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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.'"
Swedish Pirate Party Fails To Enter Parliament
Arrrrrr!
The Parliament had a portcullis made from the finest iron! The swine poured boiling oil on my mates from the battlements! But the archers... blast ye archers! The air was a maelstrom of quills and death!
Arrrrrrr!
Trolling is a art,
How is democracy related to stealing revenue from other people?
If this was successful... whats next, the auto theft movement for "Rightfully freeing car from their owner for anyone to use."?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
When the real news is that the swastica-waving "democratic nationalist" party Sverigedemokraterna got a seat in the parliament.
Politicians in other parties will be thinking about that 1% next time they sit down to dinner with the RIAA.
No sig today...
While the article is correct, the swedish green party, miljöpartiet, has officially supported decriminalisation of noncommercial filesharing since just after the EU election. I would guess that most of those who voted for the pirate party in the EU election voted for the greens now, since there was no doubt that they would get in.
In fact, the greens were very successful in this election so despite the pirate party's failure, 7% of the riksdag actually supports legal file sharing which is not a bad situation in any way for the pirate movement.
I voted for the Pirate Party in the EU elections. But even then, when it got some seven percent of the votes did I think it would make it to parliament in the national elections. And while I agree with a lot of their views, their focus seemed all too narrow for getting my vote this time. Especially when a party like the pseudo-nazi Sweden Democrats got in.
Seriously, did anyone really think such a thing would make it through ?
It's the "pirate" party for crying out loud, in what universe is the word "pirate" not considered a villainous term ?
Romanticized, yes. Get's the girl at the end of a single Disney movie, no.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Then they need to drop the childish name. "The Pirate Party" makes it sound like they are a bunch of rebellious kids flaunting how they like to break the law and get away with it.
If they want positive economic and legal reform, then they should adopt a name that is expressive of such reform, in a mature and positive light.
Maybe some thing like "the digital party" or "the free information party" or maybe pull a trick out of the other side's hat and choose something like "the information protection party" or "cultural preservation party."
I hope four years is enough time for them to grow up.
...but you're anti- million-dollar lawsuits over a few dozen MP3s illicitly traded, fed-up at the viciously draconian DRM schemes being pushed on consumers, and frankly downright concerned that your children could cause you to lose your Internet access and your house over a file transfer.
Is it seriously that farfetched to consider voting for a party this extreme when there's absolutely nothing in the middle of the spectrum as far as protecting consumers and citizens from runaway litigation and settlement schemes?
I absolutely believe that you should pay for software if you want to use it and the author is selling it, I've actually started selling some myself. But who else is out there to rein in the gross overreach of the copyright lobby or seriously fighting for privacy rights at that level?
Society is still not ready for this progressive thinking mentality.
The people currently working in the government grew in a time when media (or intelectual property as some want to call it) was a scare resource, thus they do not understand the current situation.
We need to wait some time, maybe one generation, when politicians, leaders, and in general other decision makers (e.g. grown people with some power) are individuals who grown understanding the nature of media; how it can be shared in a costless manner, and the advantage that such thing provides. We are still not ready, but we are getting there.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
How does he figure that? I (a Swede) haven't heard or seen anything from them since the election for the European parliament. I think it would be more correct to call it their worst election campaign ever.
So the truth finally comes out: now one gives a flying fluck.
Not even surprising enough to warrant a sarcastic choke on the next sip of my coffee.
-paul
The swedish Democrats (read anti-immigrant party) did make it in. Intresting prediction by Gerald Celente in a dutch free newspaper today. "Hate of Islam can no longer be stopped". When even Sweden starts going natiolistic, you know things are bad.
So, freedom of information. NO.
No to immigrants. Yes.
Sad. And yes there are issues, but the problem goes deeper then just Islam, you can see that with the Roma in France. There is a clash of cultures going on and a ruling elite that is totally in capable of dealing or even acknowledging this.
The same free newspaper ran a story last week on the Roma being deported. It said the troubles started after Roma attacked a police station after police has shot one of them. Then it goes on to make the claim that this decision was totally wrong and ill thought out... NO, not the decision of the Roma to attack a police station in a country were there reputation already sucks, no, it is the FRENCH reaction to one of its police stations being attack in protest of the legal shooting of a criminal by foreigners that gets attacked.
