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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.'"
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!
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.
I suggest creating a facebook group and tying a coloured ribbon around the antennae of your car. This is what we do in Canada.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
The name might just be in reference to TPB.
Unfortunately, even though they got 3,000 members, 90% of them are leachers.
Dual Opteron < $600
In other news, RIAA navy seals under cover of night parachute into Swedish prison and with 4 well placed shots.....
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.
3000 MORE members, for a total of 17,799.
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
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)
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
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.
Vice Chairman Piratpartiet
Candidate for the European Parliament
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
There is a pirate party in the US. http://www.pirate-party.us/
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
I've been endorsed by said party to run for Congress in Tennessee's fifth district. Check the sig.
Former US House candidate, TN-5