Pirates now represented in the European Parliament

[PowerWizard]

Sure, there is a general thread about the EU Parliamentary elections, but I think this topic deserves its own thread. What do you think of this result? What can one guy do the in the EP? Can he achieve anything?

Ahoy! Pirate Party gets berth in European Parliament

Sweden's Pirate Party has won entry to the European Parliament in Brussels in elections held Sunday.
The Pirate Party gained 7 percent of the Swedish votes and secured at least one of the 18 seats that Sweden holds in the parliament.

"Citizens have understood that it's time to pull the fist out of the pocket and that you can make a difference," Rick Falkvinge, leader and founder of the party, told the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, after the result of the elections were revealed. "We don't accept to be bugged by the government. People start to understand that the government is not always good."
The Pirate Party is focused on three main goals: "to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected."
The party was founded in 2006, and that year gained only 0.63 percent of the votes in Swedish parliamentary elections. But since then it has attracted members during the debate on several controversial laws that authorize monitoring of electronic communications and that make it easier to police file sharing on the Internet.
It is now Sweden's third biggest party by membership. Its ranks swelled when four men were sentenced to prison in the high-profile Pirate Bay case in April. People use Web sites like The Pirate Bay to transfer movies and music, a practice that has drawn the ire--and the lawyers--of Hollywood studios and the recording industry.
The Pirate Party is not formally connected with The Pirate Bay, but has officially expressed support for the Web site.
The party wants all noncommercial copying to be free and file sharing to be encouraged. The copyright system, it argues, is out of whack--rather than encouraging the spread of culture, the system now imposes severe restrictions.
The European elections attracted 43.8 percent of the Swedish voters, which is on par with the European average.
Apart from the Pirate Party, which became the fifth biggest party in the elections in Sweden, the Greens were the big winners gaining 10.9 percent resulting in a fourth position and two seats in the parliament.

Their 3 main goals

Reform of copyright law

The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a balance in order to promote culture being created and spread. Today that balance has been completely lost, to a point where the copyright laws severely restrict the very thing they are supposed to promote. The Pirate Party wants to restore the balance in the copyright legislation.

All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created.

The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today's copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead. No film studio or record company bases its investment decisions on the off-chance that the product would be of interest to anyone a hundred years in the future. The commercial life of cultural works is staggeringly short in today's world. If you haven't made your money back in the first one or two years, you never will. A five years copyright term for commercial use is more than enough. Non-commercial use should be free from day one.

We also want a complete ban on DRM technologies, and on contract clauses that aim to restrict the consumers' legal rights in this area. There is no point in restoring balance and reason to the legislation, if at the same time we continue to allow the big media companies to both write and enforce their own arbitrary laws.

An abolished patent system

Pharmaceutical patents kill people in third world countries every day. They hamper possibly life saving research by forcing scientists to lock up their findings pending patent application, instead of sharing them with the rest of the scientific community. The latest example of this is the bird flu virus, where not even the threat of a global pandemic can make research institutions forgo their chance to make a killing on patents.

The Pirate Party has a constructive and reasoned proposal for an alternative to pharmaceutical patents. It would not only solve these problems, but also give more money to pharmaceutical research, while still cutting public spending on medicines in half. This is something we would like to discuss on a European level.

Patents in other areas range from the morally repulsive (like patents on living organisms) through the seriously harmful (patents on software and business methods) to the merely pointless (patents in the mature manufacturing industries).

Europe has all to gain and nothing to lose by abolishing patents outright. If we lead, the rest of the world will eventually follow.

Respect for the right to privacy

Following the 9/11 event in the US, Europe has allowed itself to be swept along in a panic reaction to try to end all evil by increasing the level of surveillance and control over the entire population. We Europeans should know better. It is not twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and there are plenty of other horrific examples of surveillance-gone-wrong in Europe's modern history.

The arguments for each step on the road to the surveillance state may sound ever so convincing. But we Europeans know from experience where that road leads, and it is not somewhere we want to go.

We must pull the emergency brake on the runaway train towards a society we do not want. Terrorists may attack the open society, but only governments can abolish it. The Pirate Party wants to prevent that from happening.

EDIT: Removed hotlinked picture. BG

Pirate - Party

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Hmm, abolishing patents.

[PowerWizard]

Yeah, pretty weird. They must think that politics is like bargaining in the market, the bigger claim you make, the more you can knock off the price afterwards.

[KukriKhan]

I wish them luck and every success.

So that a year after their agenda is put in place, when there is no more new content, only copied, "free", old content - except for the very rich patrons' who'll hire writers and artists on an ad hoc basis - we'll have free information nirvana.

[Fragony]

It's hilarious, 'screw you' doesn't get any better then this.

10/10

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

It's hilarious, 'screw you' doesn't get any better then this.

10/10

This. Safe money betting that the Pirate Party won't try to ban "violent" video games...

[drone]

Arrr! Maybe this will slow down global warming...

I can't say I agree completely with their plans, but maybe they can bring some sanity back into the copyright/patent system.

The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The whole point is to promote progress. A one hit wonder should not be allowed to reap the benefits for a lifetime (or beyond), this does not give any motivation to create new works. Extending copyright beyond death is completely ridiculous, how is a corpse going to create new works? A return to the original 14 year term (with 1 14 year extension) would be fine. Life plus 70 years is pointless. KukriKhan mentioned rich patrons, this is essentially what we have today. In the music biz, the labels act as patrons and pay the artists to create works for them.