Talk about NOT getting the point.
And no I am NOT going off-topic. The same applies to copyright infringement. The ruling elite would LOVE to make out that this is people stealing music from hard working artists who are begging for bread. What it is REALLY about is a mother scrubbing floors for a living putting a song performed by a multi-biljonair behind a video of child and uploading it on youtube to share with friends. If the copyright extortion industry had its way, we would have to pay a performance fee for singing "Happy birthday" and pay for having our earphones on to loud or if we whistle a tune. Any tune because every country has a collection agency that collects for every song regardless of whether the author wants it to be collected.
Times are changing. The internet has changed the rules of copying and mass imigration has changed the rules about cultures meeting. And either we act on those changes or ignore them until things blow up. Remember the last time the ruling elite were unable to deal with a changing reality? I think it was about 1932 that it came to a boil. Read up on that era. There is plenty writting about the years after but far less about before. You can't stop it when it has happened, so how about learning from history how to stop it happening again?
Copyright infringement is performed by millions, perhaps when so many do it, you just got to accept it as reality rather then try to protect the out of date business practices of a few filthy rich.
If you look at the politicians who are pro-copyright, pro-internet filtering and pro-immigration, you notice that they all try to claim that their methods are working have worked for decades and any problems are just radical extremists. And if you are not careful a real radical will stand up and claim to have the answer and be listened to.
What do they really want to do about filesharing? Create a war on filesharing? That went so well with the war on drugs. Put every filesharer in jail? Give every kid a criminal record for sharing Celine Dion? No, that is impossible especially since the police is undergoing budget cuts throughout Europe and has plenty of calls on its man power for the war on drugs and war on terror.
And if you ask the current elite WHY they side with the copyright industry, you often don't get any better answer then 'eh, because that is how it always was'. No, copyright is a new thing. It was changed because of new tech, so why not change it again because of even newer tech?
Either politicians change with the changing world, or they find themselves changed. Right now all parties in sweden have declared they won't work the new Swedish Democrats. Sure sure, we heard that before. Next election they will become far far larger because the current elite won't actually change anything and then they will have to work with them. And still they won't change a thing.
The Roma were kicked out of France. It is to late to stop the revolution, it has already happened. 10 years ago, this would have been unthinkable. So the ruling elite didn't think about it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And the revolution has already happened with music. In the times of Napster only a fraction of the population had access to reliable internet with acceptable speeds. The music industry did NOT adapt to the changing times and instead sued and then sat back congratualiting themselves on their achievement... and the times kept changing and now an entire generation has grown up were downloading is the norm.
And NO, iTunes is NOT the counter revolution. Selling the songs for the same price but without the production and distribution costs is just cynical money grabbing rather then the capitalists "passing savings on to the customer".
The elite thought they could stop the changing times and didn't. Nothing new there. Trying to change back the clock is far to late. The music industry should have switched business models pre-2000. Like the dutch Free Record Store wanted to do. Remove CD's, instead have a computer with all music loaded on it and burn or upload it to a MP3 player on demand for a low fee. The advantages are HUGE. Every song on sale in the smallest retail location. No surplus stock, no damaged stock, no theft, full listening of songs in the store without wear and tear. If you know the rental costs of a highstreet location, being able to skip on endless racks of CD's would save a fortune. Lower the costs of music and increase the earning for everyone involved while giving customer the service they want and all the music ever recorded... what did the music industry say? No, and if you try it, we will sue you.
The revolution in France wasn't about telling people going hungry to eat cake. It was about an elite totally unable to grasp the reality of the day.
It must be something in the champagne the elite drink that makes them blind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I must say, it's a relief seeing your post. I've been a little concerned that the moderate middle ground on the copyright issue may be shrinking. Actions by the Big Publishers have been polarising the issue somewhat, which is not entirely fair, since copyright is actually quite a bit bigger than them. I've been seeing more people here in favour of abandoning copyright, or almost as bad, abandoning copyright for non-commercial purposes (which is where 99% of the violations come from).
