Swedish Filesharers Start 'The Piracy Party'

sp3tt writes "Tired of being called criminals, a group of Swedish filesharers have started a new political party, The Piracy Party (Piratpartiet in Swedish). The party wants to abolish all intellectual property laws, reverse the data retention directive passed by the EU last month, and protect privacy with new laws. The party expresses no opinion on other subjects. The Piracy Party's webpage is so far only available in Swedish, at piratpartiet.se The party's goal is to get into to the parliament, which requires 4% of the votes, or roughly 225000 votes. Elections are held in September."

Two questions:

How much does it cost to rent a one room studio "summer home?"

And, what are the minimum residency requirements for voting in Sweden?

Re:Two questions:

Most countries require citizenship. I'd imagine that citizenship would at least have some basic language requirements. Of course, judging from the site, that could be fun:

Ge oss dina favoritargument!

You have to love languages where you can combinemultiplewords to expressasingleconcept. I doubt they have German beat, though.

Re:Two questions:

Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and German have the same rules as far as compund words [wikipedia.org] go. Either language can make as long words as the situation requires, but it seldom does require longer words than such as "masseødelæggelsesvåben" (Danish for 'weapons of mass destruction', it's similar in Swedish & Norwegian).

Your two english examples are wrong though, we'd never combine words that way. It would be more like "You have to love languages where you can multiwordcombine in order to singleconceptexpress." Note that those two are the verbal forms of the (literally translated) words multiwordcombination (flerordskombination) and singleconceptexpression (enkeltkonceptsudtryk), none of which are used at all, but are readily understandable. See also Agglutinative languages [wikipedia.org] for some more information on the topic of forming new words by combining others (which does happen in English as well).

Re:Two questions:

The longest Swedish word is: NORDÖSTERSJÖKUSTARTILLERIFLYGSPANINGSSIMULATORANLÄ GGNINGSMATERIELUNDERHÅLLSUPPFÖLJNINGSSYSTEMDISKUSS IONSINLÄGGSFÖRBEREDELSEARBETEN, meaning "preparatory work on the contribution to the discussion on the maintaining system of support of the material of the aviation survey simulator device within the north-east part of the coast artillery of the Baltic"

Re:Two questions:

Soundlikeyodawedo, with our multiwordcombine, yes, hmmm.

Re:Two questions:

Großoberunterkartoffelbreikäsewaffenführer: Chief Head Deputy mashed-potato cheese weapon leader

At least, I think that's what that would mean; I can't remember if "Unterführer" can be split, and it's been about six years since I used German conversationally for any length of time.

Re:Two questions:

Actually, I'd say it's the english rules that are the strange ones. The rule in Swedish, and I believe in most germanic languages, is simply: do not put spaces in nouns, adjectives or verbs (or in any other "word" for that matter).

Think about the english noun "water tap". Notice that it's just that - a noun. If "water" was an adjective, then it would be an adjective and a noun; but it isn't, since if it was, it would make sense to say things like "the tap is water". The first word in "rusty tap", however, Is an adjective.

Though English puts spaces in nouns, it doesn't usually put spaces in adjectives (it's written "able-bodied man" instead of "able bodied man"). I guess that would just be too confusing..

To sum it up, English puts spaces in its nouns. Most other germanic languages don't. Who's being weird? =)

Re:Two questions:

Yup, "everyone" has to love that. Of course in English we're usually too lazy to write it all out anyway, so we just combine the first letters of the words, or actually, any letters that we like to spell something interesting. For a while we were calling this algorithm we developed the Field Uniformity Correction Kit. ;)

Re:Two questions:

"I'd imagine that citizenship would at least have some basic language requirements."

Funny....if we try to do that here in the US...we get branded a 'racist'.

I've been getting a little pissed lately that EVERYTHING is written in Spanish and English. Nowdays, when I have to go through an automated phone system, it starts with a spanish message. What is the deal with that? What happened to immigrants moving to the US, and becoming assimilated into the 'melting pot'...learning English, and fitting into American society?

Sorry...but reading this just hit a hot spot with me of late. I mean...when you travel to another country outside of the US, with the exception of tourist areas...they don't have every sign in 5 different languages, they expect you to pick up on the native language of the country.

I recently heard that Alabama voted to have English as the official state language. All driving tests were in English only....and the ACLU is now suing them...what the hell?

Re:Two questions:

Or better yet, Any swedish girl wants to marry me? =-)

Better yet..