I'm not really sure why they think patents need to go. Patents are necessary, even if the current system is ripe for abuse. Submarine patents go against the intent of patents, if the owner does not try to exploit the invention he/she/it should lose the right to it. The system could stand to be reformed and streamlined, but getting rid of them would kill every R&D and VC effort. Utter disaster.

Software (my business) is the worst of both worlds. Patents and copyrights combined.

[Kralizec]

Patents exist for a reason, as Drone mentioned.

Plus I would never vote for a single issue party

[Louis VI the Fat]

I'm not fond of clownesque / single issue parties.

Then it dawned on me that this party could go a long way towards absorbing and neutralizing the vote of YouTube commentary spewing, dubious website reading, socially inept, extremophile juveniles.

Brilliant.

[Hooahguy]

man, i thought you were talking about real pirates- like the ones on ships. shoot. i woulve voted differently had i known what it was actually talking about.

[TB666]

I'm not really sure why they think patents need to go. Patents are necessary, even if the current system is ripe for abuse. Submarine patents go against the intent of patents, if the owner does not try to exploit the invention he/she/it should lose the right to it. The system could stand to be reformed and streamlined, but getting rid of them would kill every R&D and VC effort. Utter disaster.

From what I understand they want to remove the current patent system and redo the whole thing.
There was a debate with them a few years ago where they clearly stated that patents and copyright are both needed however the current rules are archaic and needs to be removed and redone.

[PowerWizard]

man, i thought you were talking about real pirates- like the ones on ships. shoot. i woulve voted differently had i known what it was actually talking about.

You should read the first post next time. :P

[JAG]

I would have voted for them if I could!

[doc_bean]

A communist by any other name ...

[Lemur]

I don't think it's unreasonable to assert that IP law needs a radical overhaul. When companies exist solely for the purpose of suing other companies for silly patents, something's off.

Example 1, example 2, example 3, etc.

Copyright law also needs a critical look-over. Our original copyright law granted 14 years to the rightholder (renewable to a total of 28), a reasonable span of time in which to milk your product. Every extension since then has been problematic.



Do I even need to bring Disney into the discussion, or is invoking the spirit of Walt the Godwin of IP discussions?

[Hooahguy]

You should read the first post next time. :P

wheres the fun in that? :P

[drone]

Do I even need to bring Disney into the discussion, or is invoking the spirit of Walt the Godwin of IP discussions?

Zing!!!! I wish smilies were working now...

[KukriKhan]

...rich patrons, this is essentially what we have today. In the music biz, the labels act as patrons and pay the artists to create works for them.

I hadn't thought of it quite that way before. Hmmm...

[seireikhaan]

If they dropped the "no patent" rule, it would be a fine party in their own right. No doubt that there's some possibilities for patent reform, but with no patents whatsoever, you remove a big chunk of incentive for economic motivation.

[rasoforos]

I believe that there shouldnt be patents in Art. I wish them all the best

[Moros]

While they have their points. Patent and copyrightlaw should be changed. Not abolished, but then again they are not pro abolishing patents and copyright. It's not only medicine company's abusing them. There are companies selling genitic manipulted seed, which also corrupts the genes of the plants from other nearby crops. Which in the end leads other plants to either grow bad, or become manipulated as well. Which makes the other peasants, who didn't use that seed, to need to pay as well. The manipulated genes also threat original and historical species. Take for example Mexico were ancients mais, from maya tradition, taking over the genes of the manipulated plants.
Also having to use the manipulated seeds, is also highly problematic for the poor peasants of the less fortunate countries too.
As far as I'm concerned there shouldn't be patents allowed on the modification of genes, DNA,... of living organisms. And there should be strict rules and more fair rules when it comes to medicines as well.Of course these companies should still be able to make profits and be able to do the costly research.
When it comes to the internet file sharing ect,... Well they have some points as well.

On the fact on privacy and the government monitoring people, well it's one way of telling terrorists: good job you are scaring us! And it's one way of making you're government scary as well.

If they'd lay out there points better, and not only limit themselves to their rightful concerns they'd have a strong case for themselves, imo.

Edit: I just made an eightuple (is that the word?) post? Gah!

[Crazed Rabbit]

Edit: The .org and my pc are acting a bit wierd apparantly.

Ya don't say?

Anyways, I don't like these guys because of their anti-patent stance. They're a bunch of people who want to make it legal to steal.

CR

[Scurvy]

Similar, patent laws need changing, not abolishing

i'd have voted for them due to the name though

[Jolt]

Edit: The .org and my pc are acting a bit wierd apparantly.

Edit: The .org and my pc are acting a bit wierd apparantly.

Edit: The .org and my pc are acting a bit wierd apparantly.

Edit: The .org and my pc are acting a bit wierd apparantly.

Edit: The .org and my pc are acting a bit wierd apparantly.

Edit: The .org and my pc are acting a bit wierd apparantly.

...Seriously?

Anyways, I go with the flow. IP laws are incredibly stupid (As was posted due to the IPod, CD conversion thingie), and need a complete overhaul.