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

Kind of misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

If they want to be taken seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Best election campaign ever?

[narooze]

"The Swedish Pirate Party did its best election campaign ever. We had more media, more articles, more debates, more handed-out flyers than ever"

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.

Sign of the times

[SmallFurryCreature]

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.