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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."
Why would the Pirate Party of Sweden do this? Any Swedish citizens want to answer?
Wouldn't this bring up some real issues about the legitimacy of the Swedish government? While I think this is a great (hilarious!) idea, I think this would probably do more harm than good.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
when the system is used against itself.
"They have the biggest balls since balls came to ballstown." -Master Shake, paraphrased
Living With a Nerd
The Pirate Party has them.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
I'm so proud, it makes me want to cry.
And move to Sweden.
As if Swedish women weren't enough incentive.
I thought TPB was looking at buying a micronation place of their own like Sealand? Whatever happened to that?
How do those guys find pants to fit with balls that big?
I'm moving to Sweden and starting the Hooker Party.
The party supporters will still get screwed, but not in the way usually associated with politics.
Invade Sweeden, they are taking our movies!!!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
You're confusing criminal and civil law. Copyright infringement is a tort - an issue of civil law, whereas pedo's are violating criminal law.
"If you see a man on a horse, he is likely an enemy. Kill the man and eat the horse."
13 is old enough.
It's not the file sharing links.
It's the attitude. They are incredibly cool and fearless.
This is just another step along the way from their lawyer letters.
naive and foolish - perhaps.
Some day they will be crushed.. but it will have been a brilliant arc.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Bah, left out half my thought. I believe the immunity applies only to suits brought in civil court, though this is just an educated guess as IANAL.
"If you see a man on a horse, he is likely an enemy. Kill the man and eat the horse."
tell us, the internet, what you need.
Read radical news here
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.
Does Sweden have that sort of system, though? Isn't the civil/criminal distinction specific to legal systems based on English Common Law?
In any case, I guess you could theoretically start a Pedo Party, but you'd first have to get elected to Swedish Parliament, and then could only do it within Parliament itself.
Not a typewriter
Peruse this for an idea of what you might be getting yourself into.
Like I said in my next post, IANAL, especially IANASL. Hopefully some helpful Swede comes around and corrects me.
"If you see a man on a horse, he is likely an enemy. Kill the man and eat the horse."
Playing devil's advocate: why not? I'm not advocating paedophilia but the reason that it is illegal in a given jurisdiction is because the inhabitants of that jurisdiction have decided so. If enough people disagree and the society is truly democratic then laws can (and will) be changed. I'm sure that's among the ultimate goals of the Pirate Party here.
Although the Pirate Party may be applying a karate chop type of action in a controversial area it can be pointed out that outfits that want all of this strict copyright type of nonsense rely on the police and their weapons as the ultimate means of enforcement. The political system creates a situation in which the one with the power is just and right. Now the Pirate Party has come up with a clever use of law that trumps the other side completely. Sauce for goose is sauce for gander.
You'd have to get 4% of the people to vote for you, good luck with that.
PS: If it's really your thing there are countries which will oblige you without going through all that hassle.
No sig today...
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
I take it someone will start a Pedo Party and claim that sex with minors is part of their political platform. "I know she's only 13, but this is a matter of political philosophy!"
A German politician (Joerg Tauss) recently tried to use his parlamentary immunity as a defence against CP charges. He couldn't convince his fellow representatives, or the judge for that matter -- so his immunity was stripped by the parliament and he was convicted in court...
CP, like most other felonies, is sufficiently yucky that most politicians wouldn't dare to try to protect one of their ranks against prosecution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)#Causes_of_sinking
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you were in Japan, Spain, or about 20 other countries, 13 would be above the age of consent. Sweden is 15, which is about the worldwide average. Above 16 is the exception.
And regarding the wide pedo-brush that people like to smear these laws with, dangerous pedophiles don't care about consent or laws in general. There's very little correlation, in fact, between state-enforced moral laws and the amount of child rape, sexual abuse, or teen pregnancies. These laws mostly end up turning early-maturing teenagers into "sex offenders" with a life-long criminal record.
So yes, the criminality of under-18s having sex is very much a political issue and not a universal moral constant.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
to live in a country where there is no more urgent worry than being able to fight for the right to piracy....
It time for the Piraty-Nerdy Geek Party. Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right?Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? Can't be too much more insane that what we have now right? ^C^C^C 404 Error. 404 Error. 404 Error. ^C^C^C ...
