Pirate Party Coming To Canada 394
An anonymous reader writes "After scoring a surprise electoral win in Sweden and getting high-profile support in Germany, The Pirate Party is coming to Canada. The party's goals are fairly simple. People should have the right to share and copy music, movies and virtually any material, as long as it is for personal use, not for profit. It opposes government and corporate monitoring of Internet activities, unless as part of a criminal investigation. It also wants to phase out patents."
It should appeal to the US too (Score:5, Interesting)
Most welcome, Canadian brethren (Score:5, Interesting)
As an official in the Swedish Pirate Party, I can only wish our Canadian brothers and sisters a heartily welcome up onto the barricades, and the best of winds.
We are changing the world together.
The neoconservatives are laughing (Score:4, Interesting)
The Pirate Party is coming to Canada.
It's likely to split the non-neoconservative vote even further into obscurity.
Re:The neoconservatives are laughing (Score:2, Interesting)
It's your own fault [wikipedia.org].
Multinational Political Party (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean these Pirate Parties might not have a majority in any of the countries they are in, but in the near future, the (theoretical) sum total of these parties in each country may well be one of the single biggest political movements across the world we have ever seen.
Re:This is CRAP!!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
With proportional representation the party leaders choose who represent you and you have no way to say no to a scummy person. Also independents effectively cannot be elected.
I would prefer larger electoral districts where anyone with at least 10% of the vote becomes a representative of the district and gets 1 vote per 1 full percent of the vote he received. As to pay the representative would get a percentage of the pay for that districts representatives that equals the % of the vote received. This allows the minority to be represented without handing more power to party leaderships and their cronies.
Re:It should appeal to the US too (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Like copyright law, patent law was never meant to prevent the duplication of a product, process, or idea. It was only meant to prevent the duplication FOR PROFIT.
I personally met one individual who patented a method to modify carburetors to increase fuel mileage. He sold his patent to GM. The man still worked on cars, and modified those big Chevy Impalas to get 30+ MPG. If he worked on your car, he could not accept payment. Doing so would have put him in violation of patent law. But, doing the very same work for his own amusement was perfectly legal.
It's a shame GM wasn't putting that patent to use 40 years ago, when they bought it. They might not be bankrupt today.......
Re:As a Canadian, my thoughts (Score:2, Interesting)
ideas and works that they create
I could be entirely wrong, but I took the word "create" at the end of the sentence to mean exactly what you listed under something useful.
Re:First Vote (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the key factor here isn't so much a question of morality. I think it's a question of viability.
When I think about the state of copyright, I keep comparing it to the spice trades around the 15th Century or so; there are a lot of similarities with the recording industry of, say, forty years ago. Both were extremely lucrative. Both required a significant up front capital investment. And (IIRC) spice trade routes tended to be the subject of state granted monopolies - just like copyright.
So why did the spice route monopolies go away? I'm sure the monopoly holders could make all the same arguments the media cartels do today. They spent a lot of money developing those routes, they could argue. Or that they were the ones that discovered the route, and that entitled them to exclusivity. Or even that if they were not rewarded for their development, who would make the investment to find new trade routes. I think the ethics of the matter were probably about the same then as they are now with the media cartels.
I think what changed was the technology of distribution. It's one thing to enforce a monopoly when to exploit it you need to spend a kings ransom outfitting a trade caravan and then a year or more braving bandits, wild beasts, disease and starvation. It's another entirely when anyone so minded can hop on a plane to Azerbaijan be back inside a week with a suitcase full of saffron.
Similarly, it's easy to enforce a monopoly on the distribution of music when that distribution requires a factory to press vinyl discs, as well as warehousing and transportation networks. But as in the case of the spice traders, technology has moved on.
The bottom line? In a time when media can be distributed for costs approaching zero, I question whether charging for distribution remains a viable way to compensate creators. And if, as I suspect it is not, then I have to question the utility of copyright itself.
