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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."
How much does it cost to rent a one room studio "summer home?"
And, what are the minimum residency requirements for voting in Sweden?
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?
From The Inquirer: Its massage is that corporations are engaging in racketeering in the developing world and a few power hungry individuals and greedy corporate entities are infringing on privacy and integrity.
Got to hand it to the Swedes, combining political advocacy with pirates and massages.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
...would be a piracy pARRRRRRRRRRRty.
If their aim is to abolish immaterial law, then how do they reconcile that with protecting privacy? After all, that would be immaterial law, would it not?
I think this party would have much better support if they tried to reduce copyright terms to something more sensible like ~15 years, to see what affect competition with a more contemporary public domain would have on the market, before jumping headlong into abolishing copyright altogether.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
More pirates means less global warming
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Is that you don't have to go through all the trouble of fundraising. Just grab what you need when you need it.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
People don't want to live in the environment these people are describing. They merely don't want their rights curtailed.
Would you like to live in an anarchy? No. It'd suck because there were no rules.
Likewise this would suck.
Instead they should just be holding back on patents, fighting for fair-term copyrights (e.g., 50 years maximum), and fair-use rights (purchased music is owned and can be copied by the owner as many times, but not redistributed unless all other copies are destroyed/included in the redistribution) and to not have spyware installed on the computer regardless of how they respond to the EULA. Basically, strong limitations on what the corporations can and cannot do, and some restrictions on the users to encourage responsible behaviour.
This is a strange new idea, instead of following the law you instead try to gain political power and change the laws. I know there are a few people out there that actually can convince themselves that they are not stealing, but I doubt they could get 4% of a country to feel the same way.
Are there really that many people, even on Slashdot, that think stealing intellectual property is not wrong?
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Oops....is my cynicism showing?
.nosig
This is cute, but unfortunately that's all I give it. Granted, I don't know much/anything about how Swedish politics works, but in the US I could never vote in someone who only runs on one platform, even if it was a platform I agreed on.
Government is supposed to exist for the benefit of the population, not the other way around. Therefore, if a majority of the population oppose an existing law, the law is probably wrong. So if the majority of the population think that sharing music is acceptable, the law should probably reflect that. Record labels and some musicians may disagree, but they're not the majority.
(Of course, this whole argument breaks down when one considers some of the things that a large proportion of the population would dearly love to legalize. If the tabloid-reading majority had their way, we'd have an immediate end to immigration, public lynching of suspected paedophiles, and all manner of other entertainment).
-Stephen
Not to mention novelists and filmmakers. Won't someone think about THEIR rights?
Oh, wait...
In particular, derivative works are often the sources of significant new ideas, but the current laws make that very dangerous. Punchline: Walt Disney's stuff was highly derivative, but if a new creator tried to do the same stuff to Disney, Inc., they'd slap him in jail sooooo fast.
However, the largest abuse is probably unlimited term extension for copyright. There is almost nothing left for "society" in that area.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
This is the only real rebuttal that pro-copy protection people have. The indie community will be terribly hurt by any new laws that state that it's now legal to opy illegally.
Also, I think it would be better to abolish ones claim on intellectual property after a reason timespan, similar to how patents expire, with the exception that it's shorter. Like per se, 3 to 5 years.
This gives the creator some incentive to make a product, giving it an edge in the industry for a few years, and after that, when everyone's seen it and it's big boom is over, I think the bit of intellectual property should go to the community.
I think that this plan will work best with both sides. Demoting the greed that seems to lay on both sides.
Plus, is the developing world really hurting since they can't get a OEM copy of Windows? I think what's really hurting them is their seeming lack of food, fair trade policies, and a decent education.
Q: What do Swedish pirates say when they find a film good enough to pirate?
A: Der flim is okee-dokee!
Ba-dum tsss!
Go, and never darken my towels again! -- Rufus
Slashdot poll with this party pls !
As for the results,Question is whether they will have 99% or 100 % of sladotters votes!
Why does yahoo do this
That's great. It must be absolutely awesome to live in a country where there's more than two political parties.
Err, wait a minute.
*thinks*
...
I mean, it must be absolutely awesome to live in a country where there's more than one political party.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
It's tricky to do something like this.
How can a criminal be elected so he can depenalize the very same things he's illegally doing?
It would be like naming Al Capone for the US senate to ban the Dry Law.
The solution: Name a person who doesn't have a record of file sharing (or name a scapegoat for him) and propose him for the ellections.
Or maybe it's, in Soviet Russia, state property pirates YOU!
Or something like that,... I digress!
Think they'll be a political threat to the Sweedish Bikini Party?
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.
"Even if they the party gets no-one elected"
Is 'They the Party' anything like 'We, the People'? I'm sure it was something lost in translation (or gained, in this instance).
"They will refuse to allow data retention nonsense based on terrorism claims or failed RIAA business models."
I am so sick and tired of hearing about 'failed RIAA business models.' This has nothing to do with the traditional record industry business model -- it has everything to do with whether IP is valid property or not. Business models should never enter into a discussion of the validity of IP, since IP is a theoretical construct that doesn't depend on business models for its existence, regardless of what the motivation for original IP laws was.
What it boils down to is:
Do I have a right to control distribution of ideas I have had?
This has nothing to do with the fact that the way some companies have chosen to control distribution isn't making them as much money as they'd like.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You are wrong. Reducing the copyright duration is exactly the other side of raising the copyright duration, and in fighting for the former you recognize the latter as a valid option. And you can't win: the corporation will always have money to buy more politicians than you, directly by depositing the money in offshore banks or indirectly by buying TV time, hiring campaign staffers, buiyng journalists and pundits to both praise their side and demonize/destroy you.
I think theirs is a perfect emergency platform - nullify all intelectual property and dismiss all copyright laws before it is too late. Then we start over carefully and see what we really need.
Not that they have a chance (maybe as a seed to germinate elsewhere in the world) but it would be funny to see RIAA (or some EU sister)running to install the equipment to stop the waves carrying their IP from reaching Sweeden.
To a Swedish Piracy Party?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I am just wondering what their official flag might be?
...but at least these folks are trying. Will it catch on? Who knows. But those of us in the USA could take a page from this book. There are lots of complaints that you can't get a voice in the system thanks to the Republicans and Democrats, but last I checked people in this country were allowed to hold contrary opinions to the major parties. And their are literally hundreds of parties in this country, though most represent small minorities of people.
All it would take is a grass roots campaign, an issue that people of many stripes could believe in and would vote for. Start with the Internet, work on people, gather funds, and make noise. Look at well Howard Dean did gathering support (until the media crucified him) on the Internet, and Al Gore to a lesser extent. It would take time, organization, dedication, and commitment, but ti could work. What's the worst that happens?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Its not your average blog, and no its not mine.
http://battleangel.org/item/1946
Some interesting stuff there though.
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.
The party wants to abolish all intellectual property laws
So, er, if trademarks and similar are abolished, how do you make sure you're voting for the real Piracy Party, and not something with the same name but vastly different policies set up as a stunt by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau?
