Sweden's 'Pirate Party' wins seat in the European Parliament; RIAA surrenders

[The Ozzman]

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's Pirate Party, striking a chord with voters who want more free content on the Internet, won a seat in the European Parliament, early results showed on Sunday.

The Pirate Party captured 7.1 percent of votes in Sweden in the Europe-wide ballot, enough to give it a single seat. The party wants to deregulate copyright, abolish the patent system and reduce surveillance on the Internet.

"This is fantastic!" Christian Engstrom, the party's top candidate, told Reuters. "This shows that there are a lot of people who think that personal integrity is important and that it matters that we deal with the Internet and the new information society in the right way."

Previously an obscure group of single-issue activists, the party enjoyed a jump in popularity after the conviction in April of four men behind The Pirate Bay, one of the world's biggest free file-sharing website.

The case cast a spotlight on the issue of internet file-sharing, a technique used to download movies, music and other content. The defendants have called for a retrial.

Despite the similar names, the party and the website are not linked. The party was founded in 2006 and contested a Swedish general election that year, but received less than one percent of the vote.

Engstrom credited the party's appeal to young voters for its success. "We are very strong among those under 30. They are the ones who understand the new world the best. And they have now signalled they don't like how the big parties deal with these issues."

The Pirate Party will take up one of Sweden's 18 seats in the 785-seat parliament. "We will use all of our strength to defend personal integrity and our civil rights," Engstrom said.

http://af.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idAFTRE55623320090607

Now, while this could rightly go in the news thread, I wanted to take a different approach here.

Regarding the bold section: Do you think abolishing the patent system is right? Do you really think it respects intellectual property laws/ethics? Why?

It was my understanding that the patent system respected IP to the fullest extent.

 

[Vimana]

Sweden fuck yeah!

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Honestly I'd be interested to see if that idea actually catches on, and what effect it would have on Sweden's economy. It sounds pretty stupid though, and I can only imagine how many of their supporters have thought no further about the issue than "FREEEEEEEEEEE MUSICZZZZZZZZZZ!!"

I mean, do they really think most artist and inventor types are going to be as motivated to produce creative works if they have no ownership of their ideas whatsoever? Not even Richard Stallman is for completely abolishing 'intellectual property' laws, and he's devoted most of his life to promoting free software.

 

[cookiecutter]

I don't think copyright and patent should be abolished. It had uses before the internet. However I think they should give up trying to stop individuals from downloading things. That's an impossible task and doesn't really solve anything.

 

[Dak]

I don't want to turn this thread into a debate over whether or not downloading is stealing or not. My personal opinion is that it's ok as long as you are not profitting from it. As in, burning and selling movies/music/etc.
That is basically the same thing as plagarism, as opposed to copying a paper to read yourself. Imo anyway.

 

[ArneZ]

Good to hear. Fascism will never win.

 

[The Ozzman]

I don't want to turn this thread into a debate over whether or not downloading is stealing or not. My personal opinion is that it's ok as long as you are not profitting from it.

Too late.

I was looking for more opinions on intellectual property and whether patents are right/wrong or ethical/unethical etc

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I don't want to turn this thread into a debate over whether or not downloading is stealing or not. My personal opinion is that it's ok as long as you are not profitting from it. As in, burning and selling movies/music/etc.
That is basically the same thing as plagarism, as opposed to copying a paper to read yourself. Imo anyway.

Arguably by your logic it would then be okay to go into any store and walk off with the products on the shelves, as long as you don't sell those products yourself. In both cases, you're taking something that has value and jeopardising the producer's ability to profit off of it.

Too late.

I was looking for more opinions on intellectual property and whether patents are right/wrong or ethical/unethical etc

I think how ethical they are just depends on how they're implemented - primarily on the lifespan of the patent, I guess. I think it makes sense for patents to last five years or so, thus giving the inventor time to establish a business around the idea and get a head start in marketing it, but of course if patents last too long then it just drags down the economy by blocking competition.

 

[Dak]

Arguably by your logic it would then be okay to go into any library and walk off with the products on the shelves, as long as you don't sell those products yourself.

Post edited to show similarity in situation.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Pirating media is not analogous to checking out something at a library. If you wanted a real analogy, it would be going into a library and scanning all the pages of a book (or burning copies of CDs there) and walking off with those copies. Huge difference.

 

[waif]

I'm opposed to downloading against the artist's will, but I do think more artists should support downloading their music. I don't claim to be well-informed on the specifics, but the idea of abolishing patents sounds fucking stupid. I was hoping this thread was about the "arrr" sort of pirates.

 

[Dak]

Pirating media is not analogous to checking out something at a library. If you wanted a real analogy, it would be going into a library and scanning all the pages of a book (or burning copies of CDs there) and walking off with those copies. Huge difference.

I really don't see the difference except for convenience of access. It's like, I can either listen to the song on myspace/last.fm, etc for free, or I can download it so I don't have to be connected to the internet to listen to it for free.....

I don't think myspace is paying bands to post their music. The bands are making myspace money. So why not just make limewire or a torrent site a little money instead.

 

[Blind Guardian]

I didn't vote for them, but I think it's all good.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I really don't see the difference except for convenience of access. It's like, I can either listen to the song on myspace/last.fm, etc for free, or I can download it so I don't have to be connected to the internet to listen to it for free.....

I don't think myspace is paying bands to post their music. The bands are making myspace money. So why not just make limewire or a torrent site a little money instead.

Because when you download something you have the opportunity to keep it permanently, whereas if you just listen to it off of a site like MySpace you can only hear it there, you can't put it on your iPod or anything, and the band can take the song down at anytime. Not to mention that you almost never find entire albums on MySpace and Last.fm.

Furthermore, you'd never in a million years get to freely download copies of full-length big-budget movies if it were up to the people who make them. The difference between pirating media and "checking it out" are so huge that there shouldn't even be a need to discuss this.

 

[RedinTheSky]

Because when you download something you have the opportunity to keep it permanently, whereas if you just listen to it off of a site like MySpace you can only hear it there, you can't put it on your iPod or anything, and the band can take the song down at anytime. Not to mention that you almost never find entire albums on MySpace and Last.fm.

You could get the songs off of myspace or youtube, but would you really want to regularly listen to something of that quality ?

 

[zabu of nΩd]

You could get the songs off of myspace or youtube,

Well yeah, but not legally, which makes it kinda a moot point.

but would you really want to regularly listen to something of that quality ?

That too. There's obviously a reason why bands don't just upload their entire albums to websites in lossless downloadable formats and say "HERE YA GO!"

 

[Dak]

Some of that has to do with the industry being behind the times. The music itself is moving more and more towards being free, while what you pay for is all the extras.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

How does music move more and more towards "being free"?

 

[Dak]

More music is being made available for online download at a relativily low price, and then you have (I think it was Rush), that made their album available for download for whatever the buyer wanted to pay.

Then of course you have the music on the myspaces and web jukeboxes and internet radios etc etc.

If nothing else, the availability of [illegal] downloaded music is forcing the industry to become more creative in its marketing and distribution.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Radiohead, not Rush I believe. Anyway, I don't think this means music is becoming "more free" but rather that it's just much easier to listen to music in various ways through various avenues.