That’s not all. Google and former public telecoms company Telia moved their servers out of Sweden. Belgium says it will sue Sweden since Belgian citizens may be wiretapped without any apparent reason. Anne Ramberg, secretary-general of the Swedish Bar Association, has called for challenges to the law in Swedish and European courts and similar demands have been heard from several other interest groups, like the Journalist’s Union. It’s FRA hunting season this summer in Sweden!

It is now obvious that the legislation was a deal made between the leaders of the four government parties without full support, even from within their own ranks. Active party members resigned in protest, like Fabian Norlin of the Moderate party who quit on June 24 and instead launched FRApedia, a Wiki covering everything about the law and the authorities.

Meanwhile, the people responsible have not uttered a word in defense of the legislation. They haven’t even tried to justify it. In fact, the few quotes that were made referred in smug terms to the nature of the debate and the debaters. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said “It would be best for everyone if the debate would calm down.” Others have called your-rights-online-bloggers “spirited amateurs”, sparking even more fury.

During the time since the vote, the Members of Parliament have appeared everything from sad through to ridiculously stupid when trying to handle the turbulence. A representative of the “ridiculous” faction was Liberal Party member Gunnar Andrén who wrote a very upset internal email claiming he hadn’t been told by party colleague Camilla Lindberg that she was going to vote against the bill (she was the only member of any of the four government parties that voted against the bill and received much appreciation and media by it). His email was leaked to the press by another party colleague and Andrén was later heard on a recorded phone-call exclaiming that his secrecy of correspondence had been broken and that it was “Gestapo methods”. Dude, you just voted for a bill that allows all emails to be read and all phone calls to be recorded. Live with it!

The big shift in public opinion came at the time of the vote when the blogs, who had pushed on the issue for many weeks before the vote, finally found the mainstream media with them, and with that the power to reach the masses. Some 6.6 million emails were sent to the Members of Parliament through an online petition created by daily newspaper Expressen which allowed easy protests to the members. Göran Petterson of the Moderate Party (until 2006 a military officer and one of those in favor of the FRA legislation) wrote on his blog: “Email is a great way to communicate with my voters but then you can’t do like Expressen has done now. […] Now, normal emails from the citizens are drowning in these.” Clearly, he didn’t understand his voters were trying to communicate with him, sending him a clear message of what they thought of him and his party.

This Thursday, rallies were initiated in Malmö and Stockholm by The Pirate Party which gathered more than 2000 anti-FRA protesters. They were in fact parties rather than protests, celebrating that Sweden has become a banana republic. As in the protests before the vote in June, the parties’ youth organizations stood side by side fighting the FRA, all ideological differences set aside for what may be one of the most important issues in their political careers.

In Malmö, Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay spoke at the rally saying “the FRA bill is unnecessary, ineffective, unwanted and last but not least, expensive. The government should listen to the people, as they cannot replace us. However, we have the power to change the government.” Meanwhile, in Stockholm, Maria Wetterstrand of the Green Party promised that an abolishment of the FRA bill would be one of their demands in order to form government with The Social Democrats after the elections 2010 while Alice Ã…ström of the Left Party promised to motion this fall to give members of the government alliance parties the possibility to break up the legislation.

The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde at the Malmö rally

Yesterday, the annual Swedish political gathering in Almedalen began, where ministers, parliament members, journalists, pundits, lobbyists and interest groups traditionally meet during a week on the island of Gotland. The government thought that putting the FRA vote at the back of the spring schedule would make it go unnoticed. Instead, it’s the only current political hot topic as the Almedalen week is approaching with the Pirate Party in full presence on site to further push the agenda.

Source: Swedes Massively Protest Wiretap Law

“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.

Source: Swedish Left Party Wants to Legalize Piracy

Greens EFA claim that the entertainment industry exploits artists and sell propaganda, and want to make the public aware of this. We couldn’t agree more of course, and it is good to see that these established political parties are attempting to decriminalize filesharing. As they write: “The media industry has failed to offer viable legal alternatives and they will fail to convince consumers that sharing equals stealing. Unfortunately, they have succeeded in another area , lobbying to adapt laws to criminalize sharing, turning consumers into criminals.”

In collaboration with RÃ¥FILM the parties created a short clip for the campaign. which they made available on BitTorrent by uploading it to The Pirate Bay. It’s beginning to look like things are finally starting to change, politicians are not scared anymore to embrace BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, and stand up for people’s right to share culture.

The Pirate Bay is of course delighted by the campaign and even updated the logo on their frontpage to show their support. Pirate Bay’s Brokep told TorrentFreak: “I love that there are smart people that understand how the world works and I’m gonna support them with whatever means I can”.