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
The Piracy Party? Come on! They could hardly have chosen a worse name if they want to garner mainstream support. By using the label "piracy" they imply that they represent primarily criminal intent. Surely there is a better term they could have used that would accentuate the positive aspects of the unfettered exchange of information. Tsk, tsk.
stealing intellectual property is wrong
but what intellectual property holders are allowed to do to enforce that idea is worse
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This could actually work. It's not uncommon for small parties to appear like this in Sweden and get craploads of votes. For example, the small party June List ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junilistan ) is only a few years old, but they got around 15% of the votes in the EU-parliament election in 2004. They only thing the June List care about is not moving too much power to the EU. Given that around 80% of all young adults vote in Sweden this little piracy party could actually get enough votes. This sounds good for the pirates, but it probably isn't. The party is very disorganized, their ideas are a little to radical for most Swedes (heck, I don't know a single pirate who want to abolish _all_ ntellectual property laws) and the party is not very serious sounding either. Their leader was completely unknown until today, only known under the handle "falconwing". I bet he will get lots of votes from the elderly. ;)
Anyhow, this is interesting because now all the bigger parties have to make up their mind. 1 out of 9 swedes do download music after all.
How can private information be protected without intellectual property laws?
Are there really that many people, even on Slashdot, that think stealing intellectual property is not wrong?
...
You must be new here
Heh, it's a losing battle. Even though I'm very against the RIAA and all bodies like that, such need to exist to protect intellectual property. Without them we would stop getting new content. The scary part is with such few votes, it's possible for them to be successful.
--
United Bimmer - BMW Enthusiast Community
Although they do a good job of getting media attention, but their message is so extreme, a lot of people will write them off as crackpots and judging righteous IP reformer the same.
The downside of their proposal is that it is extremely profitable for big business, more so then for occasional filesharers. If there is no copyright, businesses will be able to rip of any Linux distro and sell it as their own (or any other piece of copyrighted work). This will rearrange the playingfield, but the ones with lots of money to invest have a big advantage here.
Copyright is a double edged sword: it protects the big evil business taking advantage of musicians and authors, but also protects independent musicians and authors from the big evil companies (if they are smart enough not to sign all their rights over for a cheap meal and a record deal).
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
The point about GPL violations is that you're simultaneously evading copyright and wielding it.
If there were no copyright at all, that would be more or less identical to everything being GPL: do as you please, but you can't stop others doing likewise. GPL is a use of copyright to subvert the effects of copyright.
If you break GPL, you're
- taking code that's free (behaves as if there were no copyright)
- making it unfree (asserting your own, undeserved copyright)
That is why it's not hypocritical to simultaneously be against copyright, and against GPL violations. the same principle applies: software should be free.
You could do the same, if your wanted to.
They don't want what you want. that's why they don't promote it.
Isn't it somewhat obvious that they are just trying to call public attention to the state and the way Intelectual Property laws are taking in Sweeden and Europe? For this purpose, calling it "The Free Knowledge Party" is useless. Calling it "Piracy Party" makes people stop and think about it.
Now then now then, I know it's tempting but you can't tell someone on
The technically correct response to the grandparent post is:
PWNED!
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
...that's probably the most apt metaphor I've heard. Reminds me of when as a kid, I'd ride with a friend of mine to the drive-in movie theater on horseback. If the security to prevent watching those movies for free was so lax that you could drive two 1300lb animals through without impediment, who's fault is it that they "lost" six bucks? Did we really owe it to them?
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.
I own dozens of copyrights. Its not hard to do, just write something. It doesn't have to be good, or popular, or make money, or anything else. You automatically have copyright on your creations.
That's why they'll be struggling to get even 4% of the vote. So by your argument, there is absolutely no way they should do away with IP.
Perhaps your americanism. Most of europe doesn't have the outrageously bought politicians that the US does. Not that I'm saying our lot are any better, but we have stricter rules on campaign finance etc as a rule. I'm sure ways are found around this, but our politicians are more often accused of being misguided/stupid/deviant/power-hungry than out and out corrupt.
Missed it in the post (yes, me stupid).
The theinquirer.net article is mostly copy and paste from the battleangel.org site !
Interesting indeed
However, a much more reasonable and economically sound stance is to make one case or another for a normalization / rethinking or protection terms and conditions. The most obvious candidate for this, as far as the US is concerned, is the ever-lengthening copyright duration (it stands to note that the "around 20 year" length for patents is actually pretty good on average - it can be improved by specifically making it more or less for certain industries or types of inventions, but as a mean figure it's actually quite good in terms of stimulating inonvation and econommic activity).
I personally tend to think that 40 years from initial publication, irrespective of the death or lack thereof of the author, is a reasonable copyright duration for most works.
"Voting rights to Riksdag elections are reserved for all Swedish citizen who are 18 years of age before or on Election Day and who are, or have at some time been, registered residents of Sweden." - Info from the Swedish election authority
IAAAL - I am actually a lawyer
"Maximizing profit for the sake of large owners of IP was NOT the idea"
What do you mean? The idea is maximizing profit for any IP owner (thus the incentive for innovation). Why should it matter how much IP someone owns, or how much money they have.
I always thought proportional representation was a bad system because it led to unstable governments.
Why would you want stability in government? Haven't you head the expression "Politicans and Diapers should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason?"
A little unstability in government is a GOOD thing.. it keeps the incumbents from getting too cozy and secure, which reduces their ability to "influence" things for their corporate masters which means less corruption, etc.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
My Zombie and Robot party will fuck you up!
Am I the only one out there that sees the logical issues with this? They want no one to have intellectual property, BUT they want the right to privacy?
Umm, privacy is a form of Intellectual Property. If you're going to do away with IP, then you can't have Privacy. This stand doesn't make much sense to me.
Every other day a corporation takes a word or an idea and gives it a new meaning, always a more conforming one. Appropriating "Piracy", the very word the IP owners of the world use to designate those who, in their view, are criminal thiefs of their property, is a nice slap in the face of those corporations. It sends the clear message that yes, "we are criminals", but we are criminals because the laws you bought are invalid. Eventually the people may hear.
I guess I'm the only one on Slashdot who thinks it's reasonable for record labels to want to make some money. I strongly agree that suing the grandparents of kids for downloading is going way too far, I strongly believe in the concept of fair use and I strongly believe in limiting the time span of a copyright. But when folks are downloading songs from the Internet that they have not paid a single bit of royalties for then it doesn't seem to me that the record labels are being unreasonable by being upset about that.
I know, I'm the only person on Slashdot who feels that both sides in this issue are somewhat wrong, so please feel free to flame me.
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
It is in fact an excellent choice of a name. It will shock people who would not vote for it anyway (because they are not aware of what it's all about or have vested interests in I.P.) and cause a ruckus that is necessary for the press to take notice.
It was bound to happen. People are just sick of being hunted down because they copy music files. In 50 or 100 years, the whole I.P. thing will be seen in the same way we now see the feudal lords executing/imprisoning their subjects because they were hunting on their lands.
The US is getting itself irrelevant to these new freedoms and will be the last one to adjust because they have invested in the media industry more than anyone else but even them will have to adjust in the end.
It's simply inevitable.
Then they complain that file sharing is the reason nobody is buying, they won't ever admit that it's because the product sucks, or their politics suck.
I can't read Sweedish so all I know is in the same short note everyone else read. But I very much doubt a "movement" is what they are after - but even so, as I said in another comment, the name itself sends a clear message. It appropriates the very term the IP moguls use to designate thiefs and send it back rolling, screamming "Yes, we are the criminals, but just because the evil invalid laws you bought say so". Eventually (hopefully) they will be able to add to the message "And the people are with us".
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.
You're right, IP is just a theory since the product doesn't actually exist, but the point is that the business model IS broken. First thing you learn when you do a philosophy course is to always have something to fall back on, and the broken business model is always going to be a stable foundation, because it's a model that is not maintainable.
