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.'"

Comments

Wow....

[Mia'cova]

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.

Re:Wow....

[rackserverdeals]

The name might just be in reference to TPB.

Unfortunately, even though they got 3,000 members, 90% of them are leachers.

Re:Wow....

[againjj]

3000 MORE members, for a total of 17,799.

Re:Wow....

[Goblez]

Hahahaha. The truth is that most of these supporters probably are 'leachers', unwilling to actually expend their own effort to support it. But hey, isn't that 95% of America's political party 'supporters' as well?

Re:Wow....

[cortesoft]

To try to better fit your analogy, wouldn't this case be more like, say, holding the phone company responsible for the alcohol-to-kids store because they listed their telephone number and address? We all agree that this selling-to-anyone store is breaking the law... we just don't think telling people where the store is and what the store sells is illegal.

I apologize for not making this a car analogy.. I will try harder next time.

Re:Wow....

[cbiltcliffe]

As much as the DMCA sucks, I don't agree with your comment.

Slashdot wasn't responsible for what the commenter posted, otherwise the CoS would have been able to sue slashdot and win, regardless of whether the comment was taken down or not.

The fact that you have to comply with a DMCA takedown doesn't mean that you're responsible for the comment.
It means you're responsible for the comment, only if you ignore the takedown notice.

In practice, the comment is gone either way, so it doesn't make much difference to freedom of speech, but you aren't legally (read: financially) responsible.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a supporter means that you're paying subs. Even if they can't be arsed to go out and do any campaigning they're making a difference by giving money plus they're likely to talk about issues that the party raises in their newsletters.

As someone who is a member of a minority party (in the UK) I'd be very happy if we got 3,000 fee paying members all of a sudden. That kind of money and mind-share is what can lead to electoral victory.

Re:Wow....

[The Empiricist]

The fact that you have to comply with a DMCA takedown doesn't mean that you're responsible for the comment. It means you're responsible for the comment, only if you ignore the takedown notice.

That's not quite accurate. If you comply with a DMCA takedown notice, it means you are protected from monetary damages, even if you put the work back up because of a counternotice provided by the user. If you do not comply with a DMCA takedown notice (e.g., if you are one of the countless service providers that has not designated an agent to receive a DMCA takedown notice), then you are no longer protected from monetary damages by the DMCA safe harbors. But, that doesn't mean that you are responsible for the user data either.

If there is no infringement, you are in the clear (unless you get sued but don't defend yourself). If there is infringement, then your liability could depend on factors such as whether you exercise control over what your site publishes, whether you had knowledge of the infringement, whether you promoted use of your site as a place for infringement, and whether you benefit as a result of the infringement.

Service providers did not want to face the uncertainty of whether the courts would find them liable for their users' content and what factors would affect the outcome of trial. I believe that they were the biggest supporters of the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. The rights of users and the desire to avoid stiflement of free speech led to the counternotice-and-putback part of the safe harbor provisions (a provision sadly missing in the DMCA safe habor counterparts in parts of the world such as the European Union).

Unfortunately, the anonymous reader who posted Church of Scientology material (see grandparent comment) did so, well, anonymously. Thus, there was never an opportunity for a counternotice to be submitted by the user who posted the material. Perhaps someone could have claimed responsibility for having posted it and submitted a counternotice. But, that would mean providing a name, address, and telephone number, then consenting to the jurisdiction of U.S. Federal Courts.

Of course, Slashdot could have ignored the original notice and tried to face down a potential lawsuit from the Church of Scientology (not that I blame them for not wanting to go through that). But, Slashdot would have faced such as threat regardless of the DMCA safe habor provisions. At least the DMCA safe habor provisions meant that there was no need for Slashdot people (or scripts) to scan comments for potentially instances of infringement. And the DMCA counternotice-and-putback provision provided an opportunity for someone else to take on the monetary risks of possible infringement.

If Slashdot did not take advantage of the DMCA safe habor, or if there were no DMCA safe habors, that would not meant that Slashdot would be liable in court. It would just mean that Slashdot would have one affirmative defense fewer to hide behind and that the question of responsibility would be an open one for the courts to decide.

Re:Wow....

