What happens when a lot of people get upset about copyright laws? In Sweden, the Pirate Party gets a seat at the European Parliament. As the Guardian reports, “revulsion” over a controversial I.P. enforcement directive and the arrest of The Pirate Bay’s owners helped the Pirate Party secure 7 percent of the national vote. Another Pirate Party won nearly 1 percent of the vote in Germany, and similar parties exist in Austria, Spain, Denmark, Poland, and Finland. It may be a good thing that Dubner’s new term for internet piracy didn’t catch on. The Downlifting Party just doesn’t sound as appealing. [%comments]
Pirates in Government
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I support the Pirate Party. Sharing is not stealing.
Yarrrrrrr!
There is a pirate party in the US, also.
They do make some good points. I can honestly say that Youtube (and other similar services) are how I have found out about a lot of music. Without those services, these recording companies would never have made a single cent off of me.
The problem is that it’s not easy to measure the indirect gain from online sharing, but it’s easy to measure (or at least think you are measuring) the direct costs.
Kevin: There are independent scientific reports (e.g. from Netherlands and Sweden) that shows exactly what you’re talking about. They show that more money than ever are flowing to the cultural sector. The problem is that more of this money goes straight to the artists and not via the “industry” like it obviously should…
Despite the tongue-in-cheek name, the primary aim of the Pirate Party is to correct the privacy invasions, presumptions of guilt, ridiculous extensions of copyright, and other attacks on civil liberties that have been perpetuated in the US and Europe in the name of copyright enforcement. The goal is not simply to get “free stuff”. The EU, the French Constitutional Court, and US judges have thankfully begun realizing how far and dangerous these efforts have been, but we still have a long way to go when Orrin Hatch is applauding draconian enforcement and President Obama is naming RIAA lawyers to his team.
….and VHS will surely destroy the TV/movie industry
Nonsense, the ‘pirate party’ are primarily kids who dont understand the value of other peoples work. The idea that it is some pro-privacy campaugn is frankly laughable.
The pirateparty do not belive in copytright. They think that freakonomics should have been written by amateurs in their free time and its authord not been paid for a single copy.
Its telling that their spokesperson is an 18year old swedish student. In other words, someone who has never, ever done a days work in her life.
A sad symptom of the ‘entitlement generation’.