I was talking to a business studies lecturer late this afternoon, and it's a commonly accepted view by the people who are teaching our kids business, that the model is broken. Suing people is not the answer to stop them sharing, once it's in bits and bytes, god help you. As far as i'm concerned with intellectual property, if you can't lock it down with true, uncrackable security, then it's not something you should be suing over. And by true, uncrackable, i'm not talking security through obscurity with DRM, i'm not talking a false sense of security, i'm talking true, proven security.
And how should a private company have any say in how the system works when it is not in the interests of the consumers? How should the record industry be able to justify access to retained data under that data retention law? It should not. The law is there to enforce utility, that is the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, albeit with certain rules applied because there ARE cases where that could lead to anarchy. This is not one of them. Yes, the music artists put work into creating the music, yes they deserve a reward, but at the end of the day, all the record companies have traditionally done comes to nothing with the internet, they are no longer needed, period. Artists can record their music, put it up, advertise themselves and put up a site. Distribution can be through the internet and the artists can have much lower costs and make more than they could have through a record company. The record company's place is gone, they're just clutching at straws
~HTP~ Hug that tux
do you really want your representative to be a soulless reptilian creature of infinite evil?
YES!!! No wait... I want to be this soulless creature of infinite 3V1L... (let's leave out that reptilian part)
Sweden currently has only one party with wich i can fully identify with, this very one. Im fully convinced that IP as an industry is just a feverish attempt at keeping the current snowball-market afloat. That is, it doesnt work without constant market growth and as we have made the most out of real values we now turn to fictional ones like ideas, thoughts and culture. This is a must to keep the market expanding when no new movements have arised to take the place of the industrialism era. In my view its the economical system that needs to adapt to real values and not the other way around, make the real world look like the stock market.
HTTP/1.1 400
Their site is hideous. They need to hire an artist or designer to help them make it look better. Oh, wait... considering that they want to destroy every artist's rights, why would any artist want to help them? Hmm.
I think this party is a big joke. It's only goal is to destroy IP laws, so that they can steal other countries' creative works and get away with it.
(oh, you think Sweden actually has creative works? Hahahaha!)
Maybe I'm naive, but I think that people are more than willing to pay the creators for their work, or at least come up with some kind of decent exchange that betters society (e.g. the number of GPL fans here). The problem is that people are sick of handing all of their money and rights over to the various copyright cartels (**AA, I'm talking about you!).
It isn't that people want everything for free without compensating the creators. It is that people are sick of the abuse of the system. WhyTF should we pay tax on media because we might use it to violate someone's copyright? Why should we have to deal with copyright owners (who are often not the creators) pulling crap like installing rootkits on our computers, preventing us from viewing/listening to/using their materials in other formats, basically removing our fair use rights, etc.? Why do we have to put up with the virtual death of Public Domain?
I am a creator (writing, photography, sometimes music, et al) and sometimes my creations make me money. Still, I call bullshit on the entire system. I'm fed up with it.
I've given myself a copyright limit of 15 years, the last five of which, all of my creations go Creative Commons at minimum if they aren't already. After that, everything goes public domain, regardless of whether or not I am making money off of it. The idea of copyright is that anyone can have any idea, but the creator comes up with it first and therefore gets the rights to it for a LIMITED time. After that, it MUST go back to the public whence it came.
People don't want to necessarily leech the system. People want their rights back, and people want to stick it to those who would take away their rights.
Copyright is not a natural right, and should not be treated as such.
As a creator, even I firmly believe in this.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
We just need one-quarter of the ones that already think like this to consider this their most important issue.
/ Rick (the founder)
Yes, proportional representation goes a long way towards giving minority views seats in parliament. However I believe that Sweden, like my country Norway, elects representatives on a county level.. So any political party has to achieve a certain level of support on a county basis to amount to anything. Effectively it means votes for minor parties are wasted votes... imagine what it means for the Pirate Party!
...in case anyone's wondering, this is me (the founder). Don't have time to write more right atm. Yeah, and I realize anyone could write this. Go figure. :-)
/ Rick
Awww come on! There are so many slashbots who whine about how crappy American movies and music are, and about how much Microsoft software eats it...and conversely, how much Linux rocks. It seems that the same people who spout this also tend to advocate the ability to copy this crappy data. So...which is it?
Yeah, I get that piracy is not 'stealing' in the traditional sense, but neither is theft of service (cable/telephone/internet/TV service). Guess what, it's still theft, regardless of whether or not a commodity with a limited supply is stolen. If you don't like the license, don't use the software. How difficult is that? (Yeah, predatory click-through EULAs are bullshit too...but that's not what we're talking about)
The fact is that without strong IP laws, we would not have had a personal computer or related market. (Computers would still exist of course, but it is unlikely that the cost would have become this low). Without a PC market, Linux never would have seen fruition, since all of those at-home developers wouldn't have cheap computers kicking around their homes, offices, and labs. In fact -- Linux would not exist, if not for the need created by expensive commercial Unixes (to take it a step further, neither would Unix). Since Macintosh computers are PC's too, the Mac wouldn't exist either. Yes, IP laws have been helpful to us.
Shops who have invested millions into things like user interface design wouldn't have any incentive to invest those dollars because the return on those dollars would not be legally protected. Here's a quasi-analogy: why have a store if a government will not guarantee resasonable protection under the law? If the goods can be stolen by anyone, what is the incentive for putting them into the store? (Yes, I know, everthing should be free, but it isn't.) If commercial developers have no assumption of protection under the law, they will stop producing software for money. Contrary to the free-everything opinion, those developers won't just give up and code for free. They still have to feed their families, and will find another line of work. Not everyone in the world produces out of the goodness of their heart. If that motivates you, fine I appreciate your good heart; but don't expect the rest of us to share what motivates you. We're not all the same.
To all those who are anti-IP law: Just because a system has its problems doesn't mean that the system should be thrown to the curb. Yes, the system needs fixing. Yes, the extension of copyright laws in the US is bullshit. Yes, software and business process patents patents are a lame idea, and yes, the USPTO is badly broken. NONE of these mean that the idea of copyrights and IP should be tossed out. This would be akin to tossing the baby out with the bath water.
-Turkey
Thansk for weighing in.
Can you explain exactly what it means when a parliament forms a government? Does that mean decide who serves in what position, like Ministry of State, etc. ? What is a confidence vote and what are its repercusions?
I've never understood it and I haven't yet found a good explanation of it. Not even in Wikipedia.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Just pointing out that the "strange new idea" is over 2000 year old it is called democracy. It is the idea that if you do not like how you are ruled and the laws enforce, you can ask your peers to grant you the power to change it by power of there votes.
If this was a complete thought, instead of a broken fragment, I'd be down.
However, they have no views on other issues. Surely Sweden has issues other than filesharing. Lets look at the big picture, this is a publicity stunt.
And you've just demonstrated why slashdot is absolutely useless
And you've just demonstrated why people get modded down as redundant: because they don't read over replies to comments before they post.
some people have no problem murdering you and your family
Great equivalency there - compare the beliefs of a large portion of society to the beliefs of a fraction of a percent of a society. I'd wager that at least two thirds of Americans (let alone people in poorer countries) have at least one video that they copied off TV or from a rental, at least one copied song, or other such infringement in their house. Did you honestly think there was *any* sort of equivalency there? Why not just go for a full Godwin's Law while you're at it?
your side
What is "my side", and what language does it use? This should be quite humorous.
By your logic since there is still a domestic workforce present
1) The US has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world; quit your complaining.