<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.
The difference between civil and criminal law definitively exist in Germany, which doesn't have Common Law.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yes, because the movie industry is such in a terrible shape. /sarcasm
Wise up, kid: the movie industry is experiencing an all-time high in the profits department. What "pirates" (actually it should be "middle man haters") are doing is remove the need for another branch of the industry to control how the content is distributed. You want the blu-ray 666 disk collector's edition with human skin cover of the latest blockbuster? Buy it. You want to see the movie at the local multiplex? Get your ticket. Want it on your computer? Download it. Find a way to make the downloading lucrative by other means, like with ad supporting. It works with games. Above all, no user should accept the media mob's latest stance, that they have control over stuff you have BOUGHT and over the devices you OWN to play the media on, FOREVER plus one day. This is not free market, it's communism for the rich. It must be destroyed and all of its proponents killed and their heads stuck on poles so that we can shit on them while passing by.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I am not an expert on the Swedish law, but here in Germany there are certainly procedures to prosecute parlamentarians who break the law during their term - either when their parliamentary immunity is lifted (by majority vote of the parliament, after recommendation by a standing committee with delegates from all parties which inspects the evidence) or retroactively after their term has ended. In addition, immunity here only applies to criminal prosecution, not against civil lawsuits.
So if you have 96% parliament members which do not consider the suppport of industrial-scale copyright violations a proper thing, good luck wich your protective shields....
This reminds me of Pablo Escobar who actually got elected to Columbia's Congress so as to avoid extradition to the USA for the various crimes he committed. He was eventually kicked out because the rest of the Congress saw right through this (and strangely enough Escobar ended up getting his way anyway by just paying off enough of those same members of Congress to amend the Columbian constitution with a no extradition bill). Now this post isn't equating copyright infringement with the various crimes that Escobar committed, but it will be interesting to see how the Swedish Parliament reacts internally to this matter.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
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 saw the movie 8th Wonderland a while ago in a special screening.
It is an interesting take on the concept of a virtual "nation without territory".
"The 8th's" first public act is an underground effort to bolt condom dispensers to
every church in Rome overnight.
This reminds me a bit of that.
Please don't in any way pretend the Pirate Party represents "The Internet" as a whole. I personally dislike their means and their motives.
I write bullshit
Having sex with a 13 year old may not count as pedophilia.
You may get prosecuted for rape of a children if you have sex with someone younger than fifteen in Sweden though.
But that's just some random age used, just as 18 may be in the US, and have nothing with pedophilia to do, but rather the protecting young people from being abused or tricked into scenarios they may not have wanted to end up in. Or something such.
The rape part is pretty new, but nowadays I think it's considered rape by default so to speak, you don't have to actually have "raped" the child, the child being a child is enough for having it considered rape.
We don't have the difference in Sweden.
(And hence I assume the "omg it doesn't matter if they are right or wrong you'll get squashed by the lawyer charges alone anyway" is less of an issue over here.)
Sorry but your argument just doesn't hold up. The "Movie Industry" would LOVE to build very big pipes and sell you a movie that you could play for forever plus 1 day IF they knew for sure and dead certain you would not immediately then burn it onto to 15 DVD's and give a copy to all your friends who didn't pay for it.
Why in the hell do you think they spent millions coming up with DRM, copy protection, etc,etc ad naseum? WHY because people think that if they buy ONE DVD or download one, for some reason they think they have the right to start reproducing it and giving to anyone they want or putting onto a torent site for millions of other people to NOT pay for it.!
I would bet a very large amount of money that if we got the CEO of Disney in a room and asked him, "He if you could be completely sure that each copy sold would stay one copy would you scarp all this DRM bullshit, he would say "In a heartbeat". Why because DRM is a pain in the ass for them just as much as it is a pain in the ass for everyone else.
The movie industry taken as a whole is not that insanely profitable. Yes Avatar is going to be looking at a 500% ROI but when you start diluting that with movies that break even, lose money or make very little in profit then things look a little different. Viacom the parent of Paramount has about an 11% profit margin. News Corporation has about 10% profit margin.
