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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.
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...
Are there really that many people, even on Slashdot, that think stealing intellectual property is not wrong?
Hopefully, most people on Slashdot are educated enough to know that "stealing intellectual property" is not even possible, by definition. (Well, maybe it is possible with some sort of memory erasing device.)
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.
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
Or maybe it's, in Soviet Russia, state property pirates YOU!
Or something like that,... I digress!
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.
It would be like naming Al Capone for the US senate to ban the Dry Law.
Al Capone did not want to repeal prohibition. It's what made him money. Professional racketeers usually like the laws they're breaking, it means they're performing a service for which others will pay them.
To a Swedish Piracy Party?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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
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
Theft is any time that someone acquires property from someone without their permission.
From Webster: Steal v. t. "To take, and carry away, feloniously; to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal the personal goods of another."
How exactly can I carry away so called intellectual property? Do do so (rather than to copy it and carry away a copy) requires that I deprive the original "owner" of that property. Making a copy of a dollar bill is not called stealing, it is called counterfeiting. Making a copy of a copyrighted book without permission is not called stealing. It is called copyright infringement. Knowingly violating a patent is not called stealing. It is called patent violation (or patent infringement). Passing off another's work as my own is not stealing. It is called plagiarism. Buy a dictionary already.
If a teenager stole my car every night and when joyriding but brought in back every morning before I left for work I would still consider it stealing.
...but you'd probably be wrong. They may have illegally borrowed your car, but if they intend to return it, it is not stealing, unless you count them keeping it for a time as "keeping it." In any case, copying something is not stealing it. That is why we have different words for different things. It makes these distinctions clear.
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
Applicable definitions of "Steal", from dictionary.com:
"To take (the property of another) without right or permission."
"To commit theft"
Applicable definitions of "Take", from dictionary.com:
"To capture physically; sieze."
Applicable definitions of "Theft", from dictionary.com:
"The act or instance of stealing; larceny."
Applicable definitions of "Larceny", from dictionary.com:
"The unlawful taking and removing of another's personal property with the intent of permanently depriving the owner; theft."
I find it hard to read "piracy" into "stealing", given the definitions. Now, you can argue that the language is obsolete and that it should be included, but then it is *you* who are arguing against the language.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
If you made a sculpture and somebody scanned and recreated it with a prototyping machine, have they deprived you of your sculpture?
You make that statement in a way which seems to suggest that you think ideas are a form of property. The property system was invented to solve one very specific problem; physical objects can not generally be used by lots of people simultaneously, or often even consecutively. Applying notions designed to deal with property to things which do not have this restriction is stupid, it's trying to solve a problem which does not exist.
Or in this case, stealthily substituting a completely different set of concerns (the "right" to make profit), and hoping nobody will notice.
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.
"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
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.
They could just be testing the water, this sort of thing might catch on with other small parties.
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
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.
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
Bitter?
Art, be it music or any other form, rarely pays a decent living. Does that suck? Yes. But it is reality.
"And also spare us the idealistic "Well, if you don't like it, you can go indie" crap. It's hard enough making a living as a musician (or any other sort of artist, Web designers and commercial artists possibly excepted); it's even harder when you're indie."
No one said life was easy. Not my problem if you're art doesn't have enough market appeal to make you a living... get a day job, just like the semi-pro athletes who dream of making it big... or the actors waiting tables at night while auditioning every day. Give lessons or mow lawns or something.
You can scream and rail against the recording industry, but you DO have a choice.
BTW, I hate the recording industry. But I also think it's ridiculous for artists to think that they are 'forced' into signing with a major label.
Consider the example of a label that can choose to sign and promote whoever they wish... whoever they select will become popular and make millions for the company. All the bands/artists that don't get signed go home with empty pockets. All that example tells me is that there is an oversupply of 'artists' and that they are all pretty much interchangeable.
Why don't musicians unionize? It seems to have worked out pretty well for actors. That's a solution to your problems.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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
Yep. That's why the piracy party leader said:
"Your speculation is true - the founder is an extreme capitalist that views legal monopolies as unbalanced between the state and
the monopoly owner; the state is handing out monopolies like candy, getting nothing (or even negative value) in return. No
business would agree to exclusivity like that, ever.
Signed, the founder (and leader) of Piratpartiet"
i.e. - the reason a loss occurs is because of a state enforced ruling.
It is as if a law was passed requiring town criers (who knew sign language or something - imagine equal access law gone wild) to have any conversation in a municipal space. Your decision to talk about stuff without using the crier would be both illegal and a theft of potential earnings.
Of course, both of these are only in the context of the law that made it possible.
One could point out that copyright law was created to benefit artists - however one could also point out that isn't what is happening now, and there were and still are ways to profit as an artist with or without copyright law.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Why don't musicians unionize? It seems to have worked out pretty well for actors. That's a solution to your problems.
They have. It's called the American Federation of Musicians. Mostly protects working/session musicians, just like SAG, Equity, and IATSE are mainly for working theatrical/movie people, not so much for stars.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
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.
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
...I object to the horrible piracy these people are promoting by spreading their ideas without charging for them.
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?
No, I would not. I usually hear such activities referred to as "industrial espionage" or "appropriation" of trade secrets in any reputable publication with competent writers.
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
Believe it or not, I don't have a strong stand when it comes to trade secrets. I'm certainly not sure they deserve legal protection on the order they are given. Almost all the valid cases I have heard in support of them are already covered by stock manipulation laws and slander/libel laws. I'm not sure I see any benefit to society for them, although the appropriation of them usually involves the breaking of other laws, and should be punished appropriately. For example, If I find a file folder open it and see a bunch of documents labeled "top secret, property of Microsoft" I'm not convinced that there is any ethical problem with myself or a newspaper printing the contents of that file folder. Although, the folder and contents themselves should be returned to the rightful owners.
BTW, dictionary definition of "steal": To take or appropriate without right or leave, with intent to keep or use wongly[sic].
Copied from another thread I posted this in: From Webster: Steal v. t. "To take, and carry away, feloniously; to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal the personal goods of another." You must have the abridged+spelling errors edition.
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!
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!
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.