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Interview With Leader of Sweden's Pirate Party
CrystalFalcon writes "Linux-P2P has published an interview with Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party which is aiming to gain entry to Swedish Parliament this fall. (The party's founding was previously covered on Slashdot.) The party is totally for real, totally serious, and has seen approval ratings of 57% in some polls, with only four percent needed to gain seats. Its goals are to cut back copyrights, abolish patents, and strengthen the right to privacy."
How do you say, "Yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" in Swedish?
global average temperatures are decreasing.
I would be curious to hear arguments as to the viability of a pirate party in the US.
Its goals are to cut back copyrights, abolish patents, and strengthen the right to privacy."
They want to strenghten privacy rights but weaken copyrights? So, to state it another way, they want their interests protected, but not those of others? Does information want to be "libre" or not?
Such a thing makes you wonder, if copyright were to be abolished in such a fashion as Falkvinge is proposing, then would the artist/director/musician have any incentive to pour his time and money into a project?
While I believe that many aspects of copyright are downright silly, this could be related to a kid whining about not getting what he wants.
If only this were possible in the US. People actually taking time out of their day to care about something other than what's on TV... hell, for that matter, this is more about the Swedish caring about what's on TV. People in the US don't really care much about anything.
I wonder where I can get a rubber band to wear that is in support of copyright and patent reform?
Worth noting is that the 57% approval rating was most likely achieved on a completely unbiased straw poll on DALnet.
I very seriously doubt 4% of the voting public is even aware of this party's existence. We already have three other new mobs of power-hungry morons^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H groups of upstanding, concerned citizens hogging the spotlight; don't expect this one to make much of a splash.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Here down under there have been plans to start a similar party. The "No Pokies" party in South Australia actually got a couple of seats. If they can, the Aussie Pirate Party sure can...
If anyone is interested in running for the Oz Pirate Party please send mail to software dot [TLD two-letter code for Oz] at gmail dot com. Thanks.
(The word "sarcasm" appears in this sentence for the 20% of Slashdotters who never recognize it when it appears.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
As we all know, today is the Information Age. For this reason, I believe that information should not be restricted anymore. I know that as an individualistic--as opposed to collectivistic--society we find the individual's achievements laudable and attributable. However, as we have seen over the past decade, movements towards free information have been very successful. "Piracy" has rampaged. Firefox has flourished. The internet has become (in my opinion, at least) one of the greatest inventions of mankind. EVER. Because of Tim Berners-Lee's refusal to privatize or commercialize the internet.
Sweden is a strong country as far as free information goes; very little is restricted. For example, the popular torrent website The Pirate Bay, a warehouse of torrents for popular files is hosted in Sweden and hasn't had much problems with the Swedish authorities. Interestingly, its corresponding crime rate is one of the lowest in the world--60 people imprisoned per 100,000, as compared to the United States' 690.
Call me unpatriotic, call me crazy, but I think this "Pirate Party" might very well just be a good idea. It will give people a different perspective on things: It is possible to not restrict information, and still manage a flourishing--if not something greater--economy and society.
I, for one, welcome our new pirate overlords.
If they win, does this mean we can download as many Swedish CDs, Games and Movies that we like?
AWESOME!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
There's a famous Swedish pirate site. I wonder if there's a link....
Here is the link: http://www.thepiratebay.org/
Do these guys realise that abolishing patents means the death of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries? These are 2 industries that I have worked for and I cannot see them surviving without patents. Maybe they should go and talk to some people in these domains.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
"The party is totally for real, totally serious, and has seen approval ratings of 57% in some polls"
-"What is right isn't always popular, and what is popular isn't always right."
Cutting back the term of copyright is what many people here agree on.
But they also say that in their proposal, only the "exact copy" is protected - you can sample a clip and then sell it as a new work! Now, there might be a grey area, but that seems a bit on the nose. Just pass it through a Digital to analog converter, and back to digital, and you've somehow created something?
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Bad idea.
Obviously patenting has run amok and needs to be fixed, but I don't see where anyone would benefit from the elimination of patents. "Hey guys, I've got an idea...let's remove the ability to make money off massive R&D investments by making it so that people who didn't do any of the work can produce and sell a product as soon as it comes to market!"
