We need a party like this in SA

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lucifir

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http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28671

Swedish pirates form political party

Ooo Ah make RIAA walk the plank

By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 03 January 2006, 06:55
A BUNCH of Swedish file sharers have got together to form their own political party.

The Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) said that it is tired of being deemed a criminals and terrorists by the system for sharing a few measly files for no financial gain or loss to anyone.

In its manifesto, here, which is in Swedish, the party says that it is against seeing the developing world starve because the developed world refuses to share its intellectual property.

Its massage is that corporations are engaging in racketeering in the developing world and a few power hungry individuals and greedy corporate entities are infringing on privacy and integrity. Piratpartiet says that it will strike out immaterial law, ignore WIPO and WT, and annul any further treaties or policies that hinder the free flow of information. They will refuse to allow data retention nonsense based on terrorism claims or failed RIAA business models.

The new party, wants to break the four per cent barrier (225 000 votes) this autumn to take up seats in parliament.

Even if they the party gets no-one elected, it is clear that it does represent a backlash against copyright protection laws and the antics of the RIAA and its ilk.

They would definitely get my vote :)
 
Do they have any policies in place which will see the creators of original works get paid ?

This is the real issue at stake.

If people no longer get paid for creating books, music, film and software, then who will produce it and how will artists and developers survive ?

It's clear that beasts like RIAA need to be taken down to size and that they are as doomed as the dinosaurs, but what will we see in it's place ?

Will artists sell their products directly to the public ?

That's the problem, these guys don't seem to be seeing the bigger picture, that sharing the work of people without giving them the rewards doesn't help anyone.

It's all very well saying information should be shared and expecting some kind of utopia where artists give freely of their work, but people need to eat and have a roof over their heads.
 
or in the case of most of these artists ... 20 mansion sized roofs over their heads :) ...
I do c ur point bb_matt ... but so far every study I have heard of has said that the so called "piracy" actually helps to bolster the sales of the product ....
Just think about it for a second ... if you download a song ... if you do not like it, you will get rid of it ... but if u like it.... u would not mind paying for it... the problem is that the products are too expensive .... if they were more reasonably priced, we would not have these problems ... simple economics :)
 
bb_matt said:
Do they have any policies in place which will see the creators of original works get paid ?

This is the real issue at stake.

If people no longer get paid for creating books, music, film and software, then who will produce it and how will artists and developers survive ?

It's clear that beasts like RIAA need to be taken down to size and that they are as doomed as the dinosaurs, but what will we see in it's place ?

Will artists sell their products directly to the public ?

That's the problem, these guys don't seem to be seeing the bigger picture, that sharing the work of people without giving them the rewards doesn't help anyone.

It's all very well saying information should be shared and expecting some kind of utopia where artists give freely of their work, but people need to eat and have a roof over their heads.
Click to expand...
well, first, when you buy a DVD in your nearby shop for R200 or so, you pay about R180-190 to the sharks in the chain and about R10-20 to the artist! In other words you are feeding tons of useless people that do almost nothing benefitial but collecting money from people like you!

second, don't you think artists are "little bit" overpaid anyway! I don't mind if they have higher status than the average people, but still, making millions from one concert or one album is a bit overdone! Very much like Microsoft! Many artists those days release absolute junk very often so they make quick bucks, they release a cd with 15 songs, 1 or 2 of which are worth listening, and the rest is garbage, and they expect everyone will run to the shop and buy it! This must change!
 
Um - no - only like the top 2% of artists are like being overpaid ...
There are like how many billion artists ... ?
How many of these are at the "Top" ?
I don't think they're overpaid.
 
stoke said:
Um - no - only like the top 2% of artists are like being overpaid ...
There are like how many billion artists ... ?
How many of these are at the "Top" ?
I don't think they're overpaid.
Click to expand...
well, I listen to the top ones and they are overpaid :D

but I think the biggest problem here is the rip off from the middle man, not that much that the artists are overpaid, so I don't want to argue about that!
 
