The Swedish Pirate Party has won 7.1% of the Swedish EU Parliament vote, receiving one mandate! After a letdown in the election to the Swedish Parliament in 2006, the Pirate Party is back. Next task is to win a mandate in the Swedish Riksdag next year, a lot of work lies ahead.
This success seems to have shaken the established parties quite a bit and they all seem to attempt to court our voters by talking more about our core issues. Hopefully we will manage to influence their politics enough to gain a higher effect than the mandate itself gives us.
Also, just a few days ago a Finnish Pirate Party was established, but did not take part in this election as it was not formed in time to participate. There is also a German Pirate Party which did not duplicate our success. This movement has had the greatest success in Sweden so far, but our hopes are that we can export it to other countries in Europe and the world.
How do you think European politics will be affected by this? It will be interesting to see how many Pirate Parties will take part in the next election. There seem to be more upstarting parties on the way. I think our success will result in a strengthened movement EU-wide, as the news reach out, and we will now have two full time politicians + assistants paid by the EU working for our cause. Not just voting in our matters, but working to influence others, build coalitions, and create a stronger network throughout Europe. Oh, yes, I previously said one mandate, but we will have a second mandate without voting rights for now, which would gain voting rights if the Lisbon Treaty passes in Ireland to change the parliament structure. Still, it is another full time activist for us in EU + assistants.
The plan for the Swedish Parliament Election in 2010 is to gain mandates between the major (and usually even) left and right blocs, allowing us to decide who gets to form government, giving us an excellent negotiation chip.
Here’s an article about a world without copyright:
In the U.S. copyright was originally 14 years plus a 14 year extension.
Then they kept on extending copyright until it is about 100 years but I bet they keep on extending it.
When I especially hate though is that they make it retroactive. e.g. say someone made a creative work when they expected to be rewarded for 50 years… then decades later copyright got extended - even on that example work!!
After copyrights are extended a lot, all that is happening is that their descendants get the money - or maybe a record company does. I think being rewarded in your own lifetime is enough.
Is anyone over the age of 15 in the industrialized world suffering because they want some book, movie or piece of music and can’t afford to buy or borrow it? Anyone?
That isn’t the issue. Why should Walt Disney be allowed to borrow classic stories and create new art when others can’t do the same with the produced works?
Copyright law is meant to strike a balance between letting artists earn a living from their work while also creating an environment where one can still create. Currently the pendulum has swung too far towards the money making aspect and is actually hindering creative effort.
Unless they pirate, quite a few; it’s pretty expensive last I checked ( and often inferior in quality to the pirated versions, thanks to destructive “safeguards” against copying which only hurt non-piraters ). And that ignores the problem of things being simply unavailable for reasons of copyright.
They can. They just have to wait for the copyright to run out. As you pointed out, Disney borrows only from very old stories where the copyright is expired; you don’t see them turning “The French Connection” or “E.T.” into cartoons, at least not without paying for it. Disney is doing nothing anyone else can’t do.
And in these threads it’s always Disney, Disney, Disney. Big, mean Disney. You would think nobody else in history has ever claimed copyright over anything. Yes, they have a lot of money and protect their copyrights and trademarks ferociously. This doesn’t mean stealing intellectual property is okay. I’m sure Wal-Mart can absorb a lot of shoplifting and I think we all agree they are a brutally tenacious legal opponent if you cross them, but that doesn’t mean we should make theft legal. Laws against copyright infringement and theft may help companies like Disney and Walmart that don’t need a lot of help, but they also help small time artists/authors/filmmakers and small shop owners who damn well DO need the help. I don’t want people stealing my stuff, and if that means Disney gets protected too, I’ll live with that.
I realize this all falls on deaf ears because the purpose of all piracy advocates is just to get stuff for free.
This is the problem with these threads, though. There is a perfectly reasonable (in fact IMO almost unanswerable) case to say that copyright terms have gone far beyond their original purpose of encouraging creativity, and are now actively obstructing it to no particular gain (creating music using samples is an absolute minefield, and anyone intending to try it had better have an army of lawyers on their side. Go creativity!). However, many of the people advancing this argument do indeed just want free stuff. No, ludicrous copyright terms don’t justify copyright infringement. But the reverse is true, too: the existence of pirates doesn’t justify what is effectively perpetual copyright.
Which never happens, because the terms are invariably extended. Try to separate the question of copyright terms in your mind from that of allowing copyright infringement full stop. They are two quite distinct issues, and we shouldn’t allow the behaviour of some Swedes with terrible facial hair discourage us from thinking about what the purpose of copyright really is, and whether it is achieving its goals. I have no real idea whether the Pirate Party are interested in this sort of debate, or whether they’re some of the tedious “information wants to be free, maaaan” types, but I think you’re doing the debate at large a huge disservice if you really think that it’s purely about getting free stuff.
As I recall, it IS to a large degree Disney’s fault that the length of copyright gets longer and longer and longer. So as I understand it no, people can’t “wait for the copyright to run out”, because Disney won’t let it, for anything.
And who are quite often screwed over because of our copyright laws and the methods used to enforce them, just like the rest of us.
And of course, NO ONE really thinks the laws are screwed up and need to be reformed, or has an actual ideological objection to copyright, or is simply pissed off at corporations, or anything else. Nope, it’s all just people who want things for free from the poor, victimized corporations. :rolleyes:
I’d be rather more impressed by it if this argument for moral responsibility ever went more than one way; but somehow it’s perfectly fine for those same corporations to screw over their customers, who are just whining pirate sympathizers if they don’t like their computers being infested with corporate rootkits and malware or just plain broken.
In case you haven’t noticed, they keep on extending the copyright, making it rather difficult to wait it out. When it was first published, a work created in 1924 would have been protected for 55 years, until 1979. It still hasn’t expired, and isn’t going to until 2019, and that’s assuming that copyright isn’t extended again.
That’s gross mischaracterization. The idea is that copyright is a good concept, that has been extended way too far and allows for a number of applications that go against the very spirit of copyright right now.
Disney (or any copyright holding publisher, Disney’s just an example anyone can understand and relate to) can sue me and make me cease-and-desist should I use a Disney character in a story of my own, or should I choose to retell a story they own the rights to in my own words. Sorry, but that’s a bunch of crap. Once you put out art, other artists are going to be inspired by it. As long as they’re not pretending to *be *Disney, they should be allowed to, without being hassled by litigious jerks.
Right now, an artist can even be denied the right to reproduce or modify something he created in the first place, because somebody else holds the copyright. How is that not against the spirit of artist protection ?
I know there are extremists in the anti-copyright movement who want the right to produce and distribute exact duplicates of an artist work for their own benefit. Maybe the Swedish Pirate Party even stands for that, I don’t know (I was under the impression than their moniker was more of a joke stemming precisely from the fact that all those who question copyright laws get lumped with the extremists and given the “pirate” moniker by big publishing corporations). But that’s no reason not to question modern copyright at all.
Why does everyone always debate what the extent of thought property should be, and not discuss other compensation/incentive mechanisms besides ownership? There’s many ways to pay a collective tax and then have zero marginal cost of sharing in intellectual works. You know, like a library…
