Pirate Party 3rd Largest Political Party in Sweden

[cindy25]

the Republican party needs to add a strong internet privacy platform, to hell with Hollywood-they all love Obama anyway


http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-3rd-largest-political-party-in-sweden-090506/

Pirate Party 3rd Largest Political Party in Sweden
Written by Ernesto on May 06, 2009

Support for the Swedish Pirate Party surged following the Pirate Bay verdict and today it became the third largest political party in the country. When they are elected for the European Parliament next month, the party hopes to end the abuse of copyright by multi-billion dollar corporations.

pirate partyThe explosive growth rate displayed after the Pirate Bay verdict has skyrocketed the Pirate Party’s member count and today they’ve surpassed that of the Center Party. Of all the established parties only the Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party have more members.

The Pirate Party has tripled its ranks in only three weeks up to 44,000 members, and it’s on course to become the second largest political part in the country. TorrentFreak caught up with party leader Rick Falkvinge to congratulate him on this unprecedented achievement, and we used the opportunity to find out more about his future plans. First off, we asked him if the recent surge in members can be solely attributed to the outcome of the Pirate Bay trial.

“The Pirate Bay verdict was not a single event, but the final straw in a long series of events,” Falkvinge replied. “We tripled our member count in a week, and have kept growing at an accelerated pace. With just one month till the European elections, the timing of these horrible events arguably work as a catalyst for change.”

Falkvinge is looking forward to the upcoming European Parliament elections on June 6 this year. “I’m extremely optimistic,” he told TorrentFreak. “It’s not a question of ‘a’ seat any more. If everybody who is angry with the Pirate Bay verdict goes to vote, we will get at least one seat, and probably more.” Although things are looking good, the road to Brussels is not guaranteed yet. There are two hurdles left.

“One is to get our ballot papers out — contender parties are not served by the Election Authority, but have to distribute their ballot papers to all 7,000 polling stations by hand. That’s a logistical nightmare, but with 13,000 activists, we should be able to fix that. We had 1,600 activists in the last election, and covered 93%. The other hurdle is getting our folks to actually vote, but I believe they’re still angry enough.”

A question that has been under reported is what the party actually plans to achieve when they arrive in Brussels. One of the questions we asked is how torrent sites and trackers such as the Pirate Bay should be handled. “The Pirate Bay is infrastructure,” Falkvinge told us. “The messenger immunity, that the messenger is never responsible for the contents of a message, is crucial to how our society works. The Lobby is trying to gut that immunity, along with boneheaded politicians who see a chance to look tough on crime.”

“First of all, copyright needs to be reduced to cover commercial activities only. That would get copyright out of ordinary honest peoples’ bedrooms, which is badly needed. That would also make everything that happens over The Pirate Bay legal overnight, and so, there would be no copyright infringement that TPB could potentially facilitate. At that point, since they can’t be facilitating, aiding or abetting anything illegal [anymore] in any interpretation, this would also mean that they can be as commercial as they like.”

Falkvinge further told us that he’s toying with the idea of writing “Nothing that happens at The Pirate Bay violates copyright law” directly into Sweden’s copyright law. In 2010 the Pirate Party hopes to enter the Swedish parliament, and they want to make it absolutely clear that The Pirate Bay four will be acquitted on appeal.

“But that’s not enough,” Falkvinge told TorrentFreak. “The issues at stake are more important than that. The Lobby is constantly nagging on the gray area, making inroads, establishing new precedents, and acting very aggressively. They can do this without any risk at all, and that needs to stop. The Lobby is damaging the open society and our economy at a level that I think should be criminal, especially since they’re doing it as a commercial operation.”

So, the Pirate Party wants to reduce the abuse of power and copyright by the entertainment industry, and make that illegal instead. With the current level of support and indications by recent polls there is no doubt that they will get a seat in the European Parliament, and we hope they will be able to be heard there. Avast mateys!
Saved in: Hot Off The Press, Legal Issues, Politics and Ideology

[sailor]

Whoah. Good news. I hope they last. And that they make a dent, but it will be hard without corporate sponsorship.

[TheEvilDetector]

Nice work.

[heavenlyboy34]

Sounds like the Swedes are better at dealing with parties than we are. We just have a totally corrupt duopoly. :(:p:mad:

[cindy25]

the lesson is how simple it would be to get the 18-30 year old vote just by adding this issue.


then add making Social security ponzi voluntary, non interference with foreign governments banking and internet laws

[samiam5211]

the Republican party needs to add a strong internet privacy platform, to hell with Hollywood-they all love Obama anyway

I'm not in favor of the government directly monitoring anything we do without cause.

