Man · · Score: 3, Informative

    The longest Swedish word is: NORDÖSTERSJÖKUSTARTILLERIFLYGSPANINGSSIMULATORANLÄ GGNINGSMATERIELUNDERHÅLLSUPPFÖLJNINGSSYSTEMDISKUSS IONSINLÄGGSFÖRBEREDELSEARBETEN, meaning "preparatory work on the contribution to the discussion on the maintaining system of support of the material of the aviation survey simulator device within the north-east part of the coast artillery of the Baltic"

    --
    Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
  6. Loose translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    from http://technocrat.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/0045 243&mode=thread Here is a loose translation of the Pirate Party's start page:

    Phase 1: Gather signatures for the Election Authority

    We need 1500 signatures before the end of February in order to enter the parliamentary elections for 2006. In order to have a small safety margin we shall gather 2000 before February 4th, that gives us time to finish the administrivia for the Election Authority (which is nearly guaranteed to dislike us, or what)

    Just right now we are validating all the signatures. We have received over 4000 signatures in less than 24 hours. Right now we are going through the whole lot to verify that we can provide them to the Election Authority.

    What is this about?

    The Pirate Party aims to take up the roll of maintaining a balance of power after the 2006 election. There are between 800 000 and 1 100 000 active file swappers in Sweden, and they are all tired of being called criminals. We need to have 225 000 of them with us to cross the four percent threshold and land in the roll of power balance.

    To get one fourth of a criminalized and angry mob with us is far from unachievable. It is that which we shall achieve in the coming nine months.

    Are youse serious?

    "You had better believe it. This is the real thing."

    What is the Pirate Party's platform?

    The Pirate Party's platform is the abolishment of immaterial property (copyright, patents, trademarks and patterns) and the derivative effects (extra fees on blank tapes) and is furthermore very strongly interested in protecting personal integrity (among other things that the data retention law shall not be implemented, and an expansion on the privacy of written correspondence to cover all communications, and a constitutional right to personal privacy.) We do not take a position in any other questions, especially not other politically divisive issues. (the point with that is that you should be able to vote for the Pirate Party without changing your position in the left-right scale of Swedish politics)

    Furthermore we stand for that Thomas Bodström shall not accomplish new general tasks, as per his escapades with the data retention law

    Which is the Pirate Party, Left or Right?

    It is quaintly amusing that the Left accuses us of being for the Right while the Right accuses us of being for the Left. The Left reasons that culture is a generality, the Right that immaterial property create market damaging monopolies. Others simply don't care about Left-Right ideology and simply want to put an end to further hinderance of the advancement of technology and society for the sake of a short term profit.

  7. Re:Do Swede young males vote even? by lordmetroid · · Score: 3, Informative

    Swedish people love to excercice the power they have thru voting. It's around 95% of the voting population that do so. However, younger people seem to not care as much anymore and I heard numbers like 75% voting qouta. These numbers are from my memory though, so I reserve myself for any errors I have made but it's around those figures.

  8. Only in Swedish - of course! by slavemowgli · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Piracy Party's webpage is so far only available in Swedish [...]

    Why is that surprising? The webpages of the democratic/republican parties in the USA weren't available in Swedish last time I checked, either, so why should the webpage of a Swedish party necessarily be available in English? I'd think they have lots of more important things to do before doing a translation for a bunch of people who can't even vote.

    --
    quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.