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Pirate Party Wins At Least One European Parliament Seat
reeeh2000 writes "According to TorrentFreak, with half of polling stations now closed in Sweden, the Pirate Party has at least one guaranteed seat in the EU Parliament. Currently, the party is sitting with 7% of the vote. Depending on how the remaining districts voted, the Pirate Party could win another seat, for a total of two."
Reader lordholm adds a link to an article about exit polls in Sweden (link in Swedish) indicating that the Pirate Party will score two seats, writing "According to the polls, the pirate party is the largest party in the 18-30 year age category of voters. The final counting of votes (including around a million postal votes) will not be done until later next week."
They couldn't have done it with out you.
It's one seat only for sure, however, it's my understanding that if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified (shudder), this opens up extra seats one of which would go to PP.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Hi,
the pirate party reached in germany 0,9%. Concerning lack of attention from the media, nearly non-existent funds and that stupid name, this is a very strong result for them.
CU, Martin
The Pirate Party got 7.1% wth 99.9% votes counted. This will give them 1 seat in the current parlament, 2 if the parlament gets extended according to the Lisbon treaty. /greger
You can find the final official result here:
http://www.val.se/val/ep2009/valnatt/rike/index.html
The purple bar (PP) represent the privacy/piracy party, 7,1% will give them one seat in the European parliamen.
You need to get at least 0.5% to get money from the state. approx 7 cent per vote. The total results can be found here: http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/europawahlen/EU_BUND_09/ergebnisse/bundesergebnisse/b_tabelle_99.html
The 7.1% the Pirate Party got gives them one seat. See http://www.val.se/val/ep2009/valnatt/rike/index.html. It is incredibly unlikely that they'd get another one. Nearly all of the advance votes have already been counted.
The advance votes get sent to the polling station where one would have normally voted on and are counted as part of the normal counting process. See http://www.val.se/in_english/2009_ep_election/index.html. Those advance votes that aren't counted yet are those advance votes that were placed on Sunday, which are relatively few given Sunday was the ordinary election day.
Anyhow the final count will be available on Wednesday.
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
The Pirate Party has an English page here that describes the basics. It has gained a lot of support after they, together with bloggers etc, managed to drum up public opposition to a wiretapping law, a law forcing ISPs to store traffic data, new copyright enforcement laws and the Pirate Bay trial. It has been growing since 2006 and spreads internationally, but this is the first parliamentary seat.
What concerns exactly? That it's illegal to download copyrighted stuff?
How about the fact that the penalties for "download[ing] copyrighted stuff" (which is not illegal except under specific circumstances; if it were always illegal, then everyone on Slashdot, and in fact almost everyone who uses the internet for anything, would be a criminal) are increasingly absurd and draconian, and in many cases the mere accusation of misconduct is sufficient to cause those penalties to be invoked? If that doesn't concern you, then you're not paying attention.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It might be interesting for slashdotters to know that the top-candidate of the Pirate Party is a free-software contributor, and has been working a lot previously to establish open standards and to fight software patents.
Their success might turn out to be an asset for free software as well as integrity.
Important stuff
They get two seats, but the second seat will be a non-voting seat (She [assuming it is Amelia Andersdotter]) will get the salary, personal staff but no vote until and if the Lisbon treaty passes.
I'm a content provider. I make games and sell them. Explain to me how I am an irrlevant middleman.
Who makes my games? pixies from space?
BTW, as a content producer, I disagree that p2p helps me in an way. In fact, I strongly refute that.
But as an angti-piracy poster here, I'll get modded as troll in the hope nobody will read a dissenting view on slashdot.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
This is such a joke. What civil liberties and personal rights are you voting to protect?
Well stuff like net neutrality and the right to privacy for one. Perhaps you should go read their views on various issues, I think you'll find there's a bit more to it that "LOL I WANT NEW TOM CROOSE MOOVIES".
How about my right to fucking run a game on a new computer when I purchase it? Or my right to fucking play a movie on a computer as well as on a Playstation? Or my fucking right to not be put in jail for 8 years like I'd murdered someone when I share a song with a friend? Or my fucking right to lend someone a music CD I'd bought? Or my fucking right to not have every action on the internet monitored like I was molesting little children for lunch?
What civil liberties and personal rights are you voting to protect?
The right to not have my traffic snooped on by the government as the FRA law in Sweden allows.
The right to not end up in a logfile whenever I send an email or visit a webpage, as the EU data retention directive wants.
The right to not have my internet cut off on the say-so of big copyright holding companies, as the French three-strikes law allows.
The right to not have my home searched and my assets seized on the say-so of copyright holders, as the Swedish IPRED law allows.
These things are important, not only for me, not only for those who download illegally, but for everyone who uses the internet. It is absolutely essential that civil liberties are respected on the internet and in real life. I didn't vote for the PirateParty so people can download stuff for free, I voted for them to stop the draconian surveillance bullshit that's being pushed in the name of stopping terrorism, child porn and illegal filesharing, but which in reality accomplishes nothing of the sort, it only lessens my right and my liberties.
No, once they are over 30 something clicks and they become more interested in preserving their own wealth than in idealism, so they become conservatives.
As an over 30 conservative in favour of copyright reform, I don't see a problem with that. I see the effects of copyright on education and business as much more important than the effects on the entertainment industries (referring to the use of written works in business, not the sale of written works as business, eg operating systems, productivity software, accounting software). If you look at the cost to society of paying copyright levies for textbooks that teach material that has been known for hundreds of years (basic mathematics for example) it seems to me that the compulsory purchase via copyright of information that should have long been in the public domain is a dead weight on our economies.
