Slashdot Mirror
Swedish Pirate Party Gains 3000 Members In 7 Hours
An anonymous reader writes "Due to outrage over the verdict in The Pirate Bay trial, the Swedish Pirate Party has gained 3000 members in less than 7 hours. It is now bigger than 3 of the 7 parties represented in the Swedish parliament. 'Ruling means that our political work must now be stepped up. We want to ensure that the Pirate Bay activities — to link people and information — is clearly lawful. And we want to do it for all people in Sweden, Europe and the world, continues Rick Falk Vinge. We want it to be open for ordinary people to disseminate and receive information without fear of imprisonment or astronomical damages.'"
Wow. I honestly didn't think TPB broke any swedish laws. The name is cute but the site doesn't favor pirated content over legal content. I don't get it.
so what we have here is a possibility that in the future a 'pirate' party controls the government maybe? Would Obama with his RIAA lawyer friends declare Sweden to be part of axis of evil and will actually bomb them to bring in the democracy US style (where only 2 parties are really allowed to hold the government in practice).
That bunker, that one of their ISP has may just come in handy.
You can't handle the truth.
A political party is worthless if it doesn't have any card-carrying members in office legislating, judiciating or executing... (that doesn't quite sound right, but okay... you get the idea)
When is the next election cycle? THAT is when things really get shaken up.
isn't it any wonder that this verdict is so provocative? There's an elephant in the room, and this is just the sort of news that could make people take a second look. We all know that copying in an age of information abundance is inevitable. And so is the martyrdom of the TPB founders. All power to their elbows. Shame it didn't happen just before Easter...
This is taken from the automaticly translated article.
If these guys are genuine that may be something. By genuine I mean fight intellectual property nonsense, not nut jobs who believe that it is ok to just take others work. They don't sound genuine, however.
I said this before but I say it again. I think business is good in general, a chronic lack of wealth has a negative effect on sociality. However large corporations (I believe this started in the eighties) now think that to protect their profits they must control a market. This is done through laws that where instituted by means of lobbying, or the extension of laws to areas where they were never meant for. Its OK if there are three or so other big players, then you cant be called a monopoly and be broken up. These people (like banks) have a short term view of things and can harm the competitiveness of the western world.
You can see this in music, with fees for sampling music. There even a role over rate involved so if an artist has success they pay more for the samples per song, which consumes most of your profit. (the four) Big companies in music are the ones who profit while every one pays out. IP also plays a apart in IT as well, with the added negative (from our view) that companies don't even have to have a strong case, you cant afford 5 million in court fees so you must settle
Sweden has 10 million peoeple - 3000 isn't that many. This is like saying "Alaska's secessionist party has 150 more people because Palin lost!" To play a real part in politics they'll need at least 10x as many people.
More importantly, this case is giving the issue a lot of renewed attention. I'm happy about that.
I suggest creating a facebook group and tying a coloured ribbon around the antennae of your car. This is what we do in Canada.
Modded insightful? No offense, but how is this insightful? I find it more humorous or ironic than Insightful.
Not saying it shouldn't be modded up, just the "insightful part".
So it is just fine that copyright, the agreement between "the people" and the creators (actually, the publishers who buy up the content for exclusive distribution and control), has been abused and distorted to the point that works that would be public domain have how completely fallen off the face of the earth? The notion of copyright has been completely twisted to become a control on all entertainment. That was NOT its intent. "The people" were not represented when these changes were imposed and "the people" will have to take it back. In the mean time, civil disobedience is what we are doing -- taking freely as we please in spite of bad law.
It's not stealing. That's why they use the word "infringement." Stealing is depriving others of their property. That isn't what is happening.
It's interesting the difference with the US. "Kids" in Sweden are engaging properly in the political process, forming a party and making (real) change happen. Rather than just rolling over and accepting the situation with "nothing we can do" and "who can we vote for, they're all the same".
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Do you pay Time-Warner when you sing "Happy Birthday to you" in public,
or do you steal/pirate it?
Shame on you.
And that information wants to be "Free," I suppose...?
That's fine. Of course, if all TPB was "link people to information," they would not be in this mess. What they did, was link people to *entertainment*, which I understand wants to be paid for, more times than not.
