Rick Falkvinge, pirate

Social Democrats on the wrong track with IPRED again

(Original post published on November 3rd, 2009)

At the party congress of the Social Democrats, there were a few decisions-in-principle made on the matter of IPRED (Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights.) Earlier this spring, the party took a stand in favor of the new law, voting for its adoption. Those at the congress moving for a change of direction were quickly subdued, and there was nothing to be found in the resulting documents to indicate a change to this policy.

SD state that,

[Our] position is that the police are the ones responsible for investigating crime, including those pertaining to copyright.

However, as Mark Klamberg and others point out, IPRED is not about investigation of crime. It is rather about lawsuits under private law, whereby it grants a private interest (such as the copyright lobby) authority on par with that of the police, as if had it been a crime investigation. The above quote does not in any way change this fact.

Ravenna further underlines the backwards thinking of SD, when they state that “we have now achieved a balance between the integrity of the individual, and the author’s right to compensation.” Interestingly, it so happens to be the case that the latter “right” does not in fact exist – not even under current copyright law itself.

Mattias Bjärnemalm also says that, as long as SD do not understand that copyright law is in fact hampering creativity – not encouraging it – they will remain lost [on their way.]

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In the FRA Aftermath

(Original post published on October 31st, 2009)

Just around Halloween seems like a good time to be talking about the FRA. Even though the law on mass-surveillance governing the operations of the FRA has been passed – for the second time – without even one single MP of the Coalition having voted against [it], we must not admit ourselves to defeat. We must realize that, we now shoulder a herculean responsibility:

We are the last line of defense of the free and open society.

As such, it is imperative that we soldier on. We simply cannot afford to give in. Marie Andersson shares her thoughts on this matter at her blog Opassande (Swedish.)

In the wake of the elections to the European Parliament, we had been asked if we had truly understood the implications of the role we were about to assume. To a certain extent, we had become synonymous to [representing and defending] civil rights. “If you don’t make it into the Parliament,” they said, “the politicians will know that civil rights are largely irrelevant. For a foreseeable time to come, these issues will have vanished from the political agenda entirely.”

It was a heavy responsibility bear. But we did so with pride and strength, claiming two seats in the Parliament, and thus sending a message across. And we must keep at it.

In the latest poll by United Minds, our figure is at 2.1% for the general election coming up next year. This is quite an impressive result, given that we have been largely invisible for three months while recovering [from the European Parliament election.] We know that, when we work together, amazing things can be accomplished.

So, why should we keep going? What difference does it make that, for an example the FRA are allowed to jack in to our carriers, and intercept the communications of anyone, at a time and duration of their choosing? Let me explain with the help of a known book. I have substituted a few words in order to demonstrate my case:

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the FRA plugged in on any individual carrier was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in to your communications whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every article read, every mail sent, every date agreed to was monitored by the Government.

This piece is from the book 1984, by George Orwell. It has often been used as an example to paint a very dark vision of the future, meant as a warning – not an instruction manual.

(The book can be read in its entirety at Project Gutenberg, Australia, where its copyright has expired.)

The Pirate Party is needed in Parliament. It is not enough to tear up and rework the “FRA law.” The agency has violated whatever trust was there to begin with, and it must be shut down and replaced with exactly nothing, at all. When there is legislation tailored to suit the needs of a specific agency, it has used up its right to exist.

The Finnish Piraattilitto, think tank and lobbying organization, today write that Finland has one month left of secrecy of correspondence. The same applies for us.

[The rest of the post was lost in translation.]

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Frightening Pictures from London

I wrote that I would get back to you on my experiences from London. I will, however, keep the written word to a minimum and let these pictures speak for themselves. The London Police Service has come to the conclusion that security cameras do not, in fact, contribute to the prevention or solving of crimes. Is this, then, the kind of society we want?

One does not have to look particularly far in order to find one of these cameras. Wherever you are, simply survey the surrounding area and you will find yourself in the line-of-sight of at least three or four of them. (In the following three pictures, I have marked the spots where the cameras are located, in order to ease identification due to the zoom level. Please also note that there are numerous cameras to my sides and rear, outside of the field of view.)

