

Berlin's new Pirate Party might be here to stay - NonEUCitizen
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15397528,00.html

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Tichy
"Many saw the idea of blocking such sites as censorship of the internet"

Annoying inaccuracy! Of course pirates are not in favor of child pornography,
nor of not blocking such sites. The issue was that under the pretense of
fighting child pornography the government wanted/wants to install a system
that enables them to block any site, without even being required to give
reasons and no possibility of appeal against it.

Naturally even now if illegal content is discovered on a German server, the
government/police can make the hoster remove it. No magic switch needs to be
given to the police.

~~~
muuh-gnu
> The issue was that under the pretense of fighting child pornography the
> government wanted/wants to install a system

The Christian-led goverment party didn't even pretend that hard what the
envisioned "Zensurinfrastruktur" will be later mainly used for and on several
occasions mentioned "child pornography, copyright infringement and other
crimes" in one and the same sentence.

This was exactly how the copyright lobby envisioned the strategy, linking
child porn and copying.

”Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium declared
enthusiastically. ”It is great because politicians understand child
pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking
sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file
sharing sites”.

* [http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/ifpis-chil...](http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/ifpis-child-porn-strategy/)

> No magic switch needs to be given to the police.

But it is absolutely necessary to be able to block "outsourced" overseas
torrent sites.

~~~
mhd
For an international audience who might not be that familiar with German party
politics, "Christian-led" might be a bit misleading… Also, you're mixing the
German and the Swedish cases here a bit.

I'm not even sure if the initiation of that particular bill was out of malice,
and not sheer incompetence on Von Der Leyen's side. But however it started,
the fact that this "protection" can easily be extended certainly was a big
reason for its support.

I remember that in the beginning it was all about "due to the rise of child
pornography on the internet", but when an official inquiry was made (by the
FDP, if I remember correctly), they had to admit that they had no such data.

~~~
muuh-gnu
> Also, you're mixing the German and the Swedish cases here a bit.

There are not German and Swedish cases. The media industry efforts cross
national borders. The quote being from a swedish MEP doesnt make IFPI's case
somehow different.

> I'm not even sure if the initiation of that particular bill was out of
> malice, and not sheer incompetence

If she actually mentions "child pornography and copyright infringement" one by
another in one and the same sentence on several occasions, then it crosses the
border of obvious intent, at least IMHO.

~~~
mhd
The industry's efforts cross borders, but we're talking about different
governments. I understood what you meant, but especially if you're not
following the link some readers here might be misled a bit.

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mrich
I am loving this wake-up call to the established parties of Germany, whose
elected representatives are bailing out countries and banks left and right
against the will of their electorate. The only parties which seem to represent
the will of the voters (on the surface) in this regard are the left and the
extreme right. But for historical reasons, many Germans will never vote for
them. So the pirate party fills a real void (mainly for youths): as a protest
party for disgruntled voters, and as a party which gets the internet and the
importance of free/cheap access to knowledge and education.

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iwwr
It's quite interesting to see a _successful_ political movement not just
unwedded to the IP establishment, but against it.

~~~
davidw
Hopefully if they actually stay in power for any length of time they'll figure
out that there's a baby in the bathwater.

~~~
davidw
If the downvoters needed it spelled out, IP should be a _compromise_ , a
middle ground between producers and consumers. These days, it's tilted too far
towards producers, in my opinion, but with no IP, it would mean that people
could not make money creating digital goods that are easily copied. Or they
would, but in ways we might find distasteful. For instance, a movie might show
a lot of people quenching their thirst with delicious, satisfying COCA COLA
products, much more than they do already. Or perhaps things like writing and
movies would be the preserve of the independently wealthy. This would mean
fewer books, movies, programs, etc... etc... which would ultimately leave the
consumer _worse off_ due to the lack of these goods.

Digital goods that are by their nature not rivalrous and not easily excludable
share some of the properties of public goods:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#The_free_rider_prob...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#The_free_rider_problem)

Hence the solution of creating artificial property, which has worked 'pretty
well' for a while. Being a compromise, it'll never be "perfect", and is
something that needs constant tuning, not throwing out in its entirety.

~~~
toyg
When your adversary is successfully framing the debate in radical and
irrational terms ("You wouldn't steal a car, so you shouldn't steal a movie"),
the only answer is to escalate your own radical rhetoric until a fair
compromise can be reached; you create an incentive for your adversary to not
be completely obliterated if/when you'll achieve total victory.

If you start by admitting that your adversary has a point, there is no
incentive for him to come to a compromise: he's shaping your reality, so
you'll never win.

At the moment we need a lot of rebalancing in terms of online rights and
copyright, so the likes of PP can only be welcome.

(Besides, making the Bond franchise a feature-long advert "much more than they
do already" is pretty much impossible!)

~~~
davidw
In terms of debate tactics, you're probably right.

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gst
Unfortunately the German "pirates" managed to kill the whole idea even before
they were voted into parliament.

As far as I know, the original idea by the Pirate Parties was to have an
opinion in the areas that unite their members (online privacy, copyright,
etc.) and to leave the rest to the other parties.

Unfortunately the German Pirate Party now also tries to deal with all kinds of
topics such as economics, education, gender politics, etc.

Maybe they've managed to get some additional voters that way, who don't care
about the original topics that much. But at they same time they've made
theirself unelectable for their original target group, as I guess that there
are many people who don't agree with their opinions.

~~~
rb2k_
They are also about transparency of the whole political process and just being
an alternative to the lobby-ridden decision making. Especially the German
pirate party also has a strong position on privacy. I think they are still
doing a good job on those things, especially when looking at the other
parties.

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m_st
I never liked the choice of the word 'Pirate' for a political party even if I
support some of their motives. Though 'pirates' means freedom (doing whatever
you want) it also means killing, robbing and taking hostages (Somalia,
Indonesia).

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leon_
I honestly don't know what to think about the PP. I want them to be more than
a one-hit wonder but they seem to not have much of a political agenda other
than "legalize warez" and "don't censor the net".

I hope their success stirs up the other parties a little.

~~~
icebraining
I think PP shows how badly prepared are current democratic systems to handle a
wider diversity of opinions. Politics got less ideological and more pragmatic,
and that leads to a wider diversity of opinions, which the current systems
aren't prepared to handle. The concept of all encompassing parties doesn't
scale; we need a way for people to show their support for very targeted
movements like PP without feeling they're wasting their vote away.

~~~
m_st
Very true indeed. Personally I could never join one of the many parties as
they all have some opinions I just can't agree with. This really makes voting
quite hard. In Switzerland we now have <http://smartvote.ch/?lang=en_GB> were
you fill out a questionnaire and then get some politicians matching your
profile. While certainly not perfect, it is already a good start.

~~~
FrojoS
Something like this exists in Germany, too for parties: www.wahl-o-mat.de

A possible solution, to the problem you describe might be Liquid Democracy.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy>

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flarg
You guys know about this right? <http://www.talklikeapirate.com/> [humour]

