Pirate Party wins a seat at the European Parliament | Hacker News Reader

Pirate Party wins a seat at the European Parliament

stockholmnews.com

75 pointsdaviday78 comments

I haven't read all comments yet, but some commenters seem to make the presumption that copyright is about artists. It is not. It is about the rightsholder which may in- or exclude artists. I'm writing this on my commute so I don't have the research to back it up at the moment, but I remember research has been done on the rightsholders and if I remember correctly only a small percentage were creators and thus actively contributed to culture. The larger percentage of the rightsholders were merely parasiting on ip rights created by creators already dead or who (had to) sold their ip-rights off for a meager sum. Copyright is therefor also less about incentive since it mostly benefits those holding on the 'old' creations and milking it instead of creating new works. I recommend reading the essays of Dutch professor Joost Smiers. He makes some interesting (and some wacky) points and is an interesting read.

Copyright law gives ownership rights to a work's creator. What (s)he does with those rights (keep it, license it, sell it, or trade it) is his/her choice. Just because they have made the choice to sell or bequeath the copyright doesn't mean they didn't benefit from its existence.

Your point akin to saying that startup founders aren't rewarded for innovating because a public company's stock is rarely owned by the company's original founders.

One major difference: it takes a lot of work and resources to turn a startup into a public company, but it takes little to turn an artistic work into a product. One might argue that record labels provide most of their value by finding good music, and saving customers the time it would take to do that on their own. (IMO this view is far too charitable to the labels.) Even then, internet is already doing this job better than the labels, and is still rapidly improving. The law should keep up.

Saying that artists benefited from their arrangement with the labels is akin to saying that indentured servants benefited from theirs. That is, true in a narrow sense--the indentured servants did get food and shelter, didn't they?

That's an incredibly short-sighted view of the issue. A larger market for the copy rights to art works increases the return earned by the artists who make them.

Do you think artists should be prohibited from selling their copyrights, or that there is anything inherently wrong about them doing so?

The situation is that artists get ripped off by business people.

Becoming more of a business person (in a lot of cases) destroys the art that person makes.

In Australia there are new laws for collectable artwork. Where the original artists will always get a percentage of the work from every sale. As the work gets resold, always for a higher value, the artist gets a cut each time.

Good for artists, ok for collectors, good for government controlling artists.

To counter your argument - the market does not get reduced - but the artists also get a cut.

I'm not sure of all the sociological research that went into this policy, but it seems very sensible. I also know that it is backed up with scientific research - so you can look up the reasoning behind it.

I know some of the research was that many artists sell their work for almost nothing, and the collectors make most of the money. This has been going on for a long time. Consider Van Gogh who lived in poverty for all of his life... even though his work has generated many millions of euros. If this law was in place, he would have perhaps been able to share in some of the value his work produced(money wise).

Places like Sweden and Australia are way ahead in many areas socially compared the the US. Especially in the area of copyright, and helping artists. Sweden is a world leader socially, so paying close attention to what they do, and the scientific research behind their social policies is worthwhile.

Even though this seat is a political victory, it shows a deep understanding of the issues by the Swedish people - who are a very well educated population.

From their manifesto:

"All non-commercial acquiring, using, bettering and spread of culture should be actively encouraged. The Internet is filling the same function today as popular education did a hundred years ago. It is something positive and good for the development of society.

The copyright legislation must be changes so that it is made perfectly clear that it only regulate use and copying of works done for commercial purposes. To share copies, or in any other way spread or use someone else’s work, should never be forbidden as long as it is done on an idealistic basis without the purposes of commercial gain."

So, what's the motivation for me the author of a book or software to actually write a book or software. Believe me that monetary gain is part of the motivation.

If you take this route and say that all works must be freely shared then you have to ask where 'artists' get their money from. If you do not give them a supply of some money then you end up going back to the middle ages and requiring that artists have benefactors who keep them alive.