Copyrights run way too long, but are a good thing; people work hard to produce works and should be given some legal protection so that--if they choose--they can profit from those works. It encourages the creation of new works by allowing people to make a career of it.
I really think that people who think intellectual property is a bad thing think that simply because they are out of touch. Or maybe they've just never had ideas/works that were original enough to be protected under IP laws and so they don't know what it means to have an idea stolen. Taking away the protections the law currently gives would discourage new ideas because they would no longer be profitable.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
for copywrite infringement.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Are you suggesting (pure) democracy does not work? Are the Arab countries informed about this issue? I think they should know this before bombs start dropping demanding democracy.
Am I the only one that thinks that this Swedish "Pirate Party" is a thinly veiled attempt by the "Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster" (www.venganza.org) to beef up their ranks and prevent global warming?
Even if Swedens ruling party (The Social Democrats) has their tongue right in there in Bush's crack i dont think nice thoughts when i see the American flag in this topics headline.
HTTP/1.1 400
...here's the Wikipedia article on the Pirate Party
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
This is a great day! The FSM will be proud to see that with the growing nuumber of Pirates in the world the Earth's temperature will begin to reverse it's present course!
http://www.venganza.org/
RAmen
Ramen
Patents work for pharmaceuticals because it is one patent per saleable product.
There is a push on to change this, so that a drug company can get a patent on the site that a drug targets. Then subsequent drug discoveries that target that site will be covered by two patents, the early broad one on the site and the later specific one on the new drug.
At this point the patent system will start to implode. It will be hard to get research money to work on drugs for sites that are covered by patents, because the owners of the earlier patent can leech of the investors in the research for the second drug.
The patent system will end up restricting research funding in pharmaceuticals just like it does in other areas that are overgrown by patent thickets.
Basically, because the politicians didn't listen to their voters, but to yesterday's industry interests instead, which led them to criminalize 20% of their voters (1.2 million file sharers, 5.2 million voters).
...we will require the public sector - which is quite large in Sweden, and spends quite some money - to purchase systems in a way that does not "promote the formation or continuation of monopolies on ideas and concepts". This translates to more or less requiring FOSS, or at least more open systems than are common today.
...In short, the story about striking it rich on a patent is a fairy tale. There are way too many interests out there who don't want you to get rich on that patent, and they make very sure you won't be...
Argumentum ad numerum.
DRM is effectively media companies writing their own copyright laws, harming society and consumers. We have a parliament to write such laws, thank you very much.
DRM is more of a license agreement. Like any given license agreement, it spells out what you can and cannot do with what you have purchased. DRM simply takes it a step further and makes it difficult for you to violate the agreement.
(Don't think I'm defending DRM...I hate it. But you do have the option to simply not purchase DRM files)
The equivalent would be if someone sold you a product that shut down on purpose in daylight, or outside of a particular city, or under whatever condition the manufacturer hadn't approved. We call it fraud in the cases where we can relate, so I can't believe the media industry is getting away with this.
If it said on the box "this product does not work in the dark or outside Seattle" what's the problem?
Apart from that, there have been numerous horror stories about DRM abuse. Starforce and XCP come to mind.
That's like saying that P2P software should be banned because it can be (ab)used to pirate movies and music.
Just...wow.
Basically, because it's hard to get a patent that isn't already claimed by someone else and because the system is abused by major corporations, let's get rid of patents.
Does he realize that this would just hand everything to big business? Every good product that any small-time inventor came up with would be instantly copied by some big company and in every Wal-Mart inside of a week. This guy wants to remove the only protection the "little guy" has from the predators.
You might want to note, though, that once the copyright has expired after five years, such activity would be totally legit. It would be no different from printing a really old book today.
FIVE YEARS??? They're insane. It can take five years for a band to work their way up from garage band to being noteworthy enough to get a recording contract. This would mean that all of their early works would be unprotected right as they became popular enough to actually make money off them.
For individually-owned copyrights, give them lifetime rights, plus five or ten years (as opposed to 75...this allows their unreleased works to be profitable for their heirs). If at any time copyrights are transfered from the creator to another individual or corporation, give them the same 5-10 years the family would get if the author died. This would encourage more creators to hang on to their rights rather than give them to corporations.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
"Sweden is a strong country as far as free information goes; very little is restricted."
