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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."
I wish I was Swedish! In the US a few years ago, I tried to convince some local Libertarians to run strictly on the "right to copy" platform. It seems most of those guys wanted to run on the "Smoke Pot" platform, which will generally get you nowhere except with stoners.
The big news here, to me, is that Sweden seems to allow minority opinions into their parliament (similar to Costa Rica and other countries). In the US it is near impossible to get a minority opinion into even a state legislature -- democracy and gerrymandering prevent the minority opinion from ever seeing the light of day.
225,000 votes is a LOT of votes. Does anyone know what the 18-30 male voting record is in terms of actually making it to the ballot box to vote? In recent local elections that I've witnessed (I like to watch), I haven't seen anything but blue haired ladies with walkers hitting the booths. I don't think I saw one person under the age of 40 at my booth (and I witnessed the voters for over 3 hours). I'm not sure how well this would work even if our voting system did allow for minority parties with minority positions to get elected.
Does bork bork bork mean "freedom to copy" now?
How many copyrights do most people own? If you guessed "none", you'd be right.
Please explain your view of why this is "anarchy" (defined by dictionary.com as "Absense of any form of political authority").
I know it may be hard for you to accept, but there are those who believe that intellectual property rights are more destructive than beneficial, and that any theoretical reduction in intellectual property production/IP quality is well worth the benefits of having all IP in the public domain. You may disagree with this viewpoint, but that's no reason to demean them with overly dramatic language for holding that viewpoint.
In fact, I would argue that you look at China as an example of what happens in a country with poor IP control. Almost all CDs sold in China are produced by professional pirates (not kids downloading music on their computers). Is there no domestic Chinese music industry? Hardly. Chinese musicians make most of their money through concerts, doing ad spots, and all sorts of other means.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
The concept of copyright and patents is to encourage development of new creations, so the creator(s) can assure themselves that their hard work won't be copied and ripped off immediately after creation.
However if the period of time for these things is too long, then the creator will sit back on their existing creations. Things become stale. This is what we have now for the most part.
So a balance seems to be what is required. Enough of something to encourage people to create (which takes time and money) which benefits us all, whilst reducing the staleness that companies like Disney have running through them.
The pirates in China are making a parasitic living. Maybe the musicians over there accept that as a higher being they will have lower beings living off of them, it's natural. But it must suck to be in a band if the pirates are making more than you! On the other hand, they are spreading your work to people you couldn't reach yourself - unless they sold their CDs at a reasonable price too. That's the other issue - long copyrights and strict enforcement results in higher prices for society, again, this is bad for society and a sign of staleness, rotteness and foul corruption.
I'm one of the few anti-copyright "advocates" on slashdot, FWIW. In 2006, I am starting a record label with my brother and a few friends (we already have studio space, equipment and some cash for distribution) that focuses solely on copyright-free music. Bands will get a larger percentage of touring cash, but the music will be considered public domain from the start.
I am a strong believer that copyright laws create monsters like the RIAA -- whenever you have a law that offers an individual or a group the ability to use force (a government monopoly) over another individual or group, you'll have VERY bad abuses. I'm an author (blogger, book writer and I perform some private speaking engagements) and all my works are public domain. I used to own a software company (now strictly IT consulting) that produced numerous public domain products for my customer base.
The great part of removing myself from copyright protections is that I can now sell to my customers what I am capable of doing: face-to-face productions of my works. As a newsletter writer, I made more money on speaking engagements than on actually selling the newsletter. With copyright, I would need to use the force of government to force my readers to control their thoughts regarding my writings.
Sure, some big company can go and "steal" content, but they still need money to distribute it, and in the long run, those who can create content aren't really protected either. Have you seen how many actors, musicians and painters actually profit from their work? They don't, but the distribution cartels sure do.
Copyright does not protect anyone but those who control the copying: the distributors.
No, Sweden do not require any language skills in swedish for citizenship. Infact swedish is not even the offical language in Sweden, we do not have any offical language. Funny lite fact the only country in the world to have swedish as an offical language is Finland
Some Finnish:
...
N Verb Meaning
0 tehdä - to do
1 teettää - to have someone do
2 teetättää - to have someone have someone do
3 teetätättää to have someone have someone have someone do
N tee(tä)Nttää to (have someone)N do
And then there's one of my all time favourite dialogues, though not heavy on compound words:
"Älä räkkää kääkkää"
"En mä rääkkää kääkkääkään"
Roughly translates to:
"Don't pester the old man."
"I'm not even pestering the old man."
And the longest vocal structure in Finnish language:
hääyöaie - "(something you are going) to do during your wedding night" (and that was not an euphemism, it's the actual meaning of the word)
My other SIG is a Sauer.
Why are you anti copyright? The things you want to do can be done with copyrights the way they are now, just pick a license that allows redistribution (and what ever you want).
I believe VERY strongly in private property rights -- the right to do on your land what you want to do with your property, body and time. I think the Constitution originally was prepared to protect property rights, but over time things have changed.
I do not see any right to items that are no longer in your control. Once you sell, give away or barter an item to someone else, that item is that person's. If it is a book, they own the book -- what they do with the book is their inherent right. They can copy it, modify it, burn it, it doesn't matter, you reliquished control.
There are hundreds of thousands of slashdot readers who refute me -- but none of them seem to have every written a book, played music for an album or created a movie. In my experience, freeing your information for copying is the best way to get public speaking engagements, get people to come to your concert and get people to visit your theatre production. I find it ridiculous to think that someone should have a right to have a monopoly over words or actions -- they're not really protectable in a free market.
Copyright laws are strongest for the content distribution companies: I call them the content cartels. The RIAA, MPAA, the two book author associations and the other cartels that distribute content. Popular musicians make no money on their content, they usually make money at their shows. At many shows you can buy a T-shirt for $20 from the band or for $5 from the guy outside: many people buy from the band. How many times have you seen "popular" actors end up on Broadway or smaller theatre groups?
In the end, I prefer to see people making money for performing an action: putting someone on paper or CD or DVD form and hoping to make money by forcing others to disregard their private property rights is wrong to me. I will never use force against another person offensively: copyright is force.
Funny....if we try to do that here in the US...we get branded a 'racist'.
I've been getting a little pissed lately that EVERYTHING is written in Spanish and English. Nowdays, when I have to go through an automated phone system, it starts with a spanish message. What is the deal with that? What happened to immigrants moving to the US, and becoming assimilated into the 'melting pot'...learning English, and fitting into American society?
Sorry...but reading this just hit a hot spot with me of late. I mean...when you travel to another country outside of the US, with the exception of tourist areas...they don't have every sign in 5 different languages, they expect you to pick up on the native language of the country.
I recently heard that Alabama voted to have English as the official state language. All driving tests were in English only....and the ACLU is now suing them...what the hell?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........