Probably a lot of people reading this have heard of the Swedish Pirate Party or perhaps The Pirate Bay website where you can find things like videos, music, software and other things to download, copyrighted and otherwise.
In fact the idea of the Pirate Party has spread worldwide, and many countries have similar emerging parties.
The Pirate Party really came to peoples attention when The Pirate Bay website was raided by the Swedish police. It was raided, not because it was in violation of Swedish or other law, it was raided on the request of the US government who threatened trade sanctions against Sweden(!) if they didn’t shut the website down. In Sweden this is illegal. Politicians are not allowed to request the police to do this, but they did it anyway.
In the following video, Peter Sunde, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay website tells the story of The Pirate Bay, the Swedish Pirate Party and Flattr:
In the last European elections the Swedish Pirate Party won 2 seats in the EU Parliament. Since the ISP of The Pirate Bay was ordered by a judge to disconnect the website, the Swedish Pirate Party decided to become an ISP and now hosts The Pirate Bay website in the Swedish parliament building. The Swedish constitution gives them immunity from prosecution as long as their actions are consistent with their party mandate. This is the reason The Pirate Bay website is still available on the Internet.
I am no spokesperson for the Swedish or any other Pirate Party. In fact one of the things I’ve discovered recently is there is a huge diversity of opinions within these parties. As a rule however, these parties are opposed to the injustices imposed by copyright holders on users of the Internet. These include lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, disconnection of Internet service and other actions.
I think many Pirate Party members feel like I do, that downloading anything from the Internet is a good thing. It is the nature of how the Internet works technically. It’s how information and computer tools are distributed and it’s how people communicate. This is simply an important aspect of how the Internet works, and people should use it as such.
Few people are opposed to creators of this content being paid! I think it’s a fine idea for people to be paid for their work. The idea of enforcing this payment by imposing rules on the use of the Internet is seriously flawed.
There are even some politicians who believe people who break these or other rules should have their Internet service disconnected! Can you imagine this? This is like taking away someone’s library card, because they’ve abused the information in the books.
In today’s world the Internet is far beyond a luxury. If you’re a person of any age in school, you’ll almost certainly receive a portion of your assignments on the Internet. Some companies now only bill via the Internet. It’s simply the largest and most important source of information and communication, and it’s not something you take away from someone because they’ve been bad! Already it’s a necessary part of life, and in the coming years it’s going to be even more important.
This video has some Dutch but it’s mostly in English, and features the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party talking a bit about the party principles:
While these principles apply now to the Internet, there are ramifications for Democracy as a whole. Do we want seed companies to someday be able to tell us we can’t trade seeds over the Internet?