A Conservative Swedish political party posted the 12 danish drawings of Mohammed on their website, and the swedish minister of internal affairs ordered swedish intelligence to get the site taken down for "Reasons of security" - even though everybody knows, it's a clear case of DDR'esque political censorship by the ruling far-left opinion elite, slithering behind the curtain.
Sweden has MAJOR problems with freedom of information.
I'd personally vote for the ninja party myself.
Even if they were to turn out to be a complete failure, which I wish they wouldn't, I just donated them 5 Euros.
They are just too cool to pass with no donation!
Cheers, Kuba
quick, somebody ask Maddox what he thinks !!
+1 fashionably cynical
Clearly they are trying to reverse global warming. According to Flying Spaghetti Monsterism there is a direct relationship with the declining number of pirates and an increase in global warming. There has been a precipitous decline in the Norwegian (and Swedish) Blue Parrot. The Swedish Blue differes from the Norwegian in that in addition to it's bright blue feathers it has a streak of bright yellow feathers. They often lay about in their cages pining for the fjords. Where would any self-respecting pirate would be without his parrot?
On another note the Church of the FSM in Sweden has recently beatified the Swedish Chef for his work on meatballs.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
How does all this fit with Sweden being a member state of the EU? Doesn't membership require a great deal of effort towards unifying laws, policies, etc.?
For example, the EU just made data retention laws mandatory so soon places like The Pirate Bay will be legally required to log the IP addresses of each connection and retain it for a couple of years. What if some other EU State sues TPB in an EU court demanding those records? Would you like the UK/German/French/Whatever version of the RIAA/MPAA having a list of records saying you were linking to stuff thru TPB? It may be legal in Sweden, but what about the rest of the EU?
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
In the UK constituency boundaries are drawn up by an independent boundary commission. A third party still cannot win seats, but it can contest marginal constituencies. If it has a popular policy and is attracting protest votes then one or other or both of the main parties is likely to steal the policy to avoid losing marginal seats. So a third party can force policy changes even though it cannot win political power.
What I read about the USA tells me that boundaries are fixed by the politicians in power. In theory they could use this power to fix things so that they win majorities in Congress with a minority of the popular vote. In practise they seem to use it to make all seats safe seats. So third parties are completely frozen out.
Here's what I mean: pharmaceuticals. Some countries still don't patent them; they also don't have a pharmaceutical industry. It costs a ton of money to create a new drug, and it takes a long time to make a profit of that drug. If no patent on the drug was allowed, then other companies would quickly copy the drug, and then sell it at a lower price than the developer of the drug would be able to. There would be no profit in research and development--so no new drugs would be developed, everyone would just copy each other's old drugs.
What would happen instead is something that already hinders the industry to a degree--trade secrets. Patents would be replaced by trade secrets. Since "the next big drug" usually comes from developments ontop of earlier research, each company would be totally separate not telling the other what its developed, so each company would be duplicating research to find out what another company had already discovered. So it is much more efficient to have patents where the discovery is published but protected. Then research need not be inefficiently duplicated at a huge wasteful cost.
I think that if patents were actually abolished governments would be required to take up the slack. It would be like public roads--no single entity profits from deciding to make a road unless they will make money. Since they can't make money of developing drugs without outside help, the government must offer that help--so the government would have to fund new drug development. Or, they could just use patents.
How would you like it if you were Motorola, and you spent $10,000,000 depeloping a new technology for a telephone, and then, 6 months after you put it on sale, all the other major companies have developed the exact same thing but can undercut your price because they only had to pay $500,000 for research and development (research consisted of dismantling your invention; development consisted of reproducing it)? According to the article, to make money Motorola needs to just develop something better than the last thing. So, it spends $10,000,000 developing something even better. 6 months later, Nokia had that copied and out on their new phones as well, also undercutting your price.
If you don't believe me regarding this scenario--look at history. Experiences exactly like this are the very reason that patent law came into existence in the first place. Do we really want to go back where we already were, find out again that it was bad, and then reimpliment patent law...ad infinitum???