I do think that it should be within the rights of an internet provider to monitor and log what you access through their server. I am talking about a generic log of files transferred, not the data in those files. There is surely a way to log this information without it including any personal information other than an some nondescript ID tag that the ISP can later match to you if it's discovered you've broken a law.

Nor, would I have any problem with the ISP being free to share that information with anyone (including government) they choose to. If there is a law against copyright violation, and a record company wants to use that data to press charges against people who have violated that law, then so be it.

There would be ISP's who choose not to log their user's information, and anyone uncomfortable with the logging could use those. If the ones logging could not remain competitive, then they would either stop logging or fail.

If you don't like a law, change the law, don't ignore it.



So, the Pirate Party wants to reduce the abuse of power and copyright by the entertainment industry, and make that illegal instead. With the current level of support and indications by recent polls there is no doubt that they will get a seat in the European Parliament, and we hope they will be able to be heard there. Avast mateys!
Saved in: Hot Off The Press, Legal Issues, Politics and Ideology

How is the entertainment industry abusing power and copyright?

If a person feels that the cost of music is too high, they can simply choose not to buy it. Music isn't a necessity. You can choose to do without it. If enough people agree that the cost is too high, and they also stop purchasing music, the price will have to be decreased.

Government restrictions in general are bad, even if it's a restriction that isn't being placed on you. It's still bad. It still gives people the expectation that government is there to remove all inconvenience from our lives.

The reason we keep losing power to the government is because we keep handing it our responsibilities. It's not unlike a child living with his or her parents. As you get older, you take on more responsibility, and you get more freedom. The only difference is we are doing it in reverse. We are handing over responsibility at the cost of freedom.

The only real movement that needs to take place is one that inspires people to accept more responsibility for their lives. The rest will take care of itself.

[purplechoe]

I prefer the Ninja Party personally.

[cindy25]

personal non-commercial use should not be subject to copyright.

if you xerox 10 pages from a book or share a dvd that should not be copyright infringement. if students want to use a Disney character in a school play they should be allowed to without Disney screaming.

and copyrights must have a life span. steamboat willy from the 20s is still not in the public domain, and that is crazy

the ISPs are now mostly public utilities, and therefore setting their own rules is not an option. when dial-up dominated I would agree the market worked, but allowing Comcast or AOL to set their rules when they are part of Hollywood (its AOL Time WARNER) would not work

[idiom]

The DMCA is a dreadful thing. However it is a part of the WIPO treaty. It also pro-corporate.

[samiam5211]

personal non-commercial use should not be subject to copyright.

if you xerox 10 pages from a book or share a dvd that should not be copyright infringement. if students want to use a Disney character in a school play they should be allowed to without Disney screaming.

Why? You aren't purchasing the paper that makes the book, or the disc that the movie is on. You are purchasing access that allows you to be able to view that movie or read that book whenever you like.

If you make a copy of the book or movie for yourself to have a spare, you aren't violating the spirit of the copyright. As far as I know there aren't any laws against doing that either.

Giving your copy of the book or movie to a friend violates it because now two people have access that allows them to view or read the copyrighted material any time they wish, but only one of those people actually paid for that access.

Sharing or giving the book or movie to a friend doesn't violate the copyright either, as long as you don't have a copy, because only one person has the access and that access was purchased, just not by that person.

It's like buying a chair, and then deciding to give that chair to a friend. It's not stealing. If you give a copy to a friend, it's like buying a chair, then stealing an identical chair from the store and giving it to a friend.



and copyrights must have a life span. steamboat willy from the 20s is still not in the public domain, and that is crazy

Why should it be public domain? crazy isn't a good enough reason. Why doesn't physical property become public domain after a certain amount of time passes? If my great great grandfather had a watch that was passed from generation to generation should it become public domain because it is 100 years old?

The revenue from intellectual property belongs to the creator of the property and anyone that they enter into an agreement with to share those profits with. The survivors of the creator have just as much right to those profits as I have to my grandfather's watch. If a record company makes contract in 1920 with an artist, that contract doesn't have an expiration date just because it was over 80 years ago.



the ISPs are now mostly public utilities, and therefore setting their own rules is not an option. when dial-up dominated I would agree the market worked, but allowing Comcast or AOL to set their rules when they are part of Hollywood (its AOL Time WARNER) would not work


Problem: The ISPs are now mostly a public utility.

