Pirate Party Comes to the U.S.

Spy der Mann writes "Wired news has published an interview with the Pirate Party of the U.S., which was formed a week after the raid on Pirate Bay. The group patterns itself after Piratpartiet, the Swedish political party associated with The Pirate Bay, and says it wants to reform intellectual property and privacy laws."

Re:Too bad it's futile

[govtpiggy]

Third parties tend to seem futile at the time but it isn't surprising to see the major parties slowly adopt the major parts of the third parties platform given time. We saw it years ago with the Populist Party [wikipedia.org] and I wouldn't be surprised to see bits and pieces of Green or Libertarian Party philosophy emerging from the Democrats and Republicans in a few decades.

Re:I'll have to look into a donation...

[blackmonday]

I agree wholeheartedly, but one correction. Its not the character of Mickey Mouse that would become Public Domain, it's "Steamboat Willie" - the cartoon in which Mickey first appeared. Important Distinction.

Re:Guantanamo beckons...

[Ossifer]

The US already holds a Swedish citizen at Guantanamo, in violation of US and international law...

Re:I'll have to look into a donation...

[Meagermanx]

Actually, they want to open up the pharmaceutical patents and expand the privacy of Americans, too. So that's "healthcare wants to be less expensive" and "ourinformation wants to be private."

Re:Too bad it's futile

[thebdj]

Actually not quite true. While we have not seen it happen on a national scale yet, it is not unknown for independents or third parties to win seats in the House or Senate. Also, look at past presidential elections and you will see 3rd parties stealing electoral votes in certain states. Another person gave you a few examples of independents, there is also a former governor from Minnesota that no one would've predicted.

This is especially true during times of "fierce social change." See the election just before the US Civil War (1860) and the elections during the Civil Rights Movement. You will see other parties winning states beyond just the normal two. While the two party system seems dominant, it would not be unheard of for a new third party to move in and take a few seats in congress, or maybe even win a few states in a Presidential election.

Re:I'll have to look into a donation...

[drinkypoo]

As a registered trademark, the mouse would still not be free game - except as pertains to images of him used in steamboat willie, which could be utilized with impunity, as could the entirety of the film itself.

Libertarians have been saying this for decades

[Bob_Robertson]

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0603e.asp [fff.org] The New Mercantilism

http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcelroy/mcelroy17.html [lewrockwell.com] Patently Absurd

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sapienza/sapienza36.htm l [lewrockwell.com] The Fraud of Intellectual Property

http://www.mises.org/blog/archives/002935.asp [mises.org] Mises Economics Blog: Bill Gates: Anti-IP Movement Is Communist

I wish the Pirate party far better success than the Libertarians have had. It is surprising that the message of Liberty does not resonate in the United States.

Bob-

Approval Voting

[samtihen]

And this is where Approval Voting [wikipedia.org] comes into play.

Basically, the idea is that you may vote for as many of the candidates as you approve of.

For instance, a good chunk of people enjoy many of the ideas that the Libertarian party believes in. This same chunk of people often has to make a choice between voting for a democrat or a republican, because everyone knows third parties stand no chance here.

Now, under the Approval voting system, you could vote for both the Libertarian candidate and the party you would have ended up voting for had you no choice.

Now, I do not believe that the Libertarian party would win. What I do believe is that they would receive a much larger number of votes, and many of the idea would be much harder for the main two parties to ignore.

The same, of course, would happen to the Pirate Party. They are not going to win, let's face it. But, if they were to receive a vote from 15-30% of the population (a reasonable goal), the major parties could not ignore that.

What makes this system so great, however, is the incredible ease of implementation. It isn't complicated for voters to understand, and ballots could already support multiple votes.

Dastar v. 20 Cent Fox

[tepples]

The original Mickey Mouse film trilogy was Plane Crazy, Gallopin' Gaucho, and Steamboat Willie. Any traits of the character that appeared in the original trilogy would pass into PD along with the films.

As a registered trademark, the mouse would still not be free game

O rly? The Supreme Court ruled the other way in Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. [wikipedia.org], where Justice Scalia wrote that a trademark can't be hacked to extend copyright.

Re:Too bad it's futile

[rmgrotkierii]

Hey, if the "youth" voted,
* The drinking age would be 18 again.

Got that wrong buckwheat. Unfortunately the federal govt. links all sorts of monies including the all important highway money to the drinking age/BAC levels. Which is legal according to the Supreme Court, which ruled in http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?n avby=CASE&court=US&vol=483&page=203 [findlaw.com] South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987) that Congress had engaged in a valid exercise of its power under the Taxing and Spending Clause, and did not violate the Twenty-first Amendment.

Re:Guantanamo beckons...

[brouski]

You might want to check with your sources on that, dude.

He was released in July 2004: http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/4166/nocache/true/a/ 27298/dictionary/true [sweden.gov.se]

Re:As do I.

[raddan]

You know... that has to be the most insightful, concise thing I've heard said about what's wrong with copyright for a long time.

Piratpartiet is not associated with The Pirate Bay

[Anonymous Coward]

Spy der Mann is mixing up Piratpartiet (The Swedish Pirate Party) with Piratbyrån. The former is not associated with The Pirate Bay in any way.

Re:I'll have to look into a donation...

[ElleyKitten]

A lot of medical R&D is done by the government, or with government grants. Also, opening up patents is not "stealing from the rich". It allows competition.

Re:And this is why they will never succeed...

[Chandon Seldon]

The entire entertainment industry is only a very small component of the US economy. In all, it's in the same order of magnitude as the sale of sporting goods. Somehow I don't think our economy would collapse if people stopped buying soccer balls and golf clubs, and it's the same for "entertainment content".

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_2/odlyzko / [firstmonday.org]

Re:Why bother with all this math?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...requiring registration is an unfair barrier to small content producers since it takes a fair bit of money to have a lawyer go through the registration process."

You're confusing copyright with patent.

Registering copyright in the US requires filling out a 2-page form (2 pages of instructions, 2 pages of forms) with straightforward questions (the work's title, the authors, contact information, whether it is a derivative work of anything else). There is a $30 fee, plus you have to provide a copy of the work for deposit in the Library of Congress. There's nothing there that should take more than 5 minutes.

The only complication is that registering in many countries can be a pain. But it would at least lead to people not bothering with copyright unless it is an economically vaulable work. As it is (with everything, no matter how trivial, copyrighted as soon as it is written), there's no restriction of copyright only to works where it matters.

What? A typo?

[NoScreenNamesLeft]

It's not piratepartiet. It's piratebyran...

Re:And this is why they will never succeed...

[LoveGoblin]

Offtopic trivia: Hollywood isn't the biggest industry in California. By far, agriculture is. :)