Pirate Party Banned From Social Networking Site 354
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that as the European Parliament elections loom, StudiVZ, Germany's largest social networking site, has opened up to political parties for election campaigning. That is, if you aren't the Pirate Party. "The other political parties were allowed to have a special account to show they are an organization and not an individual. The Pirate Party, however, was not allowed to have one and instead operated on a standard user account registered by an individual. StudiVZ noticed that the Pirate Party account was not a "real person" and despite it having a thriving network with hundreds of followers, it was summarily deleted. This means that it is impossible for the Pirate Party to have a presence at all on the largest social networking site in Germany."
Update: 05/02 19:17 GMT by T : Reader riot notes: "FYI: I just translated the press release to English."
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:4, Informative)
But I'm an asshole I guess, as I have also never seen the problem with an apartment not renting to people with kids, or restaurants not seating kids, but that is illegal.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:5, Informative)
The Pirate Party is hardly a 'fake' political party. It has a well developed platform including protecting privacy (on and off the internet), copyright reform, and patent reform. In the 2006 elections in Sweden it recieved 34,918 less than 9 months after it was founded, making it the 10th largest (out of 40) political party in the election.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:3, Informative)
Second, this particular "victim" has perhaps the largest-trafficed site in the world. They don't need any help.
Pirate Party != The Pirate Bay
Especially true when speaking of the German Pirate Party. The Swedish Pirate Party has a slightly closer association.
Re:Is it an officially-registered political party (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm sure... (Score:5, Informative)
Officially registered pirate parties exist in Spain, Austria, Germany and Poland, while those in the USA, United Kingdom, Argentina, Finland, and Australia are currently unregistered, but active.
They have actually run for a state election in Germany, although only receiving .3% of the votes. It is possible the social networking site is unaware that the Pirate Party is an actual party: nothing I saw in the article indicates otherwise. It is also possible that the company is unaware of what's going on, and the entire situation got lost in bureaucracy. It was likely just some support person who deleted the account for violating the terms of service.
For the most part I agree with the platform of the Pirate Party, but it gives the impression that their primary purpose for existing is to support piracy of songs, software and movies, which I don't support. Their marketing department could probably use some work.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe a link to the US pirate party platform [pirate-party.us] would be helpful for those who are incapable of googling.
WAIT A MINUTE! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What do they expect. They're the PIRATE party (Score:2, Informative)
As was stated earlier, however, the Pirate party *met* those standards. They *are* an officially recognized party in Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_party [wikipedia.org]
Re:I'm sure... (Score:5, Informative)
I can't speak for our German sister party, but as a member of the Swedish pirate party, I can assure you that the Pirate Party is not a fake party.
It's a party that has developed and gained support due to the increasingly anti-democratic attitude of our elected parliamentarians. Last year, parliament voted for a law giving a government institution the right to wiretap all international telecommunications traffic without warrant, suspicion and with minimal public insight. This year the IPRED directive was implemented with the added bonus (for record executives) that private corporations could go to court on their own (and not through the police as is common practice) to request information from ISPs on who was using a specific IP at a specific time. I'm sure you haven't missed ACTA if you've read /. with any regularity. The data retention directive will be implemented in Sweden this fall.
The Pirate Party is against all this. While the party is also of the opinion that non-commercial file-sharing of copyrighted works should be legalized, this is really sort of secondary. In order to enforce a ban on filesharing, you have to implement a totalitarian state that can monitor what every person does all the time. This is in our opinion NOT acceptable.
And many agree with us. In the first poll for the upcoming European Parliament elections, we got 5.1% of the vote, enough to grab one seat, with the Pirate Party not even being an alternative presented by the pollsters, and we are now the fourth, soon the third largest party in Sweden with over 42,000 members.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:2, Informative)
The pirate party isn't a fake party in Sweden though.
http://www.piratpartiet.se/ [piratpartiet.se]
http://www.piratpartiet.se/storlek [piratpartiet.se]
We'll see if they get enough votes for the EU parlament or not.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh well (Score:1, Informative)
They are fighting FOR copyright reform. They are fighting FOR fair use rights. They are fighting FOR a real public domain.
Just because you are ignorant of their policy positions does not mean that they have none.
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm sure... (Score:3, Informative)
"While the party is also of the opinion that non-commercial file-sharing of copyrighted works should be legalized"
I dont think the party even stands for this comment.
It's unequivocally stated in the party principles. Commercial use five years, all non-commercial use to be made legal. I doubt that every member agrees with everything, but they don't in other parties either. What the GP said is the official party line.
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:2, Informative)
But it's a private website. It is the website's call if they want to ban pirates or ninjas. I do some coding for a social networking site and we will delete accounts if they don't meet our guidelines (the site targets a specific audience, and we want it that way). The 'net is a big place... big enough to allow site owners the right to keep out unwanted parties. Don't like the site's way of doing things, go elsewhere. It isn't like there aren't a dozen social networking sites trying to fill the big boy's shoes.
This whole "it's a private website" argument has fundamental problems. Perhaps the website is acting legally and perhaps no law *should* be passed against it, but people and websites have social responsibilities beyond legality. Additionally, network effects (especially on a social *networking* site) make it hard for people to go elsewhere, destroying the normal methods of accountability for socially irresponsible decisions. Your post sounds like an attempt to discredit the discussion and say everything's perfectly OK. Yet, in your post, you point out that if a site does something you don't like, don't use it, and that's what competition is for. But that is exactly what this discussion could very likely accomplish: coordinating a boycott and publicizing the fact that many of us don't like the site. It's outside the realm of government. If you think the discussion is pointless, argue that, but don't argue that it's trying to intrude on the private rights of private websites, and don't smugly recommend that we do what we are already doing: coordinating not using the site and supporting the competitors.
Re:What do they expect. They're the PIRATE party (Score:4, Informative)
America is quite capable of outlawing political parties, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act [wikipedia.org] as an example and also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA#History [wikipedia.org].
As a democracy if enough people wanted to be communist to amend the constitution (over 2/3rds) then the will of the people should be respected.
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:1, Informative)
The next thing they did was make all the corporations democratically run by the workers. Which really pissed off the foreign owners who were milking the country dry. That's what the war was about, maintaining the enslavement of the people.
You know that Hitler started WWII? You know that he even let people be killed to make it look like the Poles attacked first, not the Germans? Yeah, that's totally about evil bourgeois wanting their business to go on as usual. It's not even tangentially related to the original National Socialist ideology of more living space in the east.
They recognized that the capitalists and the money changers were guilty of crimes against humanity, and they tried to liberate humanity. That's why the blitz worked, because the people in the various countries they invaded actually greeted them as liberators.
They got huge sums from capitalists and their great second enemy, who's a bastard of the first according to them, was Communism. Surely they would embrace that stupid theory by that fucking jew Marx! (Buzzword: Sozialismus der Tat)
The reason you think what you think about the Nazi's is because you were raised on a diet of propaganda designed to hide the shame of your forefathers. That's not to say the things you think you know are defensible, because they're not. The point is, nothing you think you know about the subject is actually real.
Yeah, of course. Most German kids learn in grade 9 or 10, depending on federal land, all the nice horrors from 1933 to 1945. The nice thing: The books actually _cite_ their texts; contemporary witnesses, credible historians, and even original sources, like a recording of one of Hitler's speeches. That's about as unreal as anything can get, eh?
If you don't have any clue what you're talking about, shut the fuck up. (Disclaimer: I'm actually a secondary jew-hater (i.e. anti-Semite). These people think that the jews now take advantage of their position as victims to be in a better political/economical/foocal position.)