Soluton: Make the ISP's a private entity.

Not the Solution: Implement government regulation to offset government regulation.

We have a problem of a government that has it's hands in far too much of our business. We have only ourselves to blame, because our first reaction is to ask government to fix a problem. Often these problems are better solved by telling government to become less involved.

It's quite a mess we've gotten ourselves into. There is too much government regulation and the most popular solution to that problem seems to be more government regulation.

[DamianTV]

Government solution to any problem is usually worse than the problem itself. If Comcast, AT&T and every other mega ISP had their way, you would pay for tiered internet. As in on our low end package you can visit up to 40 websites! Including Ebay, Facebook, and many others... 2nd option the Govt would try to implement is requiring a License to surf the internet.

Then we get to Piracy. Piracy isnt a problem its the result of a currently existing problem. The problem being that copyright laws, and copyright technology are all geared to screw over the average users. For example, most bars will play the football games on their TVs during football season. Pretty normal. Pretty normal until they try to step in and actually enforce some subclause in their "public domain" license with the FCC that a football game cannot be displayed on a TV larger than 60 inches without paying for some other ridiculusly expensive license. The size of the average TV has gone up quite a bit in the last few years, and say you have a 62 inch widescreen TV in the local bar and grill and there is a football game on it, its hardly piracy.

Then we get DRM. Digital Rights Management software. The software that ends up screwing over the average user more than it stops piracy. Neighborhood Joe just went to the store and bought a brand new game for his computer at $60 bucks, gets it home, but cant play it because the DRM software on the game says that his DVD Drive in his computer is not an allowed brand. Joe cant take the software and get a refund from the store, teh publisher, or the company. Joe just got fucked. So what is Joe to do? Joe turns to the pirates to help him play the very game he tried to pay for in the first place.

Then, as of course, they get to Privacy. Current trend is that people arent giving up their privacy, they are flat out throwing it away. Giving it away would be to walk into Best Buy, and as is common practice in Best Buy, you buy a pack of gum and they want your Phone Number. Most people flat out give it to them! Not only am I completely mortified by that, Im mortified on so many more levels to see that these same stupid people not only give Best Buy their Phone Number each and every time they ask for it, they turn around, go buy some weed, then go on Facebook (on totally public profiles) and tell their friends on Facebook, VIA Facebook they got some weed and they are going to have a party tonight. These people I dont feel sorry for. They will be riding away in the cop cars for violating Federal Drug Laws and literally wonder "how did they catch me?" not realizing the obviousness of their situation. They may as well just call the cops themselves and tell the cops that they are going to have a party tonight and there is going to be (currently) illegal drugs at this party and all their friends should come.

That aspect of Privacy is only the tip of the iceberg. Its as if people would want to not have any privacy to begin with so they dont have to be burdened by listening to people like me, or the hellatious chore of taking responsibility for protecting their privacy. So when their Insurance Companies triple their insurance rates because they go to McDonalds once a week, they can wonder how they knew about that to begin with. They dont stop to think that maybe their Banks are doing exactly what they are doing now, selling the records they collect of peoples shopping trends to anyone that is interested in buying them, like thier Insurance Companies. This is probably not as tinfoil hat as you might think and not as far off as many would have you believe. You dont want to pay for someone to get a quadruple bypass surgery because they ate like shit and didnt exercise. If we continue our trend towards Socialized Health Care, this is exactly what we will end up with. But it doesnt even stop there...

Lets see if I can think of another aspect of Privacy that people take for granted. What religion are you? Me? Im an athiest, and I dont give a shit if anybody knows it. Joe, he's a christian. Bob over there? He is a Mormon and doesnt have any problem telling you what religion he is. Then Adam over there? He refuses to tell you. Come to find out that he is a Jew and the last time every Jew was forced to tell people what religion they were, we had a Hollocaust...

[samiam5211]

Government solution to any problem is usually worse than the problem itself. If Comcast, AT&T and every other mega ISP had their way, you would pay for tiered internet. As in on our low end package you can visit up to 40 websites! Including Ebay, Facebook, and many others...

If this came to fruition, we have to decide if it was worth it or not. If enough people abstain, the cost will have to fall enough for the customer base to make it profitable for the media company selling the service. Or if there was not equilibrium price because the consumers weren't willing enough to pay for the product it would revert back to the profit model we currently have.



