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.
268 Comments on Pirate Party Elected to EU Parliament
If you think anything about the RIAA or MPAA is pro-artist, then you are sadly, sadly mistaken. Socking it to those executives is the best thing for artists and consumers.
And if you think musicians have it easy because of the RIAA, then you've read nothing in depth about the matter, and you don't know anyone trying to work in the music business.
But since you're obviously not interested in researching your knee-jerk reactions, go back to worrying about how the Swedes are going to relentlessly pirate your "commercial paintings" on torrent sites. Like I said, the vast majority of this shit doesn't apply to those of us working in physical mediums.
It will be a very long time before the laws in regards to digital copyright favor the consumer. This is only the first step in a very long journey.
By the way, Torrents are legal and so is all forms of peer to peer networking. The only thing that can be labeled illicit is the content shared. RIAA succeeded in the past in convincing a court that peer to peer has no use besides illicit activities; the only reason the RIAA won is because they got far more money than the developers of P2P technology (basically keep counter suing until the developer goes bankrupt).
Edit: Oh, by the way, current Vice President Biden played a critical role in making sure DMCA happened.
It's not OK for a record company for force someone to buy a crappy album (with little or no idea about how crappy the rest of the album is other than one or two 'star' singles, with major reviewers (so called "subjective analysts") on recoding companies' payrolls, and then be restricted from doing anything but playing it or using it as a coffee-mug coaster.
It's not OK for a record company to dictate how people should consume content they paid for.
Television and radio are mass-media. Once a song/video is broadcast from the broadcaster, it's gone. There should end the recording companies' liabilities over the content. Consumers shouldn't be told not to add a 'copyrighted' piece of content from YouTube videos, if it's coming from a TV or radio recording.
There's no way you can call TV or Radio recording illegal. Doing so is blatant theft. For the logic stated above.
Penal codes around the world suck. So he illegally downloaded a .mp3 (worth 99c on Amazon), and is made to pay >10 times the amount as fine? Appalling. This is exactly what TPP is out to set right...cash-rich recoding companies with their shitty contracted artists robbing the masses blind.
The exorbitant fines are a sign of the archaic copyright laws in place.
Make one or two attractive songs, fill the rest of the CD with crap, and selling 10 songs (because only the entire album is marketed, not the hit single), is ripping off. Especially for those who don't use digital downloads, and believe in having a hard-copy of everything they buy.
That's pretty much what the RIAA and MPAA are.And Clinton signed it into law. When it comes to digital rights, both parties in the US screw people over.