Re:First Vote (Score:3, Interesting)
Well to be fair, if you produced it, means if you created a new and unique variant of the original that does not detract from the original, substantive actual work ie. taking a slice of pie from a pie diminishes that pie but creating a new a unique copy of piece of that pie leaves the original pie completely intact. The value in copyright just like patents is the value of the result to society not the artificial profits generated by legislated protectionism.
If you choose to release your work, the you have released it, if you wish to keep it secret, then don't release it, keep it to yourself as your private possession. Why would anyone consider it appropriate for the government to protect this pseudo mechanism for keeping released to the public works private from that same public, especially as it can be readily demonstrated that a lot of these works are of no real value to society, as required under law in order to be protected by copyright. In point of fact many of those illegally protected works are detrimental to society and are illegal to be shown publicly not to protect copyrights but to protect the general populace from the perceived harm caused by those works to members of society.
Copyrights are parasitical in nature, they bleed resources off a society, they neither house, nourish, heal, clothe, transport nor provide energy or necessary infrastructure. If fact those resources as set aside to feed copyright only so long as the works produced do provide a real return of true value and merit and thus justify the opportunity provided for them to generate profit for a short time to justify the original investment.
However should those works be of no value to society based upon qualitative nature of the work than they should not be protected ie. is it appropriate for the Government and hence the taxpayer to protect the profits of pornography, sure freedom of speech needs to be observed but creating a free copy is free speech and also is required to be protected and, in point of fact should take precedence as pornography fails the basic test for copyright protection, that it must be of value to the sciences and useful arts.
Re:Bumper stickers? (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree, somewhat. The US needs ANYONE to run against the two established parties ON ANY PLATFORM, and to WIN offices around the country.
Granted, if the Pirate Party came here, they wouldn't win seats in Congress and the Senate, they certainly wouldn't win the presidency. But, if (in states where judges are elected) we started seating judges, mayors, and state representatives, the two parties would take notice. And, it wouldn't take a lot of them, either. Our politicians may be crooked as all hell, but that doesn't make them stupid. They can read grass roots movements as well as anyone.
Aren't we all sick of the same old crap we get from the two inbred parties yet? If not - well - I've heard that people get the government that they deserve. Maybe that really is true.
Re:Proportional Representation (Score:3, Interesting)
This. I don't honestly understand how anyone can vote for Harper. I wouldn't buy a used car from the man.
Where do I sign up? (Score:1, Interesting)
Seriously, this is as good as EFF and GNU! Patents are a drain on the economy. Cutting patents back to 10 years (maximum), and copyright terms to a maximum of 20 years is the equivilent of putting 50,000 people to work (for life). The free ride corporations have had for the last few decades is over. They should have to compete on merit every day, just like everyone else. Got a great idea? Good! You get to benefit for 10 years. After that, its someone elses turn to improve on it. If you keep improving on the idea, then you can patent the new thing (and get 10 more years). Over the working life of an inventor, thats 4 follow-on inventions. If you drop the ball, someone else gets to pick it up. I'm sick of this legal bull that lets people have income for life because of 5 minutes work.
Re:First Vote (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:First Vote (Score:3, Interesting)
I get the impression that they are bleeding the customer dry whenever I see people getting fines running into the tens of thousands for sharing a handful of tracks. A $2 million dollar fine for sharing 24 tracks.
When I see the industry saying that paying for a track on a CD doesn't entitle you to copy that onto your PC or portable MP3 player, and that you have to buy another copy.
When I hear about how the people want to extend copyright past any reasonable length to reasonably ensure income for the author.
When you look at a CD on an online shop and see it's half the price of electronic delivery from the same place.
When a CD of an album that came out in 1984 is 3 times the price of a 2008 straight-to-DVD film.
When "Gone with the Wind" - which came out in 1939, has made hundreds of millions of dollars since then, still holds the record for domestic box office, and whose main actors have been dead for at least 30-40 years - is still more expensive on DVD than films that came out in 2008.
The customer may may be paying a relatively fair price when compared to 1939, but that doesn't make it fair.