by a swedish kind of death
At the first annual MoA summit,
I promised b a post. I fear I might have said I would deliver it in a matter of
weeks. Well, a good thing is worth the wait. See, the thing is that I am a
member of a new and fast growing political movement. I am a pirate. I am
card-carrying member of the Swedish Pirate Party (except, we do not really have
cards).
Pirate-ism
So why "Pirate"? Well, the copyright lobby
has for a long time claimed that online copying of copyrighted material
constitutes "piracy", and therefore those doing it are pirates. In Sweden the
local branch of MPAA is called Antipiratbyrån – the anti piracy bureau. Now
about one in seven of adult swedes (and more of the kids) are pirates according
to the copyright industry. Faced with tightening laws and restrictions, this
constituency – originally created by the copyright industry – spawned a party.
Our platform (conceived and formulated in our online forum) in its
version 2.0 included the following three legs:
* Ensure the citizens
privacy. By never implementing and working to revoke the EU data retention
directive and instead making postal secrecy general (postal secrecy is very
strong in Sweden) – a communications secrecy act – the Pirate Party hopes to
stop and reverse the current trend towards more surveillance.
* A
cultural commons policy. Decriminalize copying, especially file-sharing. Limit
copyright to a couple of years. Note that this would enable vast digital
libraries in any language as long as their server is parked in Sweden.
*
Work to abolish patents, or at least make sure not more areas are allowed to be
patented. No software patents, no patents on discoveries like DNA and so
on.
The work on the platform 3.0 is mainly focused on expanding the
privacy issue, so that instead of being reactive – "Stop surveillance now!" – it
can be proactive. We are a young movement, and we are a movement born out of the
Internet. Other parties might try to use Internet but we live
here.
Swedish election of 2006
So we had a platform, but there
is more to an election. The party was founded on the first of January 2006 and
ran in the 2006 parliament election in September. Every single thing we did was
in last minute. Gathering signatures (1500 to register the party), raising
funds, choosing candidates, buying ballots for the funds (new parties has to
provide their own ballots, we spent about 40 000 USD on that, which was all the
money we had at the time).
And then in June came the raid on The Pirate
Bay and the demonstrations we
threw three days later. Making everything in the last minute creates an
organisation good at doing stuff in a hurry. The party tripled its membership in
a week, from 2000 to 6000. During the summer we passed the Green party (in
parliament since the 80ies) in membership numbers. We were not visible in the
opinion polls though, but since they do not call cell phones, they hardly
measure the young tech-savvy voters. We made sure any online poll was a Pirate
victory, we were getting interviews in the local papers. Things were looking
good.
Then the other parties rolled over. First the Greens (who actually
believed what they did), then the rest of the parties. In the final debate
between Prime minister Persson and opposition candidate Reinfeldt, both answered
that it was unreasonable to hunt a generation (this shifted rapidly after the
election).
On election night, we gathered 35 000 votes or 0.63%. That was
better then any opinion poll had predicted and we obviously beat expectations as
we were not even among the alternatives in the exit polls. It was however far
from passing the minimum limit of 4% to enter parliament.
Young
Pirate
In the national school mock election we got 4,5%. Seeing how we
are strongest in the youngest age groups we have founded Young Pirate. The
mother party itself is rather young, the most common birth year before the
election was 1985, making this many members first election. The youth movement
is younger, with 1989 as year providing most pirates. In the party I am old,
though on the MoA summit I was the youngest…
Young Pirate also has the
advantage of being eligible for government grants as a rather large youth
organisation, in fact it is the 4:th largest political youth organisation in
Sweden. Considering how little we spent on the election campaign (estimated 80
000 USD total), any money is welcome and has the chance of giving us the needed
edge, so some fat government grants for the youth movement could very well be
all we need to win next time. (And if you like to donate for the 2009 EU
parliament election and 2010 national election here is the treasure chest,
political donations are not regulated in Sweden. Anybody is free to donate. All
donations are anonymous by default.)
Young Pirate held its first
conference this summer, and is growing rapidly.
Pirate
International
The Pirate movement is international, and copying and
adapting the concept new parties has sprung up in different countries. In Europe
there are parties in different countries and a Pirate International has been
founded to organise on an international level. In June the first European Pirate
conference was held in Vienna.
Spin offs
In Sweden a number of
interesting spin-offs has been created. Piratpartiet helped launch Relakks an
anonymisation service which anonymises all your information. The difference to
Tor is that Relakks promises you the
same speed as usual. For a fee of course. Works anywhere in the world. Anyone
tracking you will just end up at a machine in Sweden that forwards the
information and deletes the records.
Tankafritt.nu is another interesting
organisation. For a fee of about 20 USD/year they promise to pay your fines if
you get caught file sharing, and give you a t-shirt with "I was caught file
sharing and all I got was this stupid t-shirt". Works only in Sweden.
Now
why are these interesting then? Demand creates supply and all of that. Both were
however founded after the Pirate Bay raid and the Pirate party’s demonstrations.
Prior to our break-through they would have been scolded by the copyright
organisations that would have demanded legislation, crucifixion and what not.
Now, the copyright organisations are on the defensive in the public sphere. They
still make their anti-piracy movies and show them before movies at the theatres,
lobby politicians like there is no end to it and so on. But they will not debate
in the press, TV or radio, because now they have opponents and visibility for us
is a loss for them.
End?
So where am I going with this post? I
am not really sure. In the end taking on Intellectual Enclosure and the mounting
surveillance society is, well, quite a daunting task. And lets not forget that
we are anyway running in to some really hard walls with our global gluttony of
energy (for example oil) and other resources (fish, farmland, forests) while
spewing out our rest products and destroying what we can not eat (climate for
example). Having an open, democratic society is however a prerequisition for
getting solutions that does not include a neofeudal genocidal
nightmare.
And perhaps most importantly it feels good to fight back.