Rick Falkvinge, pirate

In About Eight Hours, We Will Know

As I sit here and prepare to go to the voting booths, a couple of things strike me.

It strikes me what a fantastic organization of activists we have which allow us to build this together. It has not happened in living memory, that ordinary people without a community have managed to build a party from scratch.

It strikes me how proud I am to have all of these amazing activist colleagues. I am certainly proud to be their colleague as well.

It strikes me how great a journey this has been, before now.

In just under eight hours, we learn the first preliminary results. Regardless of how it goes, whether we are going over or under the magical four percent, I am wickedly proud to have worked side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder with all on these issues.

Just to mention a few: Oscar, Emma, Anna, Stefan, Christian, Janne, Mab, Amelia, Johanna, Mary, Lake, Hax, Maloki, Kalle, Sandra, Anaïs, Björn, Klara, Göran and Marcus, Anna, Tobias, Johanna, Rasmus, Stefan, Christopher, Jennie, Leo, Jerry, Calle, HQ, Richie, Mini, Farmor Gun, Gustav, Björn, Joshen, Drottningsylt, Polymeriska, Teflonminne, Isobel, with special thanks to: Badlands , Calandrella , Hanna , Yamiko, and… hundreds of others. Hundreds! Not everyone is a member of the Pirate Party, but we have all fought for the ideas. Together.

Translation note: links are found on the original page. I have not included them here due to time restrictions. If you wish to see the links, please visit the original post on the Swedish-language blog. Apologies if there is any inconvenience.

We have built this together. I am proud to have been involved with that.

The journey has only just begun.

Posted in EU Elections, Managing Pirates | No Comments »

The Night Before it Gets Serious

It’s half-past ten in the evening before election day. Ballot coverage on election day is a little over 97%. Everything is out there. Opinion polls are holding steady at over 8%.

It’s now real.

This is what we’ve worked for for three-and-a-half years. Several of us have worked far longer than that.

I suspect that what I’m feeling is similar to the feeling the soldiers had just before D-Day: they knew they would make history tomorrow, which would require hard work today. It was only toward the evening that they would know if their hard work and sacrifices would be enough to save the free world.

Tomorrow evening, shortly after 22:00, we will know if we have been able to begin to secure the rights of the citizens of Europe again. This hasn’t happened since 1944.

Good luck, everyone. and—if I may use an American utterance—Godspeed.

Posted in Civil Liberties, EU Elections | No Comments »

The Last 36 Hours

Friends:

As this letter goes out, it’s 36 hours until the polls open. I thought now is the time to swarm with the strength of a tornado just before the election itself.

For we are many. We are fifty thousand members and fifteen thousand activists.

So many people making a difference

Now we have—after so much hard work—received an acceptable coverage of our polling stations. At the time of this writing, we are just over 93%. That is where we were in 2006. It is tragic to miss seven percent of the votes we can’t reach with more polling, but at least it’s not a third anymore.

So during the last 36 hours—eight o’clock on Friday evening until eight o’clock on Sunday morning—there are two things I want us to focus on.

Those who have printers, print 100 double-sided copies of the pamphlet, fold, and place in neighbors’ mailboxes. This is the same pamphlet we printed up and distributed around town, but we don’t have the capacity to send it to others by conventional methods. However, we are such a large group on the ground that we can do that swarm work. Print 100 double-sided copies, fold, and distribute to 100 neighbors around you. Here is the original in color (if you have a color printer), this one is black-and-white (if you have a black-and-white laser printer), or you might try the this substantially lighter version (to save on toner/ink).

Then, EVERYONE, take the next 36 hours to campaign all over the net! Hearts must pound during the last few hours before the polls open, so we can show our presence wherever we are—in very simple ways, with very simple means. We can fill the network, our phones, our Skype, MSN, and email signatures with the message to vote and what we are voting on. In this way we show ourselves to each other, our friends, for power, for all that we are and that we vote on Piratpartiet. As many people as we are, we have the capacity to be just everywhere. It makes a difference in the days before the election.

I just changed by Facebook, MSN, and Skype status to “vote in the European elections. EU policy is also politics. I am voting Pirate.” More suggestions may be found here. Here is a banner for blogs and websites!

Translation note: Banner was not translated. Visit the above links for your banner and ideas!

Posted in EU Elections, Managing Pirates | No Comments »

The Finish Line

Now we must finish.

Do not miss the giant giant report on Piratpartiet and my background in Fokus, published today.