We desperately need solutions, but nuking copyright just creates more problems. What we really need is a tighter corporate leash. That would solve not only the copyright problems, but a fair few other problems as well. I too would vote for a party who would be in favour of reasonably scaling copyright and copyright enforcement back, but I find the pirate party's stance simply unacceptable.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Nothing ever gets changed politically by people who are being reasonable. To end up in the middle, you have to pull as strong in your direction as your opponents pull in the other direction. Sad but true.
It's dead in the water I'm afraid.
It may have been funny in the Swedish dorms, but it's holding you back and globally now.
Time to get serious. And this from a pirate. So have a burial at sea, make it walk the plank, whatever. But jettison the moniker.
- js.
Take this from a Swede from Stockholm:
I haven't noticed or heard anything from our about the Pirate Party in the streets or in the media. Except a couple of months ago when there was some discussion regarding the PPs view on child pornography.
Just a few days me and my friends discussed this, as its peculiar that during the European Parlimentary election there was a lot more buzz about the PP.
My guess is a that the xenophobic Sverigedemokraterna (Swedish democrats party) has taken a lot of the focus from PP as the "new" party with a chance getting into the parliament.
Digital products mean an *end to scarcity* of one aspect to all of our-humanity- lives. Keeping them artificially restricted and scarce is absolutely abhorrent from a future perspective.
Suppose we have a breakthrough where..whatever..solar panels get to be 75% efficient, and you can print them out for five bucks, so much so that near everyone can have abundant cheap energy. Are we supposed to keep paying the old "scarce resource" prices to the energy cartels when the power was made from coal? Just "because" the old monopoly was used to so much a "unit" kwh cost?
This is what has happened with digital products, they have maintained an "official" price for a digital product that reflects a per unit pricing model of a hard copy tangible product from last century, and this is NO LONGER THE ONLY OPTION. TECHNOLOGY GOT LOADS BETTER AND CHEAPER, but we DID NOT get price drops that parallel this tech advance.
THIS JUST FUCKING SUCKS!!!!
How dare those assholes want to maintain that ridiculous price! How fucking dare they, plus use bribe money to corrupt the legal system to help maintain their buggywhip industry?
"Copyright" is supposed to be of general public benefit, for a limited time. Not only have they maintained a market fuckup high price that in no way is justified today, but they have extended copyright terms WAY WAY WAY too long. They violated the social construct, through coercion and BRIBERY. They also COLLUDE to maintain these high prices, and get away with it, despite that being allegedly "illegal", yet we see no "justice" efforts to rein them in on those artificial market busting high prices.
It is RIDICULOUS to charge serious money for a few megs of transfer. It's beyond a ripoff into actual harm to society in general.
IF they had dropped prices down radically, to reflect true costs of production on a "per copy" basis, these anti piracy shrill industry voices would be taken more seriously, but they did NOT. They corrupted the system.
Fuck 'em!
I neither download what I am not "supposed" to, NOR will I EVER pay their price gouging prices for digital "products". I do without, or use free and alternative products instead, or pay a REASONABLE fee for a digital product. NO, I am NOT going to drop ten bucks on your digital book, or music or movie, if it is in digital form, those are completely out to lunch ridiculous prices.
We have close to seven billion people on the planet now, most have access to the net in one form or another. If this isn't enough of a potential market to sell your digital crap CHEAP, and make your money from VOLUME SALES,and that "volume" part is to shut up those econo 101 assholes who always chime in on cost of production, then..well...people who can't see that, go to hell. Fucking luddite price gouging law corrupting socially stifling future destroying bastards.
Digital products get pirated because for the most part because they are offered "legally" at extreme ludicrously inflated prices, plus ridiculous DRM and other restrictions on the end user who wants to BUY your shit. Your shit isn't being hand scribed by monks, it isn't even being stamped on two cents worth of tangible plastic that needs to be shipped anymore, so there is NO REASON at all for these big players to want to charge what they are demanding.
So people reacted when they knew they were being screwed, they ignored the getting screwed part and made their own copies. If these digital product sellers had not been complete assholes about prices in the first place, when it became obvious how cheap they could sell copies and STILL MAKE A GOOD PROFIT, none of this shit would have happened in the first place. The digital sellers FUCKED UP AND RIPPED OFF HUMANITY FIRST. THEY BROKE OUR SOCIAL LAW FIRST!
