Pirate Party Wins Again In Germany

from the momentum dept

It really appears that The Pirate Party is no fluke in Germany. After winning 9% of the vote in the Berlin parliament elections, and then 7.4% in Saarland, the party has now received 8.2% of the vote in Schleswig-Holstein. These are each local "state" elections, and there's another big one next week, in Northrhine-Westphalia, where they're apparently polling in a similar range. It seems clear that The Pirate Party is certainly surpassing the German Green Party as the preeminent 3rd party -- and it seems to be having an impact. As we noted, the Greens have tried to co-opt much of the Pirate Party's agenda as their own, and Germany's major political parties have started to show a much more reasoned approach to copyright as well.

And it's definitely getting increasing notice. Last week, we pointed to an op-ed piece in the NY Times about the Pirate Party in Germany, and this week, they've followed it up with a full article about the Party's success, which also discusses how the Greens are frantically trying to convince the younger generation that they're cool, too:

The Greens were once the insurgent activists on the political scene. Now founding members from the ’68 generation have started collecting their pensions. A Green campaign poster with a cursor arrow pointing at a Facebook thumbs-up icon carried a whiff of desperation to keep up with the Pirates.

Of course, it's worth noting a point that's been left out in many of the discussions about the success of the German Pirate Party: Germany has some of the worst copyright laws around, especially on issues like secondary liability. Perhaps those two things are linked... and perhaps those who keep pushing for more draconian enforcement of copyrights might want to take that into account. There's little to no evidence that such laws do anything to slow down infringement, but it sure seems to make people respect copyright law even less.

Filed Under: activism, germany, pirate party

NY Times Notices That The Pirate Party May Be Changing Politics

from the slowly,-but-surely dept

We've talked about the growing success of The Pirate Parties in Europe, with particularly strong growth in Germany. While some continue to dismiss the phenomenon as unimportant, it appears that more and more people are realizing why it is important. I don't think more than maybe a handful of people actually believe The Pirate Party will ever become a significant political party on its own... but what it can do (and is already doing in some areas) is changing how politics works. Even the NY Times is taking notice, publishing a fascinating piece by Steve Kettmann about how The Pirate Party in Germany is having a much wider impact. He notes that the official platform -- and what many people associate the party with -- may be niche, but the overall goal is something much bigger:

But their real goal, and the root of their success, is more meta: using the Internet to create a new structure of politics that can solve the problem of how to energize citizens — not only for the excitement of a campaign but also the often dreary realities of actual governance.

And he gives an example of how The Pirate Party is experimenting with technology to get the public much more engaged. They're not fighting back against the system just by talking -- but they're actually trying to hack the system from within:

Using a software package they call Liquid Feedback, the Pirates are able to create a continuous, real-time political forum in which every member has equal input on party decisions, 24 hours a day. It’s more than just a gimmicky Web forum, though: complex algorithms track member input and generate instantaneous collective decisions.

Of course, on some level Liquid Feedback is a gimmick, an effort to get young people interested and involved in the humdrum of German politics, outside the campaign season and even off line. Whatever it is, it works: late last month some 1,300 members trekked to the small northern city of Neumunster to elect a new executive board.

And the real point in all of this: there's no reason that others can't learn from what The Pirate Parties are doing, and make use of them to make all politics much more engaging and inclusive:

There’s no reason the party’s lessons couldn’t be applied elsewhere, including the United States. One of the biggest problems for President Obama has been to maintain the vigorous online following that Candidate Obama generated in 2008. But while the Obama campaign at least gave the impression that he was influenced by input from his supporters, they have been shut out of the White House.

If Mr. Obama had followed the Pirate method, he would not only have sent updates via Facebook and Twitter, but he would have involved larger numbers of supporters in an extensive dialogue and given them an actual say in determining such priorities as which issues to pursue in his first months in office and how much to reach out to conservatives.

Indeed, the Obama administration did at least try to do some of that with various online tools, but it rarely seemed to take them very seriously, reverting to politics as usual, rather than actually doing much with what information the public sent in. It was a step in the right direction, but hardly a full step. If The Pirate Party's one big success is convincing other major political parties to be more responsive to the public, rather than special interests, I'd argue that it would be a massive success.