2nd option the Govt would try to implement is requiring a License to surf the internet.

No, just no. I assume from the tone we agree.



Then we get to Piracy. Piracy isnt a problem its the result of a currently existing problem. The problem being that copyright laws, and copyright technology are all geared to screw over the average users. For example, most bars will play the football games on their TVs during football season. Pretty normal. Pretty normal until they try to step in and actually enforce some subclause in their "public domain" license with the FCC that a football game cannot be displayed on a TV larger than 60 inches without paying for some other ridiculusly expensive license. The size of the average TV has gone up quite a bit in the last few years, and say you have a 62 inch widescreen TV in the local bar and grill and there is a football game on it, its hardly piracy.

The FCC needs to go away. The public airways need to become private. There is not right to watch TV. Sure the free media is a valuable service, but it's only a service, not a right.

Copyright enforcement should be a business arrangement.

If the bar and the station could not work out some agreement satisfying the bartender's desire to show the game to his patrons and the station wanting a portion of the extra profit gained because their show was being aired, then the station should be able to deny the bartender access to their station.

If there were no public airways it would be possible for the station to limit access on an individual basis.



Then we get DRM. Digital Rights Management software. The software that ends up screwing over the average user more than it stops piracy. Neighborhood Joe just went to the store and bought a brand new game for his computer at $60 bucks, gets it home, but cant play it because the DRM software on the game says that his DVD Drive in his computer is not an allowed brand. Joe cant take the software and get a refund from the store, teh publisher, or the company. Joe just got fucked. So what is Joe to do? Joe turns to the pirates to help him play the very game he tried to pay for in the first place.

That's a problem with the company producing the game/DRM software. Joe and others like Joe, can choose not to purchase software from that company again. Either companies would suffer enough loss to change their practices of copyright protection or returns.

Also, in the case you give... If Joe downloads a hack or crack so that he can play the game that he paid for then he did not commit piracy. He paid for the access he's getting, he just had to use a tool that is most commonly needed for pirated software.



Then, as of course, they get to Privacy. Current trend is that people arent giving up their privacy, they are flat out throwing it away. Giving it away would be to walk into Best Buy, and as is common practice in Best Buy, you buy a pack of gum and they want your Phone Number. Most people flat out give it to them! Not only am I completely mortified by that, Im mortified on so many more levels to see that these same stupid people not only give Best Buy their Phone Number each and every time they ask for it, they turn around, go buy some weed, then go on Facebook (on totally public profiles) and tell their friends on Facebook, VIA Facebook they got some weed and they are going to have a party tonight. These people I dont feel sorry for. They will be riding away in the cop cars for violating Federal Drug Laws and literally wonder "how did they catch me?" not realizing the obviousness of their situation. They may as well just call the cops themselves and tell the cops that they are going to have a party tonight and there is going to be (currently) illegal drugs at this party and all their friends should come.

I am not a big worrier about my own privacy. I may regret it someday, but I suppose it's a lesson I am going to have to learn the hard way.

I understand people who are protective of their privacy though. But I also believe that the only person responsible for the protection of that privacy is the person in question.

You shouldn't have your privacy taken without your knowledge, but i see nothing wrong with businesses asking for personal information. It's very easy to just refuse. If it were a situation where the business refused to conduct business unless personal information is given, then once again, they will have to suffer the loss of revenue or change the policy.

BTW, one thing I have always wondered....does the constitution protect our right to privacy? I have never found anywhere that guarantees a right to privacy that doesn't require some broad interpretation. If it's not in there, it should be somewhere, because your privacy should be yours to give away. It should not be taken away.



That aspect of Privacy is only the tip of the iceberg. Its as if people would want to not have any privacy to begin with so they dont have to be burdened by listening to people like me, or the hellatious chore of taking responsibility for protecting their privacy. So when their Insurance Companies triple their insurance rates because they go to McDonalds once a week, they can wonder how they knew about that to begin with. They dont stop to think that maybe their Banks are doing exactly what they are doing now, selling the records they collect of peoples shopping trends to anyone that is interested in buying them, like thier Insurance Companies. This is probably not as tinfoil hat as you might think and not as far off as many would have you believe. You dont want to pay for someone to get a quadruple bypass surgery because they ate like shit and didnt exercise. If we continue our trend towards Socialized Health Care, this is exactly what we will end up with. But it doesnt even stop there...