2) Even if the US didn't, that is again a completely out of proportion argument; you're comparing the loss to a large number of people for benefit a small number of people (high unemployment to raise the profits for a few execs and investors), versus the gain for a large number of people and the loss for a small number (everything in the public domain for everyone, for a small loss for recording artists (who only get a pittiance from every CD sale if they sign onto a label) and the destruction of the recording industry (which is a tiny percentage of the population)). Once again, you've gone so far overboard with your examples that you can't even see the ship any more.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
Statute of Anne, 1710, 14 years, renewable for 14, the author still living. The model for the first U.S. copyright law in 1790.
In 1831, U.S. copyright was extended to 28 years, renewable for 14, again following the European standard.
The Berne Convention of 1886, as revised in 1908, established the modern formula of life plus X years, where X equals 50 years or more. Copyright Timeline
They are not very serious. For example on their website you can read that they want the current minister of justice to sell hot dogs outside the parlament since there he can't do any more damage. :)
But I hope they can make a real party programme before the election! At least I would vote on them.
Okay, dude, I'm sorry, but I have to ask this.
/.
What the FUCK is a "dead duelist of Dios?" Google is confusing when I ask it, and I've seen this sig or a mutation of it at least three or four times on
+++ATH0
I will step in here to answer.
As the original poster said, in countries without proportional representation, such as Canada and the UK, you vote for a candidate in your riding. The leader of the party that elects the most members becomes Prime Minister. The Prime Minister decides who becomes ministers in his or her Cabinet (or Executive). And while the ranks of Ministers are typically taken from MPs from his or her party, any citizen may be appointed to Cabinet. (For example, the former Premier of British Columbia chose Ed John, a tribal chief who hadn't even run for office, to be his minister for child and family services).
In the parliamentary system, all budget votes are confidence votes. If a budget vote fails, the government is toppled and an election is forced (there are exceptions, but they're rare).
A member may also call for a vote of non-confidence in the government, but only under certain conditions -- usually when there aren't enough government members in the House at that moment to prevent a new bill from being tabled, or when the government has assigned time to the opposition to introduce a private bill.
See, the government has absolute power in the House as to the order in which business is read. The Government House Leader need not allow any private bill to be heard or to go past first reading, which makes it difficult for a non-budget non-confidence vote to be heard. Practically speaking, however, any government which does not give the opposition a day or two every legislative session to introduce bills can lose the confidence of their own private members, which is dangerous.
The Canadian government was brought down last month when the Conservatives introduced a non-confidence motion on one of their Opposition Days.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Bunch of muppets. Funny quote though: "We are not red, blue or green. We are just pirates," he said. More here:
Even a small portion of their goals could be beneficial for everyone, including all of us outside Sweden. Despite the A that stands for America the RIAA is a global organization (their recent attempts to pressure Russia about allofmp3.com should leave no doubt of that). So when any country forces the RIAA to adapt to different laws it makes similar laws more viable elsewhere, even if just slightly.
Imagine concert sales doubling in Sweden after such a change, or an influx of new artists as the country becomes the next Seattle. That's what we all think/hope would happen if intellectual property laws were relaxed, isn't it? That could be persuasive to the domestic powers that be.
And if nothing changed, or if the lack of intellectual property laws made things far worse well then we'd have to finally shut up about it, lol.
Perhaps this is a byproduct of his putting his bum on them.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
... and I don't speak swedish, I can't make any famous comments like RTFA and find out that this is probably an example of someone making exaggerated claims on the original article.
To put it simply, intellectual property laws, if written properly, are meant to protect the little guy. As they are written in the US, they primarily benefit large corporations who have the deep pockets to prosecute offenders. If there were absolutely no IP laws, then the big corporations again win, by simply crushing the competition with their power and wealth.
But that's the great thing about a government that lets into its governing body different minority parties, it spurs discussion by bringing in new points of view. Maybe they will be able to pull back some of those laws and achieve a balance. Just don't think anarchy will come 6 months after a few reps are elected because that would be a ridiculous expectation of any government.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
....If we're ever going to stop global warming!
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
There ain't no free ride. If no one wants to pay for it the product goes away, it's called capitalism.
Depends on the exact country, but for Sweden the procedure is something like this (I'm not a specialist in this area, so some details might not be 100% to the letter accurate)
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
Umm no. You obviously have no understanding of the law. And this does not address my question in the slightest.
So could I simplify this and replace the phrase "form a new government" with "pick new ministers" when I listen to NPR?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
With copyright out the way, they can reproduce one ballot a million times and win the prime ministry!!! mu ha ha ha ha
Wouldn't it be better to create your own party in your own country to represent the same ideals? Here in the US I'd be willing to join such a party. Something that supports individual privacy, the right to reverse engineer, the weakening of IP laws (no software/genetic/business/etc patents and short copyright periods), encouragement of open standards, encouragement of open source, etc. I wouldn't call it the Piracy Party though. The Intellectual Freedom party would be could. You could do some good marketing with 'IF?'.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The party expresses no opinion on other subjects... The party's goal is to get into to the parliament
I dislike single issue parties. These candidates will be elected based on one single domain (IP), yet they will be helping to set policy in dozens of domains.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I can answer your third question.
A non-confidence vote are often made in parliamentary governments when a minority government occurs. This occured in Canada a few months ago. The Liberals were in "control" of the minority government (they had the highest percentage of seats), but they did not control 50% of the votes. This means that, in order for any legislation to pass, members in the senate parties other than the ruling party would have to vote in favour. It also means that, if another party doesn't like a particular piece of legislation, they can attempt to get support from other parties to shut it down.
In the case of Canada, the Conservative party (second most seats) decided they didn't want the Liberals to be in control anymore. Thus, they moved forward a piece of legislation called a non-confidence vote. This indicates that they believe that the ruling party is incapable of leading the country in he best way possible, or that they do not represent the populace as best they can. If it is passed, the Prime Minister asks the Governer General to dissolve the parliament (such that no new legislation can occur), and the Governer General will call an election. An election occurs, and a new parliament is formed.
This is different from the American system in that elections can occur much more often.
you gotta fight, for your right, to be in the marijauna party!
Duh?
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
I have some understanding of the law. IANAL, but I don't think there's any copyright infringement going on if a peeping tom looks in my window. I don't think there's any copyright infringement going on as I create "intellectual property" during a phone conversation which is being monitored without my knowledge by a third party. If I'm wrong, cite a legal document -- law, court decision, something.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
But the whole goal of publishing something under protection is to continue to own something that you'd otherwise keep private! Aren't you familar with the reasons for Intellectual Property and the history of it?
Guilds were built on the idea of 'secret formulas' (ie things that were private and never intended to be made public so you could make money off of them).
If you get rid of IP, then the people that come up with these ideas will keep them private, because they won't want to lose the money they stand to make. And even more draconian licenses and other restraints will return to the market place. The whole purpose of IP is to protect Private Property. Don't they teach anybody history anymore?
It's the same awesome people who run the thePirateBay.org?
Depends if that third party is a private party or the government. Governments are not subject to copyright or patent restrictions in time of war, or when dealing with foreign powers.
And before asking to prove you wrong, I'd suggest you first try to prove you're right. Your statements about the NSA were wrong. Either defend your attack with with facts, or just let it drop. But don't change the subject.
If there is no copyright, why do we need the GPL? The GPL and creative commons were both created in reaction to oppressive copyright laws. Without the laws, we don't need these licenses.
So what if big corporations take all the code and incorporate it in their own works. The point is that these companies will not be able to prevent you from doing the same thing.
Linux, and GPL software is becoming more successful because of their philosophies of sharing. This would be the same with or without copyrights.
I'm even using the same name.... The Piracy Party.