Let’s hope the entertainment industry is paying attention as well.

Source: European Politicians Launch Pro-Filesharing Campaign

The message from the Moderate Party MPs to their AntipiratbyrÃ¥n supporting colleagues was “be careful, they will never be satisfied”, drawing parallels to the earlier attempts to ban MP3 players, and VCRs, both areas in which, having failed to ban, industry groups are now making a profit from selling content.

Karl Sigfrid told TorrentFreak that the APB proposals make no practical sense. “I think it could be solved in theory. However, in reality, you would need such a surveillance system to achieve this that it would be all out of proportion. So I don’t think there’s a feasilbe way of stopping individuals copying. The cause for file sharing is basically that it’s possible. People have always done it to the extent that they’ve been able to. With cassette tapes 20 years ago and electronically today. Copyright laws preventing individuals from sharing information have never been legitimate in the eyes of most people.”

When asked about if it was down to content industries being slow to change their business practices, he replied: “It’s hard to say what would have happened if the content industries had been quicker releasing their material online, before the P2P networks grew mainstream. Probably the illegal filesharing would be less extensive, but it’s possible that it would still have been increasingly difficult for iTunes and such services to compete with free downloading. The change needed might be so radical that it’s no longer about selling copies of immaterial products at all.”

Rickard Falkvinge, of the Swedish Pirate Party was understandably upbeat about it. “Karl Sigfrid’s taking a stand marks a major turning point. For the first time, an established politician shows deep-down understanding of the real conflict, instead of cluelessly humming along with a technophobical luddite industry. Some other Swedish mainstream politicians have previously talked in terms of how it’s unreasonable to declare war on an entire generation. Sigfrid is the first to understand why.” His enthusiasm is understandable as, one Swedish torrent user put it “a bunch of members of The Conservative Party have started listening to the policies of The Pirate Party, and they want to jump on their bandwagon, as it’s gaining popularity”.

Gaining popularity it is, as yesterday, thirteen members of Parliament joined in another attack (Swedish only, no English translation at present) on the likes of the APB, and recording industries, saying “The record labels are obviously opposed to a development that makes them obsolete.” However, not everyone has been celebrating. Pirate Bay administrator Brokep was skeptical, saying “I’m intrigued that the debate is sparking up again. There’s been a lot of lies from the politicians. Promises and nothing has happened, so at least this will put the debate back on the map.”

The initial seven MPs were Karl Sigfrid. Margareta Cederfelt. Ulf Berg. Lena Asplund. Staffan Appelros. Lisbeth Grönfeldt Bergman and Göran Montan. Tuesdays additions were Marie Weibull Kornias,Finn Bengtsson, Ann-Charlotte Hammar Johnsson, Sven Yngve Persson, and Anders Hansson.

**UPDATE** Sorry, forgot to add this translation of the second piece, available here

Source: Swedish Politicians Strike Blows at Copyright Lobby

TorrentFreak – What topics are you focusing in on your campaign?

Christof Leng – With national data retention starting on January 1st, this is certainly a major topic not only for us, but for the opposition in general. Beyond that, the privacy infringements by government agencies are something to be discussed. Another big topic for young people are the new tuition fees, which lead to a drop in student numbers. We believe strongly in the knowledge society and stopping the concept of free education will hurt Germany’s future.

TorrentFreak – So more on the privacy than culture/copyright angles?

Christof Leng – Unfortunately, copyright is something that is not decided in Hesse or even in Germany, but mostly on the European level. Thus is plays a lesser role in this election. But we try to raise awareness and get support for the next European election in 2009.

TorrentFreak – How many people have you put up as candidates?

Christof Leng – Ok, I guess I should explain a little bit about the German election system first. We have (party) lists and direct candidates, and we don’t run for direct seats, only a party list. A direct win would be utopian, as it’s majority vote. Because we’re sane and realistic, we focus on the list, which in our case has seven pirates on it.

TorrentFreak – And the minimum requirement on the party list is 5%?

Christof Leng – To get into the regional parliament of Hesse, yes, but to my best knowledge, no new party ever achieved this on this first election in an existing federal state.

TorrentFreak – Are you, however, hopeful?

Christof Leng – There are other things to aim at. If you get 1% at a regional election, you get public funding.

TorrentFreak – Is that an attainable goal?