Filed Under: europe, germany, ny times, obama, pirate party

Playmobil Is Upset That Its Pirate Figures Have Been Used To Illustrate The Pirate Party

from the too-flipping-bad dept

Playmobil, makers of the rather popular little toy people that many of us had as kids, has a bit of a history of being over aggressive when it comes to what it thinks you're allowed to do with the toys you've purchased. A few years ago, we wrote about how it sued over an "unauthorized" use of the toys to depict violent scenes. It seems its latest complaint is with the fact that its pirate figures have been used in photos describing The Pirate Party: The company sent a letter to the German Pirate Party declaring that it was a "politically neutral toy," and indicating a concern that the toy should be associated with the party. As the Pirate Party responded, those who purchased such figures should have the right to then do with them as they wish, considering they are their property. They also noted that they have not used the figures for "marketing," and no one would assume that Playmobil the company had specifically endorsed the party. Thankfully, the company has indicated that they don't see any reason to take this issue any further, such as by commencing legal action, but merely the decision to raise this suggests a company that believes it has much more control over toys that it sold than it really does.

In the meantime, if Playmobil does not want to be associated with the Pirate Party, perhaps it shouldn't sell Pirate Party Cups.

Filed Under: control, ownership culture, pirate party, toys
Companies: playmobil

Pirate Parties Continue To Grow In Europe As People Get Sick Of Politics As Usual

from the good-for-them dept

I've expressed my skepticism in the past about the ability of The Pirate Party to make a real dent long-term in politics, but I'm beginning to wonder if I've underestimated the effort. While we've seen some successes in Germany, it appears that the party has now become the third most popular party in the country, surpassing the Greens. That's fairly surprising. Equally interesting is that in nearby Austria, a Pirate Party member won a seat in a local city election... which actually made front page news:

These are still small steps, of course, and I still doubt that the party will become a "major" political party -- but its success in Europe is already driving other parties to pay much more attention to the issues that have attracted so much attention for The Pirate Party: internet freedom, free speech, civil liberties, copyright law, patent law, privacy and much more. If the Party's one major accomplishment is to bring those issues into the mainstream of politics, I'd consider it a pretty big success.

Filed Under: austria, europe, germany, internet freedom, pirate party

Dutch Whac-A-Mole Game Against The Pirate Bay Apparently Works Better Without Due Process

from the judicial-miscarriage dept

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting, briefly, Tim Kuik, the head of BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group that has been fighting against file sharing on a variety of fronts. We had an enjoyable conversation (as part of a larger discussion) in which he insisted that he and BREIN recognized the future opportunities of the digital market, and that BREIN was not interested in trying to put the genie back in the bottle -- in response to my suggestion that too many in the industry were trying to do exactly that. That may be true, but it's difficult to see how that's the case when immediately after this we hear of stories about BREIN going to court to shut down a proxy by the Dutch Pirate Party to point people to The Pirate Bay -- a site that BREIN has forced ISPs to block.

Of course, blocking sites on the web is impossible, and the silly continued whac-a-mole against proxies seems like a huge waste of time and resources that could have been put towards helping to develop compelling new business models. But, a much bigger concern is the process by which this latest proxy was shut down. Or, rather, I should note it's not so much the process, but the lack of due process. That is, a court ordered the proxy to be taken down without allowing the Dutch Pirate Party to testify on its own behalf:

The Pirate Party was not heard in the matter (ex parte) and according to board member “blauwbaard” the judge ignored their requests to be heard.

“The judge has decided to ignore our express and valid request to have the injunction either denied flat-out, or to at least be heard in the matter before a decision was made,” blauwbaard states in a response.

“This decision is even more strange because BREIN was allowed to bring over 20 pages of arguments to convince the judge to stretch a quaint rule of IP-law, meant to block the sudden appearance of mass quantities of counterfeited goods, far enough to be applied to the website of a political party.”

