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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."
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!
Sovereign Immunity? In Sweden is it legal to sue the government for copyright infringement?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I'm so proud, it makes me want to cry.
And move to Sweden.
As if Swedish women weren't enough incentive.
Politicians are cheaper than islands?
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.
If the pirate party came into parliament I (as a Swedish TPB and PP supporter) think the laws will be changed swiftly to make this illegal, just like it happened for Zenon Panoussis. Even stronger forces than the CoS are against TPB.
But I'm glad that they're doing this, at least it's great PR..
Quantum hacker.
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.
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.
Election coverage. If there's no new being reported on piracy/privacy related issues it will be hard to gather momentum around The Pirate Party in the September national elections.
it's in my head
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.
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!
Now we just have to get 4% of the vote but that should be easy because we'll give a portion of the loot in exchange for votes.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Peruse this for an idea of what you might be getting yourself into.
Democracy is democracy. You get the votes, you get the power.
Can you name a democratic country where everything the government does makes sense (eg. "war on drugs" is prevalent in most of the world). Is having the country run by Christians or oil magnates really any more sensible than pirates?
No sig today...
Sadly, unless you are bringing the parliament on your ship, and moving it over the other ship before boarding it, you won't be covered by that loophole as you won't be 'inside' the parliament ..
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
so unless you plan on pirating from INSIDE the building
It worked for the Permanent Assurance.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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.
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?
Ok, the example might have been bad but the point still stands. One can imagine all kinds of illegal/immoral/unethical things done 'inside' the parliament as well, with the protection of immunity as long as you can convince 4% of people to support it.
Which differs from governmental practice in most countries how exactly? Fraud, bribery, extra marital affairs, Who the hell needs imagination? It's common bloody knowledge!
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
<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.
If they do it to avoid prosecution why not take it one step further and just start hosting the items themselves?
Because they are more interested in promoting free speech than actually distributing copyrighted materials. They want to show that free speech is absolute, even when it happens to be inconvenient to other parties. They want to make sure that hosting a website that basically lists people interested in engaging in copyright infringement should be allowed as free speech.
It's the same reason the NRA fights assault weapons bans in the US. The vast majority of gun owners couldn't give two shits about high-powered assault rifles, but as long as the debate is squarely focused on those, then their hunting rifles and target pistols will remain relatively unrestricted.
The Pirate Party isn't really interested in providing easy access to your "0-day warez!!11!!!ONE!!1". That's just a means to get people thinking and talking about what free speech is and should be and to focus debate on modifying existing copyright laws, which are, in their opinion, a source of undue enrichment for media consortia.
Just beam the other vessel aboard the parliament, and you're in the clear.
Unfortunately (well, not really!) the protection only applies to criminal charges that carry a maximum of 2 years imprisonment.
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...
Ok, the example might have been bad but the point still stands. One can imagine all kinds of illegal/immoral/unethical things done 'inside' the parliament as well, with the protection of immunity as long as you can convince 4% of people to support it. If they were doing this in order to illustrate the absurdity of that law, I would applaud them. If they actually intend to use it, then I don't think they are doing themselves any favors.
If its done by the parliament it's ethical according to Sweden. There are no objective ethical values because each country has a different national interest.
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.
Given that the *AAs have attempted to manipulate the Swedish legal system, I'd say that this has less to do with the right to piracy than getting pissed that a set of wealthy, largely foreign, entertainment cartels have tried to shanghai their courts and politicians.
It makes you wonder how different things in the US would be if our government had any real concept, let alone the threat of no-confidence.
No, it's not necessarily ethical; rather, it would be legal (which you probably meant). Two things often align, but are very different beasts. Ethical (or more accurately, moral) viewpoint is with respect to right and wrong; legality just whether it is acceptable according to local legal standard.
And while ethical issues are indeed not black-and-white, they seldom have anything to do with national interests.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
The NRA and other gunslingers fight those laws because they consider the constitution to be absolute. The constitution grants US citizens the right to have weapons to protect themselves against forces both foreign and domestic. The police forces active either local, state or federal are some of those forces which could easily become a military force against citizens as has happened in many other 3rd world countries and they have fully automatic armor-piercing weapons.
Also, citizens should be able to protect their cultural heritage and art forms through whatever form they believe is best. What would have happened to many cultures if Rembrandt or da Vinci burned their paintings after a person paid them to view it? Or what would the Sixtine Chapel be if nobody was allowed to view it because they couldn't find the copyright owners after a few years? What good would a Gutenberg Bible be if he had encrypted the words and gave decryption keys on small self-destructing papers to only those who paid him a yearly fee?
There is a lot more to torrents and so-called 'pirating' (also known as copyright infringement, not a crime in most of the developed world) and the Pirate Bay than just getting free stuff on expense of the authors, many authors have long since lost royalties on those works and all royalties are pure profit for whomever bought the original publisher out.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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.
If its done by the parliament it's ethical
No, it's not necessarily ethical; rather, it would be legal (which you probably meant). Two things often align, but are very different beasts. Ethical (or more accurately, moral) viewpoint is with respect to right and wrong; legality just whether it is acceptable according to local legal standard.
And while ethical issues are indeed not black-and-white, they seldom have anything to do with national interests.
Governments don't have ethics but they do have laws. If it's legal then it's ethical according to the government.
Also: What they usually end up fighting is "assault weapons" bans.
An "assault rifle" is a military designation for a short-barreled select-fire (i.e. can be switched to fire bursts or continuously) gun designed for use in restricted areas - such a popping up through a hatch in a tank. (They usually fire such a low-powered bullet that the semi-auto (one-shot-per-trigger-pull-only) civilian plowshare versions are banned as hunting weapons. Too cruel: The prey is wounded and escapes to suffer, rather than dying quickly.)
An "assault weapon" is a legal term invented by gun banners to ban civilian guns. It refers to semi-auto guns with any of several scary-looking but irrelevant accessory features, and is used to whittle away at the right to keep and bear arms.
Also: Much of what the second amendment is about is the ability to resist a runaway government - foreign or domestic. It functions as an insurance policy against a runaway government just ignoring the constitution and doing whatever it pleases to the population: The population CAN fight back, and the threat has retarded this tendency of government for over two centuries. (Example: Nixon was rumored to have asked a think tank what would happen if he postponed the elections. Think tank told him over half the population was armed and such an event would be a trigger for an uprising.)
Also: NRA is one of the wimpiest of the pro-gun organizations. For instance: They actually opposed bringing D.C. v Heller to court. Others with more guts: Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO: putting teeth in "Never Again!"), and a number of others.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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?
I'm not sure that I would really classify all members of Homo Sapiens Sapiens as human... And I've observed a rather high concentration of inhuman examples at high levels of government.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
From their declaration of principles: (their, not mine, I'm not interested in discussing the subject at the moment)
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Governments don't have ethics but they do have laws. If it's legal then it's ethical according to the government.
Interesting point, however, all governments on earth are constructed entirely of human beings.
The ethics of human beings who work for the government are very different from the ethics of human beings who don't. If you work for the government as a soldier then right and wrong is whatever leads to success/mission accomplishment.
If you're a government civilian employee then right and wrong is whatever is legal regardless of how you feel about what goes on.
So right and wrong are determined by profession as well. What is right for an individual in one profession would not be right for an individual in another profession. What is wrong for an individual in one profession would not be wrong for an individual in another profession. It's wrong for a cop to break the law, it's not wrong for a criminal to break the law. It's wrong for a politician to accept a bribe, it's not wrong for a corporate employee to accept a bribe.
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
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