Sharing a copy of my 'work' may well be non-commercial for the sharer, but it's not non-commercial for me. In fact, I may well have lost money (of course, there are some people who would never have spent the money in the first place).

And the idealistic part about cultural works being good for people seems valid to me, that's why we have art galleries, museums, education and libraries (of books, CDs and DVDs) funded with public money.

If you don't care enough about writing the book, just don't write it. Someone who cares (is internally motivated) enough, will write it or pay you to write it for them (external motivation). We don't necessarily need legislation to create an extra, artificial external motivation for artists, authors, etc. Writers will write, artists will express themselves, and the world will benefit with or without copyrights.

You're just wrong. Off the top of my head Dostoevsky and Sam Johnson and Charles Dickens all openly wrote for the money. I don't doubt that almost all authors do, without being so open about it.

Hemingway

Then they are business people and and their products should be judged by the commodity it is not by their wish to make money.

I didn't say they couldn't make money! Actually the opposite, I meant some artists could still make money without copyright.

It doesn't even matter if you're doing it for the money, at the end of the day you need money to eat, have a roof over your head, blah blah. I'm not sure society benefits if the only people who can create intellectual assets are independently wealthy dilletantes.

If copyright was abolished tomorrow, it would still be possible for writers to getr paid to write. For example, they could write a book and only release it when donations to them have reached a certain level.

So, basically you feel that the situation of 'starving artists' is the way to go. You feel that it's better to limit the creation of artistic works to those who are either able to find another source of income, those lucky enough to have a benefactor or those who are so motivated that they'll live in essentially poverty.

I don't see how limiting the number of artists benefits society.

Also, you say that "someone else will write it". Try telling that to any great writer (which I am not). I bet they'll be really motivated to know that "hey, if you don't do it someone else will"

Most people who paint will not earn enough from their paintings to make a living from it. Yet many people still paint. This is with copyright protection in full force.

Totally agree. But will removing copyright protection fix that problem?

Copyright protection IS the problem. It allows the RIAA to criminalize normal otherwise law abiding citizens. The sentences that we see today does in no way match up with the claimed crime. Today artist can argue lost revenue PLUS a penalty on top. That is hardly a fair way of treating the so called crime.

1. The issue of sentences is different from whether the law is worth having or not. It seems silly to me to decide that since current sentencing is harsh we should get rid of the law.

2. I do agree that the RIAA have been acting like idiots. I don't think they've even been acting in their own best interests.

1. But it shows that something is completely wrong and needs to be changed, hence the Pirate Party

2. Yup

That is completely irrelevant to the issue. Copyright law does not exist to guarantee an income. It exists to bolster creativity. In fact, it limits creativity. Here is an example. Disney made a fortune by adapting numerous fairy tales and folk tales, none of which were copyrighted. Yet, it is illegal to adapt Disney's works as they are all copyrighted.

"You feel that it's better to limit the creation of artistic works to those who are either able to find another source of income...."

What can I say? That's life. Either someone cares enough to do it, or it doesn't get done. My point is that there is plenty of motivation (internal and external) to do lots of kinds of work. We don't need artificial "protections" like copyright. As long as people want art and literature, it will get funded.

You are not entitled to a life of your own choosing.

removing copyright doesn't reduce the number of artists, it increases them, because more people are exposed to the art and more people will become inspired by it.

> I don't see how limiting the number of artists benefits society.

I don't see how DRM or 3-strikes laws benefit society.

The Internet exists. Its purpose is to copy enormous amounts of data and sent it around the world quickly and cheaply; that's not a side-effect, it's what the net was designed to do. This spells death to business models based on selling copies of digital data. Society must therefore either accept that a good deal of unauthorised copying will take place, or it must castrate the Internet.

It may harm society if artists earn less money; but it will harm socierty a lot more if we castrate the Internet.

Designing a system based on the assumption of internal motivation is like fighting crime by asking people to just be nice. You need incentives, positive and negative, to base any system on, especially one with millions of actors: an economy.