Tomorrow, Saturday, I am on Sergelstory at 12 to hand out flyers and leaflets for the Stockholm area.

Furthermore, I’ve worked on a newsbrief in swarm work for 20 of the past 36 hours.

Here we go!

Posted in EU Elections | 1 Comment »

2029, An Alternate View of Reality

I wake up with the sun at 11. The alarm clock was needless today.

I remember a time when everyone had to work simultaneously. So… unnecessary. But this was before the swarm work model. What a waste! How could people work so stifled? Without creativity and innovation? And so… limited by geography?

Once out of bed, I plop down at the computer and check through the news feeds. Two items have cropped up: they have reached critical mass in my trusted swarm and were automatically added. Most of the hunger issue in the Third World is being resolved once Monsanto conceded the idea of patent could no longer be maintained—and they’re still arguing about it? It was a great victory when India threw out patents in 2022 and began producing medicines and crops for free. Although Europe had not been really ready for that step, they saw India’s leadership. This was followed by Europe, Brazil, and China.

Nigerian olives are a delicacy, I think, taking some from the bowl at the computer.

Today’s schedule is a meeting with some developers, the rest of the day I’m free to work. See you this afternoon at 14:00, measured in my time, a channel in our project swarm. I decide to take the meeting at a cafe, so I plug in a good headset and take my little computer under my arm. But before the meeting, I want a little culture to develop with, so I check my favorite swarms recommended channel and select “make up and distribute.” The pipeline is filled up and in minutes I have a terabyte of ambient music. Perfect.

On the way out the door, I expect the crypto tape’s vibrations. It’s a small band around my wrist with all of my encryption keys, which of course are destroyed if anyone steals it, knows that I am at the door, and the door opens. From inside the apartment, I hear a voice: “the bus is about twelve o’clock … … minutes.” That was a quick hack I did, to ask the local servers while my key server unlocks the front door after approval from my crypto band.

Just twenty years ago, the landlord installed a new system. It had small key tiles to lock the front door, so the landlord could see when all had come and gone. Incomprehensible that everyone accepted it. But times change of course—thank God.

On the way to the cafe, I see several spontaneous swarms on the bus. One of the swarmers is in the mix on a video. Fun projects to have in something as volatile as a public transport swarm! I see how people dive in and out of swarms all the time—it doesn’t seem to go over the internet, but instead some kind of spontaneous local format. I can’t see what was involved on the bus, but I have some guesses.

At one time, I remember that somebody wrongly thought that all things would be traceable. How could they be? Well, one positive side effect of those strange discussions around 2009-2010 was, in any case, that everyone began to encrypt their communications as a matter of pure routine. This is what security experts had gone on about since the 1980’s, but it was only when people felt threatened by ignorant politicians that they started to make encryption their routine. Since then, there has been only tunneling. Privacy and correspondence built into the system, beyond the reach of future politicians. Just as it should be.

Once they have arrived at the cafe, I link up my part of the project to the rest of the swarm, and meet my closest colleagues. José is looking a little sunburned—it’s apparently good weather in Paraguay. Shreedhar is in a good mood as usual, and Xiao and Xi start by quickly throwing out a large amount of discussion. M0rph3us looks a little down and out… though I have never been told she was working somewhere, it strikes me. Not that it makes any difference.

It was pretty fun in the late 2010’s when all the companies ignored the average citizen of the world, but quite simply hired the very best. It had begun surreptitious with Swedish MySQL in the 2000’s. Those who failed the conversion when everyone else suddenly did so went under. There are simply not enough people with talent in sync with a single physical place any more.

But so it was also clear that the industry would evolve so. It had been clear since the early 1990s. It was just past politicians who didn’t understand it.

Once at the café, I order myself a xingfei and two madhavapedder. “Six hundred even,” says the guy behind the counter. I hand over three two-hundred notes, take a seat, and put on my headset.

As I sit at the meeting, I see a new video show up in my syndication swarm. Checking it quickly, it’s flagged by several of my trusted. But … this is the video they did on the bus this morning! Hah, I saw it first!

Once upon a time these weren’t published, except by the prior approval of large companies. It was an odd time. And also the companies insisted that swarms couldn’t talk about it. Completely incomprehensible!

Posted in Civil Liberties, Copyright, Managing Pirates, World Economy | No Comments »

A Sample from France

This close to the election, we’re seeing a sample of what the copyright lobby wants. Today, the HADOPI Act passed in the French Parliament.