[shutdown -p now]

However while DMCA does handle one side of the equation it does not handle the wrongful use of DMCA notices taking down stuff that is legal. There are no anti-DMCA notices.

But there are - that's the whole point of DMCA take-down process! Here's how it works:

User X publishes some material using service provider P. Company Y sends P a DMCA take-down notice, claiming the ownership of said material. At this point P must take the materials down, or accept responsibility for copyright infringement (if Y can later prove in court that the material was indeed infringing).

You assume that it stops here, but in practice, it doesn't. Here's what follows.

When P takes down the materials, it notifies X. X can now in turn claim that claims put forward by Y are themselves wrong - and at that point P can put the content back online, without assuming responsibility (it now fully rests with X). Note, this is precisely your "anti-DMCA notice". If Y is willing to stick to their claim, they sue X, and then the court figures out who's wrong and who's right; if the court finds out that the material was indeed infringing, then P finally takes down the material for good, and X (but not P) pays out the damages to Y.

The reason why counterclaims are very rare in practice is because 1) most material removed under DMCA take-down notices is, indeed, infringing, and the poster knows it very well, so they don't challenge it, and 2) in remaining cases, if people are uncertain about the status, they are often afraid and/or don't have the money to go to court. #1 needs no further elaboration, while #2 is a deficiency with the American justice system in general, not with DMCA.

Aside from that, it's actually a very reasonable process that results in minimal headache for the service providers, gives content owners a quick way to remove content which is clearly illegal without going to the court for each and every case, and yet allows content posters to defend their rights in the court if they believe they are in the right.

Re:Wow....

[Handlarn]

It has everything to do with linking people and information, since hyperlinking copyrighted material is not considered a crime in Sweden.

Until now, because torrents are technically not much more than a file with links.

Of course there's an outrage. Linking copyrighted material is LEGAL in Sweden. Hosting copyrighted material for unlawful distribution is illegal. It is obvious that The Pirate Bay have not been involved in the latter.

They got a one-year prison sentence and 30 million SEK in fines for something that is legal.

Re:Wow....

[Repossessed]

You are mostly correct. Mostly is the key word here, most DMCA notices are not legitimate. From an earlier /. article:

In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.

(yes that adds up to over 100%, there is overlap)

There is, mostly, no penalty for sending fake notices, so people do it all the time. There needs to be statutory damages for sending invalid claims even when the claim is in good faith, and even when no financial damage is done to the victim, to combat this. In cases where the claim is actively malicious, the perjury clause needs to be enforced.

Limewire, LOL!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do what you want, 'cause a pirate is free,
YOU ARE A PIRATE!
Yar har, fiddle di dee,
Being a pirate is alright to be,
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free,
You are a pirate!

(spoken)You are a pirate!
(crowd)Yay!

We've got us a map, (a map!)
To lead us to a hidden box,
That's all locked up with locks! (with locks!)
And buried deep away!

We'll dig up the box, (the box!)
We know it's full of precious booty!
Burst open the locks!
And then we'll say hooray!

nuclear bunker may just come in handy

[roman_mir]

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.

Re:nuclear bunker may just come in handy

[richie2000]

That bunker, that one of their ISP has may just come in handy.

Actually, that ISP is one of our best supporters and we have all of our Pirate Party servers in that bunker. ;-)

Re:nuclear bunker may just come in handy

[Qzukk]

we have all of our Pirate Party servers in that bunker

Target acquired

Re:nuclear bunker may just come in handy

[Ralish]

You don't need to get into government to affect the political process; rather, you need enough seats to be able to have a significant impact on the likelihood of legislation getting through the parliament. I suspect this is what they are aiming for. I'm not sure what the composition is of the American parliament, for instance, but many countries have minor parties with significant representation.

For example, here in Australia the Greens have several seats in the Senate, enough in fact, that the Government can't pass legislation without their support (assuming they don't have the support of the opposition). This usually isn't a problem, as the Greens will generally go along with most of the government legislation. But, for certain pieces, for example, the government is forced to make concessions to appease the Greens if they wish to get the legislation through.

The point being, if you need the support of a party in order to get more controversial legislation through, you may well find you need to make concessions to other parties in areas that aren't core to your political ideology in order to advance your main cause. I suspect this is what The Pirate Party would like to achieve. No real aspirations for government, just enough representation to change the law in the areas they really care about.

