Monday, June 8th 2009
Pirate Party Elected to EU Parliament
The Pirate Party silenced skeptics, gathering enough votes in the European Union elections this year, to make it to the Parliament from Sweden. This serves as a huge victory to the party whose ideology revolves around fighting harsh and archaic copyright laws and enforcement agencies, that it finds incompatible with the digital age we live in. The party secured 7.1 percent of the 99.9 percent districts' votes counted, which guarantees at least one of the 18 or 20 seats Sweden contributes to the EU Parliament. Sweden has 20 seats, but until the Lisbon treaty passes only 18 with voting rights. In this case, the party might secure 2 seats.
Rick Falkvinge, leader of the party, in a statement to TorrentFreak said "Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it." National and International press gathered in Stockholm, where the party celebrates its landmark victory. "This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it's time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples' lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities' mass-surveillance," Falkvinge added.The voter turnout for the elections was 43 percent. Nearly 200,000 people voted for The Pirate Party, way up from its performance in the 2006 Swedish national elections, where it secured 34,918 votes. With their presence in the EU Parliament, the party wants to fight the abuses of power and copyright laws at the hands of the entertainment industries, and make those activities illegal instead. On the other hand they hope to legalize file-sharing for personal (non-commercial) use.
Source:
TorrentFreak
Rick Falkvinge, leader of the party, in a statement to TorrentFreak said "Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it." National and International press gathered in Stockholm, where the party celebrates its landmark victory. "This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it's time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples' lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities' mass-surveillance," Falkvinge added.The voter turnout for the elections was 43 percent. Nearly 200,000 people voted for The Pirate Party, way up from its performance in the 2006 Swedish national elections, where it secured 34,918 votes. With their presence in the EU Parliament, the party wants to fight the abuses of power and copyright laws at the hands of the entertainment industries, and make those activities illegal instead. On the other hand they hope to legalize file-sharing for personal (non-commercial) use.
268 Comments on Pirate Party Elected to EU Parliament
Oddly enough, if you "record" that song with your mind, and then "play it back" by singing it out loud, you actually are breaking US laws regarding unlicensed performances. :laugh:
Cassettes are still the norm for backing up data on the enterprise level. Think of all the copyright infringments Walmart and Amazon commit when they backup their databases or copy it to a mirror server. :|
I dont care if they are right or wrong. Its the diffrence of perspective that helps the overall result over there.
Still I get the feeling its gonna be like Poland with germans having their 2 seats as the local minority just so we get a break from "bla bla bla we wanna have a vote too".
On the mailman hand. The old nice CD in Virgin store system is dead.
Internet gives us such freedom nobody should ever gain any control of its content.
I really dont get it why wont artist make good use of internet and finally kick out money leeching producers from buisness. Just sell your stuff over internet for 25% of the retail shop price and everybody will be happy. Im pretty sure that on the long run you will get more from this when ppl will totally depend on getting digital entertainment from inet.
Its the same when computers came with robotics and suddenly everybody noticed ppl will loose their jobs. "Oh noez us cheap bastards will loose our jobs because of this hardware. We should stop this now !" .
Nobody will adjust the ways of evolution for some smaller group. If its bad for some but its good for everyone that will be the way..
I pirate a €20 movie so they would want me to pay €250,000...why? It's not like they would have got QUARTER OF A FUCKING MILLION euro from me buying 1 DVD. Funnily enough, most people I know have pirated, it's everyday stuff if for most people, doesn't matter if it's "just a few songs" or a fucking Blu-ray movie it's still piracy, but pretty much everyone I know has done it because it's so easy, everyone else does it and no one gets caught. How many people have I read in the paper getting caught with piracy, fined and jailed? None. Lotta rape, murder and drugs going on though.
Piracy is harmless, why should someone have to pay €250k and be looking at 5 years in a prison, 5 years in fucking prison over a movie? It's a joke. If they nailed us all most of Ireland would be in jail.
"You pirated a most likely shitty movie? YOU MONSTER! We're going to fine you something you can't afford and put you in a cell with a man who killed someone to death, raped women and children and sells hard drugs!"
You're not allowed copy movies to your hard-drive since it's illegal to break the security, yet no one cares. You're not supposed to show movies in schools/hospitals and so on, yet they still do it and no one cares. So why should anyone care if a person pirates a movie? Fair enough if they're stingy bastards and wont pay, but I have good intentions, and so do a lot of people.
The reason for the fine is a deterrent - why would anyone pay, if there was no punishment to steal?
for a $20 DVD, the fine should be $100. deterrent, but SANE.
2) In the US, showing movies in schools/hospitals is legally permitted under the "Fair Use" exemption to copyright.
Disclaimer: IANAL, YMMV
Even if it does.
Oh yeah -- also, never, ever refer to the Netherlands as "Holland," even if that's what everyone else calls it.
Music and art would be distrubuted freely but websites would have a fuck load of ads and people would make some money.
If I post a nude woman in this thread, I will probably get a infraction, and thus it would have been determined that I did wrong. If the mod etc... were to like the image and add that to their fap folder and just remove it with out the infraction being given did I do wrong? By consequence no, but by rule yes, and yet the only weighted factor was the subjectiveness about how nice the tits looked.
I like boobies.