6 ms·

Pirate Party wins a seat at the European Parliament

75 points by daviday 17y ago

samueladam 17y ago
I'm really happy they are bringing online people worries (privacy, narrower copyright, less patents) to the european political level. I think this is an important turning point, just like when the ecological ideas popped up. Looks like they are organizing themselves to conquer the world : http://www.pp-international.net/ http://www.pp-international.net/
- limmeau 17y ago
  They got 0.9% in Germany, which, given that Germany contains almost nine times the population of Sweden, is even more, although less impressive.
  - samueladam 17y ago
    Every election, I vote for another party because I'm disappointed by what the people I've put my hopes in have done. I've run out of parties and none would define what I want to fight for better than the ideas behind the PP. If they are opening a PP in my country, I will not only vote for them but militate a long way.
mynameishere 17y ago
It's a trivial, and a solved problem. You might as well vote for the anti-prohibitionist party. Really pathetic. The kids today have way too much time on their hands.
- ThomPete 17y ago
  Pray tell how is it solved?
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - mynameishere 17y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet I don't think that's a perfect solution, but it gets at the real solution. If people think you can solve a technical problem (privacy) with a political movement, they are hopelessly incorrect.
    - ThomPete 17y ago
      It's not just about privacy.
      - mynameishere 17y ago
        Well, yeah. But I'm trying to be generous when I say "privacy"--highlighting that aspect of their platform. Obviously, the party is mainly concerned with not paying the onerous 99 cents that itunes charges for an mp3.
        ThomPete 17y ago
        Not really, they are concerned with the idea of fair use and not criminalizing people. That's the real issue here and hardly a solved one.
        mynameishere 17y ago
        Listen to me, because I'm tired of saying it and getting downmodded: It is a SOLVED FUCKING PROBLEM. Use an encrypted drive, use freenet, and the government will not be able to prosecute you unless they happen to have many trillions of years of CPU time on their hands. Seriously. Not one person has even approached refuting me. Just downmods. That's how I know I'm right.
        TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
- abstractbill 17y ago
  It is not a solved problem. Here's an example. In the late-80s and early-90s, emerging sampling technology gave birth to a bunch of new kinds of music, which used samples of existing music to great effect. The best of these were not rip-off art forms, they were amazingly original and innovative. And then the lawyers came in and destroyed everything. I've been sad for a long time about the loss of all that new art, and I'm very happy to see the pendulum finally start to move in the other direction.
erlanger 17y ago
This has been a banner year for pirates. ARRGH!
jgrahamc 17y ago
From their manifesto: "All non-commercial acquiring, using, bettering and spread of culture should be actively encouraged. The Internet is filling the same function today as popular education did a hundred years ago. It is something positive and good for the development of society. The copyright legislation must be changes so that it is made perfectly clear that it only regulate use and copying of works done for commercial purposes. To share copies, or in any other way spread or use someone else’s work, should never be forbidden as long as it is done on an idealistic basis without the purposes of commercial gain." So, what's the motivation for me the author of a book or software to actually write a book or software. Believe me that monetary gain is part of the motivation. If you take this route and say that all works must be freely shared then you have to ask where 'artists' get their money from. If you do not give them a supply of some money then you end up going back to the middle ages and requiring that artists have benefactors who keep them alive. Sharing a copy of my 'work' may well be non-commercial for the sharer, but it's not non-commercial for me. In fact, I may well have lost money (of course, there are some people who would never have spent the money in the first place). And the idealistic part about cultural works being good for people seems valid to me, that's why we have art galleries, museums, education and libraries (of books, CDs and DVDs) funded with public money.
- sp332 17y ago
  If you don't care enough about writing the book, just don't write it. Someone who cares (is internally motivated) enough, will write it or pay you to write it for them (external motivation). We don't necessarily need legislation to create an extra, artificial external motivation for artists, authors, etc. Writers will write, artists will express themselves, and the world will benefit with or without copyrights.
  - mynameishere 17y ago
    You're just wrong. Off the top of my head Dostoevsky and Sam Johnson and Charles Dickens all openly wrote for the money. I don't doubt that almost all authors do, without being so open about it.
danw 17y ago
The Open Rights Group (like an UK EFF) sent a survey to all British MEP candidates to find out their opinions on copyright extension, data protection, etc: http://euelection.openrightsgroup.org/ http://euelection.openrightsgroup.org/ They found the Green party did very well.
BjornW 17y ago
I haven't read all comments yet, but some commenters seem to make the presumption that copyright is about artists. It is not. It is about the rightsholder which may in- or exclude artists. I'm writing this on my commute so I don't have the research to back it up at the moment, but I remember research has been done on the rightsholders and if I remember correctly only a small percentage were creators and thus actively contributed to culture. The larger percentage of the rightsholders were merely parasiting on ip rights created by creators already dead or who (had to) sold their ip-rights off for a meager sum. Copyright is therefor also less about incentive since it mostly benefits those holding on the 'old' creations and milking it instead of creating new works. I recommend reading the essays of Dutch professor Joost Smiers. He makes some interesting (and some wacky) points and is an interesting read.
- Sam_Odio 17y ago
  Copyright law gives ownership rights to a work's creator. What (s)he does with those rights (keep it, license it, sell it, or trade it) is his/her choice. Just because they have made the choice to sell or bequeath the copyright doesn't mean they didn't benefit from its existence. Your point akin to saying that startup founders aren't rewarded for innovating because a public company's stock is rarely owned by the company's original founders.
  - asdflkj 17y ago
    One major difference: it takes a lot of work and resources to turn a startup into a public company, but it takes little to turn an artistic work into a product. One might argue that record labels provide most of their value by finding good music, and saving customers the time it would take to do that on their own. (IMO this view is far too charitable to the labels.) Even then, internet is already doing this job better than the labels, and is still rapidly improving. The law should keep up. Saying that artists benefited from their arrangement with the labels is akin to saying that indentured servants benefited from theirs. That is, true in a narrow sense--the indentured servants did get food and shelter, didn't they?
- jacoblyles 17y ago
jacobian 17y ago
Before y'all go celebrate the mainstreaming of copyright reform, keep in mind that the white-only British National Party won two seats in the same election (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8088607.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8088607.stm). So neo-Nazis are twice as well represented in the European Parliament as copyright reformers. Sigh.
- adw 17y ago
  The Hungarians got three neo-fascists in too (this mob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_a_Better_Hungary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_a_Better_Hungary, who have some particularly scary ideas about a "Greater Hungary"). Geert Wilders' list in the Netherlands are close to as extreme, and they got 17% of the vote. And we've not even mentioned the Austrians. Oh, the Austrians. Or Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National. Neofascism is Europe's dirty little secret. It's just this is the first time in maybe thirty years it's had significant electoral success in the UK. I would say the Anglosphere, but there's Australia's Pauline Hanson, and apartheid-era South Africa...
  - adw 17y ago
    Shouldn't really reply to myself, but: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/far-right-european-parliament http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/far-right-europe... summarises the situation pretty well.
illumen 17y ago
Innovation is defined as taking an existing idea and improving it. Copyright inhibits innovation by putting up legal barriers to innovation. This is the main reason why copyright is bad for innovation. Making original ideas is a good thing, but improving existing ideas is much more common, and useful. Copyright fails to help this, and indeed places significant blocks to this.

