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Swedish Pirate Party To Run Pirate Bay From Parliament
rdnetto sends in this clip from TorrentFreak. To pursue these plans the Pirate Party needs to win 4% of the seats in Parliament in an election coming up in September. "After their former hosting provider received an injunction telling it to stop providing bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, the worlds most resilient BitTorrent site switched to a new ISP. That host, the Swedish Pirate Party, made a stand on principle. Now they aim to take things further by running the site from inside the Swedish Parliament. ... The party has announced today that they intend to use part of the Swedish Constitution to further these goals, specifically Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate. They intend to push the non-commercial sharing part of their manifesto, by running The Pirate Bay from inside the Parliament, by Members of Parliament."
Balls or not, they can certainly use a donation or two.
Quantum hacker.
No, as more than 5/6 of parliament surely would override your immunity in this case.
In the TPB case, the illegality of the site is itself under question, and I don't believe 5/6 of parliament would want to override the immunity.
Unfortunately for them I don't see how this can work. The Swedish Constitution states that:
[...]If, in any other case, a member of the Riksdag is suspected of having committed a criminal act, the relevant rules of law concerning arrest, detention or remand are applied only if he admits guilt or was caught in the act, or the penalty for the offence is imprisonment for two years [or more, I assume; I don't speak Swedish so can't check the translation].
[Chapter 4, Article 8]
Under Swedish law copyright infringement carries a penalty of two years imprisonment, so I don't think they will have any criminal immunity.
The submitter seems to have confused immunity with prosecution and immunity from civil lawsuits; matters carried out as part of a political mandate are only immune from civil lawsuits (the criminal immunity, above, would appear to apply or not apply irrespective of whether the actions were part of a political mandate). What's more, this civil immunity can be waived by a 5/6 majority of those voting - I can't imagine this would be hard to arrange against an unpopular single candidate.
I'm not a Swedish lawyer (believe it or not!) but I hope they've checked with one because they seem to be relying on more protection than they actually have.
Don't mistake The Pirate Party for the Pirate Bay.
The latter deals with links. The former is best described as the political branch of the Internet.
it's in my head
They only want to run the trackers. You know, those things that are like search-engines. No infringement anywhere in sight, except for in the deluded minds of technofobic geriatric judges.
As it's in the constitution, not just a normal law, they will have to make the proposition to change it this election period (only a few months left), then have the majority of the parliament vote yes for it the next election period, and then have the parliament the election period after that also vote yes. Not until then it can be changed.
On the other hand, they have ignored the constitution before because Sweden doesn't have a constitutional court, only a "constitution committee" that can only make "recommendations".
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Umm, dude, prostitution is legal in many European countries.
Not legal in Sweden
Quantum hacker.
<USAcentrism>It seems that the age of consent in Sweden is 15, so they already made it legal to have sex with underage girls, those filthy bastards!</USAcentrism>
This space available.
Note that real piracy is recognized as a jus cogens norm. That means that under International Law (read: The old 'Laws of Nations'), any nation can prosecute you for it. In this case, I suppose you'd only be safe in Sweden.
How far do jus cogens norms go? There are only a very few things that nations have agreed are so bad that they are terrible for everyone. Genocide, piracy, slavery, and torture*. Many nations recognize and have pushed to formerly add juvenile executions and wars of territorial aggression to that list. Say what you will about the current/previous administrations of the USA -- and there is good AND bad, to be sure -- they have previously followed jus cogens principles. In one case, a South American woman sued a man from South America for the torturing of her and others that took place South America...in a US court. No ties to the USA at all, but because it violated the j.c. priciples, should could seek justice there.
*hence why the former US administration aggressively denied that water-boarding or sleep deprivation** constituted torture. They weren't just splitting hairs, they were dancing around commiting crimes heinous enough to mark them as criminals in every court in the world.
**Waterboarding? Sure, torture. Sleep deprivation? Seriously? That is something people routinely do to themselves, from working waaaay too much, to stupid teenagers trying to stay up for days at a time. Astronauts have to stay up for 72 hours straight as part of their training. Of course it impairs your judgment, even makes you hallucinate, but torture? By itself, not so much.
I'm a member, an activist and a supporter since the same day it was started but I'm not part of the core team.
They had a debate article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet today and they have it translated to English here. Basically they say that they will host it until its legal status is clarified. That means until it's clarified legal or when it's not possible to appeal to any higher courts.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
From their declaration of principles: (their, not mine, I'm not interested in discussing the subject at the moment)
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The article claims that Swedish uses tones to convey meaning. It's sort of true in Sweden, but Swedish-speaking Finns don't use it, and Finland-Swedish is mutually intelligible with Standard Swedish. Thus, tone isn't that important. It's more like an accent.
Wrong. The Constitution does not grant citizens any rights. ALL rights are assumed to be wholly enjoyed by citizens. What the Constitution does is grant some specific rights to the government, and places hard-line restrictions against any laws which might infringe on certain rights; such as freedom of worship (thus, any law allowing or preventing marriage is unconstitutional), restriction of the freedom of the press (speech), barring the right to assemble (free speech zones, anyone? permits, anyone?), bearing of arms (no assault weapons, anyone? I'd say that is an infringement), no search and siezure without probable cause unless you have a warrant (homeland security theater and patriot act, anyone?)
Don't worry a lot of people get it backwards and don't understand that ALL rights are retained by Citizens except where specifically granted to the government by the Constitution.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50