Re:nuclear bunker may just come in handy

[Fnordulicious]

I don't know what universe you hail from, but most European countries are unarguably socialist to some degree and are doing pretty well for themselves. Have you confused socialism with Soviet-style communism?

Or perhaps you're just trolling and I've been caught.

Re:nuclear bunker may just come in handy

[Narpak]

Have you confused socialism with Soviet-style communism?

There seems to be a lot of that going around. People seem to wilfully ignore the fact that there are so many brands of socialism that it almost render the term meaningless. Saying or implying that it is absolutely inevitable that implementing some economical control or oversight will lead to a totalitarian regime.

Re:nuclear bunker may just come in handy

[clarkkent09]

Most of the "civilized" world is run by a watered down version of free-market capitalism with social services thrown in. Even Labour party in UK have realized that private capital is the most effective driving force of an economy ever known and so have most of the other former left wing parties out there. Nobody serious is promoting state ownership of industry as was the case all over the Europe just a few decades ago.

Re:nuclear bunker may just come in handy

[Dun Malg]

I really hope that this Pirate party gets elected to power in Sweden and abolish the copyright laws. The economic chaos that would ensue and the ridicule that that country would be subjected to worldwide would hopefully make even the most pea brained anti-copyright wannabe crusader realize what a stupid and childish idea that is.

Actually, what's childish is your over-the-top strawman argument. If you'd bothered to check out their web site, you'd see that they're for copyright reform, not abolition. Go back and study your subject, ignorant child.

I suggest

[BigJClark]

I suggest creating a facebook group and tying a coloured ribbon around the antennae of your car. This is what we do in Canada.

Re:I suggest

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, we can't figure out how to do anything requiring skill like tying a ribbon, so we just buy a magnet shaped like a ribbon, and slap it on the car.

Re:I suggest

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe, we do have ready-made ribbons, but we cannot afford them, so we buy them imported from the Chinese and still lack the skill of tying a ribbon. The world's a sad place, unless you're Chinese. That doesn't make any sense at all, though, so forget that you read this post.

Here is the theme...

[GPLDAN]

Are You Ready Swedes?
Aye Aye Captain
I Can't Hear You
AYE AYE CAPTAIN
OHHHHHH
Who lives in a datacenter under the sea?
computer vetenskapsman!
Absorbant and yellow and porous are we?
computer vetenskapsman!
Who's nautical nonsense be something you wish?
computer vetenskapsman!
So drop on the deck and flop like a fish! computer vetenskapsman!
Ready?
computer vetenskapsman!
computer vetenskapsman!
computer vetenskapsman!
computer vetenskapsman!

Call in the seals

[DirtyCanuck]

In other news, RIAA navy seals under cover of night parachute into Swedish prison and with 4 well placed shots.....

Re:Call in the seals

[maugle]

In other news, RIAA navy seals under cover of night parachute into Swedish prison and with 4 well placed shots.....

...shoot themselves in the foot, if the RIAA's tactics remain consistent.

Re:The Thief Party

[erroneus]

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.

Difference with the US

[Richard W.M. Jones]

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.

Re:Difference with the US

[h4rr4r]

Perhaps because the Swedes have a system that allows for multiple parties?
Our system insures third parties never get anywhere.

Re:Difference with the US

[h4rr4r]

I am just pointing out a mathematical fact. In our winner take all system even if a third party got 20% of the vote in every state they would get 0 representation.

Re:Difference with the US

[mdwh2]

FPTP is inherently flawed, and leads to people just voting for one of the two popular choices. In Sweden however, they use a system of proportional representation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Sweden#Seat_allocation

There are many different voting systems, all with different advantages and disadvantage, and almost all of them are far superior to FPTP that is sadly used in most countries.

My pet theory on that is that people want a simple choice, one or the other. When you give them a complex choice, they get frustrated.

I don't know if that's true or not, but the problem is that FPTP voting is inherently flawed with more than two choices. It's got nothing to do with the mindset of the voter.