Are you saying that, without laws, people would never get out of bed in the morning? Some people are self-motivated to do crime, some to do more productive things.

I'm saying that it's a bad basis for society to assume people behave efficiently (in a socio-economical context) without the right incentives. And I don't mean to make that sound like there's an ogre whipping them.

Suggested reading: Freakonomics :-)

Crime is a zero sum game. That is enough to need disincentives for crime. No one is really worse off if Dylan decides to stop recording.

I would say that crime is most often a negative sum game.

For example, a person pays tens of thousands of dollars getting a lead roof installed. Another person comes along and steals the lead from the roof and sells it as scrap for a few hudred dollars. Value has been destroyed, both because the lead was more valuable as a roof than as scrap, and also because of the damage to the building which happened because it was no longer protected from the weather.

I think top level copyright laws are essential... ie duplication of this material either without purchase or for monetary gain is strictly prohibited.

But that's where it should stop. Leave it up to individual companies and their products to handle how they prevent unwanted distribution.

That leads to better DRM (although ppl hate it, it should still be explored), more efficient or direct methods of transferring their projects to a consumer, and new innovations to protect their works.

Its the same argument they had when VHS tapes arrived. Then came macrovision and other creative ways to either lower copy quality or distort it completely.

I think it should be easier to create things, not harder. We should stimulate creation, experimentation, research, remixing and refinement. Copyright laws makes it harder then it should be to create things. Creativity should not be limited by copyright. Having commercial exclusivity for 50, 100 or 200 years won't make creation any easier for original author or any other person following. Being able to make some money is an incentive for certain types of works, and you should also be able to do that in the future. But for most people it not about that, how large a percent of books are really making a lot of money after 10 years? The unpopular are forgotten and the popular are already in paperback with small profit margins. And if there are some books that make a lot of money after 10 years, isn't there already a sequel? And if there isn't, wouldn't it be better to stimulate the creation of one? For most people who are in favor of copyright, it's not about making money, it's about control. Control of information. Society should not accept the control of public information. Ideas, knowledge and information have their value in their non-exclusivity. The Pirate Party is the only group I found who stand up for the right to personal development. To be able to educate yourself with free information. And that, to me, is a really powerful concept.

>"If you don't care enough about writing the book, just don't write it. Someone who cares (is internally motivated) enough, will write it or pay you to write it for them (external motivation). We don't necessarily need legislation to create an extra, artificial external motivation for artists, authors, etc. Writers will write, artists will express themselves, and the world will benefit with or without copyrights."

Meanwhile, the most popular pirated materials are movies that big studios spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make, in hopes of earning a profit.

Pirates are leeches that kill their hosts.

Marketing budget. Most of the money spent is on the marketing. Surprised that all that marketing and advertising money worked?

Many good films never get seen because of low marketing budgets - and are even not allowed good distribution.

These businesses with offices disguising themselves as 'studios' are the leeches.

And those are the films that pirates want to see. To pretend that they are sticking up for the little guy is to deliberately close our eyes to reality.

I think what's positive about them getting a seat is that the issue gets attention and the debate is brought into public view a bit more. Their proposed solutions are probably a bit... absurd.

The point is that literature and art is a commodity because of the low cost of producing and the almost zero cost of distribution. In other words prizes are not reflecting the cost of this new reality.

Further more you can skip the middle man which means that you need to make less money to make money.

You are not loosing money if someone copies a version of your product and give it to a friend. You lost an opportunity to make more money which is completely different.

"The point is that literature and art is a commodity"

No, they are not commodities. Using the Wikipedia definition: "A commodity is something for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is a product that is the same no matter who produces it, such as petroleum, notebook paper, or milk."

"because of the low cost of producing and the almost zero cost of distribution"

Literature and art do not have a low cost of production for the writer or artist. They use their time in the creation of those works and are entitled to compensation if they choose to ask for it. Copyright law gives them a framework in which to ask for compensation; an artist can also choose to ask for nothing or some combination. I have done both with different 'works'.

