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."
Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh well (Score:1, Insightful)
Revolutionaries are *always* outlaws at first. Take the American revolution against England for example.
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:2, Insightful)
Who fucking cares if there are 1000 social networking sites if the social groups (or majority of) you intend to communicate with are only on the 1 you are banned from?
Re:When your political party is (Score:1, Insightful)
When your political party is based on the ideology of corruption and who knows who, you shouldn't be surprised if you get the boot eventually. And you certainly don't defend democracy by trying to silence the opposition.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of Democracy is two fold.
1. To reduce civil wars.
2. To force the government to at least TRY an pay attention to the nees of people besides those directly in power.
First, if you have enough men to fairly win a civil, then you should have enough men to win an election - with much less casualties. In other forms of government, you might have 90% of the population hating the leader, but without democracy the only way to remove them is to fight and die.
Second, a democracy requires the government to consider what everyone else thinks. In most other forms of government, who )(*&@ cares what the peasants thinks.
P.S. There is a third benefit that happens often, but not all the times. Democracies usually have voting fairly often, so it speeds up the process of removing the incompetent, as compared to many other forms. But this is not always the case.
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:5, Insightful)
Will you delete a site that /does/ meet the guidelines, but you have a /personal/ grudge against?
That's whats going on here.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's a private website. It is the website's call if they want to ban pirates or ninjas.
And it is our call if we want to take them to task for it. This freedom of speech thing works both ways.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not helpful. It makes your party look like a bunch of nutcase radicals. Think of ELF: it is true that taking care of the environment is good, but setting fires and destroying property as a way to get your point across doesn't help at all.
Whenever laws are unjust, about the only way to change them is through "radical" ideas. Just look at blacks in America after the civil war, they sought to maintain the old order of things in the south and nothing really was done that improved the lives of black Americans, until the civil rights movement where a few "radicals" were needed to bring about change. Same thing with copyright. And no one is going to have any property burned or lives lost with the abolition of copyright, save for perhaps the publishers who were on the way out anyways and served no real purpose.
A reactionary party that goes to the opposite extreme is as bad as the original evil. If you want to change copyright, you are going to need at least some of those pro-copyright lawmakers to help you (unless you can completely take over the legislature, which if that is your goal, looking like a nutcase radical won't help you much either). To get those lawmakers on your side, you're going to come up with something reasonable.
But if the Pirate Party can get enough seats, it would prove that many people do care about copyright and the end result would be copyright is weakened or at least not strengthened. If you have a small to medium amount of people who are willing to shoot down any proposed legislation that strengthens or doesn't weaken copyright, you will have no choice but to try to work with them or face many, many, many angry letters/calls/e-mails.
Re:Oh well (Score:3, Insightful)
The Pirate Party aren't revolutionaries because they aren't fighting for anything in particular, just against something (which is almost as vague). In the case of the American revolution they had quite specific ideas about how things should work, not just "down with England". And actually revolutionaries also excuse themselves from polite society, so I'm not sure what your point is anyway.
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:4, Insightful)
[...] it's really the first step from the denial of free speech to wholesale slaughter and genocide.
There. Fixed that for ya.
Re:What do they expect. They're the PIRATE party (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. Henceforth, we shall stop imprisoning people who do bad things, lest they become martyrs to the cause for which they were imprisoned, thus creating a fascist movement dedicated to (murder/rape/jaywalking). Indeed, we should instead imprison those who do GOOD things, creating martyrs who will inspire virtue in the populace! And all men shall walk on the water, and swim upon the land. Huzzah!
In other news, your historical counterfactual is ridiculously overstated, as is the argument it tries to support. Look, I'm not an advocate of censorship, but I understand its appeal to Germans, who understand fascism and the cultural forces giving rise to a bit better than, I daresay, you seem to. America today is much closer to fascism than Germany, despite the wonderful (I mean that sincerely) protections for speech afforded by the US constitution.
Note also that this story is not about government censorship, but about some guys running a website that shows you ads and sells your personal information in exchange for letting you talk to your friends and post pictures of your boobs. As The Dude would say: this isn't a First Amendment thing, Walter.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is that people treat democracy as if it is virtuous, rather than accepting it because it does the least to restrict liberty.
I mean, a 9/10 vote to do something stupid still ends in doing something stupid.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's precisely my point. I don't care what peasants think -- especially when I'm a peasant. Democracy doesn't force government to consider the needs o the people, it forces government to consider the vote of the people.
So if someone has an actually good idea, but it requires, oh, I don't know, a grade ten education to understand, then it can never happen because people won't vote for it because they don't understand it.