Outside one could find these black dome-type cameras everywhere, some of which were privately-owned.

Middle: This appears to be a lamppost at first sight, but the black dome tells another tale. (Oxford Street)

I also met with Andrew Robinson, leader of the Pirate Party UK. We talked a lot about their electoral system, as well as exchanging thoughts and experiences in general. He shared a valuable insight with me that shows why laws need changing – a point of view I had not considered myself:

It is currently legal to sometimes capture a few images of people, on a few streets, simply because no one has had the means to do more than that. However, having acquired the means, that same right to sometimes capture an image is suddenly taken to mean always, everywhere. This dramatically changes the balance of power and grants the observer an information advantage that is directly unpleasant, as well as threatening.

To rephrase: some types of surveillance have been unregulated because it is practically harmless when done on small scale, privately. However, as this has been escalated to a level where there arises a complete awareness of how we go about in our day-to-day lives, it has become a very real menace to society, calling for a different set of regulations altogether.

Add to this, that, as has been said above, this type of surveillance does not aid in either preventing or solving crimes.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Articles of Interest

(Original post published on September 30th, 2009)

This morning saw the release of two very interesting articles.

In the first article (Dagens Nyheter, Henrik Oscarsson, Ulf Bjereld, 2009) it is established that the general public’s acceptance of surveillance of the civilian population has seen a dramatic decrease since 2002. The authors point out a strong connection between this and the success of the Pirate Party, and further assert that we have been successful in the advocacy of our policies. As they conclude that there is also a connection between the increasingly negative opinion of coercive measures, and left-wing ideology, the question is raised of whether the Left are absorbing the libertarian and information-political ideals. There was no such connection seen in 2002.

Since I find myself in a somewhat advantageous position on analysing the question at issue, I will provide some further data. It is my conviction that, had that same survey been conducted in the summer of 2006, we would instead have seen a weak but significant connection between right-wing ideology and libertarian information politics. It is not without reason that the surveillance society is called The Bodström Society. Because of undetermined causes, we find ourselves in a situation where the Swedish government – irregardless of position on a left-right scale – continue to drive the legislation of severely repressive laws, while the opposition gain freebie points by pretending to disapprove, even though having pursued those very same policies themselves during the last term.

These questions were non-existent in 2002, or had at the least not been raised in the political arena, which is why I believe that there was no apparent political connection at the time.

Also worthy of mention is the 2009 European Parliament post-election analysis by the Social Democrats. They, too, see a weak connection to left-wing sympathies, but draw a different set of conclusions altogether, which I believe to be more accurate:

The left and green parties are losing more votes to the Pirate Party than are the conservatives, which depends first and foremost on the right bloc’s weaker support among young voters.

They also conclude that people coming into voting age choose to become cross-political in favor of libertarian information politics, instead of, as seen earlier, having gravitated toward the Left. This constitutes a significant number of people, where 37% of male first-time voters cast their vote on the Pirate Party.

We have a good hunch of whether the sympathies within the party weigh stronger to the right or the left, and the opposing sides seem to have been in an equilibrium since 2006, with no preference for one or the other. For the moment, we find it easier to cooperate with the opposition, albeit this is sooner due to that they are just that – in opposition – rather than their ideological orientation. This was likewise the case before the 2006 general election, when the conservatives were in opposition.

Henrik Oscarsson and Ulf Bjereld also provide comment on the article at their respective blogs.

In the second article (Svenska Dagbladet, 2009) the CEOs of nine Internet service providers publicly defend the principle of mere conduit, also called common carrier or messenger immunity (Swedish: budbärarimmunitet.) However, they may have been too late, and the effectiveness and timing of their move can be called into question. What we need is a legal defense fund for ISPs, called for by Oscar Swartz as early as in 2005, made current by the ruling in the case against Black Internet. The question of the ”responsibility of the service providers,” a common battle cry among the Mafia, however, has already started to gain foothold, and needs to be pushed back with far more effective means than this excellent reasoning:

Consider that the Postal Service would be held responsible [sic] for any illegal message or contraband sent by their customers; that café owners would be held responsible for the conversations of their guests; or that the Road Administration would be responsible for the actions of drivers, and be forced to close off roads where one could suspect criminals to travel.

