Swedes Cast Write-In Votes for SQL Injection, Donald Duck

An anonymous reader writes "The Swedish elections were held recently (the third Sunday of September to be exact) and it seems that a few people tried to interfere with the election by voting for parties which were in effect named to be SQL injection attacks or similar. Clever stuff! Little Bobby Tables in real life." That wasn't the only oddity of the election; reader MZeroOne writes: "The Swedish Election Authority published the results of last Sunday's general election and even though the current prime minister retained power, the candidate who got the most individual handwritten votes was Disney's Donald Duck." Maybe the existence of the Hard Alcohol Party (237 votes) helps explain why the Pirate Party didn't have a better showing.

Comments

The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[FlorianMueller]

Since a number of activists from the anti-software-patent movement joined the Pirate Party, including its first MEP (Christian Engström), I've been following its development closely and at some point even lent them a signature to support their participation in an election in my country (Germany), even though I ultimately didn't vote for them.

I've commented on the Pirate Party's failure to evolve into a serious political force. The EUobserver, an independent website covering European politics, published a streamlined version of my analysis. The original version goes into some more detail and appeared on my blog.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[FuckingNickName]

What every young, unrepresentative group of loud, idealistic men don't realise is that most people just want peace, a job and a house. And, if you spend your time employed rather than campaigning for the abandonment of the intellectual property concept, you will have enough money to pay for it anyway. And what you cannot pay for, you put on credit. And debt doesn't really matter... continue working hard and you can pay fast enough that no-one takes your stuff away... your government is not going to let civilisation collapse even if everyone else is in debt too.

Life has been easy for quite a while. And of course I want to exploit you if I have the intelligence to do so. And I want to protect my legal rights to make it possible, not to share. Then I'm even more secure and my surroundings even more luxurious.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Nursie]

The only bit I object to in your argument is this -

And, if you spend your time employed rather than campaigning for the abandonment of the intellectual property concept, you will have enough money to pay for it anyway.

It's not necessarily about being able to afford to buy stuff. It's about rights and reform in the new digital age.

Other than that you're spot on, most people would rather get on with life and vote for whoever requires them to think about it the least.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[tenchikaibyaku]

As not all the ballots are counted as of yet it's possible that the final result will differ a few points, but it's worth noting that the Swedish Pirate Party basically seems to have retained its voters from the previous election:
2006: 0.63%
2010: 0.65% (preliminary)
This even though they were more or less absent from the public debate before the election.

I also think that the existence of a Pirate Party here in Sweden has managed to affect the public debate regarding piracy and privacy related questions more than what shows up in the polls.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[mikael_j]

Actually, the grandparent (or rather, the people described in the post) missed the point. The point isn't "we can't afford stuff! stuff should be free! WAAAH!", it's about rights, personal integrity and in extension safeguarding a free and democratic society. However, most people would rather get a $50/year tax cut and not think so much...

And it really helps them when people from established political parties describe the pirate party as thieves, slackers and people who just want something for nothing. Makes it a lot easier to just think "I can afford stuff, I don't need stuff for free." while you vote for whoever promises you the biggest tax cut.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[TheRaven64]

In the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, they got 90 votes in the last UK election. To put this in perspective, Mad Cap'n Tom, a joke candidate, got 84 votes in the same constituency. If the Pirate Party actually want to achieve something, then they need to start being constructive. A few suggestions:

• Change the name. Pirate Party makes them sound like a bunch of teenagers.
• Propose a sensible alternative to copyright, or propose a reasonable term for copyright. Their current proposals, if implemented, would cause significant damage to the economies of most western countries.
• Focus more on the privacy and security policies - people are more sympathetic to people who want to be left alone than to freeloaders.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[vadim_t]

No, it's not about that.

I don't object paying for stuff. I pay for indie games, and donated to the musopen project and some others. Many of those are things I don't even have to pay for if I don't want to.

I object paying to parasites who want to create laws that will make it impossible for me to avoid paying them, because they want to introduce taxes on media, internet connections, and restrictions as to what my hardware can do. Simply not buying their stuff doesn't do it, because even if I don't buy or pirate a single CD they'll still put a tax on my hard disk and connection, throttle my torrent of CC licensed music, include DRM crap in my hardware, and prevent centuries old material from entering the public domain. If I don't buy, they'll say that I'm torrenting and use that as a justification for the things I've listed.

That bullshit has to be removed at the source, through laws that make it illegal and cut its funding. I'll gladly pay the artists, but I don't want to give a single cent to the parasites from the RIAA, MPAA and ASCAP.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[wertigon]

Actually, I disagree... The Pirate Party is everything but a one-hit wonder. However in the world of politics, things move slowly, by neccessity.