People just want something for nothing. There's no difference between downloading a song or a movie and sneaking into a movie theatre or live concert. No matter how cheap they make it, it will never be cheap enough. Free will always be cheaper.

Juice
 
I saw them campaigning at the traffic lights last week near JHB Intl airport. They had all the latest dvd's for like 10 bucks lol ...oops or isn't that the "I can annoy you and sell you pirate stuff at the robot party"?
 
bb_matt said:
If people no longer get paid for creating books, music, film and software, then who will produce it and how will artists and developers survive ?
Click to expand...

Perhaps if people were not paid to do these things, the quality of the work would be better as the only people who would continue to produce such work would be those who loved it enough to do it for free. We live in times where so much of this "valuable" intellectual property is of such poor quality that I don’t think the world would be lessened by its absence.

It is a very utopian idea that people would do something simply for the love of it, and that it might result in good quality results. Despite being utopian it is not unrealistic, the open source community provides a good example of how it can work.

Although I would have to agree with you, the Pirate Party sounds like it has unrealistic expectations. As much as I detest what Intellectual Property has become, the basic idea is not wrong. What is wrong is the way the legislation has become twisted - IP violation has been distorted into a crime comparable to murder and the legal tools and protections granted to IP holders allow virtually indefinite extensions on copyright/patents.

I hope they do manage to get some seats, at least then there will be some people in gov that can't be bought by the media mafia. I doubt they will get anything they want, but at least it might balance things a bit.
 
Trying to restrict information in an increasingly networked world seems daft to me.
Also "piracy" is something that happens on the high seas. But it sure sounds a lot more badass than "copyright infringement". Its part of the RIAA/MPAA goals to create a perception that everyone is a thieving criminal.
I personally like EFF's solution:

http://www.eff.org/share/collective_lic_wp.php

You can also help by buying CD's from unsigned artists and indie labels. There is some really good music out there. Don't support the cartels.

As for those crazy swedes I think they might just pull it off. Funny stuff indeed ;p
 
Maybe there needs to be a new paradign for music/video/software distribution which does away with the piggy publishers.

With web tecnology I'm sure it would be feasible to create a site where aspirant creatives could upload their creation and buyer could purchase via download a prices acceptable by all.

This would probably get rid of the need to copy protect.
 
Just two questions from me. Please don't take offence as I personally have no problem with p2p.

1. Why doesn't this forum have a p2p corner like it does for gaming. It seems to me that the p2p debate is starting to become a daily thing. Not that I mind though but it might be good to have all these hundreds of p2p threads in one place because it seems that there are a lot of opinions and little agreement and threads spread out across under all the main headings.

2. Is there any actual evidence or proof that any p2p downloading seriously injured or damaged any entertainment industry bottom line. These so called p2p pirates make up less than 0.001% of the internet users in the world so wheres the big impact. If anyone can actually post any proof I'll be amazed ? (I'm not questioning the morality side of it but the hard cash bolts and nuts of it)
 
that means i'd have to browse two parts of these forums. prefer just staying in general adsl discussions!
 
BTech said:
2. Is there any actual evidence or proof that any p2p downloading seriously injured or damaged any entertainment industry bottom line. These so called p2p pirates make up less than 0.001% of the internet users in the world so wheres the big impact. If anyone can actually post any proof I'll be amazed ? (I'm not questioning the morality side of it but the hard cash bolts and nuts of it)
Click to expand...

Very interesting study at:
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/~dblackbu/papers/blackburn_fs.pdf

From the conclusion:

Thus, this paper finds that file sharing has had large, negative impacts on industry sales and that the RIAA’s strategy of suing individual file sharing users has led to reduced file sharing activity and sizeable increases in sales.

Furthermore, the differential effect of file sharing on the sales of artists of different levels of ex ante popularity has led to a dramatic shift in the distribution of sales among artists, as new and less popular artists are now selling more records while star artists have seen their sales shrink, compacting the distribution of outcomes.
Click to expand...
 
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