Comment by endtime | Hacker News Reader

Comment by endtime | Hacker News Reader

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Look, I dislike the DMCA as much as anyone, but I don't really think that a party founded on piracy is really a great thing to happen to European politics. At least, not in the respect you imply (that we're going to tell those recording industry fat cats they're not the boss of us!).

If they can push honest and realistic discussion of the issues, however, that could have a lot of impact. We all like to laugh at the publishing industry (music, then movies, now newspapers) for being unable to keep up with the times, but just as the web has introduced post-scarity to publishing, so will nanotech destroy the goods industry, robotics destroy the services industry, and, eventually, AI destroy info work. My hope is that we can learn from what is happening now (and try to understand the success of e.g. Trent Reznor, and determine whether his model would work if not for its novelty), and be better prepared for the future. But no one is talking about it...ideally, the Pirate Party will change that, rather than just explain to old dudes why torrent indexing isn't illegal.

The Swedish Pirate Party has a horrible name. Because its political platform is all about preserving the right to personal integrity — not piracy.

Certainly, they also believe that copyright and patent law needs to fundamentally change.

And certainly, preserving the right to privacy on the internet — to the same standard that it is guaranteed through other means of communications — would make it pretty much impossible to shut down piracy. But that's a side-effect, not the expressed goal of the party.

I'm Swedish myself, I've studied their platform closely, and I voted for them. Not because I want free stuff — but because I feel that the EU parliament needs more people in it who are viciously opposed to the idea of destroying our basic civil liberties.

Many other candidates from other parties are sympathetic to this (as opposed to their respective party platforms). But — only a vote for the Pirate Party would shake the "old parties" up sufficiently in order to make personal integrity the party platform. And I think we're going to see exactly that kind of progression in Sweden across party lines.

>Because its political platform is all about preserving the right to personal integrity

This might be a lost-in-translation thing, but I don't know what you mean by this. Integrity means something like honesty and strength of character, which, obviously, the RIAA et al have no control over. Could you clarify? Do you just mean privacy?

And okay, I believe you that the party's platform involves privacy rights more than anything else. And that is good, and even important, but I still think it's hyperbolic to call their election "the greatest thing to happen in european politics in a long time" simply because they support web privacy. I get the impression a lot of people conflate privacy intrustion with Big Brother, which doesn't seem sound.

The Swedish word for integrity (integritet) can be used in two senses: the property of having a consistent value system or a right to privacy. tjogin most likely intended the latter meaning.

I'm curious about the distinction between Big Brother and large-scale logging/filtering/monitoring in electronic systems without court orders by the government. Maybe I've misunderstood the term "Big Brother"?

Whether you think the result is "the greatest thing to happen in European politics in a long time" clearly depends on your political views. It could be seen as an indication that a number of people make at least some effort to stand up for civil liberties (an issue I hear some consider more than "important"). Also, "long time" is not particularly well defined.. ;) I'm just guessing here of course, joel_feather didn't say much about why he thought this was such a great thing.

>I'm curious about the distinction between Big Brother and large-scale logging/filtering/monitoring in electronic systems without court orders by the government. Maybe I've misunderstood the term "Big Brother"?

Well, the distinction I'm making is between keeping logs/records and abusing those logs in order to infringe on other civil liberties, a la Big Brother in 1984. What was evil about Big Brother was not the monitoring/recording, but how it was used. I know some disagree with me on this, but I do think there's a distinction.

That distinction is likely temporary though.

People always say that, and it's ooooh scary, but I don't think it's justified. I'm happy for you to try and convince me otherwise, of course, but I won't accept it at face value.

Distinction understood. Many think that the risk of misuse * potential cost is unacceptably high however. Misuse is also relative to current political fashions and those tend to change over time.

If you want, surveillance on that scale makes the system unstable.

Sweden has a history of a government that registers details about those with views not aligned with the sitting government without legal or, I would claim, moral right to do so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IB_affair. More recently, there was a potential leak from FRA http://www.thelocal.se/12778/20080702/ - as in the recently passed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law. Of course, illegality does not imply immorality/misuse, but it might explain why Swedes are weary of what lines their government might cross.

The activities have not verifiably, as far as I know, been seriously misused in Sweden (in the sense that people have been killed, tortured, or wrongfully imprisoned), though one other European country comes to mind where that did happen, most seem to agree, in the 20th century.

Thus, my guess is that many people assume logging/monitoring personal information implies misuse of that information because they consider the risk*potential cost of the latter unacceptably high, even though it's not strictly an implication. The assumption should be explicit though, so I agree on the importance of making the distinction.

Alright, I think we're on the same page. I don't really know anything about Swedish history, so thanks for the information.

I'm not a big fan of the name either. But it's our opponents who call us "pirates" so maybe it's about reclaiming the label (like the gay community has done with "queer").

I think, as the PP gains vote share in Sweden and elsewhere, many of the other parties are going to steal their policies. Which is good.

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