Christof Leng – As we are a brand new party it’s really hard to predict. The Hessian division of the party was founded in February with only a few pirates. Less than a year later we already have a efficient organization and were able to collect those 1000 signatures. And the growth has not slowed down by any means. It might be not as mind-blowing as in Sweden, but we are really happy with the development. Now we want to show that we are in fact serious party and can do campaigns and participate in elections. Furthermore, while we are already well-known in the interested public, we are still mostly unknown to the general public. Everything we currently do helps us to get more and more attention.

TorrentFreak – How has your party been viewed by the mainstream media?

Christof Leng – I have no real overview of that, sorry. I’m aware that a lot of newspaper articles have mentioned us as an example of the smaller parties in the upcoming election (I guess it’s because of the catchy name), but we have been ignored mostly so far. But the election campaigns just started to heat up, there’s not much news about the election in general. We have been covered by media interested in youth, Internet/computer, and/or civil rights. We are regularly covered by Heise Online, the most important German computer/Internet news site. A lot of journalists support us, because they feel the pressure of surveillance hits them hard and hits them first. Freedom of press is endangered and they are aware of it. There have been several scandals of government agencies investigating journalists and infringing privacy laws while doing that. You also read more about the US election 11 months away in *German* press than about the Hessian one 2 months away…

TorrentFreak – It must drive you mad.

Christof Leng – On the contrary. The heat of the election in Sweden really did hurt the Swedish pirates. If it is close and it seems important, many people are afraid of trying something new. We are new, we still need to build up our reputation. That’s much easier now than in an election where people will go for the safe bet anyway. We’d not be able to compete with the major parties mainstream media coverage. With them not being covered by the media either it’s not that much of an uphill battle, but it is still uphill, of course. It’s an optimal setting for us in Germany right now (as a party, not as a citizen). The two biggest parties form a national coalition. That boosts smaller parties naturally. Imagine the US president being a republican and the vice president a democrat…

TorrentFreak – Clearly you don’t have the financial support that the major parties have, how has that altered your strategies from the traditional methods used in a political campaign?

Christof Leng – We claim that we are experts of knowledge society, online cooperation, and sharing. That is also our strong point in the campaign. We use the Internet a lot, not only to reach voters, but to coordinate our campaign. Also, most of the population in Hesse is concentrated in the Rhein-Main area (Frankfurt is the biggest city). This makes it easy for us to reach a good part of the voters. Especially the voters that are interested in our topics (students, IT workers, journalists), and they use the internet.

TorrentFreak – with about 38Million of Germany’s roughly 82M citizens as net users, that’s clearly a core demographic.

Christof Leng – Exactly .

TorrentFreak – Is there much negative campaigning in Germany?

Christof Leng – yes, but only bashing the big parties. We are mostly ignored as a party. But… they start adopting our positions. the SPD tries to look like a civil rights party in comparison with the CDU, even though they work together on data retention in the national government. the Green party made a big fuss on their last convention about how bad data retention is. The Left party tout the topic too. Point is, none of the parties takes the topic seriously.

TorrentFreak – Why is that?

Christof Leng – the SPD and Green Party prepared much of what is going on now back when they were in government. The SPD and Left party form a coalition in Berlin and just issued new laws for public surveillance. each of the established parties plays the white knight for civil rights only as long as they are in opposition. they are brainwashed as soon as they are in government. That’s why we need the Pirate Party.

Jan Huwald, Political secretary of the Piratenpartei Deutschland was similarly upbeat about the election. “Most motivating in the upcoming election campaign is it’s constant relation to grassroot political movement. Beside the visible activity the word is spreading about the pirates. Citizens are aware of our new party much more than traditional media’s coverage might suggest. In fact while collecting signatures many people actively searched for our signing stand to help out”

The question still remains, however, if the Hesse party will do any better than Rick Falkvinge, and the Swedes did in 2006.

Source: Hessians Hope to Weave Election Magic

TorrentFreak: The polish party was founded when exactly?

Kaczorowski: The idea of creating PP in Poland appeared 27 July 2006

TorrentFreak: And you registered this week, in court, for official political party status?

Kaczorowski: Yes, on Monday we went to court to submit all papers needed for registration. Now will will have to wait for registration but from the moment of giving papers to court we will have pre-registration status.

TorrentFreak: how long until that status is confirmed?

Kaczorowski: Depends – if everything will be ok with papers – 2 weeks

TorrentFreak: The next (European) election is going to be held in September 2009, will you be putting up candidates?

Kaczorowski: Here in Poland we have elections on 27 October but it is way to soon for us too start. The elections for Europarlament in 2009 will be probably our first elections – if our parliament will not fall apart before that date.

TorrentFreak: How many members do you currently have?