And there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
If their party logo had a (C) or (TM) next to it.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
That is why we have different words for different things. It makes these distinctions clear.
Dangit! I ran out of mod points a few hours ago. If I had known something brilliant like this was going to come along, I would have saved one.
Your explanation is accurate and clear, and you even left off the almost-obligatory-on-/. ad hominem attack. This is the kind of post mod points were designed for!
Don't put advice in your sig.
...I object to the horrible piracy these people are promoting by spreading their ideas without charging for them.
That's correct, yes. Government refers specifically to the Prime Minister and his or her Cabinet (the Executive). The other members of parliament are not considered to be part of government.
One consequence of this is that in Canada, the Cabinet offices -- the physical offices in which Cabinet members conduct business while not debating in the House -- must be outside the Parliament Buildings proper so as to draw a clear line between Government and Parliament.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Tell me, if a company appropriated the trade secrets of a rival company without permission (what is commonly known as "stealing" trade secrets) would you consider that "stealing" even though the wronged company still has possession of copies of said secrets? If not "stealing", then what would you call it? I assume you would admit that it falls under one of the basic categories of "wrong", namely "lie", "cheat", "steal", "injure", "kill". So if not "stealing", then perhaps you'd be willing to call it "cheating"; I guess that eases your conscience when browsing for warez - "I'm not stealing, just cheating!!". LOL
BTW, dictionary definition of "steal": To take or appropriate without right or leave, with intent to keep or use wongly.
Sounds like copyright infringement fits the bill.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Yeah, I agree that's probably the best approach. Swedish only does that for words with "names" in them, like Duracell-batteri and Ikea-stol (Ikea chair).
My high school government teacher said so, 16 years ago. Is that a good enough cite for you? It seemed reasonable at the time, so I believed him.
No, really, I'm actually curious to know. How does copyright provide privacy protection?
As far as I'm aware, (and I am not a legal professional, just a concerned citizen who's annoyed as hell at how obfuscated our legal system is, and would like it if things were orderly, made sense, and were accessible without mountains of academic credentials, just so I could know what my actual rights fucking are... ) copyright provides a few protections to an author, and has little to nothing to do with privacy, at least in any relevant way that I can imagine.
Copyright (1) establishes authorship, and (2) provides a limited time monopoly on publishing rights, which means (3) you can't copy it without permission, unless said copying falls under "fair use" privileges.
Now, I know IP isn't just copyright, there's also trademark law, patent law, etc. I still don't see how any of it creates privacy rights, which are actually enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and then systematically dismantled by subsequent legislation too numerous to mention. If someone reads a copyrighted work of my authorship, it's very likely that it's not a breach of privacy. Considering that copyrighted works are often published, it's difficult to see how copyright law protects privacy.
If I'm wrong, don't just hold it over me that I'm wrong, tell me. I'm an ignoramus, and am only passingly familiar with the Constitution, but I'm pretty sure based on my understanding of it that I have a solid grasp of what my privacy rights are and where they originate. If you're a real legal eagle, take the opportunity to do some pro bono work and educate this idiot.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
To be sure, record labels screw their artists. Elsewise, why would so many artists form their own labels? Jack Endino (produced Nirvana's first album, among other notables) wrote a fascinating article about the process years and years ago, but a quick look at his web site (http://www.endino.com/) turns up empty. I'm sure it's there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to search for it.
But the parent makes a good point: the supply of musicians vastly outstrips the demand for music (in general, as a commodity). As such, musicians are interchangable parts - it's the value that the labels add (promotion and access) that drives the bulk of sales. Since "artists" are essentially ubiquitous, you can't fault the labels getting the best deal for themselves that they can.
Which is not to excuse the rampant abuses of copyright and the legal system the the labels perpetuate - it makes me sick, too. But the fact that artists get screwed isn't really a valid point of argument. There's nothing stopping you from forming your own label - I should know, I helped a friend do it about 2 years ago.
And just as no one promised the record labels that they could make bazillions selling the same recycled crap in perpetuity, no one promised you that you could earn a living as a musician - only that you'd have the opportunity to give it a try.
So, in summary, if you're going to be mad, be mad that the RIAA is manipulating the law such that protecting their property infringes on your right to use your legitimately purchased goods in a manner that is consistent with the principles of Fair Use. Leave the poor starving artists out of it - they made their choice.
Could you explain how the two relate?
That's scary.
That's clearly a true statement. Most people enforce no copyrights. If that's not true of your circle of acquaintances, I guarantee you are way outside the mainstream.
As to his 'weak appeal to authority' you've also completely misunderstood. He's making a factual claim contradicting what he believes is the parent poster's misinformed opinion. The point is that there are insightful people who believe we'd be better off entirely without copyright, and maybe the parent just hasn't thought about it enough.
As to the grandparent's demeaning:
I think that clearly fits the bill, maybe you disagree.
Finally, I think you're wrong about the ALL IP issue, and I suspect so did the parent. We really do think that everyone will be better off excepting the major cartels, even the little guy involved in creative endeavors.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Am I the only person on /. that thinks that both sides of this issue needs extremist?
I have no desire to live in a world that has no Copyright, no Trademarks and no Patent System, but I fully support this effort.
The Piratpartiet will never achieve it's stated goals because they are unreasonable. Their extreme view exists solely to counter the lopsided environment we are currently in. Democracy (if it is working correctly) will force the two sides into a compromise that will create a balanced framework that benefits everybody.
As an example, not many people like the world that RMS wants. But without his voice, Open Source Software would not thrive as it does today.
Is still false
Actually, my actual correction read "copyrights that they know about/will ever enforce". But even with simply "enforce", it is *not* false. Most people will *never*, in their entire life, enforce a copyright. Most people will enforce *none*. Some people will enforce some (in fact, some people and companies will enforce many), but that doesn't change the fact that most people will enforce none at all.
Lets dissect the rest of his post
Start by getting the gender right.
A weak appeal to authority
No. A 100% grounded appeal to reality - namely, the group that this entire slashdot comment section is about. Didn't you even read the section header (let alone the article) before you started posting?
Nothing demeaning there
Oh come on. Calling a government without IP law "anarchy"? Give me a break.
Funny how his response was a "proportionality"* argument
I don't get the joke, nor do I see anywhere in your post which commented on the fact that if a domestic music industry remains strong without effective IP enforcement, IP law is still critical.
did you "misspeak" again?
That does not follow. Please clarify how you find me commenting that a group finds the benefits of all IP being in the public domain as contradicting the observation that IP raises profits for a small number of people at the expense of the general population. I think you've just confused all of your readers as to the point you're trying to make.
"I hate the RIAA" contingent
Where have I ever stated that I hate the RIAA?
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
If someone is still living off the income from their copyrighted material 50 years (hell, even 5 years) later, they're just a parasite on the rest of our wallets. Copyright is supposed to provide an incentive to create, not a lifetime pension for anyone who happens to create something.
I'm not swedish, but i fully support this. I hope this idea extends beyond Sweden. Obviously it might be next impossible in corporate controlled USA, but this can get popular elsewhere. The fact is, laws were made by humans, and are not a given God right. Releasing slaves used to be illegal in USA, after all...
Copyright infringement is something that must cease. Not by jailing 3/4 of the population; but to stop pretending it to be illegal. The genie is out of the bottle; the technology made it possible, and there is no turning back. The alternative is widespread repression. No thanks, lets get rid of the problem once and for all. Culture and knowledge are not private proporty.