A court ordering a website taken down without allowing the site itself to speak on its behalf? That seems pretty extreme. A proxy is simply a redirect in a case like this. It's something just about anyone can do, and chasing after each and every proxy -- and then not allowing them to speak for themselves in court, seems like a perfect example of trying to put the genie back in the bottle, no matter how much BREIN insists that's not their goal.

And, unfortunately, the story gets even worse, the more it moves forward. The Dutch Pirate Party replaced their proxy with a page that linked to other proxies as well as an explanation of their position. This seems like a classic free speech situation. Except... BREIN claimed that even those links to other proxies violated the injunction, and have demanded the party take them down as well. The Pirate Party appears to be getting ready to fight this, noting that BREIN keeps trying to rewrite the specifics of the court's order (i.e., trying to stuff that genie back into the bottle) every time a different website shows how ridiculous it is to ban internet access to a website.

Filed Under: brein, piracy, pirate party, tim kuik, whac-a-mole
Companies: the pirate bay

German Pirate Party Scores Another Electoral Victory: Gets 4 Seats In State Parliament

from the german-pirates dept

We've discussed in the past the success of the German Pirate party in getting 9% of the vote in the Berlin state Parliamentary elections, giving them a bunch of seats there. Following that, it was noted that the party actually had a similar 9% support level across Germany. So it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that the party has been able to seat another four officials in another state election, this one in Saarland, where they took 7.4% of the vote, and got four out of the 51 seats (found via Slashdot). I do wonder why Germany's Pirate Party has been so successful, compared to the various Pirate Parties elsewhere.

It's also important to note that the campaign in this case didn't focus on copyright issues (even with ACTA still being a hot topic in Germany). Instead the campaign focused on "transparent government, access to education as a prerequisite, and the right of the people to actively partake in the decision making process." If the Pirate Party is actually going to grow, I think it's important for it to do much more to highlight its position on these kinds of issues, so it's good that this resonated. I've said in the past -- and I know plenty of people disagree with me -- that I think the Pirate Party's name, while good for getting it initial attention, has the potential to limit its effectiveness and appeal in the longterm, in part because I didn't think people would take its other policy issues (which have always been a part of the Party's efforts) seriously. However, if they worked here, that's surprising, but encouraging.

Filed Under: elections, germany, internet freedom, pirate party

The Pirate Party Effect: German Greens Scramble To Draw Up Digital Policies To Hold On To Voters

from the political-dominoes-start-to-fall dept

The founding of the Pirate Party in Sweden in 2006 was regarded by many as a joke. After all, the argument went, who would want to be associated with "pirates" or vote for such a narrow platform? This overlooked the fact that the traditional political parties had consistently ignored the concerns of voters who understood that the Internet raised important questions about areas such as copyright and privacy. By focusing on precisely those issues, the Pirate Party gave disaffected voters the opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with the old political parties and their outdated policies.

This they have done not just in Sweden, where two Members of the European Parliament were elected in 2009, but increasingly in Germany. In Berlin, the Pirate Party recently obtained nearly 9% of the vote in the latest Berlin state parliamentary elections, a level of support that is being mirrored across Germany if you believe the latest opinion polls.

Among those most threatened by the rise of the Pirates are the German Greens, a party which has traditionally appealed to precisely the voters that the Pirates are drawing their support from. The risk for the Greens is that the Pirates could take over as the main "alternative" option in German elections, turning the former into an anachronistic throwback to pre-digital times.

To head off this threat, the German Green party has drawn up a 16-page proposal entitled "Openness, freedom, participation – Exploiting the opportunities of the Internet – Making the shift to digital green", which aims to position the Green party as a defender of all those things that make the Pirates attractive to some voters (German original.).

There is support for a shopping list of digital-friendly ideas like Internet freedom, Net neutrality, privacy, data protection, online anonymity and pseudonymity, free software, open access, open data, open government, CC licenses – even for things like free public wifi and DDoS attacks, which the Greens regard as "civil disobedience". There's also a list of things that the Greens don't want: Net censorship, "three strike" exclusions, data retention, online surveillance, software patents and the export of surveillance tools.