Wouldn't it be better to create your own party in your own country to represent the same ideals? Here in the US I'd be willing to join such a party. Something that supports individual privacy, the right to reverse engineer, the weakening of IP laws (no software/genetic/business/etc patents and short copyright periods), encouragement of open standards, encouragement of open source, etc. I wouldn't call it the Piracy Party though. The Intellectual Freedom party would be could. You could do some good marketing with 'IF?'.

Do Swede young males vote even?

I wish I was Swedish! In the US a few years ago, I tried to convince some local Libertarians to run strictly on the "right to copy" platform. It seems most of those guys wanted to run on the "Smoke Pot" platform, which will generally get you nowhere except with stoners.

The big news here, to me, is that Sweden seems to allow minority opinions into their parliament (similar to Costa Rica and other countries). In the US it is near impossible to get a minority opinion into even a state legislature -- democracy and gerrymandering prevent the minority opinion from ever seeing the light of day.

225,000 votes is a LOT of votes. Does anyone know what the 18-30 male voting record is in terms of actually making it to the ballot box to vote? In recent local elections that I've witnessed (I like to watch), I haven't seen anything but blue haired ladies with walkers hitting the booths. I don't think I saw one person under the age of 40 at my booth (and I witnessed the voters for over 3 hours). I'm not sure how well this would work even if our voting system did allow for minority parties with minority positions to get elected.

Does bork bork bork mean "freedom to copy" now?

Re:Do Swede young males vote even?

http://www.scb.se/templates/Publikation____47578.a sp [www.scb.se]

Crash course in Swedish:

Ålder = Age
Röstande i % av röstberättigade = Voters as % of allowed voters
Män = Men
Kvinnor = Women
Alla = All
år = years
Förstagångsväljare = First-time voters
Samtliga = All

Re:Do Swede young males vote even?

"The big news here, to me, is that Sweden seems to allow minority opinions into their parliament (similar to Costa Rica and other countries). In the US it is near impossible to get a minority opinion into even a state legislature -- democracy and gerrymandering prevent the minority opinion from ever seeing the light of day."

Well, that's the difference between a parliamentary system and the system here in the US.

Re: democracy: It's not democracy that's the problem -- it's the form of democracy in the US. Rules that favor a two-party system, etc. There's a reason that democracy has been called the tyranny of the majority.

Re: gerrymandering -- this doesn't kill third parties so much as it is used to prevent 2nd-party opposition from gaining ground. What really kills 3rd-parties is campaign finance -- few corporations will give tons of $$ to a party unlikely to have any pull when it comes time to pay the piper. Without having any pull, it's hard to get that critical mass of funding where a party can really get going.

Re:Do Swede young males vote even?

What kills minority parties is a lack of a parlimentary body combined with a winner take all system. In the US you can get one more vote then the next guy and then fuck everybody who didn't vote for you without harm. As the grandparent stated due to gerrymandering for the vast majority of the US population there is no sense in even voting for the house of reps, over 90% of the districts are strictly one party affairs.

It's funny how we preach democracy while working so hard to deny people choices and quash minority representation.

Re:Do Swede young males vote even?

The big news here, to me, is that Sweden seems to allow minority opinions into their parliament. . .

Yes, that is why they choose to call it a Parley-ment.

America's founding fathers were well aware of such a system. It was the one they were living under until independence was declared (with the caveat that they themselves were not allowed at the parley table); and so they were aware of its shortcomings and sought to obviate them. They were also well aware that they were trading one set of shortcomings for another. It's wise to remember that when the grass looks greener on the other side.

"Well, we solved that problem. Hey! Where'd that problem come from?"

All that said it's true that I have never had a representative in government, in the truest sense of the word, not one, in my entire life. Nor do I ever expect to have one. Under a parliamentary system I might well have someone who at least represents me in some focused issue or other.

KFG

No copyright == no GPL too!

Although they do a good job of getting media attention, but their message is so extreme, a lot of people will write them off as crackpots and judging righteous IP reformer the same.
The downside of their proposal is that it is extremely profitable for big business, more so then for occasional filesharers. If there is no copyright, businesses will be able to rip of any Linux distro and sell it as their own (or any other piece of copyrighted work). This will rearrange the playingfield, but the ones with lots of money to invest have a big advantage here.
Copyright is a double edged sword: it protects the big evil business taking advantage of musicians and authors, but also protects independent musicians and authors from the big evil companies (if they are smart enough not to sign all their rights over for a cheap meal and a record deal).

Re:No copyright == no GPL too!