HADOPI is intended to “protect artists against file sharing.” It involves:

• People may have their Internet shut off without a court order for three allegations (!) by large corporations (!!). This is accomplished through the new administrative body called HADOPI.
• For the entire time that the internet is shut off, internet users are required to continue paying for their internet subscription.
• Authority to assess innocence by placing spyware on any computer. This spyware reports all activities on a given system to the HADOPI authority. If you can’t be examined, your guilt is automatically assumed.
• The Minister of Culture expects hundreds of thousands of suspensions of internet connections.

Now, let’s see here: an authority, which only reports to large companies, and who is required to monitor everything–that’s everything– that we do on our computers. Large companies who want to turn the citizens away from the internet–and politicians who announced that they will take a hundred thousand people offline. The link between hunting file sharers and a witch-hunt aiming at our right to privacy could not be made more clear.

Anaïs has up-to-date information on its blog.

This is exactly what the copyright lobby has been looking for. It is no longer a pie-in-the-sky fantasy, as it’s happened in a country in Europe (even though there are activists who will drag this law through the Constitutional Court, the EU Legislature and the European Court… but anyway, it passed on a vote).

If we ever need an example in defence of file-sharing, we now have France to point to in order to show what our quest entails. The only way to stop file sharing is to plant spyware on everyone’s computers. No legislator here in Sweden (as least, not yet) advocates that we should have spyware on our computers or automatically be guilty, but it’s already a reality in some parts of Europe.

Help With Ballot Tickets!

Piratpartiet needs help with distributing its ballots. As this is an internal issue (e.g., within Sweden), this heading was not translated. If interested, there’s a nice graph on the Swedish blog which shows the distributions. And if you’re in Sweden, we could really use the help!

Our Weekly Debate Exercise

Today, I wrote about the importance of privacy. There are those who dismiss the idea of privacy with the aphorism: “those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.” The argument is ugly, fallacious and dishonest. There’s a big difference between those who don’t want to hide something, and those who have no right to hide something.

To begin with, it’s incredibly naive to believe that the government is always good. Sweden forced sterilization of its own citizens in the tens of thousands, mainly prostitutes and the unemployed, well into the 1970s! And then there’s the secret political register, which was used to lock people out from housing and labor.

In the first place, it’s impossible to know how governments of the future might use monitoring apparatus, or what laws might change. The same laws which favor giving up the right to privacy can be used in ways you may not agree with. But when these laws pass, it’s too late. This is the simplest argument.

Secondly, monitoring in this way leads to self-censorship. When you know that you’re supervised, you try not to stand out–not to red-flag the systems which would want to get in for a closer look. It’s not especially fun to suffer through a tax audit — even if you’ve done nothing wrong and you comply with the law, it is still a lot of inconvenience and is not preferable to carrying on. You then stop considering whether what you do is honest, and how what you do might be interpreted. If I stop at a particular bar after work because they have the tastiest venison meatballs in the country, imagine how the positioning data from my mobile phone might be used — if it happens to fall into the hands of a bureaucrat at the National Road Authority — in suspending my driver’s license because I obviously have a drinking problem.

Third, it’s fundamentally dishonest to say that the only people who want to hide something are those who are doing something wrong. It’s natural to want certain things to be kept to ourselves. This is easily observed with the fact that most of us close the door when we use the toilet. Nothing which is unusual or threatening to society happens behind that particular typically-closed door, except that we just want that time for ourselves: this is privacy. To suggest that anyone who wants to have a little privacy is somehow defending paedophiles or some other equally absurd cynicism (yes, this is the case) is to crawl under the skin in a very, very unpleasant way.

Fourth, and most importantly: a personal life is not any one person’s privilege; the simple truth is, citizens must be able to challenge the structures of society and to break its laws in order for a society to develop. I usually use homosexuals as a prime example: in the 1930’s it was illegal to be homosexual. Therefore, citizens who had a homosexual orientation were criminals from birth. Parliament decided that they were criminals, and so they were. With the modern level of surveillance which is being put into effect today, there would have been no means to challenge and remove the law–for the government would have been able to find and arrest all of these “horrible criminal people” (as they thought in those days).

Today, we look back and think: what kinds of horrible people did they really have, anyway?

It’s okay to think that we can develop more surveillance–but to what end?

For a society to develop technologically and culturally, the people must have a right to privacy.