That's all good stuff, but the really interesting part of the proposal concerns copyright, because it's here that the Greens are being forced by the Pirate Party to make the most radical shifts, and where the biggest battles within the Green party seem to be taking place. According to a report in the magazine Der Spiegel (original German), the "cultural" wing of the party want copyright to remain as it is, while the "Internet" wing want its term reduced to just five years.

That gulf explains the rather vague statements of the Greens' policy paper on the subject:

We Greens are committed to a modernization and reform of copyright law and to a fair balance between the interests of copyright owners and users; that is, for all Internet participants. We want to strengthen the copyright owners and artists against the exploitation and marketing of their content, but also to provide adequate financial compensation for the free use of their copyrighted content on the Internet. At the same time we want to end the criminalization of non-commercial use of copyrighted works on the Internet and facilitate access to them. If copyrighted material is offered directly on a website or platform, which has a significant (higher than cost recovery) income from contributions from members or through advertising or links, then this counts as commercial scale.

Among the concrete proposals is a right to make private copies:

Private copying may not be prevented by technical measures, such as digital rights management (DRM), or by legal restrictions. Such a copy for private use and the right to copy it to personal devices, be it a laptop, an MP3 player, a tablet PC, or transferred to a smartphone, does not automatically include the right to share it with others publicly.

The proposals contained within the paper are currently just that: not official statements yet. But the fact that the party felt the need to address these issues in such detail shows that it is acutely aware of the challenge posed by the German Pirate Party, and it seems likely that many of the ideas will make it into the Greens' final platform.

Moreover, it's not just the German wing that is moving closer to the Pirates: as a Techdirt story from October reported, the European Green Party has also adopted many of the Pirate Party's key policies on copyright. Both are testimony to the impressive knock-on effects of the Pirates' appearance on the European political scene five years ago, and to the increasing importance of copyright in particular, and digital rights in general, to political platforms in the Internet age.

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Filed Under: copyright, freedom, germany, greens, internet, pirate party, politics

Gamex Pulls The Welcome Mat Out From Under The Pirate Party

from the here-today-gone-tomorrow dept

For several months leading up to this November's Swedish Gamex show, the Pirate Party of Sweden had been pursued by the show's sales staff to attend. Then the week prior to the show's opening, the Pirate Party was told it wasn't welcome.

"On Tuesday afternoon, I called a representative of the show with a few simple practical questions, but she seemed generally stressed out and said something vague about the show and not wanting any problems before she hung up," says Troberg.

I thought it was a bit strange, but in the afternoon, the pieces fell into place when the fair manager, Bear Wengse, phoned me and kindly, but firmly, announced that the Pirate Party was no longer welcome at the fair.

Wengse informed Troberg that the exhibition is a meeting place and not a venue for political conflict, and the party's presence could cause problems, particularly since some of their work "could be perceived as criminal."

Just what those criminal works were, no one was able to explain. The details of the unvite were severely lacking. Troberg had tried to explain that the Pirate Party wants to change existing laws through the legal process and that could not conceivably be considered "criminal". Unfortunately, no one was listening.

Frankly, it is a sad day when a political voice is silenced for no reason other than a few legacy industries not liking the message. We have already learned that here in the US, the supposed bastion of Democracy, is refusing to hear all sides of legal issues. It really comes as no surprise to find that the same people would want to block access to those same dissenting ideas. Do we really think things will get better as we move more and more toward stronger copyright? Will the next step after SOPA be the silencing of any speech that can be perceived as "pro-piracy"? I certainly hope not.

Filed Under: gaming, pirate party, sweden
Companies: gamex

Pirate Party Building Up More And More Support: 9% Nationwide In Germany

from the not-to-be-discounted dept

A month ago, when the German Pirate Party took 9% of the vote in the Berlin Parliament elections, it was definitely a surprise to a lot of people. Some brushed it off as being just a weird anomaly in a regional election. However, the success and the attention it brought seems to have increased more widespread attention on the entire German Pirate Party, which has now surged to 9% nationally, which currently puts it in 4th place among political parties -- "well ahead of the hard-line socialist Left (Die Linke) party and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP)."