File sharers are not asking money for the content they help distribute. In fact they are donating their own machine and bandwidth resources. This indirect free advertising for those parasites. Loyal fans go and buy the content anyway as long as they are treated with respect. With the advent of "DRM", "TCA" this might be changing. Why bother in spending money in content that will refuse to play or cause problems? I'd rather donate to sites which help the spreading of the same content without any restrictions.
As for the economics of a market without "IP", it is not my interest talk about this issue. I believe it will sort itself out anyway. I don't think copyrights or patents protect the small ones, reality shows its just the opposite, so it can't never be worse. In fact, you can already see how it works in countries where "IP" just plain doesn't work at all, such as almost everyplace outside of the so called "developed" world.
So this message is just to show my full support to this new party, and if i were Sweden, i would immediately sign as a party member. I hope this ideology spreads worldwide, we have had enough.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
And now, a massage from the Swedish Prime Minister...(slap slap slappity slap)
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
Try this: "Information that the author has previously distributed to the public wants to be free."
You learn from Disney, from Brad Bird and Tim Burton.
And then run the risk of being sued because your work is allegedly "substantially similar" to a work owned by a multinational publisher. If you've never heard of Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs (the "My Sweet Lord" case), you have a bit of reading to do.
The US has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world
Even when you take into account the discrepancy between the US Bureau of Labor Statistics definition of "unemployment" and the broader definitions used by many other countries?
In Norway, the King asks the Prime Minister candidate of a given coalition to form a government. He then picks whoever he want, although the King has to agree with the PM's chosen disciples. These form the government (council of the State), which have weekly meetings lead by the King,
However, the King doesn't actually interfere at all in any of these matters. A majority faction emerges from the 6-8 different parties in the Parliament, or some minority coalition gets the needed support from some of the lesser parties. The parties generally position themselves before elections, so it's obvious who the King will ask. Exceptions can occur, however, as in Germany recently.
If the government loses a vote of confidence in the Parliament, the PM and all the ministers are thrown and the process starts from scratch. This is not explicit in the constitution, but has become law-like anyway. Furthermore, the government can threaten the parliament to resign if it doesn't bow to the goverments wishes (a "cabinet question"). This system works because every time a majority votes to throw the goverment, they have made sure to be able to present an alternative. To do otherwise would be true political suicide.
The split of power between the King (that is, the government), the Parliament and the Court of Law is generally not static. Much of today's law was created during a political crisis in the end of the 1800s, where the King refused to sign a bill coming from the Parliament. Today, it is acknowledged that the King only has a postponing veto, not an eternal one. In Norway, nothing can dissolve the Parliament (although this is a matter of discussion nowadays).
The distribution of seats in Parliament is made regionally in 19 regions. In each region there can be any number of party "lists". The party regionally elects the candidates on the lists. The voters can alter the list to some degree (promoting and striking candidates), and this affects the final order of the candidates. You need a certain number of signatures to run a list. The method for distributing seats is advanced, but not impossible to understand. Generally, it leads to a distribution of seats close to the overall percentage of a party with more than 4 % of the votes.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
I think we need to start our own party in the U.S.
We have enough people out there if they found out they would support us. Especially all those people who have been persecuted by the RIAA. The copyright for stuff has been constantly extened since the founding of this country. We need to reverse back to what it was so more stuff is back in Public Domain. We regain our Fair Use rights. It is harder to make backups of our video games now these days with Securom, Safedisc, and the other copy protections. What happened to a product you buy and being able to use it the way you want. Instead of buying a license to use it. If I buy a CD I want to rip it to put on my MP3 player. I want to back up my games so my original is kept safe from wear while I use the copy to play off usually in Virtual CD/DVD Drive for better performance. Itunes is doing good even though $.99 is somewhat high. RIAA is trying to jack the prices of the itunes songs up due to some sing being more popular. Things need to be a flat price. Just look at the different prices of TV to DVD shows. $80 a season for some and others $60,$40 or somewhere in between. The MPAA, RIAA, Congress, and software publishers have gone too far.
Even ISP getting sued for what their customers do. You explain security holes and get sued when they was trying to help. We might not call it piracy party, but we need a new political party besides the 2 oil loving big business monopoly parties we have. Why else would there be only 1 cable provider and 1 local telephone company in small cities. I lived in area there 4 cables companies all in one area. One in each city and not one would go in the other area and they controlled the prices. Finally the FCC came in and gave the city control to regulater the price increases. They constantly increase price, but don't add more service.
Who is with me in regaining our consumer rights?
Let's start the Consumer's Rights Party!
"They may have illegally borrowed your car, but if they intend to return it, it is not stealing"
Yeah, tell that to the cops when they pull you over driving around a car that has been reported missing. "But officer, I was going to return it so at most I was illegally borrowing it."
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Although they do a good job of getting media attention, but their message is so extreme, a lot of people will write them off as crackpots and judging righteous IP reformer the same.
It is probably just a publicity stunt, just in the past few months two much more likely contenders for parliament (a EU sceptic party and a feminist party) fizzled in record time on grounds of not having a political line in all areas of politics (well, you can argue that they fizzled because they were clowns, and that probably contributed, but still). You can't run for parliament without having an opinion on taxes, school, healthcare, benefits and stuff. People do vote with their wallets and even if they find these issues important, they are not going to compromise day care for their kids or whatever is on top of their shopping list for that.
IPR is an issue of uttermost importance on the margin.
Voting for parliament is not a smorgasbord, it is set menues!
Just to go all the way with the offtopicness, I want to point out that this is the reason spell checkers don't work nearly as well in these languages as in English.
The infinite vocabulary doesn't fit well into a data base.
While dictionary.com agrees that "water tap" is in fact a single word noun, I don't think that makes any sense. The fact "tap" can be used by itself as a synonym for "water tap" only shows the "water" is not really part of the word and is in fact altering the word "tap", like an adjective does.
"Water tap" appears to be a adjective and a noun to me. Why isn't "oil tap" and "chocolate tap" treated as a single noun? Many people have "gas taps" in their home but it isn't given any special single word designation.
Still, it doesn't sound much different than Thieves' Party, when they could have gone for something more akin to Robin Hood. ;)
They talk like Swedish pirates. Surely, the quickening approaches.
... and then they built the supercollider.
'Withing the domain of a society...a society dada21. You can copy to your hearts content. You can't distribute copies to everyone you want. Nose, fists...remember?'
Wrong. It's illegal to go to a play and scrible down all the lines. It's just as illegal to take a legally bought play and perform it without paying the copyright owner of said play. Distribution is a large, but not the only, aspect of copyright. One final thing is that distributing copies doesn't involve anyone's nose or fist. By copying words or notes or dots of paint, the original is not removed. The only thing that is taken away is any claims of exclusion, but how can one claim it's perfectly okay to copy someone else's chair and sell it but that to copy their painting and sell it is not? Would it be okay to claim that it's the original? Of course not, but that's a question of attribution and fraud, not distribution.
'The "free advertising" argument ignores the "permission" aspect of copyright. It also sends a disrespectful message they doesn't give a damn about the artists by not even asking permission. Now is that how you'd like to be treated dada21?'
The same could be said of public domain works or works for which the original artist no longer owns the copyright. Even further, one could point at fair use. Weird Al might very well ask for permission to parody songs, out of respect, but he's in no way legally required. If copyright is all about getting permission and respect, then one should consider holding the idea of obeying one's parents and grandparents to heart. Certainly you owe more to your parents and grandparents than to some singer. You want to slap that into the lawbooks as well?