Kaczorowski: 2,000 registered on web page, 30 people actually active – numbers are small becouse we weren’t advertising ourselves a lot – we are waiting for gathering people – we needed to register first, create a new web page and then we can look for more people

TorrentFreak: What has been your biggest activity, as a party, to date?

Kaczorowski: probably the appearing on Woodstock Stop music festival in Kostrzyn. Lots of fun, great music and talking to people about our issues.

TorrentFreak: What big events do you have planned for the near future?

Kaczorowski: The registration, first inside party elections and Pirate Party internationals upcoming meeting in Berlin

TorrentFreak: Recently, you expressed your distaste with Commissioner Franco Frattini’s proposal regarding anti-terrorism and the Internet, by comparing it to how Poland was run in the 1980s. How much has the country changed since then, and what does the Pirate Party aim to do to help accelerate the change from the soviet era?

Kaczorowski: Like 180 degrees. In 80s we has socialism here with all its worst totalitarian ambitions and a grate Solidarność movement underground. Media control was normal but it didn’t worked out. You could listen to Free Europe radio beside communist trying to jam transmissions, You could read all underground printed newspapers even if for having one you could get in jail quickly – the same would be with internet now , if someone would try to control information people will go underground. Even if from first sight trying to not give terrorist info is good – controlling internet is much worse – it is a step back in creating free informational society.

TorrentFreak: Dziękuję bardzo za wasz czas

Kaczorowski: No problem

For more information about the Polish Party, you can visit their website here.

Source: Polish Pirate Party Files for Registration

Calling a political party illegitimate and their members thieves is a pretty bold statement for an organization who’s feeding politicians thousands of dollars to support their cause. I doubt that Garfield even read their election manifesto, if he did, he would know that the party has nothing to do with stealing copyright.

“This can only be seen as MPAA calling democracy illegitimate. We are a registered political party finishing in the top ten in a parliamentary democracy,” says Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party in a response to TorrentFreak. “That these people claim it would somehow be illegitimate to change laws through a parliamentary process shows just how corrupt to the core they are.”

Falkvinge continues: “On the other hand, I think the statement may be partly out of fear. There’s one thing that beats all their lawyers, war chests and monopolies. Just one. That one thing is votes in a democratic election, and that’s what we have and they don’t. These claims are so far out they don’t even reflect sunlight. Unfortunately, that seems to be true for most statements from the Music And Film Industry Associations of America, but we’re also seeing the oldskool politicians slowly starting to understand our counterpoints. It’s going to be an interesting couple of next years.”

It won’t be easy for the MPAA and other anti-piracy organizations to take on the Pirate Parties, especially not with such a clueless statement. Europe’s Pirate Parties are on course with their pan-European electoral assault for the 2009 European Elections. To quote Rick Falkvinge: “There is a far better than average chance that this is becoming the next global political movement, and I’m going to claim it already is the next big political movement.”

Sail on.

Source: MPAA: Pirate Party Politicians Are Illegitimate Thieves

This Swedish election has been special in many ways. It was if though the parliamentary parties and the media outlets of Sweden decided to boycott all the parties that didn’t already have seats in the parliament. The media let virtually no space for smaller parties – debate articles were refused, press releases not printed and so on. The parliamentary parties were not willing to debate with the smaller parties. Even the Swedish election authorities did not make their numbers official until Wednesday, three days after the election.

Despite this, the smaller parties shared about 5.7% of the votes. This is nearly double compared to the last elections. Sweden is a country with high percentage of active voters – at peak years, close to 90% of the voters place their ballots. This year, this number was 81,5% – and everyone seems happy that at least it’s not as bad as last time, when less than 80% voted.

Unfortunately The Pirate Party is a typical example of a smaller party.

They are completely ignored by news and media outlets. The papers have more or less openly decided to shut out smaller parties. The debate articles weren’t published – I think the Metro newspaper went so far as to reply they didn’t view the Pirate Party as a party, but as a special interest group. The press releases have been ignored, and the party was good enough to be in the papers only if reporters have somehow sniffed a possible scoop – or scandal. The fact that a member left the Pirate Party to help a reality show pin-up with her personal campaign (the Unique party, which only had her name on the ballots) made news. That the Pirate Party had outgrown the Green Party (government party) did not.

It was shunned by the political establishment. A consensus has been reached to only accept governmental parties into the light. Probably this is a strategy to keep white supremacists out of the fine halls of debate, out of the TV studios, and out of having an accepted platform. But this also reflected badly on other smaller parties, such as the Pirate Party, who were not allowed in public debates, not allowed to put up one little election hut (an endearing Swedish tradition, where you build little huts or cots near malls and communication centers in towns and suburbs and large centers of the cities).

