I’m moving to Sweden!

Arrrrr! :)[/quote]

yes, it’s like the word “gay”!

You are correct, there is no (I repeat no) connection between the Pirate Bay and the Swedish Pirate Party (or, AFAIK, any PP).

I think you’re wrong when you say it’s coincidental that they’ve both arisen, though. It’s defininitely not random. It was an idea whose time had come, and which is taking on many different faces.

Compare Greenpeace and the Green Parties.

So why Sweden? Well, my best explanation was that we were a few months ahead due to early high-speed broadband rollout. When you put technology in people’s hands, they discover what it can be used for. (100 Mbit is expected in an apartment in Sweden today. I had 10/10 Mbit in 1998, pretty normal at the time. Compare that to the US, where most are still not at that level today.)

Rick Falkvinge
Party leader, Swedish PP

And you never pause to consider the fact that copyright-law reform is one of the main issues of these movements?
At this point the pirate-parties are the only ones standing up against the tidal wave of civil rights abusing legislation being passed. One of the main reasons that there even is a growing “politically active voice” is the ingenious choice of the pirate brand!

I’ve never been on an electoral role or ever voted before, but I reckon I would for this party .

Even small babies/children have pirate-bodies, small cosy pirate gloves. (My 2 year and 5 year old both have pirate gloves).

So, the pirate theme is not that bad.

/Perty

my error then is to mistakenly associate the shared name of Pirate with the shared issues of copyright etc which is also all coincidental

and i have further erred because 5 members of TPB are not up on criminal charges for facilitation of copyright infringement in Sweden

furthermore, i have mistakenly made the link between copyright piracy and piracy of the highseas especially romantic swash buckling hero type of piracy!

fuck me how did i make such a mess

the right to privacy and open access is ultimately trivialized when the politically active voices of filesharing name themselves in the honor and spirit of TPB. who are all about, and dont forget this, refusing to remove infringing content

public perception can potentially turn against legitimate filesharing with disastrous results if under public scrutiny the origin of the pirate parties is linked to criminal enterprise. then it is all going to be just fun

i hear you guys about it all being a fun catchy name, but you are living on another planet. single issue politics is difficult but works best by using its base of support to lobby and petition those in power who can advocate open access rights. no professional politician is gonna champion the cause of The Pirate Party for not only the fear of looking comical but more seriously because criminal piracy is a big problem for our economies (remember filesharing is NOT piracy)

in the battle for the public, perception is everything, facts count for nothing

it is too late for the USA. filesharing has become a crime in the eyes and hearts of the public and media. there is the possibility that it can happen in Europe, is defending filesharing rights what The Pirate Parties are about? if so then make a great distance between yourselves and TPB and all symbols and names belonging to criminal piracy of copyright

dont you have anything better to do with all this organizing energy you possess? here is an idea for you: organize a political party and go out there into the land of grownups and ensure we get the world we want

politics is black and white. whose cause are The Pirate Parties ultimately assisting? not filesharing[/quote]
‘naming themselves in the honour of piratebay’ What planet are you living in? Every time I see one of your comments, h33t, I wonder more and more just what sort of alternate reality you live in. Pirates existed long before peter and co set up a website a few years ago. Pirates were democratic leaders, often working to change laws, and undermine politicians bought and sold by the rich and pwoerfull, using the newest technologies. As a metaphore, it’s apt.

Couple of things to point out to you, since you seem to be reading the comments, and not the article – the Hesse party is not dealing with copyright at all, because that just is not handled at the state level. Privacy, and associated rights, ARE, however.

As far as linked to criminal enterprise – as far as I know (and so far I’ve spoken with over 20 of the different pirate parties around the world) none of them have any ties to ‘criminal enterprise’. Perhaps you should do some (I’d usually add ‘more’ here, but that would imply some had been done in the first place) research.

Intentions are good tho, no doubt

the right to privacy and open access is ultimately trivialized when the politically active voices of filesharing name themselves in the honor and spirit of TPB. who are all about, and dont forget this, refusing to remove infringing content

public perception can potentially turn against legitimate filesharing with disastrous results if under public scrutiny the origin of the pirate parties is linked to criminal enterprise. then it is all going to be just fun

i hear you guys about it all being a fun catchy name, but you are living on another planet. single issue politics is difficult but works best by using its base of support to lobby and petition those in power who can advocate open access rights. no professional politician is gonna champion the cause of The Pirate Party for not only the fear of looking comical but more seriously because criminal piracy is a big problem for our economies (remember filesharing is NOT piracy)

in the battle for the public, perception is everything, facts count for nothing

it is too late for the USA. filesharing has become a crime in the eyes and hearts of the public and media. there is the possibility that it can happen in Europe, is defending filesharing rights what The Pirate Parties are about? if so then make a great distance between yourselves and TPB and all symbols and names belonging to criminal piracy of copyright

dont you have anything better to do with all this organizing energy you possess? here is an idea for you: organize a political party and go out there into the land of grownups and ensure we get the world we want

politics is black and white. whose cause are The Pirate Parties ultimately assisting? not filesharing

http://paidandpopular.blogspot.com

Germans do great things for online privacy/anonymity, like running a large amount of Tor nodes and what the people at that university in Dresden are doing – I’d hate to see that go away.