Anyone who wants to learn more about this can look at my keynote, Effective Law Enforcement or Democracy?

Finally, Some Opinion Polling

We’ve now undergone four public opinion polls and an election forecast. We take seats in three of them, (5.1%, 5%, and 8.5%), and we’re just over the 4% barrier in the fourth (Sifo, 3.5%). It shows once again that right now we need to use every resource at our disposal. We’ve done a tremendous amount toward our goal, but nothing’s settled until the votes are all counted.

Eight days until the polling stations open, and 26 more to election day.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Copyright, EU Elections, Managing Pirates | 2 Comments »

Question From SAMI

As an EU candidate, I have received a questionnaire, just like MMN-o did. Here are the answers I gave:

1. Do you think that copyright protections for artists, musicians, and performing arts should be extended so that these people get paid for the rest of their lives?

No. The purpose of copyright was never intended to be a lifetime supply. The intent of copyright law is to maximize society’s potenNotial for culture. As legislators, we must never confuse the means and the ends.

2. Should artists and musicians be guaranteed compensation for every use of their work in a public environment (e.g., in restaurants and hotels) and in other kinds of economic environments (e.g., online)?

No. Though it can be tolerated in some cases, such as new works which are produced in an entirely commercial context, but not as a general rule of thumb. The monopoly of copyright under the law must be weighed against the harm which is inflicted upon society.

3. Should ISP’s be held accountable for what they distribute to their customers?

No. Are you crazy? The foundation of democracy in the Western World depends upon the concept that the messenger is never held accountable for the message. The question could be asked just as easily of Telia or the postal service. The answer would be the same.

4. Do you thing a reduction of VAT to 6% from the current 25% would benefit the legal distribution (sales) of music?

No. The sales of recorded music is irrelevant as a topic of new legislation, as it will soon be gone. [Here, it is arguable that Piratpartiet is being asked to take a position on legislation, but SAMI's question was: "Does A lead to B?" instead of "laws should be amended to 'X'".]

5. How are artists and musicians going to protect themselves against uncompensated commercial use of music on the web (e.g., pirates)?

To begin with, “uncompensated commercial use is exploitation” is not necessarily something you need protection against. For example: copyright may expire, or there may even be cases where an exemption from copyright is preferable, allowing free use even in a commercial context. But if we’re talking about actual copyright infringement, it should be handled by the judicial system just as any legal issue is.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Copyright, EU Elections | No Comments »

Why Aren’t We on EU Profiler?

Approximately a week ago, Piratpartiet were in EU Profile with our answers. See the EU Profiler Page on the Pirate Party, which details how we responded to EU Profiler’s survey. Yamiko did the test on May 4^th, and were were among the recommended party options.

Now, Aftonbladet launched its own version with a song and dance that suddenly Piratpartiet can no longer be recommended as an option, and suddenly our EU Profiler seems to have been de-categorised (see above).

Why?

Especially when we’re considered this year’s winner, with EU’s largest election forecast putting us in third place?

UPDATE: I saw some of the comments on Aftonbladet about this. Piratpartiet was still on EU Profiler’s original site when we wrote this. It seems that Aftonbladet is actively advocating against Piratpartiet being an option.

UPDATE 2: I see that this is now an active decision by Aftonbladet to remove Piratpartiet from their version of EUProfiler. In their comments, they left a comment which I found startling and baffling – I have no words, as this pedantic choice leaves only the parties currently in parliament as options from which to choose (something that political experts have written about in “A Lesson in Electoral Fraud” [link to Swedish article, Google Translated article is here]). Anyone who feels compelled should call Aftonbladet and/or EUProfiler and ask them for an explanation.

Posted in Corruption, EU Elections | 1 Comment »

Use Google Translate for live coverage

I don’t have the bandwidth, unfortunately, to keep liveblogging in both Swedish and English. I suggest you all use Google Translate of my Swedish blog for live coverage — it is bad English, but readable.

Posted in Copyright | 1 Comment »

Live from the trial: prosecutor states his case

Live from the trial: the prosecutor is now stating his case against the TPB crew. He started out describing the BitTorrent protocol, pointing out that all components were necessary. He’s stating that TPB is mainly (!) used for the infringement of copyrighted works, that it is financed through advertising, and that they are therefore infringing on copyright on a commercial basis. This appears to be where he is aiming.

(Lots of details about which works have been file shared.)

Posted in Copyright | 3 Comments »