Swedish Left Party Wants to Legalize Piracy
Written by Ernesto on June 09, 2008This Sunday, the Swedish Left Party voted in favor of a motion calling for the legalization of sharing copyrighted files for personal use. The party, which currently holds 22 seats in the Swedish parliament, sees piracy as something positive, much like public libraries.
At the party’s congress this weekend, party members had to vote on a motion that would legalize the uploading and downloading of copyrighted material for personal use, as long as it is not for commercial purposes.
“To many of us in the Left Party, file sharing is something positive in the same obvious way that public libraries are,” the motion read, going on to describe the general opinion on file sharing in Sweden.
In addition, the motion stated that the various measures taken for trying to stop file sharing, such as big brother-like surveillance, or arbitrary sentences against individuals, are unacceptable.
The Pirate Bay, the main reason why piracy is such a hot topic in Sweden, was also mentioned in the motion. “The farce that is the ongoing legal procedures against The Pirate Bay also shows how legal security is in risk of being compromised by those trying to enforce the current ban on file sharing,” it read.
The motion concluded that legalizing piracy is the solution, and that the Left Party should take a stand for opening the possibilities to make copies for personal use.
The congress was split on the issue, and debate was heated before the vote on Sunday, but when the vote was taken it fell in favour of the motion legalizing file sharing.
“We obviously want to be the cultural workers’ party in the future, but legislation which makes the majority of the adult population criminals must be changed,” Elise Norberg Pilhem of the party’s board said.
Today, only a few hours after The Left Party’s new stance on file sharing, another initiative in the same direction was presented from across the aisle. The Swedish Center Party – the third largest party in Sweden, currently in government with four cabinet ministers, has called for an improvement in current copyright legislation.
Earlier this year the party had no success in convincing their colleagues in the government coalition to legalize non-commercial file sharing. Today, the party demands a complete oversight of the copyright legislation, and the appointment of a commission to investigate how a new copyright law could be constructed.
We now see a younger generation questioning copyright more and more, and with that there will be demands for updated copyright legislation. We need a legislation that is accepted by as many as possible, says Annie Johansson, the Center Party’s spokesperson on copyright.
It looks like things are changing for the better in Sweden.
Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk23)
Next: The Pirate Bay Takes Stand Against Wiretapping Law
98 Responses
Now to take down the RIAA…
hey, 1st comment!!
@mister X
no need they will destroy themselves
i like the idea of piracy being a “public library” even if the books is at the library its possible to get them in the store if you want to own it
The future is getting closer… bit by bit… the “public library” way on p2p is the way to go, sweden, hope this concludes well and sets a beautiful precedent…
We are getting closer to the future, please, someone, hold back the **AAs on this one so we can have some social progress!
that would be unreal. There would be lots of dedi servers popping up over there :D! Once that’s in place SSL FTP to home PC :D woop!
If this motion passes it is good news for Sweden, but also for other countries in the area and in Europe that are split on this copyright issue.
The entertainment corporations and their posse are far too powerful in the USA, but this legislation could have positive consequences for countries such as the UK and we should all support it as much as possible :)
Swedish torrenters, petition your representatives for the sake of all of us!
Sounds a like another slimy political promise designed to try to get votes! Well it would have mine I lived in Sweden!
Very Good News.
Hope They legalize it ! ! !
now how do i get a high speed secure connection with a sweedish ip# only if the politians here i9n the USA would see the light
canada is trying to make it illegal while sweden is trying to make it legal. interesting
Good on you, Sweden!
Workers, leechers and seeders of the world, unite!
If such a precedent is ever set, that is, filesharing is legalized in a European country, and it probably will happen sooner or later, it would be very interesting to see how the countries ‘enlightened’ in a copyright sense of the word, US mainly, would officially and unofficially react to this…
This could set as an example to other Governments and hopeful parties. Everyone should be petitioning their politians now everywhere. Make this bigger than it already is. Anyone with an internet connection you know who isn’t already learning and exploring our world culture you should help them. Someone please construct a worthwhile petition on the downing street website for me to sign with hope.
Holy shit..
GO Sweden, woot… Man thats good… Now all trackers could be safe in Sweden, and RIAA and else then would fuck themselfs, woot :)
Hm, didn’t know about Canada. This might be different, though, as while in the Canada case this looks to be more of a lucky legislative loophole, this time it’s a change of moral values we might be dealing with.
A few things should perhaps be clarified:
* “cultural worker” sounds like communist new-speak for authors and artists, etc. It is. That said, the use of the phrase has spread and is now in common use.
