Pirate Party Wants To Host The Pirate Bay From Inside The Swedish Parliament

from the will-access-be-blocked-now? dept

Fri, Jul 2nd 2010 2:11pm — Mike Masnick

No matter how you feel about The Pirate Party of Sweden, you do have to give them credit for knowing how to make a statement. Back in May, we noted that the Swedish Pirate Party had agreed to start hosting The Pirate Bay. Despite what many believe, The Pirate Bay and The Pirate Party are two totally separate entities, so this bringing them together in some form was a bit of a surprise. However, it looks like The Pirate Party is taking this effort a step further to make its point clear: it wants to host The Pirate Bay from inside the Swedish Parliament. Of course, to do that it needs to win some seats in the September election, and it's not clear if it will be able to do so (even if it has won seats in the EU Parliament).

The idea of hosting it from Parliament is that apparently the Swedish constitution has a clause that gives "Parliamentary Immunity" in any lawsuit, for actions that were part of a political mandate, and thus it would effectively shield itself from the laws by embedding itself within Parliament. The party's platform is also probably going to get some attention for taking extreme positions like making lawsuits against non-commercial file sharers illegal. Ditto for suing service providers who are merely linking to copyrighted material.

Obviously, no one expects most of these platform issues to become law, but the idea is to highlight how the entertainment industry has effectively done the same thing, using the law to prop up its own business model, outlaw perfectly reasonable activities and generally try to shield themselves with politicians. While it does feel quite a bit like a big publicity stunt, for a party like The Pirate Party, that's often what it needs to do to get attention.

In all of this, there is a serious and very real point, though, that many will probably miss. This isn't about "getting stuff for free." There are very real economic consequences to constantly outlawing technological innovation:

"Sweden has long been a nation at the forefront of IT. But we have fallen in the rankings, largely because today's politicians do not see the connection between file-sharing culture and future industry skills. We have now moved from place form place three to eight in available household bandwidth.... We can never accept the copyright industry's way of systematically and legally harassing anyone who tries to build next-generation industries. The approach is criminal in the world and should be criminal in Sweden also, professional saboteurs are professional criminals, whoever they get their money from,"

Copyright system defenders will, undoubtedly, scoff at this claim, but it is making an important point. If the copyright industries had their way, all sorts of important technologies that it deemed awful "pirate" technologies would never have existed. Player pianos, radio, the VCR, mp3 players. It's incredibly shortsighted of the industry to keep working so hard to try to ban the technology that may become the next huge innovation that drives more and more revenue for the industry.

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Filed Under: pirate party
Companies: the pirate bay

27 Comments

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6, 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:16pm

lol nice.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:21pm

ROFL
RIIIGHT

not gonna happen but go for it anyhow. THEN ITS A STATE website???? What then can the USA do? INVADE Sweden.
THINK OF THE BOOBIES
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:27pm

"...professional saboteurs are professional criminals, whoever they get their money from,"
That's beautiful.

I feel the same way about thieves, which is why I'm tempted to shoot at IRS agents.
; P
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maloki, 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:36pm

We are up for a challenge
I'm one of the Swedish candidates for the Pirate Party in this falls election. I totally stand behind this idea, why not use the law that is already in place since quite some time to our advaantage instead of, as some of the copy right organizations have done, make new laws to fit our needs. :)

The next 3 months will be very interesting, and I'm looking forward to the election!

I also believe it important that we get international support in this election, but I'll get back to you on that ;)
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Dark Helmet (profile), 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:36pm

Re: ROFL
"THINK OF THE BOOBIES"

I do. Constantly....
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Yogi, 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:38pm

Re: ROFL
So it will be the"Boobie War"? Where do you sign up?
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Dark Helmet (profile), 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:40pm

Re: Re: ROFL
"So it will be the"Boobie War"? Where do you sign up?"

Think what kind of war CHEST will be needed....
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ernestinis, 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:40pm

" It's incredibly shortsighted of the industry to keep working so hard to try to ban the technology that may become the next huge innovation that drives more and more revenue for the industry."

It is not an industry who makes decisions. It is just a personalities who each have their own positions, salaries which depends on short time revenues.

Who can get salary NOW with promise about increased sales after 5 YEARS?
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PRMan, 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:47pm

Re:
Those who don't innovate, litigate.