I have no idea if this is sustainable through any actual elections, but it is notable. People are realizing that the Pirate Party is concerned with serious issues -- even as some try to pretend (incorrectly) they just want stuff for free. The regional success seems to have convinced more people nationally that the Party is viable, which could make things interesting if they can keep this momentum going. Along those lines, it's worth noting that Germany has one of the most ridiculous copyright setups imaginable, with GEMA's overbearing nature, and the fact that all major label music is blocked on YouTube over GEMA's policies (whereas pretty much every other country has worked out a licensing deal). It seems that the more draconian you are with copyright, the more it drives interest in efforts like the Pirate Party, which seeks to push back. Countries (and industries) that support stricter copyright might want to take note.

Filed Under: germany, pirate party, politics

Here's A Surprise: EU Green Party Adopts The Pirate Party's Position On Copyright

from the didn't-see-that-coming,-did-you? dept

While some try to write off the Pirate Party's positions on things because of its name (and I still believe its name limits the party's effectiveness), it appears that more and more people are recognizing that its positions on things like copyright aren't particularly extreme, but rather are quite reasonable in this day and age. Along those lines, the EU Green Party group has adopted the Pirate Party's positions on copyright as its own:

• It must be made absolutely clear that the copyright monopoly does not extend to what an ordinary person can do with ordinary equipment in their home and spare time; it regulates commercial, intent-to-profit activity only. Specifically, file sharing is always legal.
• There must be exceptions that make it legal to create mashups and remixes. Quotation rights, like those that exist for text, must be extended to sound and video.
• Digital Restrictions Management should preferably be outlawed, as it is a type of fraud nullifying consumer and citizen rights, but at least, it must always be legal to circumvent.
• The baseline commercial copyright monopoly is shortened to a reasonable five years from publication, extendable to twenty years through registration of the work.
• The public domain must be strengthened.

I guess you could say that the Greens "pirated" the Pirate Party's position... but somehow I don't think the Pirate Party minds. The Greens have put out a position paper on this (pdf and embedded below), which lays out their reasoning. The whole thing is worth reading, but a few snippets:

Up until twenty years ago, copyright was hardly anything that concerned ordinary people. The rules about exclusivity on the production of copies where aimed at commercial actors, who had the means to, for example, print books or press records. Private citizens who wanted to copy a poem and send to their loved one, or copy a record to cassette and give it to a friend, did not have to worry about being in breach of copyright. In practice, anything you had the technical means to do as a normal person, you could do without risk of any punishment.

But today, copyright has evolved to a position where it imposes serious restrictions on what ordinary citizens can do in their every-day life. As technological progress has made it easier for ordinary people to enjoy and share culture, copyright legislation has moved in the opposite direction.

I certainly don't agree with everything in the position statement, but it's the most reasonable policy proposal I've seen in a long time. They focus on letting individuals be able to share for non-commercial reasons (which I like in concept, but worry about how you define what is commercial and what is non-commercial). It also supports granting the legal right to circumvent DRM, and a ban on DRM that blocks legal uses of a work. Not surprisingly, the paper takes aim at the length of copyright -- calling it "absurd" -- and proposes a much shorter copyright, starting at 20 years. It also wants to deal with orphan works and bring back formalities (the need to register and reregister to keep your copyrights). Of course, with 5 year reregistration requirements, it would mean that the problem of orphan works would more or less erase itself... as the lack of a copyright renewal would put the content in the public domain where it belongs. There's also this:

Today’s ever more restrictive copyright legislation and practice is a major obstacle to musicians, film makers, and other artists who want to create new works by reusing parts of existing works. We want to change this by introducing clear exceptions and limitations to allow remixes and parodies, as well as quotation rights for sound and audiovisual material modelled after the quotation rights that already exist for text.

Definitely nice to see a major political party willing to actually state that copyright today harms tons of musicians, filmmakers and artists who are limited by it.

Either way, this is great to see. Supporters of the copyright maximalist position continue to insist that those who are concerned about copyright and wish to pull it back are somehow on the "fringe." It's pretty obvious that's not true -- given the level of activity we see on these kinds of stories. But with a major political party adopting this position, it's yet another step towards realizing that lots and lots of people are quite concerned about how copyright is holding back culture.

Filed Under: copyright, green party, pirate party, politics