* Swedish Net War diary *

[TankGirl]

2.7.2006

Kristianstadsbladet: "Who does the culture belong to?"

The cultural editors of newspaper Kristianstadsbladet participate the Swedish copyright debate with a good debate essay starting from the historical background of modern copyright debate, highlighting especially the role of the French author Victor Hugo - the world's most pirate copied author of his time - in initiating the international meeting in Berne, Switzerland, that resulted in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

Kristianstadsbladet remarks that in his speech Hugo took a clear standing for the "cultural common good", and that this concept is important in today's filesharing debate as well. Hugo himself emphasized that whenever he had to make a choice between author's copyright and common good, he always priotized the common good and public's right to knowledge and information.

"Even if we don't think about it, we have a large pool of knowledge that we base our co-existence on", writes Kristianstadsbladet. "Old and inherited culture like songs, clothing, traditions and older literature are freely usable. We can learn from them and use them to shape new culture."

"An author, for example, can be influenced in any degree by Homeros, Bellman or Strindberg without having to pay any compensations to anybody. Such resources of knowledge are the cultural common good, and they are an important part of information flow in the society."

[TankGirl]

2.7.2006

One year of stricter copyright law behind

The new, stricter Swedish copyright law criminalizing 1.3 million Swedish filesharers came into effect a year ago, 1. of July 2005. At the time, only Center Party and Green Party voted against the new law, while five other parliamentary parties voted for it.

The practical effects of the law on filesharing in Sweden have been minimal at best. Swedes were and continue to be among the most active filesharing nations, hosting the world's largest BitTorrent site Pirate Bay, being the superpower of Direct Connect with the largest number of hubs and users, and so on.

Six months after the new law came into force the first Pirate Party in the world was founded in Sweden, capitalizing on the political education work by the activist organization Piratbyrån (Pirate Bureau). The public opinion in Sweden is strongly for legalizing filesharing, and the media industry has failed miserably in its efforts to impress guilt about p2p downloading on the minds of the Swedish public. In Sweden being a 'pirate' is a positive thing.

So the will of the Swedish citizens is in direct crash course with the will of the media cartels and the copyright laws they have managed to dictate down to the EU member states from WIPO and EU Commission. The extent of this conflict will be measured on September 17 this year when the Swedes have their parliamentary election, with Pirate Party giving a democratic voice to the filesharers for the first time anywhere during the 6-year history of p2p.

[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

[noobles]

thx for information TankGirl

[TankGirl]

Thank you, noobles, and welcome to p2p-zone!

[TankGirl]

5.7.2006

Belgians join the pirate movement

The political pirate movement is spreading fast in Europe. The latest country to join the movement is Belgium, who has now its own Pirate Party. What started as a Swedish revolt has become an European-wide political revolution for reforming the media cartel dictated copyright laws and for defending citizen privacy against police state style control measures geared to serve private commercial interests. It is only a question of time when the movement's impact will be felt in the power centers of EU.

[TankGirl]

11.7.2006

Pirate parties to Germany and Austria

Swedish style Pirate Parties have now been founded also in Germany and Austria. To be precise, both parties are presently organizing their activities and websites in preparation for an official party status and further political work. But as both initiatives are clearly serious and backed up by knowledgable activists, it can be safely concluded that the political pirate movement has now spread to these two countries. You can have a peek at Austrian Pirate Party's propaganda material here.