Swedish Pirate Party Fails To Enter Parliament

pickens writes "TorrentFreak reports that with 95 percent of the votes counted, it is clear that the Pirate Party will not enter the Swedish Parliament. The Party is currently stuck at about 1 percent of the total vote, nowhere near the 4 percent threshold it needs. This means that neither WikiLeaks nor The Pirate Bay will be hosted under Parliamentary immunity and the Party won't get the chance to legalize non-commercial file-sharing or criminalize 'copyright abuse' as they planned. 'The Swedish Pirate Party did its best election campaign ever. We had more media, more articles, more debates, more handed-out flyers than ever. Unfortunately, the wind was not in our sails this time, as it was with the European elections,' says party leader Rick Falkvinge. The party will now have to wait four more years before they have another shot at entering the Swedish Parliament. 'Each generation must reconquer democracy,' adds Falkvinge. 'Nobody said it was going to be an easy fight.'"

Comments

Re:Democracy?

[icebrain]

My thoughts exactly.

It's one thing to be upset with the film/recording industries for claiming some "right" to inspect all internet traffic, or to secretly place monitoring software on peoples' computers without their knowledge, or for creating invasive DRM schemes that rely on phoning home to work. It's one thing to be angry about making it illegal to format-shift media for your own personal use, or "end-result" patents that only specify a result and not a specific method, or lawsuits filed with no proof that are just intended to extort money from innocent people.

It's quite another to demand some "right" to the works of others, to say that I have a perpetual right to copy, distribute, and use anything you make, for free, just because it exists. Are you going to say that any wood furniture I might make at home isn't mine, that it's freely available to anyone that can come get it? That things belong not to the people who put the time, effort, and their lives towards making them, but to whoever can take it?

I have a pet suspicion that most of these "I have a right to everything you do, for free" types haven't ever had to work to support themselves. It's real easy to sit back and claim that you have a right to everyone else's efforts (and they to yours) when your next meal depends on someone paying you for the work you did for them.

Re:Oh, the Pirate Party

[characterZer0]

They got 20 seats, not 20%. Voter turnout was less than 100%. The number is far less than one in twenty.