The first pan-EU political party
And a curious thing it is too. The Pirate Party is a Swedish movement based around being pro-file sharing, details c/o The Register:
""We are investigating the possibility of running as the first major pan-European party with a common platform across all countries," said Falvinge. "We are seeing this as the next logical step that we should run on a common platform throughout Europe so that if you look at the French Pirate Party or the Spanish Pirate Party they should have the same programme as the Swedish Pirate Party when we run for the common parliament....The movement began in Sweden on 1 January this year, but was given a major boost when an associated unauthorised download links site, Pirate Bay, was raided by Swedish police. There was public outcry which only worsened when it emerged that the US administration had put pressure on Sweden to act against Pirate Bay. The movement mushroomed and its international expansion grew from there. Falvinge, speaking to OUT-LAW's weekly podcast, said the party stands for far more than simply legalising file sharing. "That we are pro-filesharing is a consequence of us being pro-civil liberties," said [Rick] Falvinge. "We are pro-civil liberties for the exact same reason that the entertainment industry is against civil liberties, because they have a bottom line to protect."The entertainment industry is what drives today's witch hunt on civil liberties," he said. "DRM technologies is the large media cartels' way of writing their own laws to circumvent copyright laws and we do have an elected parliament to write such laws."
My position on file sharing is not entirely fixed, in that while I agree that creative artists and copyright holders should be entitled to the fruits of their labour, I also believe that the industry over simplifies 'right' and 'wrong'. Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture examines issues of intellectual property in a masterful yet accessible fashion and can be downloaded from the link on a creative commons licence. Well worth the effort, really.
""We are investigating the possibility of running as the first major pan-European party with a common platform across all countries," said Falvinge. "We are seeing this as the next logical step that we should run on a common platform throughout Europe so that if you look at the French Pirate Party or the Spanish Pirate Party they should have the same programme as the Swedish Pirate Party when we run for the common parliament....The movement began in Sweden on 1 January this year, but was given a major boost when an associated unauthorised download links site, Pirate Bay, was raided by Swedish police. There was public outcry which only worsened when it emerged that the US administration had put pressure on Sweden to act against Pirate Bay. The movement mushroomed and its international expansion grew from there. Falvinge, speaking to OUT-LAW's weekly podcast, said the party stands for far more than simply legalising file sharing. "That we are pro-filesharing is a consequence of us being pro-civil liberties," said [Rick] Falvinge. "We are pro-civil liberties for the exact same reason that the entertainment industry is against civil liberties, because they have a bottom line to protect."The entertainment industry is what drives today's witch hunt on civil liberties," he said. "DRM technologies is the large media cartels' way of writing their own laws to circumvent copyright laws and we do have an elected parliament to write such laws."
My position on file sharing is not entirely fixed, in that while I agree that creative artists and copyright holders should be entitled to the fruits of their labour, I also believe that the industry over simplifies 'right' and 'wrong'. Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture examines issues of intellectual property in a masterful yet accessible fashion and can be downloaded from the link on a creative commons licence. Well worth the effort, really.
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 02, 2006 at 7:54 am.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
It seems to be a remake of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité", another version of intellectually justified robbery such as socialism aka communism aka communism light = welfarism.
The artist and distributor have the right to sell his products at their condition. Individuals who do not like the condition for sale of a product, are free to refuse buying the product. What would happen to property rights if everyone could unilaterally change business contracts?
By analogy, if someone likes a Porsche, he might simply refuse to pay the high price requesting by the car company, rob the Porsche and start a second pan-EU political party claiming that the party stands for far more than simply legalising car sharing. "That we are pro-carsharing is a consequence of us being pro-civil liberties," would it's founder say. "We are pro-civil liberties for the exact same reason that the automobile industry is against civil liberties, because they have a bottom line to protect."The automobile industry is what drives today's witch hunt on civil liberties."
Sorry for the typos.
I agree wholeheartedly with Colin and cannot better his argument.
I will just add that anything coming out of Sweden should be examined with a skeptical eye. They have just passed a law that in new buildings - I assume this includes private homes - all the toilets will face away from mecca.
This gives us a clue about Sweden.
Should I ever mind myself at stool in Sweden, I will have to consider whether I should attempt to sit the wrong way round.
Verity,
Thanks for the information about the new toilets in Sweden.
It appears they are now as enthusiastic about the new faith as they have been about their past creed.
"Last week it was revealed that Sweden imposed forced sterilization for 40 years, a practice that ended only in 1976. During this period, some 62,000 Swedes were sterilized in an effort to improve the quality of the Swedish people." See Eugenics in Socialist Sweden
Whoaaah! It certainly didn't work, did it?
George Bernard Shaw was a big fan of eugenics....
Actually, you are right, Verity , it proves the inefficiency of eugenics as a therapy for the ills of society.
Disappointed, the Swedish goverment has chosen a polypharmaceutical approach: Eugenics & Socialism.
Since the latter did not work either, they substituted eugenics for multiculturalism in the prescription. Unfortunately, the condition of the patient worsened.
Out of desperation, the government - in it's function as societal shrink - decided to increase the dosage of the major component in their last therapeutic formula, Islam as part of the multicultural therapy, hoping that the higher dosage might cure the patient if it does not kill him. Hence, the shrink's decision to reposition Swedish toilets.
Croydonian,
You correctly pointed out that "George Bernard Shaw was a big fan of eugenics... He was also a fan of socialism ...
Here some additional evidence for the readers of your blog who are interested in the relationship between socialism and eugenics:
"Much of eugenics belonged to the wave of progressive social reform that swept through western Europe and North America during the early decades of the century. For progressives, eugenics was a branch of the drive for social improvement or perfection that many reformers of the day thought might be achieved through the deployment of science to good social ends." Eugenics and human rights. British Medical Journal, August 14, 1999
"In January 1849, months before he migrated to London, Karl Marx published an article by Friedrich Engels in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung announcing that in Central Europe only Germans, Hungarians and Poles counted as bearers of progress. The rest must go. "The chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust."
"In England, many socialists supported eugenics. Even those viewed as critics, such as J. B .S. Haldane, Lancelot Hogben and Julian Huxley were not against eugenics per se, but came to believe that eugenics in capitalist societies was infected with class bias.
"President Woodrow Wilson signed New Jersey's sterilization law, and one of his deputies descended to greater fame as a Nazi collaborator at Buchenwald. Pennsylvania's legislature passed an 'Act for the Prevention of Idiocy,' but the governor vetoed it .... Other states, however, joined the crusade. ... Eventually, the eugenicist virus found a hospitable host in Germany. There... it led to the death chambers of Buchenwald and Auschwitz.
"Hitler.. himself said:
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."
(Hitler's Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)" Eugenics and the Left
» Post a Comment