So yes they are making money but on the whole it is not that kinds of sums that so many people think. Yes James Cameron made a nice tidy sum on that but the vast majority of the money gets turned around and invested into new projects which in turn pays a LOT of people who do all the other jobs it requires to make movies.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
The IT-department of the parliament are real BOfH, and they do what they want, being a MP or minister is something they REALLY don't care about, they've already blocked thepiratebay in the webfilter and thinking they would allow that traffic is really naive. They actually have large poster over the helpdesk (open like 2h/day) that says "Happy people are idiots"
If you were in Japan, Spain, or about 20 other countries, 13 would be above the age of consent.
In Japan, 13 is the national age of consent. Age of consent is restricted by various prefectural laws and is generally 18. Your statement is similar to saying that there is no age of consent law in the USA. While it is true that there is no federally defined age of consent (for civilians) in the United States, no one is likely to believe such an obvious mis-statement.
There's a problem with trying to apply a number one finds on the internet to a foreign culture of which one has little direct knowledge. Quickly estimating the plausibility of a given statement depends on one's familiarity with the facts with which the statement concerns itself. Being mindless of one's ability to discern truth from untruth can lead to strikingly absurd statements being given full credit in society at large. Witness the Age of Exploration with its El Dorado, the bestiaries of the Middle Ages populated with fantastical creatures, or even the current fascination with popular psychology.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
Great, I'm moving to Sweden and starting The Real Pirate Party. Our platform will include roaming the seas and capturing merchant ships and this Swedish law will grant us complete immunity from prosecution!
Privateers be scummy dogs of the state, not Real Pirates, ya yella'-livered land-lubber!
Myu:
Since I can't mod you 'wtf,'
The Pirate Party is a political party in the country of Sweden whose goal is to promote free speech in all forms. The internet is simply one method of distributing such free speech. No one, at any time, has ever seriously made the argument that anything represents the Internet as a whole, mostly due to the definition of Internet (a computer network that links computer networks through a series of communication protocols, such as TCP/IP, SMTP, FTP, etc).
By the way, parent claimed that the Pirate Party is a political branch of the internet (which it isn't, it is a Swedish political party), your personal political choices have nothing to do with whether or not that is a true statement. I do not understand why you dislike the methods and motives used by this political party when its motives are to promote free speech and its methods are to follow the Swedish constitution in Sweden. What do you disagree with?
What do you feel would be "moderate" enough to attract a wide body of support?
I'm not sure I know the answer.
I'm not so much for less government as effective government. I am assuming that in the longer term, this will result in less, and lest costly, government.
I'm not so much for restricting anyone's liberty to do as they will, as long as their right ends before swinging at my nose.
Perhaps the biggest split is the concept of Government as a Power to help Citizens in need. I believe there in fact may be two parties spawned over that.
What else?
Regards.
Free speech, fine. Got absolutely no opposition to anything they say on freedom of speech, with them 100%. It's when they link such a thing to the ability to take otherwise-sold creative works for free (i.e. commit mass copyright infringement) that I take issue. GGP did not say that the PP is "a political branch", he said "THE political branch". The only one. I object to being lumped in with them, or the whole Internet being such, as I do not agree with them, and not everybody does. Just because I use the Internet does not mean I suddenly have to believe in copyright infringement and such being good (which is not, for what it's worth, the same as me thinking free culture and such is bad).
I write bullshit
As for all Policy, I would like a specific set of Actions to be taken.
Climate Inquiry
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1706476&cid=32779586
Not quite. And the Wikipedia article glosses over what really happened, implying that personhood was granted by a court ruling. It wasn't. The 14th amendment was not initially interpreted as granting personhood to corporations. The decisive precedent was set in 1886 - by a court reporter (!), not a judicial decision. See Douglas Rushkoff's Life Inc., pp. 13-14:
Here are more details about the incident - along with optimism that the courts were chipping away at corporate personhood. That was 2003. Since then as we know the supreme court has confirmed the rights of corporations as persons. I can't think of a better example of the distinction between morality and the law (well, apart from the appalling travesty of Dred Scott, which has a certain malevolent symmetry to this).
GP said it was the political branch of the Internet. You are not the Internet (this should have been obvious when I quoted the definition of Internet for you). Therefore, the statement cannot be construed to represent anyone. Nor can it be construed to suggest that random people are members of a political party.