In every case, the effects are exclusively negative. The freedom of speech and information is undermined, while the costs of service providers increase with higher broadband fees [for the end-user], and decreased resources available for expanding the internet infrastructure, as a consequence.

They are certainly right in raising this question. However, the concept of a ”criminal service provider” has already started to appear in political documents – that is, a service provider whom does not assume responsibility for what goes on in their network. What we need now is a massive political initiative and lobbying effort. The Pirate Party is currently working with this question, albeit by itself and while facing a great deal of resistance.

Posted in Information Politics | No Comments »

Awakening

I haven’t been writing for a while now. Last week I was visiting the UK and have had quite a busy schedule. What I witnessed in London scared the living daylights out of me, and it has taken some time for me to come back to earth from that experience.

Fortunately, we can practically forget about threats of shutting file-sharers off from the internet. Lord Mandelson (whom is widely despised), is the person responsible for this motion, which is to be submitted in 2011. His counterpart, Tom Watson, has a different and far more understanding approach in his position as Digital Engagement Minister-to-be at Tories.

UPDATE: My bad. Tom Watson is an MP for Labour, not Tory. I had assumed he was Tory since he is regarded as the next minister for digitalry. Thanks to Philip Hunt of PPUK for pointing this out.

I will be back shortly with thoughts on my experiences from London and Manchester.

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Open letter to the music industry

Dear music industry,

Thank you for inviting me to be the opening speaker at your conference In The City in Manchester, UK. I am inspired by your courage to bring what must be seen as a threat into the midst of your ranks.

I must say it was an eye-opener to experience the industry’s reactions to the pirate perspective; some reactions of support in private, but mostly resentment, anger, and even fury in public. What piqued my interest was not the contrast; such contrasts can be found wherever new ideas gradually win ground, but rather, the immense value you attached to copyright as a concept.

Still, and this is what struck me, I don’t think you’ve ever considered where that value comes from. It comes from legislators. From people like me. The value you attach to copyright shows clearly that it has some form of value, and that value is created in an exchange.

That exchange, quite specifically, is with legislators. In this aspect, legislators are responsible before society for maximizing the culture available (somewhat simplified). The tool for accomplishing that has been to hand out an exclusive monopoly on duplication and public performance to people who create.

This agreement has been executed because you, the music industry, have convinced legislators that no music will be created otherwise.

What struck me is that I believe you fail to see or emotionally acknowledge the existence of this agreement. That you have not one set of intended customers, but two: first, the legislators who give you a monopoly in exchange for creating music to be put on the market, and second, the customers who give you money in exchange for music on that market.

The first transaction, the monopoly, is payment for the service of creating the goods in the first place; the second transaction, monetary, is payment for goods (CDs) or services (concerts, etc).

However, your agreement with legislators, where you used to be the only supplier, has recently come under quite a bit of competition. As it turns out, people are creating music like never before, and they are doing it not because of copyright, but despite copyright. Never before in history has there been as much music available to society. Creative Commons-licensed music and other types of artistic works, just to take one new easily-measured model where creators explicitly reject their already-awarded monopoly, is exceeding your cultural production by magnitudes.

This, of course, brings our agreement into question. If other providers are offering to perform the same service — creating music — without the cost that you have charged, in terms of a life-plus-70-years-monopoly, then we, as the legislators, are going to renegotiate the terms of that agreement.

We won’t be negotiating new terms with you, of course. No, we’ll be negotiating new terms with our new suppliers and just terminate the contract with you, as is the norm in any business.

Dear music industry, you’ve been underbid and outcompeted.

Outcompeted by millions of people who create music simply because they love to do so. They are not demanding any monopolies; in fact, they see them merely as obstacles that divert attention from what they want to do — create even more music — and reject them outright.

The proposal to shorten the commercial copyright term to five years from the date of publication is actually far more than our new suppliers are asking for. But in the name of simplicity, it is desirable to have the same term for all kinds of works, and there are some kinds that require heavy investments, without which that particular type of culture would not have been created. Hollywood blockbusters and computer games come to mind. But the ROI horizon of these are far shorter than five years, so five years of a commercial-only copyright monopoly would be safing on the overly generous side from us legislators.