I agree that the cost of reproduction and distribution is low for digital media. Shouldn't the artist be able to benefit from this situation? Surely, copyright law plus Internet actually helps an artist here.

"Further more you can skip the middle man which means that you need to make less money to make money."

I did this with my first book. Self-published, available for purchase on the web. What you miss there is marketing, that's hard and costs real money. Just because it's on the web doesn't mean that people know about it.

"The point is that literature and art is a commodity"

"because of the low cost of producing and the almost zero cost of distribution"

"Further more you can skip the middle man which means that you need to make less money to make money."

The product is a book. Once you enter it into the market it's not art anymore it just a product. If you want to call it anything but a product then you should sell it for 10 million. I know a lot of creators really believe they are doing more than just products but if they want to make money on it that is what they are doing and then that's a commodity the commodity of music, books whatever.

"Literature and art do not have a low cost of production for the writer or artist."

Of course they do which is why there have never been so many books today. If you are writing something truly extrodinary then you will make money on it but it's your choice. The world doesn't owe you anything. If you don't want it to be copied then don't try and sell it or sell it for an insane amount of money.

Furthermore the artist IS benefitting from that namely that it cost the artist 0,- to copy the book digitally.

"What you miss there is marketing, that's hard and costs real money."

No I don't miss that that is the point. It's not a right to get your book sold. It's a right to not have other people sell your book without your agreement but getting your marketing costs is not a right.

A book is a poor example from a motivation point of view, as most authors (in Sweden) can't make a living just being an author. Maybe you should ask one of the three well renowned Swedish authors who publicly supports The Pirate Party. (Linda Skugge, Uni Drougge or Lars Gustafsson).

I always wonder what world the people who ask these kinds of question live in. Because sharing of copyrighted works has been widespread for nearly a decade now and it is still, at least here in Sweden, almost impossible to get caught. Still somehow authors, artist and others find the motivation to make things. If non-commercial sharing has such a large impact on the creation of new things, wouldn't we have noticed by now?

If anything, copyright limits creativity in so many ways. In Sweden we don't even have fair use of images and there is still silent films which won't be free for another 30 years or so.

Today making new things are not encouraged, today making one thing, and then exploit it, is encouraged.

"Maybe you should ask one of the three well renowned Swedish authors who publicly supports The Pirate Party. (Linda Skugge, Uni Drougge or Lars Gustafsson)."

It amuses me when wealthy people support ideas that they find appealing after they have become wealthy from the opposite of those ideas.

I'd rather ask an unknown Swedish author.

I think you missed the point. Being a well renowned author in Sweden does not, in most cases, equal wealth. As I said only a few authors make a living being an author. Most of the authors who actually gets wealthy have started their own publishing company or other related businesses, like public speaking or magazine.

It is very difficult to make money by SELLING a book - whether you can monetarize the reputation you gain from writing a book is another matter. But I am pretty sure monetary gain from book sales is not the main motivation for most authors (at least for non-fiction books).

"So, what's the motivation for me the author of a book or software to actually write a book or software. Believe me that monetary gain is part of the motivation."

So you never lent a friend a book? Never borrowed a movie from someone? Have you ever burned a CD for a friend or received one? I would bet you answered "yes" to one of those questions. How is that any different?

The answers to those questions are yes, yes and no.

Lending != Copying.

Interestingly the exact same arguments can be applied to open source software.

I certainly agree with you that for the economy to work we need a way for (say) authors to make money. But technological change requires adaptation. Just like we ask factory workers to retrain in the face of machine automation, information workers need to adopt to the internet. There are plenty of options: advertising, server/service systems, and customization to name a few. Printing and copyright are just a blip in history. Enforcing copyright in the internet age has a giant social cost that has become larger than its benefit. As this technology develops further and people realize its potential, the Pirate Party will grow.

Well think about it this way.

