[TankGirl]

21.9.2006

Final results of the Swedish election ready

The official counting of the votes has been finished in Sweden. Pirate Party ended up as the third largest of the 'small parties' with 34.918 votes, competing tightly for the second place with the Feminist Initiative that took 37.954 votes. By far the largest small party was the anti-immigration party Sweden Democrats who took 162.463 votes, only some 50.000 votes shy of getting their candidates through to the parliament.

The result means that on the average every registered Pirate Party member managed to get about 3 other voters to cast their vote for the pirates. Even if the result did not bring the much-desired parliamentary power to the pirates, they managed to establish themself as a serious candidate in the coming elections, and they will certainly not be ignored by the Swedish media in the future as an insignificant small party. They also managed to make filesharing and privacy issues an important election theme, and the public debate on these issues continues in Sweden.

The Swedish political climate has been very mobile during recent years. This is highlighted by the poor success of June List. This small party had a sensational success in the EU Parliament election in 2004 capturing 14% of the Swedish votes and three EU parliament seats. In this election Pirate Party won June List with a margin of almost 9000 votes.

[TankGirl]

23.9.2006

Swedish Pirate Party to launch a national youth organisation

It did not take long for the Swedish Pirates to recover from their disappointment of not making it to the parliament on the first try. Active discussion on the future political activities is already going on in their forums, and new members keep joining the party daily. The party executives have kept their own post-election meeting and laid out their short and long term plans. In the long term the party will now strengthen its national organization that was put together quickly under the time pressure of the elections. The main long term targets will be success in the 2009 EU Parliament elections - where they will co-operate with other European pirate parties - and in the next Swedish parliamentary election in 2010. The party is still forced to operate on a minimal budget but now they get some extra income from the Relakks anonymizing service that they have helped to promote.

The main short term initiative declared by the party leader Rick Falkvinge will be the launching of a national political youth organization for the party. This organization, called Ung Pirat (Young Pirate), will serve as an umbrella organization for otherwise independent, locally operating pirate youth associations. This move was motivated by the promising success of the pirates in the School Election 2006 - a special election organized for the older basic school and high school students mimicking closely the real parliamentary election. 1286 schools were involved, and a total of 381.896 votes were given in the election. The Pirate Party got 4.5% of the national votes despite having blank ballots only at their use in contrast to the parliamentary parties who had preprinted ballots provided by the Swedish election officials. In some schools the pirates got 20-30% of the votes, and the record was 40%. Now that there is time to build up the political movement, investing in the younger generation seems like a smart move to guarantee success in the future elections.

[TankGirl]

27.9.2006

Pirate Party banners

This is not a news item but just to delight you, here are present banners from PP International and various national pirate parties:

PP International:



Sweden:



USA:



Germany:



Austria:



Belgium:



France:



Spain:



Italy:



Russia:



Poland:

[TankGirl]

22.10.2006

Expressen: "Legalize filesharing!"

The election is over, a new government has been formed, and while Piratpartiet did not make it to the parliament, the Swedish filesharing debate continues in the media.

Newspaper Expressen demands in its editorial today in no uncertain terms the legalization of private filesharing. The editorial refers to the two recent court cases that resulted in rather large fines for two filesharers. The newspaper considers it totally wrong that sharing a few songs or a movie on Internet is treated as serious a crime as sexual harassment or acts of violence in terms of punishment. Expressen notes that while harassment and violence cause real suffering to the victims, it is not clear at all whether there are any victims or negative effects following from filesharing.

Expressen goes through some history of previous legal battles where the copyright holders have tried to fight new emerging technologies, and how their doomsday scenarios have never happened despite the wide adoption of these new technologies - like audio cassette and video recorders - by the consumers. The newspaper is deeply worried about the impact that a strong copyright owner control over Internet would have on culture and many fields of new businesses. The editors consider the legalization of private filesharing a much better alternative and demand that movie and music industries should adapt into the digital era without any help from the state.

[BLACK_MAGE]

If the party was in the US and had the values of a republecan then you would have my vote.

sail on pirates sail on.

[vampirechronicles]

hmm

[JackSpratts]

i wish to f i knew what happened to tankgirl. i asked falkvinge to look into it and he said he'd get back to me but didn't. tg vanishes then ramona dies ffs. i miss those napsterites.

- js.

[miss_silver]

JackSpratts, on Nov 17 2009, 06:40 PM, said:

i wish to f i knew what happened to tankgirl. i asked falkvinge to look into it and he said he'd get back to me but didn't. tg vanishes then ramona dies ffs. i miss those napsterites.

- js.

Ramona passed away?

How, when did it happen!?!

My condolences to you all.

[rastaX]

Quote

And I'm up while the dawn is breaking
Even though my heart is aching
I should be drinking a toast to absent friends
Instead of these comedians
— Elvis Costello

[JackSpratts]

miss_silver, on Nov 17 2009, 05:49 PM, said:

JackSpratts, on Nov 17 2009, 06:40 PM, said:

i wish to f i knew what happened to tankgirl. i asked falkvinge to look into it and he said he'd get back to me but didn't. tg vanishes then ramona dies ffs. i miss those napsterites.

- js.

Ramona passed away?

How, when did it happen!?!

My condolences to you all.

it's terrible news isn't it? we found out in april of last year, about two weeks after it happened.

- js.