Pirate Party Wins in EU

Not to forget: The German Pirate Party has one seat in Germany's national parliament (Bundestag) at the moment. That's because a MP left his original party to join the Pirates. But as there are elections this year, the seat will probably be lost. — Anonymous

In response to Anonymous, "And what happens, then, when people stop buying art? When they stop purchasing a book because they can download it for free?" The people who download books for free, would be the ones who would be the most avid fans of the author of said books. Just like the patrons of libaries, where they can read books for free instead of purchasing them, they are usually the people who also buy most of the physical copies of the books. In addition to this, the pirate party is not against the current banning of books that are copyrighted, should you choose to do so, but are against the current copyright laws that cast a grey area over NON-copyrighted works of art (e.g. works by Shakespeare), especially over the much-maligned "peer-to-peer" networks that have been increasingly linked to the use of only stealing copyrighted works. In fact such "peer-to-peer" networks are also used as efficient distributors of legitimate non-copyrighted works of art such as open-source software (e.g. Linux distributions and well-known free applications such as OpenOffice.org [the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office] and GIMP[a free legal alternative to Adobe Photoshop]) However I agree with the poster below about "ideas" (i.e. patents) which should be taxable after say 10 years if nothing commercial/practical has been implemented or 15 years, and taxed progressively higher say $1000 for the first year and ten times that for every new year. That way useful patents that are used productively would turn a profit for the creator, which he or she can use to pay for the proposed patent taxes and if they are not useful after for example 15 years they are released into the public domain (as evidently the patent holders are not implementing the "ideas" well, or after their profits cannot sustained the growing patent taxes), so patent holders would get a nice profit if they have a great idea and implement it correctly (as the copyright laws originally intended), and if not (they can't implement it correctly and/or just patent holders in order to sue large companies when something similar is implemented when they themselves have not made anything practical and thus stifle creative works and innovation (which is against what copyright laws originally intended). — Anonymous

You're so right, Anonymous. I am a writer, I have earned a living at it for 20 years and I'm not rich. I depend on royalties to pay my rent and feed my children. If anyone can download my book "for free," how free is it when it's on someone else's back? Copyright by the way, has nothing to do with "ideas." Ideas are free for all. It is ridiculous to think ideas can be copyrighted. What IS copyrighted is how those ideas are translated into actual work, ie. a book, a widget, a piece of software. It is very short-sighted and childish to think that the "piracy" problems can be solved by abolishing copyright. Abolishing copyright just means creators have no incentive to create....ie. they will not be able to pay their rent or feed their children, ergo, they will not be able to create, they'll be too busy working for someone else--taking someone else's job, because before they had "created" their own employment. — Anonymous

People steal other people's ideas whether copyrighten or not. All copyright and patents ever really did was force people to create idea's that didn't appear like another person's idea, this doesn't stimulate creativity it only encourages the false perception that your idea is original, and that creating things that on the surface appear different is originality. But people who are upset about the loss of copyright, forget we can design new systems like Creative Commons that make much more sense, since really I'm going to use your ideas whether you like it or not, because how do you own an idea? Owning an idea is like owning a chunk of thoughts or words, to truly protect them from my use you would have to make it so that no one can say any of the words you use in your idea at all, leading ultimately to illiteracy. — Surfin Cypherz

How can this not lead to the complete bastardization of thought?... Free thought is only free when it's not free for the stealing, copying, and exploiting. Thanks, Sweden! — beanster

And what happens, then, when people stop buying art? When they stop purchasing a book because they can download it for free? The creative vision dies when the money leaves. Because, like everyone else, artists and creative minds need to eat, pay rent, and otherwise live. I'm not talking Hollywood or the music industry. But when patents die, so do the financial rewards of, say, writing a book. So, as an author, if I can't make a living doing what I love, then I am forced, by circumstance, to do who knows what, maybe accounting or something equally as silly. — Anonymous

get involved with the US pirate party: http://www.pirate-party.us/ — Parker Phinney

http://piratenpartei24.wordpress.com This is the guestbook of the pirates from germany. So anyone who wants to share his or her opinion is welcome. (also in other languages .. not only german) By the way, in germany they achieved nearly 1 % ... Greetings Alexandra — Alexandra