* The “Left Party”. Why, yes, they really are hard communists. They have a few skeletons in their closet, but they’ve tried to reinvent themselves with varying results.
* It is extremely likely that this means absolutely nothing, since the leftist won’t have means to do anything, but will pick up this card in order to have something to trade away in negotiations with socialautocrats.
* There are no fewer than 7 parties in the Riksdag. From left to right, roughly:
* Left Party, (Some, not all call themselves communist),
* Social democrats (soft left, often not even that),
* Greens (left, not supposed to be, but they are),
… and on the other side (currently in charge, a change from the usual.)
* Peoples party ‘liberals’ (scare quotes are apt, they usually call for more wiretaps, more fasces[1])
* Center party (representing forrest owners, farmers and people in rural areas),
* Moderates (the main right wing)
* Christian democrats (very conservative, I mean like from before the last, oh, 80yrs of mostly socialist rule.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces
it’s not like the library. you must return objects to the library, whereas with downloading, you keep it forever. and no, ripping borrowed cds is not legal.
not saying this is my stance, but we have to be a little less biased//ignorant if we are to win this war.
Makes me glad I’m moving to Sweden when I graduate from college. :)
@17 the zune has the ability to share music, its try before you buy, which is the exact same thing as a library and bookstore, and filesharing and buying.
Do they speak English in Sweeden or do I need to learn another language? Because I’m moving there ASAP, the US is a sinking ship in more ways then 1!
Comparing filesharing with libraries is a good way of comparing… even though as filesharing is a little superior… (Many people can use the same file at once, and if they do, it gets even better)
Well, it seems like part of the politicians finally get some idea how stuff works… The older, “traditional” and more conservative may still outnumber them right now though (in the government only of course), so it may still take a while for this to get real… but I wish you in Sweden a lot of luck, so that it works faster than I exspect it to…
They learn English as a second language kind of like we learn spanish but I still would recommend learning Swedish. I want to go there so badly to. I definitely agree with the sinking ship. With our imperialisation, failing economy and religious nutjobs, America is going right down the tubes.
I wish this can happen in America as well…though this is by far the best step in the right direction either way :) let’s hope other nations follow suit.
This is fucking awesome.
F.uck Commercial piracy, this is what im talkin about.
Personal use or get the f.uck off the internet.
http://rycon.baywords.com
We do speak English quite well in Sweden. English is mandatory from third 3rd year in school (approx. at the age of 8-9 years).
Anyway, have to say, it feels good to be Swedish. ;-)
This has pretty much been the position of the Green Party all along, which is why they got my vote in the last election. The Center party claimed they would go this way, but haven’t backed it up. It’s good to see V choosing the right thing, despite what I understand was a very misinformed speech by musician Mikael Wiehe.
(also, Swedes may speak English fairly well, but not nearly as well as they THINK they do – trust me on this)
Wow dis rocks !
Ernesto they are not legalizing piracy they are decriminalizing filesharing by making a separation between criminal piracy and petty filesharing
your blog continues to be so confused about the difference between criminal pirates and filesharers than one wonders if you work for the MAFIAA … even mainstream politicians understand the difference. what really is your problem Ernesto?
i hope they legalise it.
after that they should do the same thing with weed :)
@17
Its value is still more similar than different, because the objects remain in the Library, as it does in file-sharing networks, so that it is accessible by all. It multiplies the value of the original thing, because everyone, not just one person, could access it, and could freely access for the spread of all good information or other things of value.
@ #28 (h33t):
Fail – try reading article again…
“The motion concluded that legalizing piracy is the solution, and that the Left Party should take a stand for opening the possibilities to make copies for personal use. “
@Killer Tree, nearly everyone speaks English.. but do be prepared for the phone line to go dead if you start by: “Hello, do you speak English” because there are quite a few morons who didnt pay a lot of attention in school and so didnt pick up a second language… and unfortunately work in customer service.
but, on the other hand… most Swedes do speak English and LOVE practicing it.
This is indeed good news, i do wonder if its just a ploy to get votes though… even if it is, its worked coz they have my vote, kinda like going for the devil you do know than the one you dont.
There more on Swedish (and world) copyright on
http://www.ezee.se/ copyright is copyWRONG
Damn, just occurred to me, if we do go ahead and make private file sharing legal… we better Swear, declare, pledge etc that we dont have any weapons of mass destruction or we might get a visit from the govt that the MAFIAA have *sooo* much power over..