Despite this, the Pirate Party has thrived. It has now over 9 000 members, which is better than, as mentioned, the Green Party. The complete lack of funds, being virtually dependent on member charity and the RELAKKS cooperation, meant that the party had to rely completely on active members. Not only for printing and putting up posters or handing out flyers, but also to make sure there were ballot papers at all the polling stations. The Pirate Party succeeded in doing that. On almost every polling station there were ballot papers, not only on Election Day, but on all the several other locations where people could pre-vote, there were also ballot papers.

Come Election Day, many, many members stood outside the polling station for twelve hours, handing out ballot papers to people coming in. As did the seven major parties, only while their representatives was standing there for an hour or two, getting paid for their troubles while waiting to be substituted by someone else, Pirate Party members stood for hours expecting no one to relieve them and getting no payment for their troubles.

Despite this, the results were not as good as hoped for. As of now, the official result is 0.63%. As numbers go, everything but 1% must be seen as some sort of disappointment. The outcome was not what had been expected. For every member, there were about 3-4 voters. Suffice to say, the many members that had gathered on a restaurant in Stockholm didn’t cheer as much as might have been expected beforehand. Perhaps the winds did not blow so strongly into the sails of the Pirate ship as one might have expected.

But not everything in politics are numbers. There are also things to brag about.

In eight months the Pirate Party grew from nothing to 9 000 members, more members than one of the parliamentary parties. This is in a time where virtually every political party are together losing tens of thousands of members. Day in and day out newsspapers write that people are losing interest in party politics. However, even on Election Day the Pirate Party received some 100 new members, simply by handing out ballot papers.

In three months, Pirate Parties has started in fifteen countries. Socialist, liberal, conservative parties have sister parties in many countries. But these are networks that took years, even decades, to develop. For it to pop up in fifteen countries over one summer is unheard of in history.

So, the Pirate Party didn’t reach the 1% mark. This means they will not have their ballot papers placed for them at the next elections (to the European Parliament in three years). But the Pirate Party has proved that they can have their ballot papers out by their own means. And since they are still growing, chances are they have an easier time doing it then.

However, The Pirate Party had other triumphs. Together with the Pirate Bay raid and the work of Piratbyran and other groups and people, copyright issues are now a part of the political agenda. One of the major parties has placed some stress on it as part of their campaign. Most of the parties, both in the new government as well as the opposition, changed their views on copyright and come to the conclusion that a revision might not be such a bad idea after all. Seats or no seats, the Pirate Party has had a huge impact, this must not be forgotten.

Now starts a new phase in the Pirate Party – a phase where ideology will be strenghtened, where they will lend support and help to pirates in all countries, and where they build up their inner structure and look forward to the next election.

The ship is in the water. Now it’s up to the Pirate Party to Sail it!

Perhaps it is nice to give a little more detail on the results of the Swedish Elections, for those who are interested.

Close to 100 000 people turned in blank ballots, which means, something like, ‘I agree with the voting system, but I don’t care about any single political party.’ It would be like three million American voters choose to vote, but vote for nobody. ‘We like our system, but to us it doesn’t matter who the hell runs it – the difference is not big enough for us to care.’ Together, the small parties and the blank ballots come close to corresponding to the total increase in voting numbers. So, in reality, one can seriously question if this was at all any gain to the established parties.

There was a change in government. From the Socialist block, consisting of the Social Democrats, the Left (ex-communist) party and the Green Party that has been controlling the country, to the Alliance, that spans from liberals to mildly conservatives, in the three non-socialist parties. For the first time in forever, a non-socialist government will be installed when not in an economic crisis.

But, to be honest, one can question whether this Alliance are really the winners. Many, many of the blank votes, and most of the votes on smaller parties, can easily be deducted as protests against the Social Democrats, who, through decades and decades of power, have developed strong power bonds and, as being the ruling party, hosting most of Sweden’s political scandals, most of its personal gainers, snobs, magnates, cheaters. These votes weren’t so much pro-Alliance as anti-Social Democrats. Which is illustrated by the fact that the Moderates, being the largest of the Alliance parties, won back a little bit more than the support they had lost the last elections, the fact that the Center Party gained a very small number of seats, the fact that the Christian Democrats and the People’s Party the liberals both lost even if they were on the winning side. The Christian Democrats lost a third of their votes. The People’s Party lost almost half.

In the municipality of Stockholm, the Green Party, being the smallest of the parties in the ruling red-green coalition, is seen as the winner. They nearly doubled their votes compared to the last election. Good to mention is that they ran a fierce banner campaign on subways and busses propagating for re-legalizing file sharing. Ironically the Pirate Party has more members than they have.