NO, digital products do not deserve a 100,000% "per unit" markup. fuck.that.shit. We won't put up with that for any other product, there is no reason to put up with it for digital "products" either.
I think normal people will have a hard time understanding Pirate Party politics anyway. Copying something is obviously wrong, explaining that it's a reaction to the RIAA's tactics, the way that people can buy and sell laws, and the way they want to monitor everything that's done online in the name of "copyright" is long and complicated.
I prefer to explain it as the party for people who are fed up with the weasels we normally get to vote for, and leave it at that. The Pirate Party is unlikely to ever win serious power but I want politicians to have one eye on those votes next time they sit down to lunch with the RIAA.
No sig today...
arrrrgh invariably I had to have one spelling error.
The title of my previous post should read we are NOT ready :(
And not with this group doing the fighting. Its little more than idiotic to have a single party, with a single set of issues, trying to win this.
Chile for example has become the first country in the world with net neutrality, and it has no pirate party, or single issue party.
This reminds me of the "further left" doing everything they can to weaken the Democratic party, becausw eif they lose then...
or something its never very clear.
Nothing ever gets changed politically by people who are being reasonable. To end up in the middle, you have to pull as strong in your direction as your opponents pull in the other direction. Sad but true.
Not necessarily true. In a similar vein, if you oppose race-based affirmative action, I'd suggest that people *not* join the KKK or the nazi party in an effort to "end up in the middle".
Not necessarily true. In a similar vein, if you oppose race-based affirmative action, I'd suggest that people *not* join the KKK or the nazi party in an effort to "end up in the middle".
Damnit! Why didn't you tell me this last week?
There is no rational middle ground on piracy. If you're going to take the stance that copying is bad, you have to fight it all out. Scorched earth. Anything less, and you might as well legalize file sharing. The risks of getting caught file sharing are so low, that you must have extraordinarily draconian punishments for the risk/reward ratio to work out against file sharing.
There are three choices. You are either for locking down *everything*, for locking down *nothing*, or you are for ineffectual bumbling. Even the first option is more respectable than the last option.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Except he's not selling copies of his bank a/c. for profit. Epically failing, but I suspect that you just trot that out every time someone points out the wrongness of copyright.
There was a fair and valid vote. They didn't win. That doesn't mean democracy didn't work. That means more people didn't support them than did.
If they really believe that they must "reconquer democracy" because they lost in the election, then they want a dictatorship, not a democracy.
"Pirate" party means that you already yield to MAFIAA slang, and fully accepts it. Real meaning of the word "pirate" is in ocean near Somali...
A better name would be "Information democracy party", "Information freedom party" or the likes.
Couldn't they've just made some digital copies of their votes?
"We desperately need solutions, but nuking copyright just creates more problems."
We've never done so before, how do you know that? Also, pretending that pirates are hurting anyone by merely effortlessly copying something just creates more problems. They've taken nothing that someone already had, and as such, didn't hurt them.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Geert Wilders didn't have that many votes at the start either. Now he is dictating the next government of Holland.
Oh2, you are one of the ruling elite I am talking about. Totally incapable of accepting that things are changing differently then you wish them to change. Go ahead, ignore those 6% of the voters. They are a minority, but how many agree with them quietly?
Islam is just the latest to be blamed, the Roma example made this clear, a new target can be found in seconds to blame all societies woes on. You need to target those woes, not by going after the scapegoat but after the underlying causes. Once the hunt for the scapegoat has started it is often to late.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In contrast, the Pirate Party of Finland is registered as a political party and has just surpassed the other small parties as the largest non-parliament party at 3000 members, which is only about 1400 members less than the Green party of Finland (currently as a government party).
You really shouldn't bring that up. It is a horrible metric of anything and bringing it up is misleading.
With any other political party in Finland, belonging to the party includes supporting it financially. There is a yearly membership fee. So, amount of people who vote the parties is orders of magnitude larger than the amount of registered members. With the pirate party, that is not the case. I "joined" when it was new, later on have decided that I will not waste my vote by giving it to them... But have never revoked my membership. Why would I? My membership is secret and it costs nothing and I kinda support the cause. To give some contrast to that, I am a member of the Left Youth of Finland and will probably vote the Left Alliance in 2011 (like I did in the previous elections)... But haven't registered myself as a member of the Left Alliance. I might also vote the green party in the parliamentary elections of 2011 and could even consider giving my vote to the communists in the municipal elections of 2012 (it is unlikely but possible). Yet, I am not a member of these parties either: I might support their causes but I'm not that dedicated to them. With the pirate party there is no such (financial) barrier.