How will this change the global temperature given that the number of pirates is set to radically change?
This is sort of similar to the xenophic and borderline racist pary Ny Demokrati, who got into parliament in the early nineties. Although they got a few seats, none of the other parties would touch them with a 10 foot pole, and they didn't get anything done. Even if the pirate party somehow miraculously gets a few seats, neither the social democrats nor the right coalition will want to cooperate with a party who want legislation to ruin Sweden's cultural wealth. About that Aftonbladet poll giving them 57%, i'm very curious to know what percentage of Aftonbladet readers actually go vote. And how many readers of the article the poll was attached to got linked there by pirate bay or similar. Either way it will be an exciting election with loads of new parties, and especially the regional here in Stockholm.
I always thought that the way to reform copyright would be to have a cost associated with keeping works copyrighted with the costs escalating as time went on. For example: To copyright a work for the first 5 years would be free. The second five years would cost $1000. The third five years would cost $1 million. This could continue on indefinitely. At some point the cost of keeping the work copyrighted would be higher than what the work could earn in the 5-year term.
Last time I heard copyright didn't do much to concerts, and they're still where many artists make the bulk of their money (the rest mostly going to the RIAA etc equivilents)
Of course, if you want to hew more closely to the pirate theme than the berserker thing, maybe you can mooch Theo's poultry.
I think its a great idea, as a start, one could go live with the trembling swedes.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
ALL Hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster! the end to global warming is finally coming... Sweden has been touched by his noodly appendage, and it kind of makes sense that the Pirate Party come from Sweden, because if you think about it, Pirates like to pillage, and whenever you think of pillaging, you think of buxom young maidens...and whose the most buxomest young maiden of all? who else but the Swiss Miss...who comes from, er...umm... ANYWAY, it made plenty of sense in my head. Sweden. Switzerland. It's all the same! oh. WWFSMD in this conundrum?
semper ubi sub ubi
Factually, the WORD sarcasm does not appear in the sentence parent posted, maybe the concept of sarcasm did. No wonder the mentioned 20% of the slashdotters never recognize the word...
(In the above sentence, the word sarcasm appeared twice and sentence appeared once.)
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Perhaps if they get elected, we can finally curb the global warming trend.
Oh I pray this party has been touched by his great noodly appendage!
Pharmaceuticals are always mentioned and they get their money from citizens even if we don't use the drug, see article:
. html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,,437338,00
disclaimer - I am a professional musician/engineer, who makes my livelihood from my copyrighted works.
It should be noted that 5 years is way too short of a time period. Plenty of works don't see the light of day until several years after composition or recording. Lets consider that a band writes an album, records it a year later, and self-releases it. It sells fairly well, and a year after this it is picked up by a label with some money to throw into promotion. They dawdle for a year, and re-release. After promoting for another year, a song gets picked up on radio, and it starts to sell pretty well. This is four years into copyright, mind you, and we're just starting to sell legitimate numbers of records. Maybe two singles will do pretty well on radio the next year but then a song gets picked up internationally and becomes a smash hit. Well, too bad, their five years are up. Who gets the money from this? Is it fair that this band finally finds big success and they can't claim a penny from it? These numbers are not unrealistic - things often take this long or longer in the music business. Plus, if copyright is only five years, what's to keep this record label from sitting on the album for another year or two and just taking the album for theirselves?
Don't just think about bands and singers, either - consider also people who write for tv, film, commercials, etc. People who do this often have large libraries of their own material that they will use for whatever job comes along that calls for it. I personally have sold music that I wrote more than five years ago. Forget about doing this under these laws though.
Copyright is probably too long as it is, but it needs to be long enough to provide a reasonable incentive for composers, and 5 years just isn't long enough. Maybe I'm biased because of my line of work, but I see a lot of cases where 5 years does not do the composer financial justice. (How about classical composers? Only very established composers have an opportunity to have their pieces recorded within 5 years of composition.)
p.
free music
Let's say some guy develops that mythical 100 MPG gasoline engine. Shouldn't he be able to patent it?