Source: Swedish Elections: The Pirate Party Sails On

And of course the International Pirate Party Umbrella organization PP-International.

Piraten Partei

Source: Yet Another Pirate Party

A quote from the Wired article about how piracy divides Sweden:

Pirate Bay’s Peter is dining with a crew of pirates from all over Europe. Over tabbouleh and sausage, the talk turns to strategy: how to create media events, awareness campaigns, educational programs to let people know that piracy isn’t about free movies — it’s about clearing the way for culture to progress.

Peter talks about expanding the Pirate Bay beyond the current 25-language translation. He turns to me, with bright eyes: “We want to make a Pirate Bay for kids!”

Sebastian Gjerding of Denmark’s Piratgruppen warms to the idea, and starts talking about designing a poster to hang in schools, teaching children how to share files. The pirates bandy about names for the campaign and seem, for the moment, to settle on “iCopy.”

The article further covers the current situation is Sweden, the rise of the Pirate Party, abd the battle over piracy.

Wired quotes Attorney Monique Wadsted, the MPAA’s representative in Sweden:

“It’s become a copyright haven, a territory where you spread everything without fear of prosecution.” She continues: “Nobody has ever presented a good argument why this should be free…. They like to talk about music; they have a problem with (talking about) movies, because movies cost a lot to make.”

Great read.

Source: A PirateBay for Kids

Florian: When I first heard about the founding of the Swedish Pirate Party I thought “yeah, that’s a nice idea. The industry is running amok and politicians ignore us, so why not found a Pirate Party in Austria?” But founding a party is a rather big step, so I delayed my plans.

TorrentFreak: So what motivated you to start an Austrian Pirate party after all?

Florian: Somewhere around June, new news about the music industry’s sue-em-all campaign appeared: the industry started suing fans who put videos on youtube showing how they dance and sing to popular songs. This was the limit, the music industry showed that it has absolutely no respect for it’s customers. I always was skeptic about the “filesharing is killing music” campaign they did, but this proved it: it’s not about the music. The music industry just wants to sue the hell out of whoever it can. DAMN! Someone gotta stop em. And so we do.

TorrentFreak: So do you want to get everything for free, without paying creators of art?

Florian: No. we want artists to get paid! but the current copyright doesn’t
meet this requirement. Artists get exploited by big media companies, who in turn exploit customers.

TorrentFreak: So the system needs to change?

Florian: Yes, the copyright was introduced to “promote the progress of science and useful arts”, but this point has been completely lost nowadays. It degraded to a mere tool to lock our culture in a few hands (See the gatekeeper reference in courntey love’s article). The balance between the interests of publishers and consumers has been lost. The balance between the need to share and sustain culture (ie: works no longer sold, but which are still copyrighted, or the legal and technical problems libraries have nowadays) and the need to make profit is heavily skewed to one side. If we follow the path we’re on we’ll see the death of culture as we know it.

TorrentFreak: So what are the first steps you’re going to take?

Florian: First of all we’re doing whatever possible to participate in this years national election. In Austria you need 4% of the votes to get seats in parliament. Secondly, we are going to set up a website/forum, probably even an organization to focus on the lobbying work of NGOs in our main topics (copyright, privacy, patents).

The music industry in Austria spends a lot of workforce in lobbying to make people believe filesharing is evil. I think filesharing is the future of the music industry, especially for unknown artists and indie labels. They can reach millions of people without needing to bow to horrible major label contracts. I think that’s the _real_ reason why majo labels want to get rid of filesharing. We need to show artists and customers why the RIAA and its friends really want to abolish filesharing and private copies. I think we need a “pirate bureau” in each country ;)

TorrentFreak: How was the response in Austrian media?

Florian: The media response we got so far is wonderful. We got coverage
on big newspapers, websites, and radio shows.

TorrentFreak: And did you get any response from your political opponents?

Florian: The big parties haven’t reacted so far. They’re too busy driving their own “election
campaigns”.

TorrentFreak: How many members do you have at this point?

Florian: Not as much as the Swedes unfortunately. We’ve been officially founded just two weeks ago. We have 50 members so far and 150 people in our forum.

TorrentFreak: Are you planning to participate in the upcoming election? And are there any prerequisites?

Florian: Yes, our target is to participate in the upcoming elections. We need to collect 2600 signatures until October 25th. Unfortunately we only have around 100 so far. The way you have to collect those is quite complicated in Austria: people need to print out a form, take it to their municipal office, sign it in front of an appointee, show their id, then put it in an envelope and send it to us. It’s hell. But we’re working hard to get those signatures. Luckily we can also participate just in parts of austria. we’ve got 9 federal states, each requiring 100 to 500 signatures. It should at least be possible to gather the signatures in some of them.