I can just about see it:
put that modem down and walk away…
He’s going to press that key and release the chemical weapons… only one thing to do, cut their internet lines, quick!!!! now waste that motherf#cker!!!!!
cheers!
http://www.ezee.se/ copyright is copyWRONG
I’m not sure, but according to google translations of the sources, I don’t see anything that says “legalization” of “piracy”, I do see legalization of file sharing that is [not] commercial, and re-writing of copyright law to “not make thousands of adult voters criminals”, nothing about commercial piracy. I’ve notived some of the headlines on Torrentfreak always seem a bit off compared to the contents… (I assume [not] , cause google translation omitted the not in many many places…..hope anyway, no web translator is perfect though so I could be wrong)
If this comes about, i’m moving to Sweden for sure. I want to live in a modern and progressive country such as this. Sadly, the rest of the western world is going back into the dark ages with their laws.
One small step for man…
Yeah bitches! Everyone should learn from the most democratic country in the world! (According to the world democratic index)
Woooo!
I love you Sweden pirates. You are way better then RIAA ninjas.
If McCain gets into presidency, I think we can expect a few months of lies about Sweden’s WMD program and then a full-scale US invasion…
Hopefully not though. I really think other countries should get this smart and change their laws too.
well they got my vote
@40
How dare you say that the RIAA are ninjas! Ninjas are better than associating with them.
@43 you don’t get it do you?
Music files shared are not kept forever. They are soon outdated and not played anymore, if at all. I only started doing it to validate Internet usage. I wasn’t even listening to music.
Disks degrade over the years and become unplayable, and later on we also die, and anything we owned that still works will likely be thrown away.
“43 Jun 10, 2008 at 02:49 by Yoshino in the Moonlight
@40
How dare you say that the RIAA are ninjas! Ninjas are better than associating with them.”
No, the RIAA are more like jesuit priests, the activist arm of the catholic church, who vigorously persecuted all opposers and dissenters.
Hey #2
You fail
Going on a picnic torrenting and enjoying your pirate life…the place to be…hope to visit Sweden soon…^^
DOWNFALL TO RIAA!! CHEERS TO ALL PIRATES!!
I see this maybe going the same way as CB radio. Illegal because ham operators complained, since they had to pay for a license; until the govts realized so many people used it that they’d be better off legalizing it and charging license fees. Then of course, many still abstained from that system, which also maintained user records and imposed restrictions.
I don’t think it will become unquestionably legal in most places, unless the govts can find a way to enforce a payment scheme, which is not what file sharing is about.
As it is, the music industry must pay taxes on their wealth, so there’s not the incentive to put them out of business, despite their corruption, and artists who sign up keep them in business.
Is it co-incidence that the corporation which persecuted CB radio operators in Australia was named the Radio Institute of Australia? (RIA)
We need to move to Sweden with boats like the early immigrants!
@49
You forget about the people. The will to legalize it comes from the social, intellectual, and artistic benefits from it. This is the incentive: it will have a positive social influence.
The fact is that big money does not automatically mean big influence. Governments do not automatically favor businessess that make much money for their taxes. For example, tabacoo companies.
Proud to be European. I know who to vote during the €lections next year.
Quote @45 – ” Music files shared are not kept forever. They are soon outdated and not played anymore, if at all. I only started doing it to validate Internet usage. I wasn’t even listening to music.
Disks degrade over the years and become unplayable, and later on we also die, and anything we owned that still works will likely be thrown away. ”
Well, seems you havn’t understood the ideology behind file-sharing. We share coz we love free flow of all kinda information. N the ones we share files with, they share em further.. So even after u die, your files will keep on being shared.. Filesharing is an awesome socializing movement, only if you wanna socialize pal…
You should know that the Left party is a small but important party. When the socialists are in governement (which is the rule, in spite of the current exception) they act as a leftist consience when the socialists go too far to the right. So – even if they are the ex-communist party (and one of the most important issue at their conference was regarding their relationship to Cuba) they are influential.
So – to you americans out there: let this be a lesson about what ‘left’, ‘Socialist’ and ‘communist’ is really about. It is not the monster you are told about in school…
And – as a side topic – we do speak rather good english. The english-speaking friends I know living in Sweden find it difficult to practice their swedish becaus people always speak english to them…
It was about time you Scandinavian folks did something about those idiotic copyright rules… If you don’t, no one will…
Well, most swedes are retarded, guess they want to legalize murder too, LOL!
Fuck yeah, Sweden.
@57
You’re obviously joking, right?
