Swedish Pirate Party Fails To Enter Parliament 224
pickens writes "TorrentFreak reports that with 95 percent of the votes counted, it is clear that the Pirate Party will not enter the Swedish Parliament. The Party is currently stuck at about 1 percent of the total vote, nowhere near the 4 percent threshold it needs. This means that neither WikiLeaks nor The Pirate Bay will be hosted under Parliamentary immunity and the Party won't get the chance to legalize non-commercial file-sharing or criminalize 'copyright abuse' as they planned. 'The Swedish Pirate Party did its best election campaign ever. We had more media, more articles, more debates, more handed-out flyers than ever. Unfortunately, the wind was not in our sails this time, as it was with the European elections,' says party leader Rick Falkvinge. The party will now have to wait four more years before they have another shot at entering the Swedish Parliament. 'Each generation must reconquer democracy,' adds Falkvinge. 'Nobody said it was going to be an easy fight.'"
Re:Democracy? (Score:0, Interesting)
Well, as this demonstrates only 0.7% of Swedish people (the land of pirates) think copyright infringement should be lawful. The rest 99.3% think it should stay illegal.
Re:Oh, the Pirate Party (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually they got 20 seats and a tipping point position, where they in theory could get power to deseat the sitting conservative/liberal government.
But I agree with the point... the interesting (and scary) part about the election is that I can expect that one in every twenty people I meet down town actually voted for a nazi party.
Kind of misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
While the article is correct, the swedish green party, miljöpartiet, has officially supported decriminalisation of noncommercial filesharing since just after the EU election. I would guess that most of those who voted for the pirate party in the EU election voted for the greens now, since there was no doubt that they would get in.
In fact, the greens were very successful in this election so despite the pirate party's failure, 7% of the riksdag actually supports legal file sharing which is not a bad situation in any way for the pirate movement.
Let's say, hypothetically, you're not pro-piracy.. (Score:4, Interesting)
...but you're anti- million-dollar lawsuits over a few dozen MP3s illicitly traded, fed-up at the viciously draconian DRM schemes being pushed on consumers, and frankly downright concerned that your children could cause you to lose your Internet access and your house over a file transfer.
Is it seriously that farfetched to consider voting for a party this extreme when there's absolutely nothing in the middle of the spectrum as far as protecting consumers and citizens from runaway litigation and settlement schemes?
I absolutely believe that you should pay for software if you want to use it and the author is selling it, I've actually started selling some myself. But who else is out there to rein in the gross overreach of the copyright lobby or seriously fighting for privacy rights at that level?
Re:Democracy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Would you care to elaborate a bit ? I hope you realize that file-sharing is not only about copyrighted materials.
True, it is just 99.3% about illegally sharing copyrighted materials. Strangely enough it aligns with the vote percentages.
Best election campaign ever? (Score:5, Interesting)
How does he figure that? I (a Swede) haven't heard or seen anything from them since the election for the European parliament. I think it would be more correct to call it their worst election campaign ever.
Re:If they want to be taken seriously (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh, the Pirate Party (Score:3, Interesting)
Posting AC as this is a really infected issue to be connected to.
Sverigedemokraterna is not racists nor swastica waving. They are opposed, among other things, to the current immigration laws. In such a politically correct country as Sweden this defaults to racism. However the party has its roots, but has since been reformed, in the white supremacy movement, including some of its current high ranking officials.
That aside, they do attract racist people and new-nazis.
This is a semi personal analysis. But media, established political parties and swedes in general turned the blind side to the issue that they do infact raise. Sweden has a high immigration quota but has failed miserably to incorporate the new-swedes in its social and in its work structure. Combined with the fact that they were locked out from 99% of the debates left some swedes (read mostly young males) with the option of voting for the underdog that had radical views as opposed to voting for their ideological views.
This is a very uncomfortable situation for the politically correct swedes as they are now forced to deal openly with the subject.
Sign of the times (Score:5, Interesting)
The swedish Democrats (read anti-immigrant party) did make it in. Intresting prediction by Gerald Celente in a dutch free newspaper today. "Hate of Islam can no longer be stopped". When even Sweden starts going natiolistic, you know things are bad.
So, freedom of information. NO.
No to immigrants. Yes.
Sad. And yes there are issues, but the problem goes deeper then just Islam, you can see that with the Roma in France. There is a clash of cultures going on and a ruling elite that is totally in capable of dealing or even acknowledging this.
The same free newspaper ran a story last week on the Roma being deported. It said the troubles started after Roma attacked a police station after police has shot one of them. Then it goes on to make the claim that this decision was totally wrong and ill thought out... NO, not the decision of the Roma to attack a police station in a country were there reputation already sucks, no, it is the FRENCH reaction to one of its police stations being attack in protest of the legal shooting of a criminal by foreigners that gets attacked.
Talk about NOT getting the point.
And no I am NOT going off-topic. The same applies to copyright infringement. The ruling elite would LOVE to make out that this is people stealing music from hard working artists who are begging for bread. What it is REALLY about is a mother scrubbing floors for a living putting a song performed by a multi-biljonair behind a video of child and uploading it on youtube to share with friends. If the copyright extortion industry had its way, we would have to pay a performance fee for singing "Happy birthday" and pay for having our earphones on to loud or if we whistle a tune. Any tune because every country has a collection agency that collects for every song regardless of whether the author wants it to be collected.