TorrentFreak: Thanks and good luck.

Florian: You’re welcome

Austrian Pirate Party

Source: Interview: Leader Austrian Pirate Party

We all know that “copyright holders” means “MPAA, RIAA and other anti-piracy groups”, that will claim their representing the copyright owners. So, in effect, if this bill is passed, Swedish legislation has given room for a situation where special interest groups can demand personal information from companies to conduct their own private investigations. So the new law will give the anti-piracy lobby more power, at least in Sweden. On the other hand, not far from Sweden, the Dutch anti-p2p organization BREIN recently lost a case where they demanded personal info about filesharing ip’s.

This new law would be in line with how Sweden has worked before. Last year, the police made a bust on a large Swedish ISP called Bahnhof, after an investigation from the Bureau of Anti-Piracy (a Swedish copyright owner interest group). The interest group filed a report almost immediately after the bust, indicating they had exclusive information from the prosecutor. The ISP then released all their logs, which indicated that it was the interest group that had hired a mole to use their computers to commit copyright crimes. Of course, this didn’t lead anywhere. And the Pirate Bay bust on May 31 should be proof that it did not discourage Swedish police and prosecutors to walk errands for copyright “representatives”.

But what frightens me is the prospect that this kind of behavior is getting legally sanctioned.

I made a translation of Linander’s blog entry and provide some further arguments on Piracy Unlimited.

Source: New Law empowers Anti-piracy lobby in Sweden

Prior to this year’s festival, the online community connected to Sweden’s largest gay movement magazine, QX, started a project where members could put the logo of the party they supported on their presentation. A bit surprising to many, the party with the most logos on presentations was not the Social Democrats, who has ruled Sweden almost without stop from the beginning of the 20th century. Nor the largest opposition party, the Moderates. But it was the Pirate Party. Around 20% of all presentations with logos had the Pirate party logo.

The Pirate Party had decided long ago to participate in the festival, but this was even more a reason. So, they rented a spot on the festival area and put up a tent, where they handed out information folders, flyers, sold t-shirts and other stuff. The reaction was, according to the party members present, very positive. Many parties were critized because they show up on the Pride festival with tailor made material and voicing policies specific to the gay, bi and transsexual community, to portray themselves as the most “gay friendly” for the elections. Many representatives of the gay community have argued that this makes them feel like voters and not a group needing the support of these parties.

The Pirate Party, however, openly said to everyone that they have no points related to the gay, bi and transsexual community interests. Instead, they claimed that their aims to change copyright legislation, guard privacy and patent opposition are questions that benefit everyone, regardless of such things as sexuality. Many of the visitors to the Pirate Party tent liked this attitude,. The Pirate Party claims that every individual has the need to have their privacy defended. The gay community, who has often been subjected to oppression, threats and violence, understands this need for privacy. If the Pirate Party had a slogan on the festival, it would have been, ‘Being gay, bi or transsexual should not be an issue. But no one should be forced to declare their sexuality either, should they choose not to.’

The aftermath, rounded up on a Pirate Party meeting I attended this thursday, was alot of positive reactions, probably a bunch of votes, public goodwill and alot of sold t-shirts and baseball caps.

posted by Mathias

Source: Swedish Pirate Party attended the Stockholm Pride festival

The term was coined by tech pioneer and journalist Oscar Swartz (founder of Swedish ISP Bahnhof) in a blog article from December 15, 2005, called “Bodströmsamhället pÃ¥ väg: Europaparlamentet sa ja.” (“The Bodström Society is on its way: the European parliament said yes”).

From now on I will use the term ‘Bodström society’ instead of “Big Brother society” or similar terms. His visions are infernal and consistent and are aimed at communications being saved, so that authorities can later check it out. Yes, the ideal would be that all operators simply upload their data to a central data base where authorities can lurk around, instead of requesting the data from the operators. And they will also have far reaching possibilities to bug – even against individuals not suspected of a crime. He also suggests that authorities are going to be able to secretly install keyboard loggers, troyans and other stuff on people’s computers. Sure, it’s to fight crime. But all this is very explicitly motivated with the argument of making crime investigations more ‘efficient’.

