The Pirate Party Now the Biggest Party In Iceland

jrepin writes The Pirate Party now measures as the largest political party in Iceland, according to a new servey from the Icelandic market and research company MMR which regularly surveyes the support for the political parties in Iceland. Support for political parties and the government was surveyed in the period between the 13thand 18th of March. The results show that The Pirate Party has gained increased support. Now, support for The Pirate Party totals 23.9%, compared to their previous 12.8% in the last MMR survey.

Comments

so

[circletimessquare]

feel free to seed bjork torrents guilt free

Re:so

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't directly assume that the Pirate Party has any politics regarding copyright infringement.
While many of the different Pirate Parties to some extent have freedom of information exchange on their agenda the main reason for their popularity is the push for more government transparency and less insight in personal lives.
Voters have in general lost faith in the block politics that only argue about if people should have to pay for services directly or if the government should be a middle man, partly because the traditionally liberal parties have switched over to a more non-liberal fascist line.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that a party shows up with a main point that the government should have less knowledge and less influence over the individual to replace the void left by the older parties.

Re:so

[Anonymous Coward]

The page you read up upon doesn't talk specifically about the Icelandic Pirate Party. There is very little connection between the Pirate Party in different nations and that Wikipedia page is an outstanding example to why you shouldn't use Wikipedia as an example.

Re:so

[Opportunist]

If you look closer you might notice that the PP isn't for abolishing copyright, but rather for reducing it to a sensible form. I.e. pretty much what it was allegedly supposed to be: An equalizer between the interests of those who produce and those who consume.

And I don't think we have to go any further than "from the death of the artist plus the lifetime of his grandchildren" to see that it's out of whack.

Sounds like it's time...

[halivar]

...to air drop some Freedom on those dirty pirates.
/duck
/run

Re:Sounds like it's time...

[AmiMoJo]

Iceland is increasingly sounding like one of the most democratic places in the world. The people really do seem to be in control.

For example, when their banks failed they decided not to bail them out, and rejected government plans to compensate other countries which would have screwed them. As such they have avoided crippling austerity. They did what was in their best interests and screwed the bankers and politicians who caused the mess. It's incredible.

Re:Sounds like it's time...

[Anonymous Coward]

That being true, keep in mind that most of the money in Icelandic banks was from foreign depositors. It's easy to oppose the bailout in such a scenario.

Re:Sounds like it's time...

[kooky45]

Yes, they didn't bail out the banks, but in doing so they allowed someone in Iceland to steal £30,000 of my money.

Re:Sounds like it's time...

[AmiMoJo]

Everyone knew the risk when investing in a foreign bank. The bank failed, you lost, sorry but you could have used a UK bank. Okay, the interest rate probably wouldn't have been as good, but that's how financial risk tends to work.

Re:Sounds like it's time...

[Argos]

As such they have avoided crippling austerity.

Utterly false:
Iceland seeks end to austerity with new center-right government.
And the "...politicians who caused the mess" were re-elected in 2013.

Re:Sounds like it's time...

[barc0001]

Banks fail, even in places like Iceland, the UK and the US. Now, many countries have bodies set up to guarantee a certain amount of a given account's deposits, like the FDIC in the US will guarantee the first $250K in an account if the bank fails. But then again the US also has almost 400 million people and the largest economy in the world. It'd be a little insane to expect that Iceland with a population of less than 350,000 people could offer the same guarantees, especially on foreign deposits in privately operated banks. That would be privatizing profit, but socializing the risk, hardly fair.

There are always risks, you took one, it went badly. Such is life.

Re:Sounds like it's time...

[Rei]

BS.

First off, while you can't see it anymore due to a robots.txt page, I could previously show you on the Internet Archives what Landsbankinn's old Icesave page looked like. Just one or two clicks from the front page anyone could go there and read their account insurance policy. The account insurance policy was thus: the primary insurer was a private fund established by the Icelandic government. The secondary insurer was the UK government.