This is so true. I'm tired of hearing this generation moaning about the two party system, and then doing nothing about it except not voting. This lazy, apathetic attitude is why nothing ever changes in America. If you don't like the two main parties, then join another, or start your own. I can't remember who said it, but it's truer now than it ever was before: in a democracy, people get exactly the government they deserve.
Um, in most bookstores I have been to (including large chain stores like Barnes and Nobel), no one cares if you take a book from the shelf, sit down in one of the comfortable chairs and read as much of the book as you like. It is stealing whenever you take a book out of a bookstore without paying because the store lost a physical book that cost real money to print, etc. What "piracy" is doing is simply reading the book in the store, no loss of the book and someone is perfectly free to read the same book. Only, "piracy" is a bit less damaging because while a bookstore has a finite amount of a certain book, anything digital can make a copy in less than a second with no loss by either side. So not only are you reading a book, but hundreds to millions of others can read the book too.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I suppose they think we should be allowed to walk into bookstores, take items off the shelves and freely walk out without purchasing. You know. To free up the knowledge.
Oh, you mean like a library?
``what I don't understand is why they need to understand network technology. I don't know european law, but I'd imagine that its something similar to the DMCA. I would imagine that the DMCA isn't that ambiguous that you have to understand network technology to interpret it. it seems so basic to me, the site that hosts the content is in violation.''
But who is talking about hosting the content?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
There is not one group of people and I don't claim they people who infringe on copyright are principled activitsts. There are MANY types of people and many different reasons for doing what they do. But the one thing they all have in common is that it is more convenience for them to do what they do than it is to buy it. People will ALWAYS do what people do. People have attempted legislation against homosexuality and it changed nothing -- some people are straight and some are gay. No amount of legislation will change what people do because it is who they are. Ultimately, the whole notion of copyright is fighting nature and nature only loses on small scales. (For example, you can build a building to keep out the rain, but you can change the weather... and no building ever stays up forever.)
"Civil disobedience" is motivated by a multitude of reasons and does not mean an organized effort. Civil disobedience is what people naturally do in the face of bad law. The fact that you seem to have read in "principled activists" into what I said shows that you are not arguing on what people say, but rather what people didn't say.
Your arguments are irrelevant largely because you read more than what is said in almost everything you post. You are quite the troll based on your comment history. I say that copyright (and indeed, intellectual property law in general... Mickey Mouse was supposed to be public domain by now!) goes too far and you say that nothing will stop pirates from "stealing." It is irrelevant. The reason why is because it is completely different from the argument I was making. There will ALWAYS be some copying and sharing. The industry and the legislators need to accept it. A proper balance should be found and supported so that the system is of benefit to both sides of the problem. As it stands, publishers are making MORE than enough profit from what they are doing and they were making lots of profit before all these draconian laws and technologies were introduced. The simple problem I see is excessive greed and abuse on the publisher's side.
Sometimes buying is more convenient than acquiring by other means. But acquiring entertainment media by other means doesn't mean it won't be bought later. For example, the more recent trand of putting out popular TV series out on DVD has led to my buying those TV series when they are available on DVD. In the mean time, those TV series are on my hard drive until such a time that they are available at stores... and are affordable. (For example, the short-lived series "Star Trek Enterprise" was initially put out as a DVD set that cost $100 per season!! WAY too much. It is now around $50 per season which sounds more affordable but still a bit prohibitive... I only have like two seasons so far...) Another reason I might download movies is the fact that they are otherwise not available to me in any other way. Take for example, the Disney Classic "The Song of the South." Disney will no longer publish the work and actively seeks its removal from public hands. Another example is foreign films which I would certainly have no problem buying from foreign suppliers except for the asinine price-control mechanism known as "region coding." So I can't get movies from Japan without a lot of work to make use of it. Buying would be a LOT more convenient if only it were made available. But one reality is that I cannot speak for everyone that copies content any more than anyone else. But I can claim that my position is one held by quite a few others and I wouldn't be surprised if that group were the majority of consumers.
I might guess that you are directly involved in an intellectual property oriented business given your history of comments and so it it would make sense that you might find the majority of the consumer side of things rather annoying. (I would guess perhaps you are in the software development business?) But the fact is you can't change the majority of people and you certainly can't fight them and expect to win. The more push giv