(Oh and by the way, the exact same reasoning applies to the book publishing industry as to the music publishing industry. More is being written than ever before, not because of copyright, but despite copyright.)

I believe that’s why I found it so odd that some of you were angry with me at the convention. You don’t realize that I’m a customer, in my role as a lawmaker. Your first line customer that, in your model, enables your secondary, monetary market. While it is understandable that you may feel resentment, anger, and even fury at the notion that you won’t get as sweet a deal as before, the fact that you’ve come under competition is indisputable, and no strong emotion is going to save your business. Only a better offer than your (purposely unorganized) competition will do that.

After all, telling your customers to fuck off (to applause!) in a room full of reporters rarely brings you more of those customers’ business, does it?

(Add to this that you are now demanding a higher price from leglislators: the abolition or erosion of society’s civil liberties such as the postal secret, right to trial, right to communicate, messenger immunity, and more, just in order to safeguard the old monopoly at any cost, and the case for changing suppliers is even stronger. This higher price that you are now demanding aggressively is what we have mostly been focusing on; however, your previous offer is far outcompeted, too.)

This letter is free to republish in any shape, form, location or quantity, but please credit the author as such.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Copyright, Information Politics, Keynotes | 33 Comments »

Media Overload

I got between 30 and 50 calls per hour yesterday, from those who wanted interviews. There was not a chance to respond to all. Sorry primarily to Swedish media.

During the day today, I will give priority, in addition to Swedish media, to answering and calling back the BBC, CNN, al-Jazeera, Reuters, AP, AFP, Torrent Freak, Numérama, Wired, and Ars Technica. Those who do not belong to these ten, I will call you back in a second wave.

If you want an interview, send a text message, so chances are high that I can answer within a few hours. If you call, there is the risk that I am simply overwhelmed with phone calls.

I already have an incredibly large backlog from yesterday, although I expect that the day today will be calmer …

Posted in EU Elections, Media, Rick | 1 Comment »

Our Incredibly Important Partial Win

Friends,

Sunday, we won an incredibly important partial victory. All of us who fought hard with these questions were finally given political vindication. Christian Engström goes to Brussels. And if the Lisbon Treaty is approved in Ireland in the autumn—as we are against the thing, in and of itself—so Amelia Andersdotter also goes to Brussels.

(Previously there was information that we would send down our other, future, Representative as an observer. They proved unable to comply to our request.)

I said earlier that we would get to write history. We have done that now. Our victory has resounded throughout the world. An international news search for “Pirate Party” revealed 2459 articles—two and a half thousand articles all over the world! If we instead look at Spanish-speaking media and search for “Partido Pirata” on Monday, there were 1898 articles—just under two thousand. Even more impressive is the French-speaking media, where we have 3537 articles around the world (search term: “Parti Pirate”).

It is possible to formulate things a little differently: now there are more articles in the world press on Christian Engström (1343) than articles on Fredrik Reinfeldt (1259). Is says something about the enormous credibility we have built up—and we built this together.

All the while, Swedish media reports on international interest (Svenska Dagblet, Dagens Nyheter). On the subject of Swedish media, these were seen on newspapers’ front pages the day after the election (load images in email if you’re reading this newsletter there):

We talked a lot about a victory that was needed to get the politicians to wake up. We won this partial victory.

BBC offers this summary of the situation from a narrow perspective of file sharing: “The copyright issue has yet to become as hot a political potato in the UK as it is in Sweden, but politicians here will be be wondering who they need to appease most, the media barons or the seven million people who indulge in illegal downloading. Don’t be surprised if there’s a swing to the pirates here too.” Just as it was indeed.

Free society was at stake in this election. And we won. Free society won.

It was we who built and took home the victory. We have fifty thousand members, seventeen thousand activists, seven hundred officers and everyone who has discussed issues outside the party.

We did this together.

We are amateurs. We haven’t received one Krona in government grants. We are ordinary people who decided to make a difference. Each one of us.

Let’s take an incredibly, well-deserved rest period, before we also gear up to enter the Swedish parliament on September 19, 2010. In the meantime, our new members of Parliament to speed to Brussels with the third reading of the Telecoms package as soon as Parliament opens.