75 points by daviday 17y ago

I'm really happy they are bringing online people worries (privacy, narrower copyright, less patents) to the european political level. I think this is an important turning point, just like when the ecological ideas popped up. Looks like they are organizing themselves to conquer the world : http://www.pp-international.net/ http://www.pp-international.net/

limmeau 17y ago
They got 0.9% in Germany, which, given that Germany contains almost nine times the population of Sweden, is even more, although less impressive.
- samueladam 17y ago
  Every election, I vote for another party because I'm disappointed by what the people I've put my hopes in have done. I've run out of parties and none would define what I want to fight for better than the ideas behind the PP. If they are opening a PP in my country, I will not only vote for them but militate a long way.

mynameishere 17y ago

It's a trivial, and a solved problem. You might as well vote for the anti-prohibitionist party. Really pathetic. The kids today have way too much time on their hands.

ThomPete 17y ago
Pray tell how is it solved?
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- mynameishere 17y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet I don't think that's a perfect solution, but it gets at the real solution. If people think you can solve a technical problem (privacy) with a political movement, they are hopelessly incorrect.
  - ThomPete 17y ago
    It's not just about privacy.
    - mynameishere 17y ago
      Well, yeah. But I'm trying to be generous when I say "privacy"--highlighting that aspect of their platform. Obviously, the party is mainly concerned with not paying the onerous 99 cents that itunes charges for an mp3.
      - ThomPete 17y ago
        Not really, they are concerned with the idea of fair use and not criminalizing people. That's the real issue here and hardly a solved one.
        mynameishere 17y ago
        Listen to me, because I'm tired of saying it and getting downmodded: It is a SOLVED FUCKING PROBLEM. Use an encrypted drive, use freenet, and the government will not be able to prosecute you unless they happen to have many trillions of years of CPU time on their hands. Seriously. Not one person has even approached refuting me. Just downmods. That's how I know I'm right.
        TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
abstractbill 17y ago
It is not a solved problem. Here's an example. In the late-80s and early-90s, emerging sampling technology gave birth to a bunch of new kinds of music, which used samples of existing music to great effect. The best of these were not rip-off art forms, they were amazingly original and innovative. And then the lawyers came in and destroyed everything. I've been sad for a long time about the loss of all that new art, and I'm very happy to see the pendulum finally start to move in the other direction.

erlanger 17y ago

This has been a banner year for pirates. ARRGH!