Under the current system, the inventor of this engine is incented to seek media coverage as early as possible, to establish that he was first with this idea (establishing prior art). He then files for a patent, which takes two to three years to complete the process. During that time his invention is public knowledge as patent applications are not secret. Finally he receives his patent and sells or licenses it to a manufacturer, who begins development of cars based on that engine. A year and some change later the first model hits the streets. Meanwhile the competitors have been studying the concept for four years and are ready with either their version of it (patents not being THAT hard to work around), or a worthy competitor, or FUD to bring it down.
Under a system of no patents, the inventor is incented AGAINST seeking media coverage, and toward making an agreement with a manufacturer to bring the product to market ASAP. He signs a deal with a manufacturer and they begin development. A year and some change later the first product hits the market (two to three years earlier than under the current system). It is only at that point that other manufacturers learn of this invention, and then they scramble to reverse-engineer and study it. They have no copy, no competitor, and no FUD ready. Meanwhile the first manufacturer and the inventor have at least a full year's lead into the market with an amazing new product.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Another problem with the US system (and other similar systems):
;).
You can't vote "NO!" to a candidate. You can only vote "Yes!".
So even if 55% dislike candidate A, but only 25% are fine with candidate A, if the 55% can't agree on who to vote "Yes!" to (or they stay at home in disgust) instead, candidate A has a good chance of winning.
Now I claim more people would vote if they could vote "No!".
It'll be worth it even if the candidate still wins - but with a net negative total
OK, so how will this ruin Sweden's cultural wealth?
Under the US system, the moderates are more powerful, as they are swing voters and will be pandered too.
That would be the case only if the political districts were created to be "reasonably" politically neutral.
However, of the 435 congressional districts, only about 50 may be called politically neutral. The rest are gerrymandered by whomever to fit either one party or another. In those districts, the only way to win is to fight in the primary, which usually requires pandering to the radical elements of that party in order to win. Once the primary is won the winner sits back and fundraises for other candidates who live in marginal districts--so that they may be esteemed by the party officials and get a good position once they're elected.
but having a stable moderate government is quite desirable to everyone
Yes, but the two-party system doesn't necessarily offer that much stability. Multi-party systems typically have a roving moderate consensus that moves with time through different combinations of politics.
Our system is a black/white system that gets polarized. The longer the majority is in power, the more severe the flip will be when the other party takes over. We've had the same party for the last twelve years, if the Democrats win Congress back in 2006 the entire government suddenly flips to the new party manifesto and it'll be run like the Republicans have run it (with as little input from the minority as possible.) The two party system is actually quite destabilizing, especially in recent times, where politics has gone from ugly to lethal.
Two party politics is also damaging to the "intellectual capacity" of the electorate and the political discourse. In two party systems, political discourse comes in the form of "we're right" and "they're wrong" (depending on who's in the majority and who isn't.) In healthy multi-party systems, it's impossible to maintain this rhetoric--parties are forced instead to have a party platform and defend theirs as being the best (which is clearly intellectually more complex and encompassing.)
Even in systems which are essentially two party with a strong minority party (UK, Canada) "we're right/they're wrong" rhetoric just can't get off the ground like it does in the US.
"A study by the Boston Globe newspaper in 1998 found the National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratories spent $1bn on drug and vaccine development in the 1996 tax year"
"six HIV/Aids drugs, as well as anti-malarial treatments and other medicines of vital interest to developing countries, had been invented with public funds."
The article goes on and on about how the special treatment from patents of Pharma Co's gives them lots of profits. It says $1 bil went from the NIH. That's a pittance of the overall costs of drug R&D. I also quoted the other paragraph from the article that mentioned what drugs the public funds were going to--drugs for other countries. My point is that the parent was incorrect when it said most of the funds were coming from the government. In reality, a small portion of the funds come from the government, and they usually go, as I mentioned before, to drugs that the companies would otherwise not have incentive to develop through current patent law.
I guess that's just the way you read the article (which is already coming from a very liberal source) when you're someone that is already dogmatically against patents... Stop and think, you fools!!!
I'd love to see copyright terms enter the public debate at some point, but there are definitely more pressing issues.
In todays US congress, the district lines are drawn so 90% of districts are guaranteed for one party. Within these heavily polarized districts, you often win by being more extremely right/left than your competion. And the result is a congress with two huge extremist blocks, and very few moderates.