I'm one of the few anti-copyright "advocates" on slashdot, FWIW. In 2006, I am starting a record label with my brother and a few friends (we already have studio space, equipment and some cash for distribution) that focuses solely on copyright-free music. Bands will get a larger percentage of touring cash, but the music will be considered public domain from the start.

I am a strong believer that copyright laws create monsters like the RIAA -- whenever you have a law that offers an individual or a group the ability to use force (a government monopoly) over another individual or group, you'll have VERY bad abuses. I'm an author (blogger, book writer and I perform some private speaking engagements) and all my works are public domain. I used to own a software company (now strictly IT consulting) that produced numerous public domain products for my customer base.

The great part of removing myself from copyright protections is that I can now sell to my customers what I am capable of doing: face-to-face productions of my works. As a newsletter writer, I made more money on speaking engagements than on actually selling the newsletter. With copyright, I would need to use the force of government to force my readers to control their thoughts regarding my writings.

Sure, some big company can go and "steal" content, but they still need money to distribute it, and in the long run, those who can create content aren't really protected either. Have you seen how many actors, musicians and painters actually profit from their work? They don't, but the distribution cartels sure do.

Copyright does not protect anyone but those who control the copying: the distributors.

Re:No copyright == no GPL too!

Why are you anti copyright? The things you want to do can be done with copyrights the way they are now, just pick a license that allows redistribution (and what ever you want).

I believe VERY strongly in private property rights -- the right to do on your land what you want to do with your property, body and time. I think the Constitution originally was prepared to protect property rights, but over time things have changed.

I do not see any right to items that are no longer in your control. Once you sell, give away or barter an item to someone else, that item is that person's. If it is a book, they own the book -- what they do with the book is their inherent right. They can copy it, modify it, burn it, it doesn't matter, you reliquished control.

There are hundreds of thousands of slashdot readers who refute me -- but none of them seem to have every written a book, played music for an album or created a movie. In my experience, freeing your information for copying is the best way to get public speaking engagements, get people to come to your concert and get people to visit your theatre production. I find it ridiculous to think that someone should have a right to have a monopoly over words or actions -- they're not really protectable in a free market.

Copyright laws are strongest for the content distribution companies: I call them the content cartels. The RIAA, MPAA, the two book author associations and the other cartels that distribute content. Popular musicians make no money on their content, they usually make money at their shows. At many shows you can buy a T-shirt for $20 from the band or for $5 from the guy outside: many people buy from the band. How many times have you seen "popular" actors end up on Broadway or smaller theatre groups?

In the end, I prefer to see people making money for performing an action: putting someone on paper or CD or DVD form and hoping to make money by forcing others to disregard their private property rights is wrong to me. I will never use force against another person offensively: copyright is force.

Non sequitur

From The Inquirer: Its massage is that corporations are engaging in racketeering in the developing world and a few power hungry individuals and greedy corporate entities are infringing on privacy and integrity.

Got to hand it to the Swedes, combining political advocacy with pirates and massages.

A *real* piracy party...

...would be a piracy pARRRRRRRRRRRty.

Immaterial?

If their aim is to abolish immaterial law, then how do they reconcile that with protecting privacy? After all, that would be immaterial law, would it not?

I think this party would have much better support if they tried to reduce copyright terms to something more sensible like ~15 years, to see what affect competition with a more contemporary public domain would have on the market, before jumping headlong into abolishing copyright altogether.

Excellent !!!

More pirates means less global warming [venganza.org]

I think the best part about a Piracy Party

Is that you don't have to go through all the trouble of fundraising. Just grab what you need when you need it.

Going too far, most people just want a balance

People don't want to live in the environment these people are describing. They merely don't want their rights curtailed.

Would you like to live in an anarchy? No. It'd suck because there were no rules.

Likewise this would suck.

Instead they should just be holding back on patents, fighting for fair-term copyrights (e.g., 50 years maximum), and fair-use rights (purchased music is owned and can be copied by the owner as many times, but not redistributed unless all other copies are destroyed/included in the redistribution) and to not have spyware installed on the computer regardless of how they respond to the EULA. Basically, strong limitations on what the corporations can and cannot do, and some restrictions on the users to encourage responsible behaviour.

Re:Going too far, most people just want a balance

How many copyrights do most people own? If you guessed "none", you'd be right.

Please explain your view of why this is "anarchy" (defined by dictionary.com as "Absense of any form of political authority").

I know it may be hard for you to accept, but there are those who believe that intellectual property rights are more destructive than beneficial, and that any theoretical reduction in intellectual property production/IP quality is well worth the benefits of having all IP in the public domain. You may disagree with this viewpoint, but that's no reason to demean them with overly dramatic language for holding that viewpoint.