Swedish wikipedia says this about the Bodström society: “What differs the Bodström society from other forms of Big Brother systems is the fact that Thomas Bodström is working in a time where communications over the Internet has just received a central position, and that the government that Bodström is part of is participating in the US war on terrorism. The latter fact is a breach against the former social democratic standing doctrine that is taking a distance to the US foreign agenda.” (Source) There is alot of criticism against the US policies on domestic self defense post 9-11, such as the Patriot act and various implementations, as well as other things that leads to monitoring and control, both internally and externally. The same thing is true about the British policies. British policies are often described in Swedish debate as a mix between tender nursing of the population, combined with sometimes harsh methods of discipline, as well as a more and more far-reaching control over what people are doing, in order to protect the population from itself and others. Much of this is of course due to the aftermath of the July 2005 terror attacks.

When Sweden is moving towards more monitoring despite the lack of terror attempts – a strict policy of neutrality almost as dogmatic as the one of Switzerland kept Sweden outside the battles of WWII as well as the Cold War – many seek other explanations. One often described is a ‘follow your leader’ tendency, Sweden is by many perceived as politically moving towards the US and the UK, and major trends in said countries will have a large impact on other Western countries. Sweden is not exception here. Sweden is also a part of the European Union, and if the European Union walks in one direction, Sweden will follow it.

But there are also those that claim that Sweden is not only walking in the same direction as the European Union is walking. They point out that Sweden in many apects is leading taking charge in pointing the direction out.

In June, 2006, Oscar Swartz, the person to have coined the term, published a report named “Marschen mot Bodströmsamhället – Hur justitieministerns dubbelspel hotar vÃ¥ra grundlagsfästa fri- och rättigheter.” (The March towards the Bodström society – How the double-dealings of the minister of justice is threatening our basic freedoms and rights). The report has spun alot of attention in the Swedish blogosphere, has inspired various Swedish groups, such as the journalist trade union, to challenge tendencies in government property, and has given a strong reference collection for those that criticize the government for going towards more monitoring. It can be downloaded in PDF if you read Swedish.

The report concentrates on propositions and government documents concerning the storing and monitoring of communications, primarily on the Internet and through telephones. He points to an evident double-dealing of the minister, where the minister is one of those that are the most aggressive on making the European Union when it comes to carrying through a more far-reaching monitoring legislation, while domestically, said changes is made out to be implemented because Sweden has accepted European legislation, not because he wants it to be that way. The report goes so far as to accuse Bodström of outright lying to parliamentary committees on how he is working in the European council of ministers. At the same time, more subtle changes is made in Swedish law: the European legislation makes it possible to monitor suspects of serious crime, and Swedish legislation is tampered so that more and more people are included in ‘suspects of serious crime’ – and more and more can be done against people ‘related to’ or ‘involved with’ or ‘associated with’ people suspected of these wider and wider definition of serious crime.

In conclusion, Swartz demands that Bodström is brought before the Committee on Constitution, the executive committee of the Swedish parliament that checks to see if decicions and actions of the government are in accordance with the Swedish constitution. When the report was presented, at least one MP was present, who promised to work to this end.

The term Bodström-samhälle was established well before this report was published. The picture below has been seen on more and more Swedish blogs. The text says, ‘Democracy and terrorism is not compatible. Let us therefore abolish democracy.’

But with this report, critics of the current course of Swedish society towards Orwellian heights have now got a black on white arsenal of arguments and facts to use in debates. What will become of the demands to put Bodström before a committee is yet to be seen.

And what of the legislation carried through in Sweden, is it that serious? Well, if all would be carried through, it would be quite possible to install keyboard loggers and bugs on your computer, if a friend of the family was ever suspected of a serious crime – and remember, more and more crimes are being turned into ‘serious’. When the Pirate Bay was raided, their judicial advisor was forced to leave a DNA sample, even if it had no apparent significance to the investigation.

On my personal blog, Piracy Unlimited, I once made a compilation of laws, proposed laws and laws suggested for future installment, that has our Justice Minister as originator or advocate. Unfortunately, since I wrote it on June 19, there have been some additions to it.

Source: What is this Bodström society thing anyway?

Wired: When did the party start, and who started it?Allison: The party started on June 6, 2006 with two members, myself and my friend Alex English. A couple of days later, I received around 300 e-mails from people I didn’t know expressing interest in joining and helping out. This was thanks to publicity from the original Swedish party, Piratpartiet, who found out about it when I edited their Wikipedia entry to include mention of the U.S. version I founded.

Source: US Pirate Party Interview

Over 75 percent of those asked said it was OK to download illegally from the Internet, said the survey.

These figures indicate that the Swedish Pirate Party (piratpartiet), may collect a significant number of votes.

The survey was conducted a week before the Piratebay raid and the pro-piracy demonstration, and it’s likely that filesharing got even more popular after that.

read more

Source: Young Swedes Love Filesharing