So the membership of the pirate party should never be compared to the other political parties.
We've never done so before, how do you know that?
Thought. In fact, I haven't found a plausible scenario where nuking copyright doesn't cause problems, and believe me, it's not from a lack of trying. I've argued with countless people on the subject. Most people come up with some explanation of what our culture will be like post-copyright. In every single one of them, I have found at least three holes in their argument, or plausible concerns that they hadn't really considered.
The discussion is moot anyway. There's a much better way of approaching copyright reform: do nothing. Well, not do "nothing" exactly, but do nothing on the legal front (except perhaps some cosmetic changes, like shorter terms, perhaps repeal the DMCA (although I'm not particularly against the DMCA)). Pass/redact no laws, and start demanding that artists allow free sharing. Copyright allows for that case, and in fact, it's happening right now. Only reward artists who do allow free sharing, and refuse to deal with those who don't. They'll have to change their business model quicksmart, and they'll have no sympathy with the courts, since you're not doing anything illegal or morally wrong.
Why is this superior? Well, for a number reasons:
1) It doesn't artists into something they can't manage. If they can't manage to sustain free sharing, they can always revert back to the original business model, lick their wounds and recover.
2) If this new business model has some adverse effect on quality/quantity, then consumers have the safety net of choice. They can choose whether or not to buy into paid culture, either exclusively, or maybe just a bit on the side. Simply put, we get more choice, which is a massive bonus.
3) The system in place is a tried and true method of attracting artists, so working within it, and changing it organically from the inside out, it not only the safest way, but really the only sensible way, without having to invest in countless studies on the matter prior to tearing the system down.
It is far, far, far superior to anything I have heard from the proponents of piracy. Maybe such a superior system exists, but until it becomes known and proven, my system is by far the best chance we have for actually instituting effective change.
Pretending that you know that my carefully reasoned arguments are pretence just makes you sound like an idiot. Sorry, but it's true. :-/
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"but until it becomes known and proven, my system is by far the best chance we have for actually instituting effective change."
It is unlikely that it can be known or proven until it is first tried.
"Pretending that you know that my carefully reasoned arguments are pretence just makes you sound like an idiot. Sorry, but it's true. :-/"
Your "carefully reasoned arguments" aren't so carefully reasoned. They merely replaced the words "potential profit" with "demand" and formed the same illogical arguments that I've seen time and time again.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
'Tis true. Which is why we do studies and trials first.
Not convinced? Well, how about we try mass suicides. That may help our copyright problems. Hey, we don't know until we try!
Odd. You never pointed out a problem in my reasoning. You only tried to equate pirating with not buying (which I have since rebutted, and is not a problem of logic), and commented on the similarity of my carefully reasoned argument with another carefully reasoned argument that you've encountered before. I asked before, and I'll ask again: where, specifically, is my logical flaw?
Also, I notice you're conveniently ignoring the other half of my post from the other thread, where I prove that piracy is harmful. You didn't seem to have too much problem with the careful reasoning there.
I think, before you reply, you need to look back at my arguments, pinpoint exactly where I went wrong (and no, arriving at the opposite conclusion to you is not evidence that I'm wrong), or convince yourself that they are correct. Take as much time as you need, because otherwise you're just going to start arguing in circles.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"Also, I notice you're conveniently ignoring the other half of my post from the other thread, where I prove that piracy is harmful."
I didn't ignore any of your post in the other thread, as I read it in its entirety. I just don't quote the entire thing.
"I think, before you reply, you need to look back at my arguments, pinpoint exactly where I went wrong"
Already did that with my other reply (and my new one, as well). Your "demand" argument makes no more sense than the "potential profit" argument (which I pointed out in my other posts).
"because otherwise you're just going to start arguing in circles."
I have a feeling I'm going to be arguing in circles, anyway, because you'll keep insisting that somehow demand is hurt.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!