Times are changing. The internet has changed the rules of copying and mass imigration has changed the rules about cultures meeting. And either we act on those changes or ignore them until things blow up. Remember the last time the ruling elite were unable to deal with a changing reality? I think it was about 1932 that it came to a boil. Read up on that era. There is plenty writting about the years after but far less about before. You can't stop it when it has happened, so how about learning from history how to stop it happening again?
Copyright infringement is performed by millions, perhaps when so many do it, you just got to accept it as reality rather then try to protect the out of date business practices of a few filthy rich.
If you look at the politicians who are pro-copyright, pro-internet filtering and pro-immigration, you notice that they all try to claim that their methods are working have worked for decades and any problems are just radical extremists. And if you are not careful a real radical will stand up and claim to have the answer and be listened to.
What do they really want to do about filesharing? Create a war on filesharing? That went so well with the war on drugs. Put every filesharer in jail? Give every kid a criminal record for sharing Celine Dion? No, that is impossible especially since the police is undergoing budget cuts throughout Europe and has plenty of calls on its man power for the war on drugs and war on terror.
And if you ask the current elite WHY they side with the copyright industry, you often don't get any better answer then 'eh, because that is how it always was'. No, copyright is a new thing. It was changed because of new tech, so why not change it again because of even newer tech?
Either politicians change with the changing world, or they find themselves changed. Right now all parties in sweden have declared they won't work the new Swedish Democrats. Sure sure, we heard that before. Next election they will become far far larger because the current elite won't actually change anything and then they will have to work with them. And still they won't change a thing.
The Roma were kicked out of France. It is to late to stop the revolution, it has already happened. 10 years ago, this would have been unthinkable. So the ruling elite didn't think about it.
Re:If they want to be taken seriously (Score:3, Interesting)
Bullshit. A name has to stand for something, it doesn't have to be "good" in any sense.
The green party is a good example. The were actually named simply "The Green" when they entered the german parliament. That's as silly a name as "Pirate Party". But people didn't care for the name, they cared for the program.
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
How is democracy related to stealing revenue from other people?
It isn't, but it IS directly related to whether or not big corporations can buy their own laws on a whim.
Cue the RIAA, DMCA, ACTA, etc., etc.
What the RIAA is hoping is that downloading a $1 file can end up with you losing what has become a basic human right (ie. Internet access).
Copyright laws are the foot governments are using to wedge open the door which allows them to spy on everybody. Every round of copyright laws gets more demonic. Seriously, how can a copyright law ("ACTA") be debated in total secrecy? What's to hide...?
Voting Pirate is a sensible option if ask me.
Re:Oh, the Pirate Party (Score:2, Interesting)
Sort of. You are referring to 'gyaku manji', or the reversed one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika [wikipedia.org]
"In Japan, the swastika is called manji. Since the Middle Ages, it has been used as a coat of arms by various Japanese families. On Japanese maps, a swastika (left-facing and horizontal) is used to mark the location of a Buddhist temple. The right-facing manji is often referred to as the gyaku manji (, lit. 'reverse manji'), and can also be called kagi jji (literally 'hook cross')."
Re:If they want to be taken seriously (Score:1, Interesting)
We had a group named like the one GP suggested in Finland during the last election, whose agenda pretty much coincided with that of the current Pirate Party of Finland. They had zero publicity and zero interest from the populace at large even with the people who could've run for parliament under their name. They never managed to collect enough supporters to get their party registered, and their candidates were forced to run under then-registered liberal party, which did not garner any more interest in the election. They decided to pull the plug from the party association, citing as a cause for discontinuing amongst other things "A poor choice of name".
In contrast, the Pirate Party of Finland is registered as a political party and has just surpassed the other small parties as the largest non-parliament party at 3000 members, which is only about 1400 members less than the Green party of Finland (currently as a government party). Currently we are preparing for the next parliamentary election here that's due next spring, and have over 60 candidates in electional districts that include over 75% of the population. (The Finnish parliament has 200 members). We have had our members participate in multiple televized talks, and the justice ministry has not only asked the party's advice for their suggestions on laws concerning the usage of unsecured wifi, but also heeded it when making their recommendations.
So no, the Pirate Party does not need to "grow up", it is the grown-up party that emerged from the ashes of the "serious" party. The name is radical, but so is the change that needs to happen if we are not to succumb to the tyrannical rule that the media cartels along with the other IP organizations are planning for us.
Re:Democracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because the arguments have been repeated a thousand times, does not make the voters convinced. In fact, I think some of the more embarrassing moments have been when PP have been asked about their policy on something and pulled some really stretch logic to somehow connect one argument to their principles, because really they have no policy in that area. The party has been highly focused on causes and haven't really wanted a deeper ideology because they fear many would disagree with it.
Re:Let's say, hypothetically, you're not pro-pirac (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no rational middle ground on piracy. If you're going to take the stance that copying is bad, you have to fight it all out. Scorched earth. Anything less, and you might as well legalize file sharing. The risks of getting caught file sharing are so low, that you must have extraordinarily draconian punishments for the risk/reward ratio to work out against file sharing.
There are three choices. You are either for locking down *everything*, for locking down *nothing*, or you are for ineffectual bumbling. Even the first option is more respectable than the last option.