The senate is different, since it's ungerrymandeable, but today's US congress is the exact opposite of the moderate playing ground you claim it to be.
Gerrymandering is a problem that simply doesn't exist in a proportional system.
If there is NO monetary incentive for your art as you claim, could that be because it isn't very good and no one wants it?
Secondly, not all art is individual self expression whose object is for people to experience it for its own sake. There is a substantial industry of technical artists (medical illustrators, scientific illustrators) that require the meager protections that copyright law provides them to avoid being completely exploited by the publishing companies that contract with them for their work.
After I get out of college I know what country I'M moving to ;). I wanna meet the[buckaneer]bay.org guys >.>
As we all know, today is the Information Age. For this reason, I believe that information should not be restricted anymore.
A. You state the above almost as a QED'ed proof, but you provide nothing to support the conclusion that the second sentence follows from the first.
B. You fail to define "information". Is a game like Halo "information"? Is a program like Photoshop "information"? Not in any colloquial sense.
B2. Expanding on B, consider the board game Monopoly and a computerized version of Monopoly. Is the latter "information" while the former is not simply because one consists of bits while the other consists of atoms? What "information" is the computer version of Monopoly conveying? The bits that make up the computer game constitue the machine code necessary to run the program, but is that "information"? In human terms, the computerized Monopoly isn't conveying any information or even any idea that the board game version doesn't convey. I'd say the bits that make up the Monopoly program aren't info, rather they are the program itself. I don't think that every given bitstream constitutes "information" in the usual sense of the word; there's a difference between "intellectual property" and "information".
(A side note: Your arguments remind me of those that proclaim that "ideas" should not be restricted, but fail to see that the idea of a spreadsheet program (for example) is not the same as the implementation of such. That one is free to share the ideas of a spreadsheet program does not imply that one has the right to share the *implementations* of such programs. The latter does not follow from the former. Same goes for songs, movies, video games, etc.)
C. Since you feel that no information should be restricted, please post your Social Security Number, Credit Card numbers, ATM card numbers with their respective PINs, driver's license number, etc.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Omnibus bills that ram through dozens of other bills with one main bill. If you like the main one, everyone assumes you will vote for that. Even if the other stuff is borderline criminal.
I've often wondered whether this is a place where there is for once, a quick technical solution to a problem.
Suppose that every bill had a complete version history, the way, say, a Wikipedia article has. Furthermore, no anonymous changes would be allowed; you have to provide your identity. Any citizen could use the web to look at any law or pending or failed bill. He could determine that some provision was put in by staffer Joe Shmoe working in Senator Mary Moe's office. If the system was reasonably sophisticated, he could find out all the changs Joe Shmoe put in that affect a particular federal budget line item. He might even be able to get a list of changes that went into a budget item across all the bills passed in a year, and who made them.
A lot of time, these "earmarks" are of course easy to trace: A million dollars thrown into a highway bill for some community based program would, presumably, be put in by the congressman whose district the program is in. But in the case of favors done for connected lobbyists, you don't really know now whose palm was greased. It would also end the legislator's excuse that certain provisions were put at the 11th hour and he didn't have a chance to reread the entire bill. He'd just look at the diff from the 10:59 version to the 11:01 version.
Of course, it won't end back room dealing. But if there is a provision put into a bill at some point, somebody's fingerprints will be on it. There is nothing like light to send the vermin heading for cover.
The basis of good government, the reason democracy is so critical, can be summed up in one word: accountability.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
here's a party that puts forward ideas I would go and vote for with a smile on my face. A party that would bring back the excitement of voting and actually making a difference. I am tired of the party that caters to the lazy (read: the US Democratic Party) and the party that caters to the rich (read: the US Republican Party)
OK, how about a citation that actually supports your statement? The one you provided establishes that someone agrees with you that pharma patents are bad, and that they wrote a book. But you said 50% of Pharma reseach funding, and more than 50% of "breakthroughs" come from public funding and charities. Your citation is certainly long, but I skimmed it anyway, and find no mention of public/charity research funding, and certainly not any sourced breakout of funding sources.