In fact, I would argue that you look at China as an example of what happens in a country with poor IP control. Almost all CDs sold in China are produced by professional pirates (not kids downloading music on their computers). Is there no domestic Chinese music industry? Hardly. Chinese musicians make most of their money through concerts, doing ad spots, and all sorts of other means.

Why do you think none?

I own dozens of copyrights. Its not hard to do, just write something. It doesn't have to be good, or popular, or make money, or anything else. You automatically have copyright on your creations.

Re:Going too far, most people just want a balance

How many copyrights do most people own? If you guessed "none", you'd be right.

Only if they have never written a letter, posted on a message board, taken a photograph, made a sketch...

Re:More Criminals should try this

Are there really that many people, even on Slashdot, that think stealing intellectual property is not wrong?

Hopefully, most people on Slashdot are educated enough to know that "stealing intellectual property" is not even possible, by definition. (Well, maybe it is possible with some sort of memory erasing device.)

Re:More Criminals should try this

Theft is any time that someone acquires property from someone without their permission.

From Webster: Steal v. t. "To take, and carry away, feloniously; to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal the personal goods of another."

How exactly can I carry away so called intellectual property? Do do so (rather than to copy it and carry away a copy) requires that I deprive the original "owner" of that property. Making a copy of a dollar bill is not called stealing, it is called counterfeiting. Making a copy of a copyrighted book without permission is not called stealing. It is called copyright infringement. Knowingly violating a patent is not called stealing. It is called patent violation (or patent infringement). Passing off another's work as my own is not stealing. It is called plagiarism. Buy a dictionary already.

If a teenager stole my car every night and when joyriding but brought in back every morning before I left for work I would still consider it stealing.

...but you'd probably be wrong. They may have illegally borrowed your car, but if they intend to return it, it is not stealing, unless you count them keeping it for a time as "keeping it." In any case, copying something is not stealing it. That is why we have different words for different things. It makes these distinctions clear.

That Long, Long List of Great Swedish Musicians

Not to mention novelists and filmmakers. Won't someone think about THEIR rights?

Oh, wait...

Not good marketing, but some good ideas

It really is time to reconsider the incentives of intellectual property, though sticking the label of "piracy" on such reform does not seem to be the best way to market the idea. However, the current IP laws are clearly completely divorced from the original idea, which was to maximize innovation for the benefit of society. Maximizing profit for the sake of large owners of IP was NOT the idea, but the IP owners have been writing and rewriting the laws for so long that there's nothing else left.

In particular, derivative works are often the sources of significant new ideas, but the current laws make that very dangerous. Punchline: Walt Disney's stuff was highly derivative, but if a new creator tried to do the same stuff to Disney, Inc., they'd slap him in jail sooooo fast.

However, the largest abuse is probably unlimited term extension for copyright. There is almost nothing left for "society" in that area.

Wow.

That's great. It must be absolutely awesome to live in a country where there's more than two political parties.

Err, wait a minute.

*thinks*
 
...
 
I mean, it must be absolutely awesome to live in a country where there's more than one political party.

In the US . . .

If this party were in the U.S., isn't it actually called the Communist Party ? I mean, if communism is all about no private ownership, public property, and all that. Then again, I guess even in Soviet Russia, they pirate state property.

Or maybe it's, in Soviet Russia, state property pirates YOU!

Or something like that,... I digress!

The Bodström Shield

Although I agree with many of their positions, they are a bit extreme in their desire to abolish ALL immaterial rights. Such rights, given that they are implemented the right way for a limited period, are useful to encourage invention and artistic production. The main problem of today is the excessive implementations of IM, not IM in itself.

One of their goals is to fire the current minister of justice, Thomas Bodström, and I whole-heartedly support this. He has implemented the "Bodström filters" in Sweden, and the country has thus joined the club of filter regimes (Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Bahrain etc.). He is also the man behind increased surveillance of phones, e-mail and other means of communication in Sweden, and he has been labeled as dangerous to society by many leading newspaper columnists.

The sad reality is that this "Bodström Shield" probably will be implemented in most of Europe rather than be dismantled. This is the unfortunate political trend of today, initiated by the Bush administration.

The Pirate Party says it will allow Mr. Bodström selling hotdogs outside the parliament building, at least in the winter.

The party stands no chance of reaching the required 4% to reach parliamentary seats, although Sweden has many such fringe parties. They may, however, affect the attitude of other parties, which may take a ride on the popular train of file sharing.

