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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,
When the real news is that the swastica-waving "democratic nationalist" party Sverigedemokraterna got a seat in the parliament.
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."?
I'm going to need to to repeal some environmental laws on my property then. Ever since they passed a law prohibiting me from mining there, I've been unable to extract revenue from that resource.
In case you missed my snark, how can you steal revenue from an object that you yourself own? Once a work is released, it becomes public property. The only thing these people 'own' is the granted right to control the reproduction of that public property. That right is granted by the government. I fail to see how the government ceasing to grant that right would be theft.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Politicians in other parties will be thinking about that 1% next time they sit down to dinner with the RIAA.
No sig today...
Actually it demonstrates that most swedish media ignored the pirate party for the last few weeks before the election and instead focused on the "standard" election questions of jobs, healthcare and similar issues. Also, there's been a lot of anti-PP hollering from people claiming that anyone voting for the pirate party would be helping the sweden democrats into parliament. Essentially the pirate party and their issues have been completely ignored lately.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Piraty Party itself ignored whole area of jobs, healthcare and so on. The actual important things that government should take care of, and what majority of people care about. For most people they are more important than the ability to get entertainment for free. That's how democracy works.
Please don't go down this road, I've argued this way too many times, just go to their website and read up on things before making arguments that have been answered a thousand times before.
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.
From Wikipedia:
--
* Overall: ”Promoting global legislation to facilitate the emerging information society”
* Copyright: “We claim that today’s copyright system is unbalanced” Hence their position that copyright laws cover only commercial uses of the copyrighted material
* Patent: “Privatized monopolies are one of society’s worst enemies.” Hence their position that patents are obsolete and should be gradually destroyed. Regarding patents on pharmaceuticals, the Pirate Party proposes increasing government support for R&D to make up for loss of private R&D if there were no patent protection for innovation.
* Personal Privacy: “All attempts to curtail these rights (e.g. privacy) must be questioned and met with powerful opposition.” Hence their position that anti-terror laws nullify due process and run the risk of being used as repressive tools.
--
There you go, now continue arguing.
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'
slightly off-topic:
"If this was successful... whats next, the auto theft movement for "Rightfully freeing car from their owner for anyone to use."?"
Car sharing is actually a very good idea. :)
Not that people should be forced to share cars they own, but a more extended use of car sharing, PRT and public transports would be very good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_sharing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_automated_transport
Would you care to elaborate a bit ? I hope you realize that file-sharing is not only about copyrighted materials.
True, it is just 99.3% about illegally sharing copyrighted materials. Strangely enough it aligns with the vote percentages.
Most voters are not people who would vote for someone just because of one narrow point.
You must be young?
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.
Copyrights have become now "life of the author + nearly a century" - please explain how this isn't the most rampant and vivid infringement of the deal ("sure - we, the public, will protect your work even though we don't have to; but after a decade or two it must go into public domain in return").
One that hath name thou can not otter
If majority A wants to screw minority B, then democracy has got you covered! Well, to within a constitution, but constitutions have never covered all possible methods of screwing.
However, democracy doesn't protect against stupid decisions. Democracy is only as good as the people who use it.
(Mods, bring it on! I'm not even trolling, but it never stopped you before!)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
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?
The only problem here is that your wooden furniture is made from a resource that is expendable, requires transportation costs, and non-replicable (at least for the very near future.)
But let's say that you could make normal everyday things that could be freely copied... say a brownie. And let's say that you could create billions of copies of said food and transport it anywhere in the world in under a second for practically no cost... do you still demand payment for cooking that brownie? Or would you accept that cooking brownies probably isn't going to make you millions of dollars and your brownie might make some kid in a third world country happy for a while? Maybe we now have people who cook brownies out of kindness. Maybe these brownies have heart and care baked into them instead of being filled with only the most popular beats, err, ingredients, just to sell as many as you can copy yourself, for free.
I'm all for capitalism. I'm all for people making money. I'm all for people being successful. I'm for people being innovative in making money. However, I am not for people simply living off one invention the rest of their lives with no further effort. Artists, if they want to make money in their field, can go out and perform live acts for people. They can get out and do actual work instead of sitting in a golden throne room hitting a copy button and letting the government protect the income of their button pushing finger.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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.
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.
Don't know about democracy, but that's the essence of free market.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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...
How is democracy related to stealing revenue from other people?
It isn't, but it IS directly related to whether or not big corporations can buy their own laws on a whim.
Cue the RIAA, DMCA, ACTA, etc., etc.
What the RIAA is hoping is that downloading a $1 file can end up with you losing what has become a basic human right (ie. Internet access).
Copyright laws are the foot governments are using to wedge open the door which allows them to spy on everybody. Every round of copyright laws gets more demonic. Seriously, how can a copyright law ("ACTA") be debated in total secrecy? What's to hide...?
Voting Pirate is a sensible option if ask me.
No sig today...
PS: Copyright laws also have the potential to waste an awful lot of taxpayer money if the RIAA gets its way. Money spent in protecting an obsolete business model isn't money well spent, it's an unwinnable 'war' anyway....
No sig today...
And if the people who did make it into the Swedish Parliament have any sense, they'll modify that immunity clause to exclude deliberately dangerous criminal acts.
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".
Just because the arguments have been repeated a thousand times, does not make the voters convinced. In fact, I think some of the more embarrassing moments have been when PP have been asked about their policy on something and pulled some really stretch logic to somehow connect one argument to their principles, because really they have no policy in that area. The party has been highly focused on causes and haven't really wanted a deeper ideology because they fear many would disagree with it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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!
Well, as this demonstrates only 0.7% of Swedish people (the land of pirates) think copyright infringement should be lawful. The rest 99.3% think it should stay illegal.
Good troll, down boy. The actual number is 30% (swedish source) who think it should be illegal last year, down from 38% in 2008. The majority has wanted to legalize it since 2006 or so. It's simply just not a big enough part of ordinary teenager's lives, there has not been the kind of mass copyright lawsuits you've seen in the US. If they tried, copyright law in Sweden would change so fast the copyright industry wouldn't know what hit them.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> Well, to within a constitution,
There's no reason to suspect majority A wasn't present and willing to screw minority B at the time the paper was written.
Constitutions aren't apolitical documents. They can protect a certain status quo if people choose to respect them, but they're no more likely to protect a good status quo than a bad one.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
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.
"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.
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!
Your guess is likely correct in that the media only has room for "one" contender. This election it was the racists - last election it was the pirates.
Media attention = votes
it's in my head