Well, there is currently zero chance of the Pirate Party winning seats in the fall election in Germany and even less (yes I know) chance to become king-maker.
However, I do believe that Falkvinge is naive. Although his theory (I believe) seems sound, his tipping point is way further away than he thinks.
The reality is that the tipping point lies with the younger generation. The older generation are (in the main), a completely lost cause. They don't get it and they don't want to. They have other concerns; support for their children, jobs, health, pensions and social services.
The Piratenpartei need to have a multi-faceted offering to encourage more older people to vote for them.
In the long term, the younger generation who have a concern and understanding of privacy concerns are the key.
However, (and this is a really important point), the next generation AFTER them won't get it. They will have grown up in a society where (for example) privacy is not an natural right. They will be ingrained into a habit of downloading via iTunes, Amazon and Google. They won't know any different. They are embedded in their world of Facebook and iPhones. They only know a narrow internet world, that is controlled by a few large corporations.
Therefore the Piratenpartei have a narrow window of time in which to lodge a foot in the Bundestag. They need to gain enough popular support from the generation who grew up in a world where (briefly) the pay walls didn't exist, and things were free. The latter generation are quite possibly a lost cause.
You do understand that Facebook and Google ARE free, and they are because they can show targeted ads?
> They are embedded in their world of Facebook and iPhones. They only know a narrow internet world, that is controlled by a few large corporations.
They seem to prefer this world to BBSes and Geocities. Who am I to tell them what kind of internet they should use?
PP self-destructed when they lost focus on geek topics and instead vacuumed up all the feminist, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist, anti-anything scum that came to dominate the party.
Now they are a lost cause and they will go under after the election.
This has two issues:
One, it shows a younger generation that has a "fix everything" syndrome, they see lots of problems, and try to fix them all at once... It is obvious that at least in politics, this does not work.
The second, is that feminism, and other socialist ideologies, need a high amount of state control, while IP laws need less, and thus when you mix the two ideologies on your party you end with lots of infighting, hardcore feminists won't want to reform IP anymore, and hardcore IP reformers are most likely lean to the libertarian or anarchist side of things and are against feminist policies.
Thanks, that's an interesting observation I have not yet come across - I think you are on to something here.
The German Pirate Party essentially lost focus and self-destructed. After being founded by a bunch of physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians, mostly males focused on copyright and surveillance, after the few first electional successes they forgot to screen who is joining the increasingly popular party. Because of that, they were mass-infiltrated by more tenacious leftists, humanists, feminists, genderists and other fringe political parasites, who increasingly drove out the well-intentioned but invertebrate STEM guys who founded the party in the first place.
The German Pirate Party of today is an unelectable, goalless, anarchist mess resembling the Pirate Party of 4-5 years ago only in the name.