Do we bring Rum or Absolut?

To a Swedish Piracy Party?

Loose translation

from http://technocrat.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/0045 243&mode=thread [technocrat.net] Here is a loose translation of the Pirate Party's start page:

Phase 1: Gather signatures for the Election Authority

We need 1500 signatures before the end of February in order to enter the parliamentary elections for 2006. In order to have a small safety margin we shall gather 2000 before February 4th, that gives us time to finish the administrivia for the Election Authority (which is nearly guaranteed to dislike us, or what)

Just right now we are validating all the signatures. We have received over 4000 signatures in less than 24 hours. Right now we are going through the whole lot to verify that we can provide them to the Election Authority.

What is this about?

The Pirate Party aims to take up the roll of maintaining a balance of power after the 2006 election. There are between 800 000 and 1 100 000 active file swappers in Sweden, and they are all tired of being called criminals. We need to have 225 000 of them with us to cross the four percent threshold and land in the roll of power balance.

To get one fourth of a criminalized and angry mob with us is far from unachievable. It is that which we shall achieve in the coming nine months.

Are youse serious?

"You had better believe it. This is the real thing."

What is the Pirate Party's platform?

The Pirate Party's platform is the abolishment of immaterial property (copyright, patents, trademarks and patterns) and the derivative effects (extra fees on blank tapes) and is furthermore very strongly interested in protecting personal integrity (among other things that the data retention law shall not be implemented, and an expansion on the privacy of written correspondence to cover all communications, and a constitutional right to personal privacy.) We do not take a position in any other questions, especially not other politically divisive issues. (the point with that is that you should be able to vote for the Pirate Party without changing your position in the left-right scale of Swedish politics)

Furthermore we stand for that Thomas Bodström shall not accomplish new general tasks, as per his escapades with the data retention law

Which is the Pirate Party, Left or Right?

It is quaintly amusing that the Left accuses us of being for the Right while the Right accuses us of being for the Left. The Left reasons that culture is a generality, the Right that immaterial property create market damaging monopolies. Others simply don't care about Left-Right ideology and simply want to put an end to further hinderance of the advancement of technology and society for the sake of a short term profit.

Abolish trademarks too?

The party wants to abolish all intellectual property laws

So, er, if trademarks and similar are abolished, how do you make sure you're voting for the real Piracy Party, and not something with the same name but vastly different policies set up as a stunt by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau?

Only in Swedish - of course!

The Piracy Party's webpage is so far only available in Swedish [...]

Why is that surprising? The webpages of the democratic/republican parties in the USA weren't available in Swedish last time I checked, either, so why should the webpage of a Swedish party necessarily be available in English? I'd think they have lots of more important things to do before doing a translation for a bunch of people who can't even vote.

Right to privacy, but no Intellectual Property??

Am I the only one out there that sees the logical issues with this? They want no one to have intellectual property, BUT they want the right to privacy?

Umm, privacy is a form of Intellectual Property. If you're going to do away with IP, then you can't have Privacy. This stand doesn't make much sense to me.

Both sides are somewhat wrong

I guess I'm the only one on Slashdot who thinks it's reasonable for record labels to want to make some money. I strongly agree that suing the grandparents of kids for downloading is going way too far, I strongly believe in the concept of fair use and I strongly believe in limiting the time span of a copyright. But when folks are downloading songs from the Internet that they have not paid a single bit of royalties for then it doesn't seem to me that the record labels are being unreasonable by being upset about that.

I know, I'm the only person on Slashdot who feels that both sides in this issue are somewhat wrong, so please feel free to flame me.

They have my vote.

Sweden currently has only one party with wich i can fully identify with, this very one. Im fully convinced that IP as an industry is just a feverish attempt at keeping the current snowball-market afloat. That is, it doesnt work without constant market growth and as we have made the most out of real values we now turn to fictional ones like ideas, thoughts and culture. This is a must to keep the market expanding when no new movements have arised to take the place of the industrialism era. In my view its the economical system that needs to adapt to real values and not the other way around, make the real world look like the stock market.

I created a new party...

...I copied the Piracy Party's charter word for word.

I'm even using the same name.... The Piracy Party.

And there's not a damn thing they can do about it.

Know what would be funny?

If their party logo had a (C) or (TM) next to it.

Re:Tricky!

It would be like naming Al Capone for the US senate to ban the Dry Law.

Al Capone did not want to repeal prohibition. It's what made him money. Professional racketeers usually like the laws they're breaking, it means they're performing a service for which others will pay them.