8.6.2006
Three out of four first time voters support filesharing
Swedish newspaper
Sydsvenskan has just released results of a poll charting the opinions of first time voters on the filesharing issue. The results show that three out of four first time voters support filesharing, legal or not, and the support comes similarly from political left and right. "Anybody who is doing business with copyrighted material has reason to be worried", says Nicklas Källebring, an opinion expert from the Temo institute behind the poll.
The participants were asked whether they feel it is ok to download files from Internet even if it is illegal, to which 38 % answered yes without reservations and 39 % answered yes with some reservations.
"It is quite bizarre that we have tried to criminalize something that is a part of everyday life of young people", comments the results Ida Gabrielsson, a spokeswoman for Young Left, a youth organization of the Swedish Left Party. Two out of three of her party supporters gave an unreserved 'yes' to filesharing in the poll. Usually the thresold for people to admit supporting something illegal is very high, even in opinion polls. The filesharing issue seems to be an exception to this rule. "Obviously many voters think that this particular law is extremely stupid", says Temo's representative.
The poll was done in May, before the MPAA-initiated Pirate Bay raid, a landmark event in the Swedish Net War.
Broadband tax? "No thanks", say both pirates and antipirates
Two high-level managers from Swedish Radio came out yesterday with a
compromise proposition of a broadband tax to solve the Swedish filesharing controversy. The proposition was
quickly rejected both by the pirates and by the antipiracy organization Antipiratbyrån. A reader poll in
Aftonbladet confirms that the public does not like the idea either: 80 % of readers oppose proposed tax, with 15 % supporting it.
"The problem with this kind of solution is that filesharing is a very widespread phenomenon. Most people are not downloading well-known bands but smaller, unsigned bands. The tax money would end up to the pockets of the well-known bands though", says Tobias Andersson from Pirate Bureau. "Yet another tax sounds like a classical Swedish solution. I would instead like to see our politicians stand firmly behind the new stricter laws and keep communicating to people that it is illegal to download copyrighted material", says Henrik Pontén, the head of media cartel controlled Antipiracy Bureau.
In the present pre-election opinion climate the politicians do not seem to be ready to pay the price of standing firmly behind the media cartel friendly laws. Three established parties have already officially indicated to be willing to legalize personal filesharing - a major political achievement from Pirate Party, founded only six months ago.