Meanwhile, the Pirate Party includes non-commercial sharing as a principle, not copyright infringement. Copyright infringement and non-commercial sharing are in fact no more related than the personal use of social security numbers and identity fraud.
From their declaration of principles: (their, not mine, I'm not interested in discussing the subject at the moment)
Dilbert RSS feed
as much as I like getting the newest ${tvshow} I don't think this is a good way to go about it.
I am sure most people here are aware that the pirate bay is facilitating copyright violations, sure you might call it something else, same thing as google does ble ble ble.
This kind of misuse could seriously hurt the Swedish parliament...
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
A claim that movies are going to disappear if everyone downloads is silly considering that so many masterpieces of world cinema were realized through private patronage or state arts funding and were never intended to turn a profit.
This is full immunity, but it can be revoked if approximately 83% of parliament support the charges. This law is meant to protect the political opposition from harassment by the government. I may be wrong here, but I believe most wester countries have similar protections against turning towards dictatorship.
She made the willows dance
The irony is that the same people who are for gun ownership rights, without compromise, are also usually in favor of maintaining a large military. If we didn't have such a big army all the time, maybe it wouldn't be necessary to have our civilians armed to the teeth.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Democratic People's Republic of Korea
New Economic Perspectives
Don't mistake The Pirate Party for the Pirate Bay.nice opinion in this topics. Useable Technology
The industry shills and assorted astroturfers are out in force I see. Tell me, corporate slave, will your paycheck be enough when we finally catch you? Will that money be worth your life? Expect no mercy.
Yee-haw! Squeal like a pig! Weee!
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
No, the Pirate Party's goal is not free speech. It's unbridled copyright infringement. Free speech is what groups like EFF promote.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
That's excellent, and it would be wonderful if quality films could be created these days on just this sort of funding. But honestly, do you believe the generation that is currently bitching and whining about copyright would contribute a red cent to a project to create a "masterpiece of world cinema" solely through private patronage? And I assure you, if the state tried funding it you'd hear the "liberals" (or more specifically, those calling themselves that) bitching about "big government" spending taxpayers money where it doesn't belong.
There's really no win/win situation.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
You have the Pirate Party confused with The Pirate Bay.
There is a huge difference between working towards decriminalization of file sharing and support of unbridled copyright infringement. The pirate party is pushing for reduction of copyright to a single 5 year term and changes in the patent system (the merits for both are debatable), not the removal of the concept of copyright infringement.
Yes. There's always going to be fantastically wealthy people with an interest in the arts, even if the masses don't want to pay anything.
The United States isn't the only country in the world. In most of the European Union, a system of government arts funding is well entrenched and no one complains. And even in the US, there's a surprising amount of funding and tax breaks at the state level. Just the other day I was watching a Jim Jarmusch film, and the credits acknowledged vital help from the state of Louisiana, not a place people would necessarily think a bastion of enlightened culture.
If you live in Sweden, how come you're confusing the Pirate Bay with The Pirate Party?
If it's the name, then please explain the reasoning behind Marklund and Guillou creating Piratförlaget :)
it's in my head
Anyone who casts their vote solely based on rights to piracy is deluded (and surely young). There are far more important issues... These niche parties are pretty much equivalent to throwing votes away.
Ogre Wedding Planners llc.
If copyright and fair use were built right, torrent trackers would be a niche, much as NNTP servers are. The content middlemen^W producers have themselves to blame.
In an unrelated question, what the hell is up with your drug and prostitution laws? You guys make the USA look like cokehead ravers.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
That's not much of an accomplishment, but Scandinavians in general speak pretty good English (with some exceptions). Germans who bother to learn English also tend to have good pronunciation. The best English is spoken by the Dutch. Londoners come in around #27, right behind Glaswegians but ahead of East Indians.
Not sure which laws you are refering to, I am against all drugs, and even though I drink alcohol I think it should be banned too, but it can't because the economy might depend on it. We have very good prostitution laws that aren't targeting the prostitutes but instead those that buy sex so the poor women that are prostitutes don't have to suffer in jail etc.
Nazis also did some good things, but they were still nazis.
I'm not going to argue with you, but... wow, never thought I'd live to see that in a /. post...
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.