The Pirate Party made a really bad election this year, but that does not seem to have demotivated any of it's members. If anything, it has made them even more interested in continuing the fight. The fact that members from other parties join PP here in sweden only serve to prove that PP is here to stay, IMO.

So a one-hit wonder? Nay. Not when their core issues are so important. But they do need help, and lots of it...

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Aceticon]

Intellectual Property law created what in effect is a tax paid directly to other persons/companies:
- Against the natural laws, it gives people and companies ownership of ideas and lets them charge you every time you share an idea.

It's very simple really: with Intellectual Property you have to have authorization to give/share things with others and pay for iy, without it you're free to do as you which with what you have and what you know.

I'm surprised this point is not raised more often by the "Pirate" political parties: instead they tend to get drawn into abstract discussions on (for most people) obscure points ...

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Joce640k]

This ... and the fact the the government is piggybacking all sorts of censorship and internet-usage-log laws on top of what the RIAA wants. And the fact that the government is selling out to the RIAA in the first place, thus undermining the entire democratic process.

I was never particularly militant, I'm now old enough to have a job/house/mortgage, I'm voting pirate in the next elections.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[dkleinsc]

I'm not sure the name is their problem. After all, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party has won elections in Britain.

No, their major limitation is that they're primarily a single-issue party, and their stance on that issue has been taken by some of their opponents. So while they haven't experienced much by way of electoral success, as far as putting their ideas into mainstream politics in Sweden they've done a fantastic job.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[Archangel Michael]

Taxes are about freedom as much as your "rights, personal integrity and in extension safeguarding a free and democratic society" are. In fact, I would suggest that any government who's tax rates are greater than 20% on personal income is deeply infringing upon the right to pursue happiness.

Of course, well regulated citizenry is key to socialistic bliss. And damn everything else, I want to download music and not pay the artists a wit for it.

Speak all you want about sticking it to the man, and how you're for the poor oppressed artists and whatnot. And poor starving artists still exist, in spite of all the attempts of the Pirate Party and geeks protesting the MAFIAA.

The point is, here we are, ten years into the age of File Sharing and whatnot, and all those people downloading all that music and not paying for it are doing is making noise and giving me a headache.

Meanwhile government fines people for growing food in their backyard.

Government skimming off the top of the productivity of people is 100 times worse than anything the MAFIAA is doing to artists.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[retchdog]

distractions from the serious business of slashdot, of course.

Re:The Pirate Party probably was a one-hit wonder

[wootest]

To begin with, I don't know of another Swedish party with an official position on pharmacy patents.

There will always be people who want "copyrighted stuff for free", and since it became plausible a few decades ago, there always has been nearly free availability of "copyrighted stuff". The difference is that the rest of the democracy fundaments weren't being torn down in defense of it.

The IPRED directive intended to halt file sharing, as implemented in Sweden, perverts the concept of common carriers (it's not the PO's fault if you send people pot in envelopes), a fair trial (the civil trials are exempt from setting reasonable damages, they can seize your bank account, raid your house, make you the target of an investigation without telling you and you have to prove that you're not personally guilty) and reinvents the shame pole (you have to take out an ad in a newspaper of your own payment saying that you did something wrong). Some of these concepts date back to the Roman Empire. Is it really proportional to the crime?

There are more directives and motions like these, in other areas, and the Pirate Party is fighting them too, like supporting the repeal of a recent law enabling a defense authority, FRA, to tap every packet of Internet traffic that crosses the country borders in the interests of "preventing external threats", painted by a former Stasi employee as a tool they could only have dreamed of. Or why not by railing against the implementation of the EU Data Retention Directive, which would document every cell phone call or email. Don't confuse poor research and jumped conclusions with their actual, openly-discussed agenda.

But even where the focus is on file sharing, I don't think you'll agree after reading through the actual law that the measures are proportional, necessary or effective.

Something else: the summary mentions the "Hard Liquor Party". Although tiny (the data from the election agency lists where they appear specifically on write-in votes because their per-party ballot papers weren't available), they're a real political party, and they want to reduce the Swedish alcohol consumption by 50% to achieve many other beneficial side-effects, like decreases in domestic violence, poor performance in schools, heart failure and so on. While they didn't get my vote, I empathize with their politics.

Re:Hard Alcohol Party...

[Adambomb]

R;12;Skåne län;83;Helsingborg;01;Helsingborg Norra;0701;Ödåkra V;Stick it up your fucking ass!;1

oh my.

Re:If people are tossing their votes away . . .

[halfaperson]

Well yeah, that is actually often the point of humourus votes. It shows you support the democratic system but perhaps none of the available representatives, whereas ignoring to vote means not using your democratic rights at all.

Re:If people are tossing their votes away . . .

[bint]

No, it just says a lot about what *these people* think about quality of the candidates.