So then you start electing people who sound intelligent, not people who actually are intelligent. Those two tend to be inversely proportional.
Re:What do they expect. They're the PIRATE party (Score:1, Insightful)
It is precisely because the crazies can speak their mind that we know to ignore them. Suppress them, and they only grow stronger.
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:3, Insightful)
Well the first thing the National Socialists did when they came to power was shutdown all the Christian Democrat and Socialist newspapers and arrest their party leaders.
So when this private social networking site takes over Germany and shuts down the Pirate Party, you'll have a valid comparison.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Strangely, the soon-to-be second largest party in Sweden, Piratpartiet, seems to disagree with you. Why are you against free culture?
Maybe you say that culture isn't free to produce. We know that; it's you who are stupid. Why are you against free culture?
Because filesharing is stealing? No, it isn't. Why are you against free culture?
Because the ones producing content have to be paid? No, they don't have to be paid. Why are you against free culture?
But then no content will be produced? No, that is a lie. Why are you against free culture?
Because you like putting annoying kids in jail. OK, I can't argue with you there, but it's a quite expensive solution.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
You may not value their ideas as much as they do, but that is certainly no ground for asserting that they are not a "real" (whatever that's supposed to mean in this context...) political party.
I could assert that Socialist parties are not "real" parties because "It's just a bunch of people that want to live off the system for free, regardless of any other consequences", but I would be terribly unjustified in doing so.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is easy to belittle those with viewpoints different then yours. Are you from the US? Are you a member of either of the major parties? What jokes - the "we just want to tax and spend like crazy and limit personal freedoms" party VS the "we just want to have ZERO taxes and totally dismantle all forms of government" party. I would say they are as fake as they come.
exactly like Nazism (Score:3, Insightful)
First, they came for the tweeters but I did not complain because I was not on twitter. Then they came for the facebookers but I didn't speak up because I didn't have a facebook account. Then they came for the myspace douchebags but I didn't speak out because I wasn't on myspace. When they came for the slashdotters, there was noone left to speak up for me.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
primary purpose for existing is to support piracy of songs, software and movies, which I don't support.
You are right, your bias was clear at the start. Except you weren't applying at the start.
It isn't. It is fair for authors to be compensated for their work. Having to pay $6 for a movie that cost millions to create is not completely unjust.
Copyright is not the only way to pay for creation - your bias prevents you from distinguishing between the two. Copyright has just become the default because it has been an easy crutch to rely on. Until the internet became widespread that is.
Re:Oh well (Score:3, Insightful)
Firtsly, let's look at Sweden, where the whole thing began. In Sweden, there's an MPAA front called Antipiratbyrån (The Antipiracy Bureau). In response, an organization called Piratbyrån (The Piracy Bureau) was formed; as "antipiracy" apparently involved making copyright law ever harsher, lobbying against such harsher laws would have to be "antiantipiracy" - or piracy. Thus, pro-consumer IP lobbyists would logically be pirates. (It must also be stated, however, that Piratbyrån used to be tightly connected with The Pirate Bay.)
The Swedish Piratpartiet (Pirate Party) is not affiliated with Piratbyrån or TPB but as far as I know, their name is based on similar principles: If things they believe people should be allowed to do are classified as "piracy" then they effectively do represent "pirates". It also creates attention - by officially naming themselves after a derogative name for copyright infringers, they show that there are enough people who don't agree with modern copyright law to form a political party (and after the TPB verdict that party is larger than half of the parties currently in the Riksdag).
The name is supposed to be placative like that.
Re:Zeitgeist (Score:3, Insightful)
How is that any different from being "sick of antisocial blacks screaming and shouting in movie theaters"? Do you think your personal prejudices justify legal/commercial discrimination?
Re:Oh well (Score:3, Insightful)
The Pirate Party DOES have a political program. The Pirate Party IS figting for freedom, and the campaign for change in copyright laws is just ONE issue in their campaign.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is fair for authors to be compensated for their work.
The purpose of copyright isn't to compensate authors. It exists to encourage more works to be written. If it's not doing this very well (it's not), it needs to go.
Re:I'm sure... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WAIT A MINUTE! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
What is this nonsense about being against free culture? What do you mean by free culture? Being able to hear a song or watch a movie for free, regardless of the desires of the moviemaker, is not free culture, it's free stuff. Especially since the prices are quite reasonable.
Also, what is with the mantra crap?
There's plenty of free media, and you can make more. You and your Pirate buddies can go enjoy free culture all you want.
But that's not it. You just want free stuff.