For example, if I ask what people's favourite music is, and the poll options and results are:

* Electronic music : 35%
* Heavy metal : 25%
* Death metal : 20%
* Thrash metal : 20%

Then under FPTP, electronic music wins. But clearly, people favour metal to electronic by 65% to 35%! The problem is that if there are multiple similar options, the vote gets split between them.

There are many other kinds of flaws that can occur in different systems - e.g., take a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Criteria_in_evaluating_single_winner_voting_systems .

Re:The Thief Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you pay Time-Warner when you sing "Happy Birthday to you" in public,
or do you steal/pirate it?
Shame on you.

Re:Are there any pirate party members in office?

[Darkness404]

Its in 2010, and back in 2006 (coincidently right after another unpopular ruling by Sweden against TPB) they managed to have a very good showing and were only a few members shy of getting government funds for advertising, etc.

The ruling has already made waves in Denmark too

[brucmack]

I was pleasantly suprised to read a story about the ruling on the Danish public service channel's homepage today. The Danish advokatrådet (council of solicitors) has pointed out that the decision could have consequences for other sites that merely link to illegal files, like Google, and have encouraged the responsible minister to take preventative action. So here's hoping the ruling will end up helping us get some reasonable legislation passed!

What this means

[Qbertino]

We have similar situations all over the world and in Germany too. Legislatory and Courts not understanding the concepts in Network technology and that they require a whole new different approach and perspective for reasonable legislation and judgement. At the same time IT is growing so fast and becoming a central part of our lives that the people affected are a significant political force. I think this is sort of a generation problem too. What I find interesting is that more and more the effect of IT on our lives - and thus on politics aswell - is growing stronger and stronger. I hope this party gains traction in sweden and isn't just a fad.

Re:Hold on a second.

[MoellerPlesset2]

They can. Just not the works of people who haven't given them permission. They're TOTALLY free to create works and release them for distribution under whatever terms they want.

Apparently not. Not if those works happen to inform you about other people who are offering copyrighted material.

Somehow I don't think they'd have been going after TPB if all the works on the site were legitimately being shared.

All the works on their site were being shared legitimately. No copyright holders of any .torrent files were represented at the trial. They were not found guilty of actual copyright infringement.

Re:The Thief Party

[migla]

First of all, it's not stealing, it's copying. It's like when Jesus copied the fish and bread and fed all those people. Maybe some bakers and fishermen were pissed back then, but you know, it was for the common good. Copying was obviously the right thing to do then and it's obviously the right thing to do today.

(ps. Whether or not Jesus actually had star trek gear or it is a made up story, is irrelevant)

EU Elections June7

[Christian Engstrom]

The elections for the European Parliament are on June 7.

That's what we're focusing all our efforts on right now. It's an entirely realistic goal, and we're planning to make it.

/Christian Engstrom
Vice Chairman Piratpartiet
Candidate for the European Parliament

Re:Arghhhh Cap'n

[the_one(2)]

There is a pirate party in the US. http://www.pirate-party.us/

Re:So what?

[Kjella]

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.

I'm sure the three parties with less members will love to hear they're utterly insignificant, being in parliament and all. How many third parties are in the US Congress? Senate? Oh, right. Also, the actual figure as of this moment is over 5000 new members today alone. Let me now give you Swedens biggest parties by current memberships compared to percentage in last election.

Socialdemokraterna (s) 100639 members - 2006 elections: 1,942,625 votes - 34.99% - 130 seats
Moderaterna (m) 54858 members - 2006 elections: 1,456,014 votes - 26.23% - 97 seats
Centern (c) 47866 members - 2006 elections: 437,389 votes - 7.88% - 29 seats
Kristdemokraterna (kd) 22919 members - 2006 elections: 365,998 votes - 6.59% - 24 seats
Piratpartiet (pp) 19693 members - 2006 elections: 34,918 votes - 0.63% - 0 seats
Folkpartiet (fp) 17799 members - 2006 elections: 418,395 votes - 7.54% - 28 seats
Vänsterpartiet (v) 10700 members - 2006 elections: 324,722 votes - 5.85% - 22 seats
Miljöpartiet (mp) 9110 members - 2006 elections: 291,121 votes - 5.24% - 19 seats

I think you can safely say the Pirate Party will do a lot better election next year than 2006. Also this year in June it's election for EU parliament, where they also stand very good chances now.