'"He who writes the code, sets the License"..Linus. There's also the issue of "contract law" and free will. A popular musician has of their own free will chose to sign with a record label. You spoke earlier abour private rights. Well people have the private right to enter into any agreement they wish, or not as the case may be. Some may be legal, some may not. That's why SOCIETY has created a legal structure to handle those issues.'
True, but while a musician has of their own free will entered into an agree with a record company, I never did. Software companies have the gall to not only copyright their software, but they keep pushing EULAs for which many judges have okayed simply because there's an option to return the software for a refund. If copyright were a contract between people instead of an enforced law over people who want no part in it, then I would agree. But even people who agree to copyright as was before the DMCA now have companies using DRM to push whatever control the desire, with the power to circumvent legitimate use because others might use the same technique to defeat the DRM; and in none of this are people even commiting piracy because they haven't even begun to distribute or perform.
'And not honoring the agreement you made when the content came into your possession is what exactly? You claimed to be an employer, so how do your workers feel when they work for you, and you tell them they might get paid, but doing so would violate your private rights?'
The only agreement I made was the exchange of pieces of paper for a plastic, aluminum, paper, and laquer disc with indentations on it that can be read by a special device in a means to produce music. To state that I also agreed to copyright simply because it is forced upon me, outside of any written contract or sign of free will, is ludicrous.
'No, copyright is an agreement between society and those who chose to create. You'll note that unlike true "force", no one makes a member of society enter into a reciprocal agreement with an artist. Just as there's no "force" making your employees work for you. "Force" much like the word "evil" is misused and overapplied. Please try to refrain from abusing it further.'
If there's a law that you can't step on blue squares on the sidewalk, and such only cover 30% of the land area and
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
If as part of their weakened copyright/IP laws, they required making the source code of any software available then your example of the linux distro is no different than a company taking and forking the existing codebase.
As far as musicians and authors, the current copyright system does not benefit them either, at least not as much as it benefits corporations. A weakened copyright with shorter terms would not harm the creators of content much if at all.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
Let's make it the lifetime of the primary author. While you're alive, you can make money off of it.
What doesn't make sense is that Elvis, dead, made more money than 99% of the US, alive. That sucks.
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
It's not insightful. It's playing word games in order to make the act appear to be less offensive than it really is.
Bullshit. Stealing is taking something away from someone. Copying is making a copy of something. Copying a work the government has forbidden you to make a copy of without permission is still copying. Equating the two (stealing and copying) is what is playing word games. If I go into your house and take your TV, I have stolen from you. If I copy a book written in 1971, whose copyright owner is unknown and unfindable I have infringed a copyright. Both are illegal; one a criminal offense and the other a civil offense. One causes damage to someone and loss of property, the other does not. You are confusing the violation of a persons natural rights with the violation of a supposedly limited government granted right.
And FYI, I am professional author and make my money creating copyrighted works. That does not mean copyright law, as it now exists, is just or beneficial. As for whether or not copyright violation is justified, in many cases I find it laudable. I certainly have violated copyrights in order to make an archival copy of a work before it it lost, or in order to make available to some person a literary or musical work that is otherwise unavailable and cannot be purchased anywhere. I don't have any problem with anyone copying works for non-commercial uses, or works that have been copyrighted for more than a few years. I don't have any problem with people violating any copyrights held by large organizations who have contributed to the problem by buying laws that extend their copyrights unreasonably. Just because some company has bribed politician into passing unjust laws does not make it unethical to disobey those laws.
Artists (myself included) don't deserve compensation for work, but I think that if the government is willing to grant a short monopoly on reproduction in exchange for archival copies and to promote the creation and dissemination of works, that is reasonable. If, however, the government wants to use copyright law to make works unavailable to the public at any cost, erasing from the public consciousness important works, all for the sake of higher profits... well they can shove the laws where the sun doesn't shine. I'll certainly not obey them.
Besides, any of the countries on the northern side of Europe would tend to be filled with tall blonde lovelies anyway, so if that your thing, it'd probably be paradise!
"The only agreement I made was the exchange of pieces of paper for a plastic, aluminum, paper, and laquer disc with indentations on it that can be read by a special device in a means to produce music. To state that I also agreed to copyright simply because it is forced upon me, outside of any written contract or sign of free will, is ludicrous."
I have never made any agreement that I would not come into your home and take your stereo, or for that matter, that I would consider that particular home and stereo yours in the first place.
What's ludicrous is to suggest intelectual property is inherently illegitamite because, like all property, it is based on societal conventions; or that it is bad because those conventions (laws) are backed up by "force", like all laws.
1) Can I join in the USA? Can I become a Swede for the day that you'all vote?
2) Can anyone recommend a good (meaning one that works and is free as in beer) Swedish-English-Swedish dictionary/translation program? There must be one somewhere. I want to read this website and its posts.
Thank you
Seriously. I'm a registered USA voter. I live in Oregon and we are the only state in the USA to use mail-in voting ballots.
If you let me use your vote for Swedish parlimentary elections so that I can use your vote to for the 'pirate' party, then I will let you use my write-in vote in the next USA presidential election. I'll sign and send you the ballot. You mail it back to my local voting office from where you live (mail cost about 0.7 Euro or 3-4 Kroner if Sweden doesn't use Euros).
Now you can vote for the US president and I can vote for the pirates.
My first thought when I heard about Piratpartiet was that they had my vote for sure. However, after checking more specifially what they wanted to do, I have changed my mind. I believe in limited patent rights and so on, but not in the complete removal of it. People deserve to be paid for what they create. Also people should have the right to use other peoples creations to create new "improved" ones.
Please do read this PDF, you'll see that rejecting intellectual property has NOTHING to do with rejecting property in general, on the contrary. Thus your comparison to communism is totally wrong.
"I have never made any agreement that I would not come into your home and take your stereo, or for that matter, that I would consider that particular home and stereo yours in the first place."
No, you didn't.
"What's ludicrous is to suggest intelectual property is inherently illegitamite because, like all property, it is based on societal conventions; or that it is bad because those conventions (laws) are backed up by "force", like all laws."
I said neither things, but thanks for jumping to conclusions. My point was that copyright isn't any sort of agreement entered into of my own free will, contrary to points raised. Further, my point was such a non-agreement was backed up by "force", again contrary to points raised.
The examples I used to demonstrate the illegitimacy of copyright (and patents) falled upon using examples of copying in the real world that are not covered under IP and pointing out that there's no innate logic extension for IP to exist. Instead, it sounded more like an issue of respecting the author of a work, but copyright doesn't even function in that capacity--the copyright owner, who may not be the author, has the powers discussed.
So in the end, the only argument that would fly at all, and which wasn't brought up, is that copyright/patent may lead to a net increase in quantity and/or quality of works which outweighs the social costs, just as there may be a net increase in societal well-being when there is punishment for initiating force against others which outweighs the social costs. While I'm inclined to agree with the latter, I choose to demand more proof for the former. This is primarily because while property is a physical good with quantifiable limits, a single peice of IP can extend in such enormous scope that the social impact can be quite staggering. Your opinion may differ, and you can certainly work towards retaining copyright.
Oh, and a small FYI, but I'm perfectly happy with trademarks being retained (though in a modified form*). So, I'm not against all types of IP. I realize that all laws are a form of trade-off, and the ability of government, through people, to censor a person while alone even while on their own private property through no choice of said person--think being unable to copy a book you borrowed--is a pretty staggering loss to me. Limited the naming of products only removes confusion, on the other hand, and its use is a good means of highlighting fraud.
