[TankGirl]

4.6.2006

The French-Swedish connection

Pirate movement is not only spreading in Europe, it is also starting to operate as an European-wide political force.

A good example of this is the forming of the connection between Swedish Pirate Party and its French sister party. The Swedes were the ones to start it but when it comes to pressuring your government and the whole EU with citizen activism, the French are of course masters in it. They know how to go to barricades and how to demonstrate so that something eventually gives in. Read this snippet from the French sister party's offer of help to Piratepartiet at their forum:

As I said before Sweden really needs to pay attention to France because of the "harmonizing" of laws within the EU and because of French people's close influence on the EU by their long tradition of citizen activism. The importance of this insight should *not be underestimated* - the way to get things done in France is precisely citizen activism, en masse, as witnessed by the recent demonstrations against the CPE.

They're geographically and culturally closer to the EU's power-centers.

French activists have a higher chance of making changes in the EU, as they have already done by creating debate about open-source software and patents through groups such as StopDRM and APRIL.

Here is a more detailed account of the developments in France so far, with a number of useful links for those interested in what happens in France:

During Christmas 2005 the French parliament was hijacked since people were away on vacation, and they managed to get a majority vote for a law that would have legalized file sharing for a fee added to the Internet bill.

This was widely reported as "file-sharing legalized in France."

It could not be farther from the truth.

After the law was passed, there was a wide reaction against it by established rich artists and elitist EU politicians, and the elitist government in power announced it would open a site http://lesTelechargements.com to "go into dialogue with the file-sharers."

There was no dialogue - the site was professionaly designed and aimed at explaining, in a typical elitist top-down manner characteristic of France, why copyright should stay like it is, and why file sharing is illegal. A new law, one of the worst in Europe, was proposed, that would give fines to people found to be sharing.

http://lesTelechargements.fr was launched by opponents of the law, to explain why they disagree. They use the heading, "File-sharing: .FRench debate, or .COMmercial war?"

However, the current government in power, although resented by the people, is passing a lot of heavy handed laws that are not designed to do anything but defend the status quo and the interests of large corporations and trade agreements.

There is also the DADVSI law that will make development of the French VLC media player illegal, that was just passed.

Since the population at large is not engaged enough to protest the law, like they did with the CPE, it will be passed. The only way of stopping things in this extremely confrontational culture, is by massive protest.

French politics are elitist, confrontational, heavy-handed. France is a founding member of the EU, and what happens there will have a lot of influence on Sweden, since Sweden is an EU member. Vice-versa, Swedish politicians could influence what happens in the EU, if they have a good proposal.

There are several organizations working on a political level, and more Swedish people should make contact with them, since both countries are EU members they could benefit from increased contact.

The French Intellectuals involved in this debate have more say over EU issues than Swedish intellectuals, just because of their proximity and because there is no language barrier for them!

Although there is a language barrier, this is less of a problem in computer subjects, since French people who know computers tend to know English better. I challenge all Swedish pirates to cooperate more closely with the French.

Good starting points (use Google to translate if you do not know French, and send these people an email in English)

StopDRM
http://stopdrm.info/
The most important organization in France, who arranged the March against the DADVSI copyright law (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/March_ag..._copyright_law).

Audionautes Blog
http://www.audionautes.net/blog/
A blog by a teenager who meets regularly with French parlamentarians to explain technical details

April
http://www.april.org/
The main open source/free software organization.

Partie Pirate de France
http://www.parti-pirate.info/
Newly established. Does not seem like it has any formal organization yet, and only registres members by the pseudonym (nick) and not their real names.

Paris Power blog
http://parispower-pp.blogspot.com/
A blog by one of the people involved in the French Pirate Party

EUCD.info
http://eucd.info/
French site to mobilize against the wide-impact EUCD law

More about EUCD, DADVSI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Copyright_Directive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DADVSI
http://www.videolan.org/eucd.html