Now, either you put a ton of money into an account without reading the readily accessible information about what was backing the account, meaning you're an idiot, or you're willingly blaming the government of Iceland for something that they never promised to insure

Secondly, the UK and the Netherlands took Iceland to the EFTA court. Guess what? They Lost. The EFTA court ruled that Iceland did indeed follow all EU banking laws and that the private fund met the letter and spirit of the law. Just because your banks chose government backing rather than a private fund doesn't mean that you can retroactively damn us for having not made such a ridiculous decision.

Lastly, the UK government *did* pay out all insured minimums, as the secondary insurer. Meaning that if you lost £30,000, you're complaining about losing money that wasn't bloody insured. Which makes you even more of an idiot and a whiner. Were you really so stupid as to put a huge amount of money into an account without checking what the insured minimum for the account was, and then claim that an entity that never promised to ensure any of your account - the government of Iceland - "stole" it?

It's Iceland

[jratcliffe]

You can be the largest political party there and still have your membership fit inside a Ford Transit van without violating any seatbelt laws.

I predict some serious VPN revenue

[gweihir]

If they manage to have a sane copyright law not too far in the future, that may be quite an economic advantage.

I'm polite so...

[hcs_$reboot]

...I won't ask WTF is that "pirate" party and what are its specificities since it's on /. first page. And why that's not in TFS. but reading wikipedia as usual gives the party's stance. Mainly

The party has not officially taken a position in favour of or against Iceland's accession to the European Union. The party has however concluded the following in a party policy on the European Union:[3] Iceland must never become a member of the European Union unless the membership agreement is put to a referendum after having been presented to the nation in an impartial manner. Should Iceland join the European Union, the country shall be a single constituency in elections to the European Parliament. Should Iceland join the European Union, Icelandic shall be one of its official languages. If negotiations on the accession of Iceland to the European Union halt, or membership is rejected by either party, a review of the agreement on the European Economic Area must be sought, to better ensure Iceland's self-determination. It is unacceptable that Iceland need to take up large part of European legislation through a business agreement without getting representatives or audience.

and the one you were not expecting
Edward Snowden: On 4 July 2013 a bill was introduced in parliament that would, if passed, immediately grant Edward Snowden Icelandic citizenship

Damn It!

[Greyfox]

No wonder global warming's been so bad lately!

We need a US Pirate Party. They're kind of a one-platform party, but at least it seems to be a rational platform that you can actually explain to someone. I'm guessing the average Pirate Party candidate is much less likely to be a hypocrite than some of the other parties' candidates.

Re:voting age reform

[Immerman]

Before you go blaming the young, perhaps you should look around at the state of the world and think long and hard about what the old have been doing with it for generations.

History repeats itself

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Iceland has been the home of Vikings for centuries, so not much has changed.
It's no coincidence that the first Pirate Party was founded in Skandinavia...

Keep in mind...

[denzacar]

Iceland is a country of 323.000 people, of which some 200.000 live in the Reykjavik metro area.

Iceland's electorate is some 235.000 people (of which some 63% actually show up).
Reykjavik's electorate is some 85.000 people (of which some 66-75% actually show up) of which some 20.000 voted for the Best Party in 2010.
Which was a "member of the International Pirate Party, but not associated with Pirate Party Iceland".
They elected a comedian and a talkshow host JÃn Gnarr in 2010, and have dissolved the party after that one term in the office.

Among the political promises were the following: "a polar bear for the city's petting zoo; palm trees for its icy waterfront; free towels at its swimming pools; a rearrangement of statues; and a commitment to "sustainable transparency."
Their political platform was not much different, promising open corruption, canceling all debts, free bus rides and free dental - constantly making a point that they are just making promises, with no plan of keeping them.

The president of Iceland has been in office since 1996. They keep voting him in.
Number of votes he won last time - 84.036.
His major opponent, a journalist with the national TV service, won 52.795 votes.

It is basically a large town.
In a geographically favorable place, just off the coast of everything, with free geo-thermal energy.
Those who do vote are voting by inertia or by treating politics as a joke.
It's just the same as everywhere else in the western world, only colder, smaller and with more volcanoes and less army.