A new Swedish party has been founded by software pirates with the aim of abolishing copyrights, patens and trademarks. They founders want to be in the next election for the Riksdag (Swedish parliament, ed.) which is scheduled for September 24th and the party is a reaction to the stricter legislation against piracy introduced by the current Swedish government. Fittingly this new party has been christened ‘Piratpartiet’ – the Pirate Party. www.Piratpartiet.se
Should the Pirate Party gain the majority of votes in the election, its first move will be to remove all copyright according to the Party’s programme. This will be done without any delays or studies. The party also wants Sweden to declare to the UN that the country no longer will accept international treaties on the matter.
The party is currently looking for people who want to run for a parliamentary seat, of course they need to be software pirates.
In order to be able to be listed as a party in the upcoming elections the pirates needed 1.500 signatures. After they opened a website on January 1st they got nearly 5.000 electronic signatures, which now have to be verified. However, in order to gain the first seat in the Riksdag, they need 225.000 votes. But the pirates aren’t worried about that, according to their own estimates, 800.000 Swedes use pirate software/games/media.
Whilst I sure the initial post was purely for educational purposes, there is some validity behind the agendas of such "pirates". Copyright and patent growth especially when linked with FTA's is quickly fencing in our ability for technological growth.
Woah your horses buddy this was just a general post about something I think people might like to read about not my opinion. Thats why its in the the General part of the forum, not in "Todays political opinions and views of the world" thread lol.
Quote from HeReTiC: if everything was always free no one would make anything mate. you cant have your cake and eat it too.
Well they could just let all the other countries develop stuff, then use it. Win/win for them, they didnt have to spend any money and get products, while other countries bankroll it.
I have little understanding on the issue of copyrightbut my understanding is that the companies will still continue to sell their warez but just wont be able to sue people for using unlicenced software, music, etc. Does this mean Microsoft's current setup will breach their new laws or just mean that they cant extort money from joe average
Hmmmm, it seems to me that with such an important topic and the party not even considering other options that they might be asking for all the other countrys that abide by by these laws to start making trade blocks and heavy taxes on anythign coming from it... they could be putting their country up shit creek by doing it so politically... then again alot of other countries in asia are known for their piracy, but they also export us a huge ammoutn of the things we need so not much we can do in terms of pressuring them... i suppose they do make swedish make most hte mobiles and stuff.. but it wont do wonders for their economy if stuff is suddenly is free.. not to mention killi ng any programming industry they have built up...
but I think if they are doing this and they have no Political knowledge, they are gonna FK up things bad...