jgrahamc 17y ago

From their manifesto: "All non-commercial acquiring, using, bettering and spread of culture should be actively encouraged. The Internet is filling the same function today as popular education did a hundred years ago. It is something positive and good for the development of society. The copyright legislation must be changes so that it is made perfectly clear that it only regulate use and copying of works done for commercial purposes. To share copies, or in any other way spread or use someone else’s work, should never be forbidden as long as it is done on an idealistic basis without the purposes of commercial gain." So, what's the motivation for me the author of a book or software to actually write a book or software. Believe me that monetary gain is part of the motivation. If you take this route and say that all works must be freely shared then you have to ask where 'artists' get their money from. If you do not give them a supply of some money then you end up going back to the middle ages and requiring that artists have benefactors who keep them alive. Sharing a copy of my 'work' may well be non-commercial for the sharer, but it's not non-commercial for me. In fact, I may well have lost money (of course, there are some people who would never have spent the money in the first place). And the idealistic part about cultural works being good for people seems valid to me, that's why we have art galleries, museums, education and libraries (of books, CDs and DVDs) funded with public money.

sp332 17y ago
If you don't care enough about writing the book, just don't write it. Someone who cares (is internally motivated) enough, will write it or pay you to write it for them (external motivation). We don't necessarily need legislation to create an extra, artificial external motivation for artists, authors, etc. Writers will write, artists will express themselves, and the world will benefit with or without copyrights.
- mynameishere 17y ago
  You're just wrong. Off the top of my head Dostoevsky and Sam Johnson and Charles Dickens all openly wrote for the money. I don't doubt that almost all authors do, without being so open about it.

danw 17y ago

The Open Rights Group (like an UK EFF) sent a survey to all British MEP candidates to find out their opinions on copyright extension, data protection, etc: http://euelection.openrightsgroup.org/ http://euelection.openrightsgroup.org/ They found the Green party did very well.

BjornW 17y ago

I haven't read all comments yet, but some commenters seem to make the presumption that copyright is about artists. It is not. It is about the rightsholder which may in- or exclude artists. I'm writing this on my commute so I don't have the research to back it up at the moment, but I remember research has been done on the rightsholders and if I remember correctly only a small percentage were creators and thus actively contributed to culture. The larger percentage of the rightsholders were merely parasiting on ip rights created by creators already dead or who (had to) sold their ip-rights off for a meager sum. Copyright is therefor also less about incentive since it mostly benefits those holding on the 'old' creations and milking it instead of creating new works. I recommend reading the essays of Dutch professor Joost Smiers. He makes some interesting (and some wacky) points and is an interesting read.

Sam_Odio 17y ago
Copyright law gives ownership rights to a work's creator. What (s)he does with those rights (keep it, license it, sell it, or trade it) is his/her choice. Just because they have made the choice to sell or bequeath the copyright doesn't mean they didn't benefit from its existence. Your point akin to saying that startup founders aren't rewarded for innovating because a public company's stock is rarely owned by the company's original founders.
- asdflkj 17y ago
  One major difference: it takes a lot of work and resources to turn a startup into a public company, but it takes little to turn an artistic work into a product. One might argue that record labels provide most of their value by finding good music, and saving customers the time it would take to do that on their own. (IMO this view is far too charitable to the labels.) Even then, internet is already doing this job better than the labels, and is still rapidly improving. The law should keep up. Saying that artists benefited from their arrangement with the labels is akin to saying that indentured servants benefited from theirs. That is, true in a narrow sense--the indentured servants did get food and shelter, didn't they?
jacoblyles 17y ago

jacobian 17y ago

Before y'all go celebrate the mainstreaming of copyright reform, keep in mind that the white-only British National Party won two seats in the same election (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8088607.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8088607.stm). So neo-Nazis are twice as well represented in the European Parliament as copyright reformers. Sigh.

adw 17y ago
The Hungarians got three neo-fascists in too (this mob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_a_Better_Hungary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_a_Better_Hungary, who have some particularly scary ideas about a "Greater Hungary"). Geert Wilders' list in the Netherlands are close to as extreme, and they got 17% of the vote. And we've not even mentioned the Austrians. Oh, the Austrians. Or Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National. Neofascism is Europe's dirty little secret. It's just this is the first time in maybe thirty years it's had significant electoral success in the UK. I would say the Anglosphere, but there's Australia's Pauline Hanson, and apartheid-era South Africa...
- adw 17y ago
  Shouldn't really reply to myself, but: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/far-right-european-parliament http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/far-right-europe... summarises the situation pretty well.

illumen 17y ago

Innovation is defined as taking an existing idea and improving it. Copyright inhibits innovation by putting up legal barriers to innovation. This is the main reason why copyright is bad for innovation. Making original ideas is a good thing, but improving existing ideas is much more common, and useful. Copyright fails to help this, and indeed places significant blocks to this.