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?
There’s a hot button, Patrick. I have nothing but contempt for the Pirate Party, Pirate Bay and all freetards. I am one of those copyright holders who goes around issuing takedown notices because I have to make a living from my husband’s and my intellectual property. This is how I fund my seed saving and sharing and plant breeding work.
A conservative estimate is that Pirate Bay alone has ripped us off to the tune of about $30,000 USD this past year, and that will probably be more than we gross. Do you like to go to work and not get paid? Not all copyright holders are big media corporations.
Hi Leigh,
Thanks for your comment, and I’m sorry you’ve lost money this way. While huge amounts of time go into this blog and associated things, without expectation of profit, I’m certainly not against other people being paid for their work.
The problem is the mechanism that tries to impose unrealistic rules on the use of the Internet, including forcing countries to violate their own laws and constitutions, results in arrests or harassment lawsuits and means people being disenfranchised by way of losing their Internet connection. This is all seriously flawed and outdated.
In fact my recent participation in Flattr beta testing comes from a desire to find alternative ways for people to be paid for their work.
It’s interesting you mention your plant breeding, seed saving and sharing. The only large countries where this is legal and unrestricted are the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. You’re lucky to live in one of these places. In most other places in the world this too falls under a sort of violation of seed companies intellectual property rights. It would be illegal for you to do this in Europe, and there’s a real risk that someday we may face takedown notices here for seed sharing too. Legally speaking, there’s very little difference between sharing seeds from our garden or sharing a pirated CD over the Internet.
Even in places like the US, patenting genes and other protection mechanisms are becoming an issue, and it’s becoming more difficult for example to get genetic materials from genebanks with a clear right to use this material in plant breeding.
While I’m not afraid of controversy, and I’m aware this is a topic with a wide range of often very strong opinions, I’m a little sorry to find myself at odds with you.
While partly this blog is a place for me to write about my opinions, I write more for the people who read it than for myself. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about what I’ve written in the past and what went over well, and I try to write things people want to read. It’s never my intention to aggravate readers.
Your opinion matters to me, as does everyone else’s, and I hope you keep letting me know what you think. I’m certainly listening.
Hi Patrick – actually I appreciate you discussing this topic very much, (even if you may be a freetard 😉 ), because I feel passionately, as I know you do, that there is a desperate need for more seed saving and sharing, and small scale plant breeding in the world, in the face of growing monolithic corporate control of global food resources. Your blog is one of the few places where conversations about how this can be fostered are taking place, and that’s really important.
At a gut level I feel it is very problematic that life forms can be legally “intellectual property”, still, I want curators and breeders of plants to be compensated and encouraged for their work and skill.
What I find most disturbing (aside from being ripped off) about Pirate culture is the attitude that really amounts to contempt for the source/creator of what is shared, in other words, contempt for me and my blood, sweat and tears.
I think about it a lot, and it seems to me that one of the crucial things needed to keep our plant and animal resources and make them more widely available to average folks is a culture of deep respect and gratitude, almost religious, tho I don’t like that term. But, I think we have that attitude in this tiny corner of the blogosphere. How can it be grown?
I’m following the Flattr/micropayments thing with great interest…
Hi Leigh,
You called me a freetard — twice! Don’t worry, I don’t take it too personally.
Actually, speaking for myself I’m not really a wild downloader. I tend to view this a lot like TV, 6000 channels of junk and not much worth watching. It’s the same reason that I like growing non-commercial plants, and why paying for commercial seeds is really a non-issue.
When I do download something it tends to be unavailable otherwise, like an occasional US TV show not shown here. I almost always find things offered and promoted as free (like blogs) to be more interesting and better made. It’s been months I think, since I downloaded anything copyrighted.