Status Quo right now, you get only a very small percentage of the actual profits that your work makes -- the rest goes to your distributors. The internet allows you to significantly cut the costs of distribution and thus increase the percentage profits to yourself.

We see in the new business model that there are still plenty of ways to make money even if copyright doesn't exist. Bloggers make money from advertising, Chinese pop singers (where piracy > 90%) make money from concerts and endorsement deals. It's been possible for a long time to make prints and posters of famous artwork for cheap, yet famous original artworks still sell for millions of dollars.

So, what's the motivation for me the author of a book or software to actually write a book or software. Believe me that monetary gain is part of the motivation.

Of course it is.

There are a bunch of ways to make money without copyright, as I'm sure you're aware (and having "artists have benefactors" is one of them, but far from the only one). The problem you see is that you think that you won't make as much money, or that you have a lower probability of making money. Frankly, if you can't figure out how to make money in the free market from your writing, it's not up to us to enact laws to provide you with an income (or a higher probability of an income), even indirectly through copyright.

I'm really happy they are bringing online people worries (privacy, narrower copyright, less patents) to the european political level. I think this is an important turning point, just like when the ecological ideas popped up.

Looks like they are organizing themselves to conquer the world : http://www.pp-international.net/

They got 0.9% in Germany, which, given that Germany contains almost nine times the population of Sweden, is even more, although less impressive.

Every election, I vote for another party because I'm disappointed by what the people I've put my hopes in have done.

I've run out of parties and none would define what I want to fight for better than the ideas behind the PP.

If they are opening a PP in my country, I will not only vote for them but militate a long way.

Before y'all go celebrate the mainstreaming of copyright reform, keep in mind that the white-only British National Party won two seats in the same election (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8088607.stm).

So neo-Nazis are twice as well represented in the European Parliament as copyright reformers.

Sigh.

The Hungarians got three neo-fascists in too (this mob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_a_Better_Hungary, who have some particularly scary ideas about a "Greater Hungary").

Geert Wilders' list in the Netherlands are close to as extreme, and they got 17% of the vote. And we've not even mentioned the Austrians. Oh, the Austrians. Or Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National.

Neofascism is Europe's dirty little secret. It's just this is the first time in maybe thirty years it's had significant electoral success in the UK. I would say the Anglosphere, but there's Australia's Pauline Hanson, and apartheid-era South Africa...

Shouldn't really reply to myself, but: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/far-right-europe... summarises the situation pretty well.

Innovation is defined as taking an existing idea and improving it.

This is the main reason why copyright is bad for innovation.

Making original ideas is a good thing, but improving existing ideas is much more common, and useful. Copyright fails to help this, and indeed places significant blocks to this.

The Open Rights Group (like an UK EFF) sent a survey to all British MEP candidates to find out their opinions on copyright extension, data protection, etc:

http://euelection.openrightsgroup.org/

They found the Green party did very well.

This has been a banner year for pirates. ARRGH!

It's a trivial, and a solved problem. You might as well vote for the anti-prohibitionist party. Really pathetic. The kids today have way too much time on their hands.

Pray tell how is it solved?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet

I don't think that's a perfect solution, but it gets at the real solution. If people think you can solve a technical problem (privacy) with a political movement, they are hopelessly incorrect.

It's not just about privacy.

Well, yeah. But I'm trying to be generous when I say "privacy"--highlighting that aspect of their platform. Obviously, the party is mainly concerned with not paying the onerous 99 cents that itunes charges for an mp3.

Not really, they are concerned with the idea of fair use and not criminalizing people. That's the real issue here and hardly a solved one.

Listen to me, because I'm tired of saying it and getting downmodded: It is a SOLVED FUCKING PROBLEM.

Use an encrypted drive, use freenet, and the government will not be able to prosecute you unless they happen to have many trillions of years of CPU time on their hands.

Seriously. Not one person has even approached refuting me. Just downmods. That's how I know I'm right.

It's not a solved problem.