Oh yeah, and did you know what is now Swedens biggest youth party?

Ung Pirat (up) 9400
Moderata ungdomsförbundet (muf) 9153
Sveriges socialdemokratiska ungdomsförbund (ssu) 5431

That's right, "Young Pirate" now has more members than the youth organization of Moderaterna and Socialdemokraterna - Swedens biggest parties. Yeah, politically insignificant. Right.

Re:Swedish Pirate Party

[wootest]

"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. "

They are genuine. They've been trying to save our privacy for the past three years, but the only time anyone notices is when TPB gets in the news internationally.

They have a plan to eliminate medicine patents and replace them with (existing) centralized funding; the overall pile of money involved at different stages of the mutually assured destruction-like patent market would go down, and R&D could focus on R&D.

They want to shorten the lifespan of Copyright dramatically - I think the plan is for 5 years. (This comes out of a continuous discussion between different fields, where every field believes 5 or 10 years is a great duration for every field but their own, because they have to continue making money; thus the only way out besides continuing the stalemate is to just set a new figure across the board.) They also want non-commercial "infringement" even within the short period to always be legal as an extension of the library concept, where public culture is made available for every citizen.

They've been against the law allowing the Swedish Military Radio Institute to tap any Internet traffic crossing the border to listen for weakly defined "outer threats". Not only is it impossible from within Sweden to tell what'll cross the border or not and easy for actual terrorists (or what have you) to route around or use encryption, in order for them to be able to tap *some* traffic, they must be able to filter *all* traffic. Which means that every byte of Internet traffic inside Sweden (including this reply) passes through a supercomputer scanning for dangerous packets, violating the privacy of everyone and using military resources against its own citizen.

They're also against the implementation of the IPRED directive. This is so horrible it won't fit in a paragraph, and I advice you to google it for more information, but suffice it to say that in the process of the media industry prosecuting alleged file sharers (and the evidence could easily be fraudulent) they get to take your house in custody, search it, keep all your digital storage for evidence, slap you with (explicitly allowed) out-of-proportion fines, place the burden on you in civil court to prove that you didn't do anything and force you to take out a magazine ad proclaiming your conviction.

The Pirate Party is easily played as a bunch of schmucks that just want things for free. I can't rule out that such people are members, but it's not the strategy of the party itself, which is canny to a number of issues related to privacy and baby/bathwater situations. As far as piracy goes, though, I'm personally a member who, thanks to the large scale abolishment of music DRM as of late, download from TPB only what I can't get from iTunes otherwise, which is sadly still rather a lot. Although if they get to twist the courts into assuming guilt or causality, I'm not sure why I should be so eager to indirectly support this kind of behavior at all.

Maybe they should just move...

[One Louder]

I hear Somalia is more receptive to piracy.

Re:So what?

[Celc]

You should be ashamed for modding parent up as he clearly is clueless about what it takes to be real party in a country with more than two parties.

The pirate party has more members than three parties that currently has seats in parliament and might by the the end of the weekend have more than four of the seven. That's with a fair margin too as they got twise as many people as of two of them while *only* having 19,790 members in total. 3000 members out of 19,790 is quite a lot.

Also due to the low voter turnout for the EU election the pirate party would need about 100,000 votes to get a mandate and I'm quite confident the 20,000 party members who care enough to take stand on the issue can bring those numbers in.

Suggestion...

[denzacar]

Well I wouldn't steal a car and I wouldn't steal a handbag.
And I wouldn't steal a cd from a brick'n'mortar stall.
But I'd still download music from a pirate torrent tracker.
Because that is copying and not stealing at all.

interesting

[Eric-Dcrow]

this was posted by Anonymous Coward at another site today but i thought it would fit nicely here. "As to predictions... Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1841, against the extension of copyright http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Law_(Macaulay) Only quoting the ending, but the speech as a whole is a very good read "I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. If I saw, Sir, any probability that this bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections might be removed, I would not divide the House in this stage. But I am so fully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable to my honorable and learned friend, could render his measure supportable to me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a second time this day six months." S!

Re:Arghhhh Cap'n

[ZOmegaZ]

I've been endorsed by said party to run for Congress in Tennessee's fifth district. Check the sig.