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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.
(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.
There's a famous Swedish pirate site. I wonder if there's a link....
No, the 57% poll was achieved by online newspaper Aftonbladet, with almost 100,000 readers participating.
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.
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.
I'm sorry, but wanting to download a Swedish movie is concidered as an act of mental illness here.
So now we know that at least one person who cares about pirating is a skilled hacker. Somehow, I'm not surprised...
So, obviosly, you didn't read the article.
Piratpartiet proposes a five (5) year exclusive commercial copyright. That is more than enough time for most projects to reach a sound profit. And, as most people reading this now are aware, the non-profit sharing of music and other copyrighted materials tends to make the material sell more, not less. Just like having a song played on the radio.
Not to mention the gravity and seriousness of participating in an anonymous online poll on the frontpage of the foremost sensationalist evening paper in the country.
"Hehehe, cool, 'pirate party', let's click on that. Free rum to everyone, right? Hehehe. I like parrots. Hehehehe"
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
no legislation without representation. i presonally think this is hilarious, and their ability to actually PASS any legislation is nil. However, it would be refreshing for the anti-ip faction to have a voice in the legislature.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
...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.
I'd personally vote for the ninja party myself.
Wrong kind of pirate.
Anyway, when Swedes go in for pillage and murder on the high seas, they don't call themselves pirates. They're Vikings. Much, much scarier ;-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Even one seat in the swedish parliament would be a huge victory.
It would. It won't happen. 4% nationwide is a huge barrier, and it's a rare thing indeed for a party to be able to.
And this election year, as I mentioned, there are already a couple of other new parties with a lot more visibility and general appeal sucking away the available pool of risktaker voters. Notably, even the most visible, most believable new party is currently polling at below 1%.
Far easier is to get local seats; this happens in a few places every year. Those parties are focusing on local issues, on the other hand.
So, the party is a fun idea, a good exercize in democracy, and possibly a very good way to raise awareness of copyright issues, but no, it won't get seats in parliament.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Imagine what 5 year copyright/patent expiry cycle for commercial products would mean.
People would have to constantly create something new and interesting, instead trying to milk the 30 year old cow.
It would cut some profit, but if the innovation took off, the technological advancements would be worth it.
Too bad, no-one seems to understand this.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
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???
Apart from the others issues in your post, here's a possibility:
Companies are patenting genes and genetic modification to food, and we've already seen cases of accidental contamination, and the court upheld the company's right to the genetic code in the food. What happens if a company holds the right to the genetic code of every orange on the planet? Stop buying oranges? And what about apples? And bananas?
What happens when someone patents the cure for a pandemia? We all die?
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
How will this change the global temperature given that the number of pirates is set to radically change?
As a musician / artist i can honestly tell you THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO monetary incentive for me to do my art. I, like most real artists, do it because i love to, big business owns & controls all media & block all newcomers out. (except for the ones they control)
They have NO interest in art & ALL interest in $$$. surely even the dimmest of you must realize this.
My art is REALLY good but i am now self employed doing something totally unrelated to survive & my art after that cause i love to.
Big Business could NEVER nurture art or artists, it's oil & water.
creativity and greed are complete opposites & its either one OR the other
please understand & put an end to this "copyright supports artists"
it really do not. at all
Rock On Pirate Party !!!!!!!!!
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.
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
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.
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.