[quote]what a disaster! the MPAA could not have bought and paid for a better anti-filesharing campaign than these nutters are enacting
[/quote]

With all the idiocy you are talking on here, it really makes me not want to join the site h33t, if you are affiliated with them.

File sharers have just taken on the “pirate” image because it’s a fun image.

Arrrrr! :)

Typical scenario (even as we don´t say that downloading something illegal ist O-.K. ;) ):

“Dad – I heard about a “Freedom Party”, what do you think about”?

“Uh – ANOTHER freedom party?”

You can set every “serious” name instead. Anything with “Democracy” sounds good…. No one would take care of it. Explicit a party in Germany has the problem that no one take notice of it. Our name is nearly a guarantee of a second question like: “what the hell are THEY for?” (Christof called it catchy – my english is not that good :/ ). From this moment on we´ve won (“oh – not THAT bad… but why did they have such a silly name?”).

And from this point of sight we have to balance reasons and risks. Would we have been founded without this name? Would we have >600 people (+1 every day) in our party? As far as I know there where two other partys wich tried something like this. One was called “internet-party” I think. Another one hm.. “public rights party”. No one has ever heard of them (20 partys founded every year in Germany).

My point:
“good” name-> no one knows
“bad” name-> “silly name- but good points”

I prefer the second way. ;) Even as I think that the connotations as an “civil rights party” can work – once established. We also have a “Chaos Computer Club” – no one think about the “Chaos” in it – they are against Dat-Mining and this is the connotation there. See it on the long run.

Regards
ALOA

“freedom party” would be a much better choice…

primary goals of privacy and openaccess are great and laudable. so why burden YOUR politics with the Swedish ‘pirate’ disease? the ‘pirate parties’ are about supporting TPB ethos of refusing to acknowledge copyright for no other reason than “I can”. a immature kamikaze attitude that will surely end in tears

“The Hesse state Pirate Party is headed by Christof Leng”. by ego i mean he does it for himself not for others because his actions do not help others as he describes, on the contrary

@aloa5

typical scenario:

father to daughter “what are you doing on your computer?”

daughter “daddy, i am downloading mp3′s”

father “is that not illegal? is it not a criminal act of copyright piracy to share your music files with your other 8 year old friends?”

“but daddy, The Pirate Party says it is ok”

“ah, ok then, if there is a political party supporting copyright theft then i guess there is no problem”

“but daddy isnt theft wrong?”

“not when we vote The Pirate Party into power!”

On the official websites you will find al lot of adresses ( piratenpartei[dot]de or piratenpartei-hessen[dot]de ).

Greetings
ALOA

Bad Homburg is a city filled with mostly old people, but there is a small community of gamers/sharers too.

I really hope they get the 1% vote, best place to advertise would be in internet cafes I think.

To answer the question about the “mantle of piracy”. Really a point of view. But I can say that we have positiv press comments and not only at specific news-sites (heise). As an example I can take “Handelsblatt” as an example. A serious economy-newspaper wich cooperates with the publishing company “Dow Jones” (wich publishes “The Wall Street Journal”). A nice article with an embedded video-interview with Jens Seipenbusch comparing us with the Greens at the beginning 80´s ending with a wish that it will not last another 20 years before the (not only political) world listen to important (“new”) topics.

So the “mantle of piracy” may exist at this time. The name is strange – no way around it. But we are growing with (or because of) this name and are working serious and accurate wich is (and will further on be) honored.

Regards
ALOA

you seem to ignore the fact about the direction the german pirateparty is taking, p2p is only a secondary goal of the party. the primary goals are privacy and openaccess.

and christoph is not doing this as an ego trip, since he no longer is a representative of the pp. (as stated in the text)

filesharing is not piracy, it is not theft, filesharing is a social networking phenomena created by the ease and abundance of copy and distribution technologies

piracy is the criminal act of organizing a commercial operation based on infringing copyright for profit

the greater public’s first knowledge of filesharing comes from one of two sources: 1. anti-p2p propaganda by the **AA, or 2. their kids downloading an mp3

meanwhile, the greatest minds in the p2p world create political parties with jolly roger flags and call themselves pirates. your political enemies are pissing themselves with laughter at your niavity

Christof Leng, your arrogance to stand as a representative for filesharing is an ego trip. you are doing more to damage the political future of filesharing than could be organized by the MPAA. how do you answer your critics who say that by taking the mantle of piracy you are consenting to the label of a criminal character? you gonna hop up and down on one leg and say “arrgghhh”

Vote them and kick RIAA + MPAA out of Germany \O/