We built this together, friends and colleagues. And even though it was only a partial victory, we are from ready to secure citizens’ rights and those of an open society, so I think we should feel incredibly proud of our achievement so far.

Posted in EU Elections, Media, Piratpartiet | 3 Comments »

Brussels: One Pirate or Two?

Right now, there’s a bit of confusion about exactly what happens to the mandatory number 19 and 20. We know that we have 19 seats, with full qualification if and when the Lisbon Treaty enters into force.

But the question is what happens before then. Until yesterday, it was crystal clear—it serves us well to send an observer, except that this observer has no voting rights, as Hax has reported several times.

Yesterday, Dagens Nyheter contradicted this, saying that the Election Authority has never received any such instructions:

There have been reports in the media throughout Europe that the additional members will act as observers in the House until the Lisbon Treaty goes through. But this was denied on Sunday by the European Parliament’s Office in Stockholm. Some observers will be in Parliament until and if the Lisbon Treaty goes through.

So one or two will go; in the case of one pirate, we know that it’s not actually the current situation. Yesterday, it was crystal clear that Christian and Amelia would go down together. Now the 19 seats are in a complete fog.

Posted in EU Elections, Managing Pirates | No Comments »

Epic winnage

Friends, brothers and sisters all over the besieged free world:

Today, we have won our first crucial battle for the future of civil liberties. The right to be a free citizen. The right to privacy as a concept. Indeed, the freedom to voice one’s opinions at all.

These are freedoms that our mothers and fathers fought, bled and died for. And we are the proud sons and daughters of those our mothers and fathers. Once again, we have manned the barricades and stood tall, shoulder to shoulder. Once again, we have realized that we must fight for our liberties.

Today, we shook the old politicians at their core in that fight. We got 7.1% in a general election for those ideas, and those ideas alone, and representation in the European Parliament.

We won two seats, one of which has observer status until and if the Lisbon treaty is ratified.

In 2005, I realized that politicians were completely at the mercy of the corporate lobbyists. Politicians did not consider these issues important, they did not care about them in the slightest, except to look tough on crime and crack down on civil liberties.

And so our liberties have been chipped away, one piece at a time. Our right to privacy violated. Our right to communicate in private eliminated. Our right to express opinions censored.

The time had come in 2005 to take a stand. The time had come to stand proud. They called us pirates, because we shared society’s common culture. The time had come to kick out those politicians. The time had come to bypass the politicians, and talk directly to the citizens at the voting booths.

Because, the thing that struck me in 2005 was, that even though the lobbies have wheelbarrows of cash to fuel politicians, there is one thing that would make all those bills worthless overnight. That’s votes in a general election. And we would be able to get that. We, as pirates, would be able to build the support for civil liberties and reclaim the rights that are ours.

We would be aiming at the one thing that politicians care more about than lobbyists’ grease: their jobs. The instant politicians lose jobs over not understanding these issues, all the lobby’s money will devalue to ash overnight.

On January 1, 2006, I launched the Pirate Party’s web page, and mentioned the address just once in a chat channel. It got three million hits in the first two days. It turned out that the problem would not be attracting interest, but channeling an immense energy into an organization. It was not me anymore. It was tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands.

And here we are.

We rebuild.

We rebuild our civil liberties. We rebuild the freedoms of the net. We build civilization anew. We rebuild the liberties that our mothers and fathers fought, bled and died for.

And we do so proudly.

This is not the end. This is just the end of the beginning: the first major, decisive victory of the next generation’s civil liberties movement. The Pirate Party is now the largest party for voters below 30 years of age. That bodes well for the future fight for liberties. But the fight is not over. Not by far.

The next step is to spread this fight outside of Sweden. That’s where we will need the help of activists, people and dot-com millionaires all over the world. We have shown the world that this is possible. Now, all of us need to do the same thing where each of us live.

We need to build civilization anew, and to do so together. We need to rebuild, and we need to stand tall, or we will lose the liberties that are under siege.

Today, we all won our first major victory. Congratulations to us all.

Posted in Civil Liberties, EU Elections | 13 Comments »