I am, in fact, so interested. I'd genuinely like to know the proportions of funding for pharma research that come from various sources, because pharma seems like a potentially more defensible area for patents, which I generally dislike. So I've heard this mostly-publicly-funded meme before, and if it were true, I'd love to be able to use it. But as far as I can tell, it's made-up horse poop. So when someone says it's true, and here's the reference to back it up, and I skim that very long reference, and find they are just wasting my time, it really pisses me off.
voting age is 18 in Sweden. In the over-18 population segment, .82 seats (which is ok, as, incidentally,
approval rating of the Pirate Party drops to a mere 0.235%,
corresponding to
their smartest member has an IQ of 82).
DRM is more of a license agreement.
I'd buy that argument if DRM agreements were negotiable by individuals, non-profit organizations, and small businesses, but they aren't. Digital restrictions management as most commonly implemented is a contract of adhesion.
But you do have the option to simply not purchase DRM files
Really? Name one major record label or major movie studio that sells more than a token amount of non-DRM downloads. Independent artists and labels are at risk of being sued for subconscious copying. Or by not purchasing DRM files, did you mean not purchasing files at all?
And it remains that way precisely because neither of the two big parties would have anything to gain from real change
I pointed out that it "remains this way" not simply because both parties "have no incentive to change", but because the underlying rules of the voting system favor two parties. This is when a strong third party does emerge, they replace the weaker of the two current parties. This is exactly what happened when the Republicans replaced the Federalists.. Now, it is true that the two parties do not have any incentive to change, but this is not the 'because'.
2) Please define ad hominem, then show where I made an attack against you as a person in this text. I did repeat your argument back in a childish manner in order to make the argument seem childish, but I did not attack you
3) Read my #3 again. I said everyone is confusing one simple thing: When I say the US system moderates the politics, it does not move America's politics to the center of the political spectrum. Moving America's politics to the center would undoubtedly move it in a more liberal direction as America is typically more conservative than most Western countries. Do you agree with that?. My point is that the US political system finds the political center of its citizens, by giving more political power to those in the center of the population, rather than those at the fringes. In a parliamentary system, those at the fringes have more power as they have to be bargained with in order to gain a coalition.
4) I thought my ad hominem reply was pretty clear as humor, apparently I have to lay it on thicker, but I don't know that's possible.
Sorry, you've failed to make a consistent point, and failed to read my posts without inserting your own assumptions about what I said, or about Americans.
average temperature in Stockholm is just over 40 degrees in April, and that's not nearly the coldest area in Sweden.
Say what? 40 degrees is hot. Human body temperature is only 37 degrees. (They use Celsius in Sweden, right?)
"would the artist/director/musician have any incentive to pour his time and money into a project?"
I've seen this kind of question many times. It seems to me that it assumes two premises: 1) that it would be impossible to financially reward innovation without these legal barriers to copying, and 2) that all innovation would immediate stop without financial reward.
I know enough about creative people to state without hesitation that they will continue creating without regard to profit. (It's a very wonderful thing to simultaneously have a talent and a desire to use it.)
I am hopeful that electronic networking can now replace business infrastructure for getting "idea" people in touch with "implementation" people. I don't know enough about economics to know if it is a sustainable system over long duration. I think we're heading that direction anyway, so I'm willing to try it with all the creative insight we can muster.
I notice from biology that 1) innovation (genetic speciation) occurs because new iterations are created continuously and they are all variations on a previous working blueprint, and 2) if the rate of mutation is too high then the species is unlikely to retain a stable core definition. Biological evolution found some kind of successful compromise between these two opposing forces (variation is necessary, but stability is good too). I don't know what the economic equivalent would be.
What does linux, piracy, and privacy have in common? Nothing. Yet they all are mentioned together in the summary which only strengthens the misconception that the only people who care about this stuff are linux-using hippies wearing tin foil hats and downloading "moviez" all day long.
My four year old son would love to go to a pirate party!
They may have higher priced alcohol, but as I don't drink much Sweden is sounding more tempting than remaining in the UK, where some old musician (no doubt backed by our local music copyright organisation) is trying to extend the length of copyright again - as he neglected to save enough for his retirement...