And lawyers don't innovate. The problem is that most large companies have too many bored staff attorneys.
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Thomas (profile), 2 Jul 2010 @ 2:50pm

Blah blah blah ..
Must be Friday ... blah blah
Masnick tries to ... blah
Politicians are all thieves anyway .. blah blah
FAIL. .. I win the internet ..
Blah blah blah ..
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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 2 Jul 2010 @ 3:36pm

Re: We are up for a challenge
How long does it take to get Swedish citizenship? 'Cause I'll do that to vote for y'all.
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Infowars, 2 Jul 2010 @ 3:50pm

Kinda
Makes me want to move to Sweden..
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John Smith, 2 Jul 2010 @ 3:52pm

The Plan
- Find out what people agree on that should change and put it in a list of wanted legislation.
- Find out what people really don't agree and put it in a list of no legislation.
- Draw the laws people want to see enabled.
- Find out how much seats people need to put in place to change laws.
- Find a bunch of people that are willing to be puppeteered by the people and vote for them.

It doesn't matter who those people are as long as they put it in a contract that they will enact the laws people want, people just need to vote for them, forget about "parties" vote for the issues.

We have the internet know, cloud apps that can make this a possibility why are people not organizing in such a way is beyond me.
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John Smith, 2 Jul 2010 @ 3:54pm

The Plan
By the way this approach have one big plus, if you don't do what you are told you are out pretty quick the rotation rate will be tremendous not giving time to corrupt people to create roots and corrupt networks of backdoor dealings.
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John Smith, 2 Jul 2010 @ 3:59pm

Renew people, politics are stagnant in most countries people need to stir things up so they take notice.
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John Smith, 2 Jul 2010 @ 4:14pm

The Law.
Instead of being feed the law lets fed the law to them.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2010 @ 4:41pm

honestly, if they are willing to go to this level, it just shows how desperate they are for both attention and a free lunch.

it is truly disgusting.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2010 @ 4:57pm

Re:
All political parties want attention. What's your point? As far as a free lunch, it is only those who want free monopolies that want a free lunch.
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John, 2 Jul 2010 @ 4:59pm

Re: Re: We are up for a challenge
II'm afraid you'll have to wait for the next election...marry a Swede and live here and you can become a citizen after three years, which means: what are you waiting for ;) If you're already married, it takes 5 years assuming you live here.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2010 @ 5:36pm

Re:
Seriously!?! Do you not read what you write?
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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 2 Jul 2010 @ 5:58pm

Re: Re: Re: We are up for a challenge
Win/win! Just let me run this by The GF...
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Karl (profile), 2 Jul 2010 @ 8:22pm

Re:
Translation: "This country is doing something I don't like, so I'll smear the entire populace with ill-thought-out pseudo-Freudian criticisms."

Yeah, good one.
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The eejit (profile), 3 Jul 2010 @ 4:44am

Re:
Hi, Shill!

You recall the actions of one Peter Mandelson in the UK? Who changed his stance from 'Free the Internet!' to 'I'm in the pocket of Hollywood!' for a free lunch?

Yah.
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Kyle, 4 Jul 2010 @ 6:53pm

Invaid?
As far as invading Sweeden the USA would be stupid to do that as we depend on them for $$$ and other items that they help with.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jul 2010 @ 10:30pm

Re: Re:
seriously.

what would you say if the us government allowed planned parenthood or whatever to set up their servers in congress? what is the ptc ran their network of anti-porn campaigns right out of the oval office? what would you say if senators invited illegal aliens from mexico to shack up in their offices to avoid being deported?

what these yahoos are trying to do in sweden is to disregard the rule of law, and impose as a minority onto the majority. it is disgusting, a slap at what a democratic system is suppose to be about. if they want to make the pirate bay and its ilk legal in their country, they should get the majority and then pass the laws as the voice of the majority. they are not, and they should not force anything down peoples throats. in most countries, that would be considered mutiny (appropriate for a pirate party, i guess).
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NonAnonymous, 7 Jul 2010 @ 12:15am

Re: Anonymous Coward
If everyone followed your logic we would be living in the dark ages! Civil disobedience is a complicated issue, but is certainly a good thing from time to time.

Rosa Parks didn't wait for legislation to catch up. She did, however, start an important process that led to exactly that.

You may or may not agree with the pirate bay being a worthy cause, but your way of thinking - assuming it is not deviated from - is a danger to the development of any free society!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2010 @ 12:45am

Re:
if you don't like the law, then well... change it.

i think that's what you and your fellow shitrolls have been saying for a while now.
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