The real problem, the one the Pirate Party is trying to solve, is that the worlds culture is being trapped behind private paywalls in which high costs and penalties are extracted. For thousands of years, our culture was free, as everybody told stories, and people sang songs they created and performed.

However, for the last 100 years, copyright has really taken off. The "consensus" is that thoughts: stories, songs, plays, diatribes, you name it, can be owned and money extracted like the old troll under the rotating bridge.

However, once the "Gutenberg Press for Everybody" got out, suddenly these people want money from everybody. And now, everybody is a potential criminal because of this. Hence DRM and high governemnt-sanctioned blackmails.

The question has never been "Can you trade copyrighted media if you use heavy encryption with everything and get your friends the same?", but instead "Can I share this to people I know would like without fear?" or "Can I sing Happy Birthday in public?". There's always going to be nutters who will apply the most obtuse, obfuscated encryptions they can because they can.

The real question is "Who's culture is this, but why do select few gain?".

Just because you scream it does not make it more true.

The political movement is to fight legislation that would make using something like Freenet illegal. That is, it's not a fight to make your data private. It's a fight to make it legal to have private data. If I'm not incorrect, it is already illegal to withhold encryption keys to private data in the UK.

Then why tie that fight to copyright? If that's what they want to fight then they should make that their platform instead of going on about file sharing.

Truth is that they've wrapped up the file sharing in a blanket of privacy to try to legitimize copying of copyrighted works.

> Truth is that they've wrapped up the file sharing in a blanket of privacy to try to legitimize copying of copyrighted works.

Upvoted for honesty. Let's be intellectually honest and admit that many people pirate stuff, not because they believe in freedom of information and privacy, but because it's cheap. I don't want to state an opinion here or there, but let's at least keep the discussion honest.

At least I can speak for myself. I'm a pirate. I download most of my music and movies, buy the rest in 3rd party stores and pawn shops. I dont buy games any more after all the crapware on them. My biggest things I download are books. In fact, I even have most of my collection duplicated digitally (using free formats) along with nice bound books. Even that e-paper stuff sucks. I just like nicely bound, hopefully acid-free paper bound books. And yes, I usually buy what books I download... most anyways.

I even downloaded that Wolverine workprint. Not a great movie, but OK.

I can also remember the times I've been burnt in actually buying media. I remember the C64 games we bought that used disk drive_destroying calls for anti piracy. I can recall movies that didnt play and the money we lost cause we couldnt return them. I remember being screwed around with on DVD region garbage cause we _bought_ legit dvds.

I've been burned by countless types of media and "policies" regarding them, but never books. Even the bookstores have cafes in which they're cool for you to take a book that you havent purchased to peruse. They're like for-profit libraries. The only thing I wish is that book dealers would get their act together and publish easily searchable text with each book... Oh, and these days, vinyl is another thing I dont mind buying. Now, much vinyl comes with a scratch-off card that the publisher provides all MP3s of what's on the album. Cool and retro, and vinyl sounds good.

It's a really a "What Provides Value?" game. Books and vinyl+mp3s provide perceived value. Badly done DVDs and CDs and crippled games do not. The pirates provide better quality product with no hassle in opposition to the DVD/CD/game sellers.

Again, I don't think that freenet is the ideal solution, but the real solution is available, and it would essentially involve doing things that (for instance) the CIA uses to operate securely. There are thousands of spies in this country--in every country--who could be executed for their behavior, but...well, there are ways of avoiding detection.

The truth is, very few people are interested in security (despite their hyperventilation over the issue), but if the government became genuinely oppressive, it could happen on a mass scale.

It is not a solved problem. Here's an example.

In the late-80s and early-90s, emerging sampling technology gave birth to a bunch of new kinds of music, which used samples of existing music to great effect. The best of these were not rip-off art forms, they were amazingly original and innovative.

And then the lawyers came in and destroyed everything. I've been sad for a long time about the loss of all that new art, and I'm very happy to see the pendulum finally start to move in the other direction.

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