Copyright reform is not a conservative vs radical issue, it's an informed vs uninformed issue.
You would think that the counterculture generation of the 1960s would behave differently now that they are the dominant force in government and business, but look at the reality.
That generation has certainly moved towards conservatism but they did make some fairly big changes. There is a degree to which conservatism is based on experience of reality. If at age >30 you still have the same outlook as you did at 18, you were either an exceptionally wise 18 year old or a very stupid 30 year old. Personally, I've found through experience that some of the ideals I had at 18 were not workable. Discarding/modifying those ideals in favour of proven workable systems (ie becoming more conservative) isn't "selling out", it's growing up.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Seems the other parties completely missed the importance of this issue, the only other party that took this seriously and campaigned for increased protection of personal integrity was the Green Party, and they too seem to have gained an extra mandate from this issue.
The pirate party will most likely send Christian Engström to Brussels, who actively (and successfully) campaigned against software patents in the EU as a member of FFII, so it will be very interesting to see what he can do these next 5 years.
why yes, yes i would.
http://torrentfreak.com/download-a-free-car-from-bittorrent-090506/
The Pirate Party is nothing more than a bunch of college kids who want shit for free.
Interesting. Looking at their top 10 candidates for national government a few years back, you'll find that their average age is 38, and that 7/10 is 40 or older.
Among their top active public members, can be found an author, a musician, several with years of background in it consulting, one with a former background as director of a book publishing company, one with a background in national politics and a few with active backgrounds in other larger political parties.
So while some of the members are certainly cheap greedy kids as you describe them, clearly that does not constitute the entire party.
never mind that Slashdot said during the Napster trial they should do that, which is another example of the goofy hypocrisy around here
That was before anybody realized that the penalty for copyright infringement was hundreds of thousands of times the harm of copyright infringement. There wouldn't be nearly the outrage if the RIAA could only sue individuals for a couple bucks a song in proportion to the value of a copy rather than $150,000/song which is practically what the RIAA pays the artist for the copyright.
In the USA, the opposition party usually passes more laws EXACTLY like the unpopular ones.
Look at the GOP holding legislative sessions to keep Terri Schiavo connected to a machine.
Something is very wrong with the Swedish political system.
Don't they know the opposition party is supposed to claim they oppose unpopular laws like those then do nothing about them once they're voted into power.
Yes, they did exactly that, but unfortunately for them there was a power change in Sweden a few years ago, and it became clear that many of unpopular laws being passed by this government had actually been drafted by the last one.
Wouldn't a 20 year copyright be more than enough for you, as a game developer? Because that's what the Pirate Party is advocating. Currently, in many countries, copyright extends up to 70 years after the death of the author. What sense is there in that? It's bullshit, plain and simple. And nobody's fighting against this crap in the political arena, nobody but the Pirate Party.
Simple. There are two factors:
1) The party was founded there. Give it some time in other countries. (At least we have 0.9% here in Germany. Which means they get the campaign money back.)
2) Education. The Nordic countries are known for their high education and open-mindedness. (Add Estonia to that group too.)
Here in Germany, people like to talk about "stupid Americans" or British. But in fact, we're nearly as stupid. And it gets worse every day.
Being dumb has kind of a "cool" and "you have to respect me" touch here. People nearly brag about their stupidity.
Which does not surprise me at all, with our drone promoting school system and the B-vitamin killing stuff that most people eat.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
While this is obviously a welcome result for those who support The Pirate Party, I think a lot of people posting here over-estimate the influence one MEP is going to have. At least I hope they do, because here in the UK, the British National Party just won a seat as well.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Let me clarify why economic incentive arguments completely miss the point. Because those who argue that their actions are more profitable for musicians substitute their choice for that of the musicians in deciding what is best for the musicians. They are acting as a collective big brother towards the musicians. We can adapt the same attitude towards tangible property. As a matter of fact, eminent domain does just that. It's a concept that the government can take away your land and compensate you for it if it can make better use of the land. Well, it takes ownership rights away and substitutes it for the right to profit off of the land. Just as you claim that the musician has no right to own his music but only has the right to profit off of it.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Crab mentality is merely a lack of trust that the other guy will share.
It still produces no gain because one cannot battle the selfishness of others and expect to win.
No, a right wing racist millionaire made a donation to the site several years ago.
No, he owned a company that provided colocation space and internet access to The Pirate Bay, at a reduced fee.
It's about controlling what's yours.
Copyright wasn't established to "control whats yours". It was created to encourage creative ideas by allowing people with good ideas to profit off of them. The right to an artificial monopoly on your own creative works is not a natural right.
You can do whatever you want with your copy except copy it.
Not any more. Now you can only do what the copyright holders tell you to do with it. See: EULA, DRM, etc.
I think somewhere in between the realm of 15 to 30 years is more than reasonable. If you have not made money on something by the time your 50 that you made when you were 20 then it is better served for the public good.
Steamboat willie came out in 1928, that that particular cartoon is still in copyright 80 years later is rediculous.
The Pirate Party registered in Finland last week as an official party. They will be running in the 2011 parliamental elections.
1) The party was founded there. Give it some time in other countries.
The Finnish Pirate Party just collected the 5000 members required for registration.
See the Helsingin Sanomat article.
We need a raving, rabid, card carrying socialists to balance the equation somewhat on this side of the pond.
http://www.google.com/search?q=bernie+sanders