*Note: The modified form I'm thinking of is a naming system by which the trademark is composed of the owner of the trademark and the title of a product. Subsidiaries and the intentional use of shell companies to allow for large companies to retain different company brand names would be void; that is, if for example Philip Morris tried to sell "Kraft Cheese Spread" somehow, it would become untrademarked, which would allow anyone to sell a product with such a name. It isn't very truthful, after all, to claim that Kraft still makes the cheese when no such company still exists.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
The mistake many people make is assuming that anything to the left of Strom Thurmond or Rick Santorum is "liberal", when that's not the case. Right now we have a conservative party made up of spineless cowards with no agenda and an ultraconservative party with general unity.
From Wikipedia:
Michael Jackson purchased ownership in ATV Music Publishing in 1985, which owns the publishing rights to songs written by The Beatles and many other acts. In 1995, Jackson and Sony Music Publishing merged their two Catalogues to create, Sony-ATV. Jackson's 50% interest in the company (Sony Music Entertainment owns the other half) is estimated to be worth USD 500 million. Jackson also owns his own music catalogue called MiJac Publishing, which contains all of his songs and songs from Sly and the Family Stone.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I wouldn't necessarily say I expect less corruption. However I do expect that systems with many parties would be advantageous over systems with one or two parties for the reason that it would increase the diversity of views with real representation within the democratic process. And this, I think, is the most serious problem facing the American political system. We can worry about corruption once we're done with that.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Am I the only one out there that sees the logical issues with this? They want no one to have intellectual property, BUT they want the right to privacy?
The solution is, is that their platform simply is: no intellectual property, EXCEPT the right to privacy. Their platform contains an exception. They don't like intellectual property as owned by corporations, they do like personal privacy. Is there another way to phrase this? A political platform consists of promoting things you think the law and government should be, and of putting a stop to things it shouldn't be, it's nice to make nice clean blanket laws and statements but you make exceptions as you see fit.
It seems like you're missing something very fundamental, just because something seems extreme to you doesn't mean that a further extreme or a completely different extreme can be substituted for it.
Pirates Canada, also known as the PC party, has a long tradition in Canada, generally looting and pillaging the country on and off throughout the history of the country.
Oh, you mean software piracy? Well, maybe the Communist party might qualify. They don't just want to abolish intellectual property, they want to abolish all propterty. I can't say much about what they want to do to privacy though.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
My post was a bit flippant, I'll be the first to agree. I was just reacting to your sugestion that you had agreed only to exchange money for a plastic disc that has information on it, and hadn't agreed to anything about what you could do with it. I found that disingenuous; you are certainly aware of the conventions of your society, and knew what implicit agreement you were making when you bought the disc.
In any case, we seem to agree that the question is whether certain conventions/laws do more good then harm, and I too prefer to lean toward personal liberty whenever possible.
We live in a society where the things that many of us (me, for example) produce are informational in nature. While it may seem odd to say you can't run off a few copies of a book you own, it is ceratinly convenient that I can sell you a copy without having to have you sign a contract saying you won't.
YASQ, I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Are there any sites?
How will the fact that, with the current election method, it will remove votes from other parties be remidied?
At best I would suggest trying to coerce the Rebublican party of less gov't and more libertarain to more laws, isn't that what they want, to deal with IP that way.
I know many people would become 'R's if they started acting that way rather than the exact opposite they are.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
As an example of a long word in Danish, I can write the name of the device that used to sit on trams in order to clean the rails while the tram was running: Sporvognsskinneskidtskraber. (literally tramraildirtcleaner)
u dsemiddel.
Obviously, the guy in charge of it was a sporvognsskinneskidtskraberassistent (you figure it out), while the stuff used to polish the emblem of his cap, was sporvognsskinneskidtskraberassistentkasketemblemp
Even for a dane, that gets pretty hard to read, while it is absolutely no problem to say or hear.
(Note, in my preview, slashdot inserts a space in my perfectly legal danish word...)
On a related note, this is one reasone why soft hyphens are such a needed thing in these languages.
In Finland they let the wannabes drink a pint of Vodka and throw them in the sauna and keeps heating it up until only one man or woman is left concious. He gets to pick his mates for goverment. Finnish leaders need 'sisu' and this is how they weed out those who lack it.
Representative vs. Proportional Representative assemblies
What we have here is a failure to evolve the system of Democracy. In the past, when communication systems were poor, people were somewhat illiterate (post universal enfranchisment), people would have to 'know' their prospective representative in more character-based sense. This person would embody local values, exhibit strong personal-leadership skills or otherwise be a 'local standout'.
But, as the modern world was born the discussion 'widened'. We (Democractic Citizens) are no longer required to simply Trust in A Person (your "Representative") to make good decisions when the Vote arises. We are able to communicate many more ideas, within a much larger area... this communication means we dont need him to be "independantly trustworth" (so to speak). Physical geography matters much less. But, with the first-person-past-the-post system, your stuck being drowned-out by your neighbours. You might be a liberal in a strong conservative area -- too bad, your vote doesnt count.
Strong partisanship has also evolved. The networks of die-hard partisan politicians have evolved to be self-necessary. ie: you cannot get elected without the network (the power, connection, support, money, endorsment etc)
The result? Stagnation. Party Whips. Entrenchment. Corruption.
Most modern Democracies have a measure of Proportional Representation.
Every party OTHER THAN Democratic & Republican in the USA should be running on a SINGLE TICKET Proportional Representation Plank.
This is ALSO true of every NON Liberal party in Canada (including the Rightist party(s))
The Green Party of Canada is committed to implementing Proportional Representation in Canada to ensure that Canadians have a Democracy capable of properly serving Canadians in the future.
Please see the Green Party's 2006 Platform:Renewing our Democracy
Anyone who A) dosnt vote and B) donsnt like the entrenchment of the current parties should be lobbying for Proportional Representation...
Too bad the republicrats will collude to prevent it.
First of all, there are no privacy rights in the constitution. Just FYI.
IP rights protect privacy in that they give you the rights to things you have developed. In days gone past people would keep the things they developed secret (like blue tinted glass in old cathedrals) because they didn't want to lose their ownership, rights, and control. But if someone stole that from you, you had no way to prove it was yours.
IP says, we're going to let you take your private property, and share it with the world so that no one else can make money off of it but you. (Trade secrets work in the same manner of course). The trade off is that your IP only grants you an exclusive time of ownership, BUT you can safely license it to others to make a lot more money without losing your property.
This also gives further incentive to inventors and the like to invent more things so that they may make money off of it. If you don't allow me IP, then why should I invent, why should I share my 'secrets/privacy'? And then of course if anything I kept private gets stolen, how am I to prove it? And even if I -do- prove it, as I am not allowed to own Intellectual Property, I am -not- allowed to keep it for myself, because once my privacy has been exposed it's gone.
Now they 'law of unintended consequences' part that follows logically:
Then of course the lawyers come and steal everyone's privacy away on the grounds that they might be hiding further IP, which of course they are not entitled too.
As for the law, it's not really that hard, Logic is what prevails in the courts. Want to understand the legal system, study logic. Want to understand why laws get written, study politics. IANAL but I've been in court enough that I can defend myself just fine.
Thank you for the link to the Swedish-English dictionary. It is a useful tool for people who are learning Swedish or English.
I had hoped to find a program where I could simply cut-and-paste a block of Swedish text and get a credible English translation. The ideal is not to ever have to learn any foreign language at all and let the computer do the translating.
There are so many languages in the world and it is impossible to learn very many. Automatic language translator programs would be very helpful in this age of free global communication.
Hi. Um, are you the Daniel Cerman from moby.org?