Well – the countries with legalized murder are the US, China, Iran – other civilized countries (including Sweden) banned capital punishment centuries ago.
But I think we’re getting away from the topic here…
So, it looks like another step in the right direction from Sweeden.
I’m all for protecting intellectual copyrights (say like Intel protecting their chip design) as well as content producers making their money, but I for one am glad with Sweden’s steps. What’s going on now is just a disgrace.
Legalize it for PERSONAL USE for fuck sake!
Friggin awesome, posted this to our forum :D
Yarrrrrr!!!
AfX (PP Finland)
This is fucking awful. Major stars have money enough but how do working class musicians get paid for their product when taking “free copies of product intended to be compensated” becomes legal?
You folks aren’t looking any further out than simply hogging in on getting yours and fuck the artist.
That does rock ballz
________________________________
I got pierced at
http://www.bodypiercingbybrandi.com
Well that’s cute but i have a strong feeling that Sweden is currently being the U.S lapdog, with the nice new law in motion which allows monitoring of SMS/Internet and so on. The equipment is of course from the U.S.
Therefore this law, is so not going to go through, wrong goverment, wrong country with passive people.
@65: Earning money on music is not subject to only hoarding copyright for the next friggin 70 years, i mean you must agree. In any case, you are infact telling the artists to “fuck you, i support distribution (=record) companies that rip you off”
Think about alternative revenue models (not ad-funded, that dont work for music imho) and you will see record companies are soooo last-century
Hopefully other countries will act on this and follow this trend…
And for those who think Sweden is heading in the right direction. You’re wrong. The law i mentioned above is surely going to pass. We have a capitalist goverment, nothing wrong with capitalism but it sucks when you want to freely fileshare, have any kind of freedom.
Hey, at least Sweden will be protected from terrorism with the new law, as the goverment now can spy on those encrypted messages that terrorists send. Which they said it was for. Or well, we haven’t really been bothered at all. To think of it, we never ever do anything to upset any country. We were neutral in wars, we shut our mouths when Denmark did their nice muhammed sketch. Well i guess they can spy on filesharers and hot SMS’s instead, as they sit there being bored, doing nothing.
Something Sweden is good at though is obedience, we let the Nazis travel through our country to get an upperhand on Norway, which they wanted to conquer. Now we sit thightley and do what the U.S wants us to. For example the arrest of the Pirate Bay guys.
Cheers Sweden!
I wish i could download all the books at the library!!!
Great great news :D
I’m so going to pack my backs! Way to go Sweden :)
I applaud this!
It takes lots of guts to suggest something as radical as this. So wonderfull it even passed!
I only fear for all the future lobying…
@65
How about, GET AN ACTUAL JOB. There is no virtue in making money through junk “music.” Go bet a degree, become a doctor, engineer, or something.
Working-class musicians can still be musicians if they are passionate about it. In fact, as long as people like creating music, there will be music. We don’t need music from people who do so only for the money, we need music from people who are enthusiastic about it. For example, say someone is an engineer. This person does not need to make money from art or music. But he or she does it anyways because there is an idea that he or she wants to express in the art.
Something like that.
@Killer Tree
You should try brushing up on your English first.
And there is a language called SWEDISH. If you don’t even know this you might want to think twice about moving to Sweden.
Fuck around, that’s great. Now what will happen when the special interests come demanding money. Perhaps a copying levy like in Canada?
I like downloading off p2p but I dont what I law like this to pass in Canada. Artists will refuse to make songs because they wont get payed. Microsoft will banned the country, along with other entertainment companies. They will no longer be offered many products like xbox, ps3, wii because those companies wont sell anything to them.
do take into consideration the backlash this might incur from major ISPs.
legalization of piracy (of course, this is some loose terminology) in a major economy like sweden’s would probably give them a very good reason to put plans of obliterating net neutrality on full steam.
this would be a major victory if many very economically influential individuals did not have such passionate interests in keeping copyright intact.
i don’t see this enlightening the world so much as infuriating it.
I don’t know what we’d do without you Sweden. <3
1. Left party don’t have any saying right now because it is the right parties that controls sweden.
2. If the lefts will win the next election I think that the left party will use their influence on something that is higher up on their agenda.
Still it is a big step when a established party says yes to filesharing.
But I rather vote for the pirate party because then I atleast send a message to the rest of the goverment.
@79
So for all progress, there must be backlash. The fact is that despite any “backlash,” the time is always now to act, for NOW is the time to put right what has been wrong for so long.
by moo!![quote]it’s not like the library. you must return objects to the library[/quote]It is like like the library. In that you are giving back to the next in line by seeding.