These are exactly the types of things that caused us to allow government to grow over the years to where it is now.

It doesn't matter if protecting your own privacy is a hellatious chore or not, it's still your chore. If you find your privacy isn't worth that much effort, then it's a choice you make.

If you insurance company want's to triple your premiums because you volunteered the information that you go to McDonalds 3 times a week (although I am not sure how they could know unless you told them) then find another agency. If no agency will cover you, stop going to McDonalds, if you really like Chicken McNuggets, go without coverage.



Lets see if I can think of another aspect of Privacy that people take for granted. What religion are you? Me? Im an athiest, and I dont give a shit if anybody knows it. Joe, he's a christian. Bob over there? He is a Mormon and doesnt have any problem telling you what religion he is. Then Adam over there? He refuses to tell you. Come to find out that he is a Jew and the last time every Jew was forced to tell people what religion they were, we had a Hollocaust...

Godwin's Law with a side of non sequitur.



I just don't think we can go around expecting the government to protect the things that we want protected but aren't concerned enough to protect ourselves, then complain when government consumes certain rights in order to perform the task of giving the protection we asked for.

[He Who Pawns]

This is what you call "Blowback".

[KoldKut]

...

[TurtleBurger]

Time to schedule a Pirate Party Money Bomb!

We'll set a record for most pieces-of-eight ever raised for a political campaign!

[ChaosControl]

I think copyrights have a place to an extent, but it gets carried away. I always thought buying a software license that you could only use on 5 computers are stupid.

Of course... I download a lot of tv shows (24, Heroes, Chuck, and various foreign shows), as well as a lot of movies and of course music. So yeah... I like the piracy :)

But hey, I legitimately buy books. They are inexpensive and I absolutely hate trying to read something on the computer. Forums are fine since posts are short, I avoid long posts though just like I avoid novels on computers.

[DamianTV]

@samiam, I agree with you about 100% on all your comments. I was playing Devil's Advocate on most of the topics. Like License to Browse. Yeah, absolutely and emphatically HELL NO.

To avoid a wall of text, Im not gonna try replying to everything you said, just a general, "I agree". The one question you asked tho about Constitutional Right to Privacy, unfortuantely, its not specifically identified. US Supreme Court has defined the "Right to Privacy" as a Penumbra Right. Its not literally defined and spelled out, but is included as a general expectation from the 4th Amendment, Unlawful Search and Seizure. The other problem with it is it restricts the Govt, not businesses or private parties.

Now, as far as free market being effective at telling companies what we will tolerate and what we wont, if we really had a free market, it would work. But you know as well as I do that there is a lot of copycatting between competing businesses. Thats one of the reasons were seeing these Bandwidth Caps pop up everywhere. Hey that sounds like that will make some serious money, lets do it too.

I cant and wont make a decision for other people with regards to what they choose to allow others to know about them. Its their choice, and even though it turns my stomach to see people do what they do, I wont try to tell them how to live their lives. The task of going after those that stand to gain from having access to this information is much more difficult. One thing you said was you didnt know, in the McDonalds / Insurance scenario was how the Insurance Company would get that information. Pretty easy, the person used his ATM or Credit Card at McDonalds. Banks collect this kind of data when their cards are used, and then sell it. There was a recent legal change that required Credit Card companies to give everyone the option to Opt Out of this data sharing. I doubt I could find the law if I tried but both of my Credit Card companies sent me something about this data sharing thing in the same week, and of course I reinforced by Opt Out option on both. Thats just me, and I dont expect everyone to do the same. But as long as people are willing to give their privacy up with nothing in return (not security in a business model), corporate invasion of privacy will continue to get worse.

Lack of Privacy is a means of control. Knowing everything that everyone does, its not difficult for someone on the other side to find something wrong. And if there isnt anything wrong, they can create new criminals with new laws, or find new sources of revenue. As I am only one person, there is no way I could conceive every possible scenario of how the lack of privacy can utterly destroy a person, or to just milk more money out of them. The biggeset threat is that as long as our privacy is not protected, it will be used against us as much as possible.

(self FAIL for not posting a wall of text)

[Kilrain]

Piratpartiet (The Pirate Party) is a one-issue party. I'll be voting for true defenders of liberty - Liberala Partiet (The Liberal Party, as in classic Liberal, not "modern" Liberal).

http://www.liberalapartiet.se/ (In Swedish only)