I just wanted to give a personal thanks to all the Sweedish citizens that have made this happen so far. You are brave to stand against the idiocy of the rest of the “modern” world who fails to see the future.
I also like the common sense statement in the article: (paraphrase)…
“When you have laws that would condemm most of your citizens as criminals, you know there’s something wrong with those laws and they should be changed!”
At any rate, it may still be a few years before other countries catch up with you guys, but it will be innevitable as hard drives get bigger and bigger. It’s just a question of time.
Check this out…
Assuming 1 aXXo movie = 700 MB, the average MP3 = 5 MB, and a $200 hard drive increases in capacity every 1.5 years (not unreasonable), then:
5 years (2012) – We’ll have 7 Terabyte hard drives costing $200, capable of storing 9,643 Movies or 1.3 Million songs!!
10 years (2017) – We’ll have 51 Terabyte hard drives costing $200, capable of storing 73,225 movies or 10.3 MILLION songs
15 years (2022) – We’ll have a 389 Terabyte hard drive costing $200, that can store 556,000 Movies!!! or 77.8 Million songs (Is there even that many songs in the history of the world?!?!?)
20 years (2027) – We’ll have a 2956 TERABYTE hard drive, costing $200, that can store 4.2 MILLION MOVIES or 590 MILLION MP3s!
==================
GAME *UCKING OVER!
===================
By 2030, we’ll have every movie and song in the world stored on our freakin’ wrist watches!
Don’t forget about HD video. 700MB is a relatively low quality rip, I tend to get those only if the required film is unavailable otherwise. Most new titles (and even some remastered old ones) are, however, available in HD, so, I’d increase the movie size by an order of magnitude or so.
Man oh man, I am so happy I was born in Sweden, I for one will be voting for this party.
The Swedish “Left party” is a communist party.
They are anti-capitalism, and this stand-point they take further proves their communist attitude that “everything is for everyone”, no matter if one has earned it or not (think big, beyond file sharing, a society where everyone is equally rich/poor, no individual differences, and absolutely no capitalism).
Support this, and you may just as well say you support Soviet era communism!
87: http://www.vansterpartiet.se/content/view/1062/
Please read and educate yourself! Feel free to use babelfish on the rest of the site, I can assure you that you will not find anything about “everyone should be equally poor”. 6 hour workday, equal salary for men and women for equal work and a continued work to maintain and improvement of the welfare state we still possess. Those are their main concerns at the moment.
Yes, I can see how you can relate that to dictatorship… what better way to torture a human beeing than to give him or her a few extra hours of spare time, oh the horror…
note to diyadokeon- Sweden is not a European country.
Yeah I agree w/ 17… This could be a big stunt to front dyed-in-the-cloth commies like they’re harmless. I don’t think d/l’s are worth quite THAT much.
Wooooo-Hoooooo, I’m moving to Sweden :D
nice as far as european union states following this idea well you can say that in the eu it is not illegal to share files so by france and others who belong to the eu that try to pass laws and say it is then they are wrong. the eu has even said that they want to invest a few million into the bittorrent scene to see where it can go. if you live in the eu and your government says something like we are going to make it illeagal then do not believe them it is more a scare tatic than anything else. and never forget you have a higher court in the end that does not sit in your land where you can fight so if you run into any problems then fight the f***ers in the eu court lol. think about how much the swedish government will make when swededn is a safe haven. that will be a lot of tax money comin in from all the companies out there in sweden dealing with the web and a lot of new jobs. so maybe you who want to move there will get your chance when they look for peeps to fill these jobs lol.
This is why Sweden is the greatest country on Earth.
You know….. this might actually fly in America as well. The argument that, simply put, that the p2p-ing is just like a public library, that has movies, music, etc. of every size, shape and kind…….. is a very good argument, and might fly in a court of law in numerous countries all over the world.
If this goes through, I’m moving to Sweden.
I live in Sweden and I am SHOCKED and APPALLED at this awful development!
Taking the food right out our artists mouths by allowing you freetards to steal their content with the crime of filesharing is nothing short of scandalous.
But don’t worry everyone, the good people at the RIAA/MPAA will use their powerful government to bludgeon my country into submission in the fullness of time. :)
Yeah! Three cheers for the Vikings!
LOL legalize piracy, dumbest thing i’ve ever heard. but i guess, most swedes are retarded.
i want to legalize rape. awesome!
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