Swede 'pirates' fight for Web freedom
Pirates are invading the European Union, the digital kind. The Pirate Party, which aims to abolish copyrights altogether, is picking up serious traction with Swedish youth. Brett Neely reports.
A member of Sweden's Pirate Party in Stockholm holds a list of party candidates for the June 4-7 European Parliament elections. (Marc Preel/AFP/Getty Images)
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TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Napster is celebrating its 10th anniversary today. Back in June of 1999, it was the first really consumer-friendly, music-sharing Web site out there. That quickly made it very unfriendly for record companies. The music industry sued for copyright violation, then won. So Napster eventually went mainstream. It's part of Best Buy now. But the company's buccaneering spirit lives on. A Swedish political party that wants to restrict copyright protections is attracting a lot of support ahead of this weekend's European elections. From Stockholm, Sweden, Brett Neely reports.
BRETT NEELY: Meet the Pirate captain.
CHRISTIAN ENGSTROM: My name is Christian Engstrom. I'm the vice-chairman of the Pirate Party, and I'm the top candidate for the European parliament elections.
The 49-year-old IT consultant doesn't have an eyepatch, or a wooden leg. His party's logo is a black flag, but the only sign of Engstrom's pirate tendencies is a discreet lapel pin on his blazer in the shape of a P. For a pirate, his message is peaceful.
Engstrom: We're basically a civil rights party.
In this case, online civil rights. The Pirate Party says music and movies should be freely shared on the Web. Copyright laws should be rewritten, and the current patent system scrapped. Technology activists founded the party in 2006. At the time, the government tried to shut down a popular file-sharing Web site called the Pirate Bay, which is used by millions of downloaders across the world.
In the center of Stockholm, members of the Pirate Party hand out pamphlets and fliers. Robert Myberg, a young party member, says the government went too far when it tried to close the Pirate Bay.
ROBERT Myberg: It's very popular in Sweden. That's why there came such an uproar when the police did this to the Pirate Bay.
There's no formal relation between the Web site and the Pirate Party, though many party members do use it. Myberg and other party activists aren't just worried about the Web site. They're also concerned about other technology issues, like a 2008 law that lets the government tap Internet connections without a warrant. Candidate Engstrom says the law inhibits online communications.
Engstrom: I mean, what's the point in having freedom of speech if it applies everywhere except on the Internet. And the Internet is the only platform that is being used?
In April, the Swedish government convicted the Pirate Bay's founders of violating copyright laws and sentenced them to prison. After the trial, tens of thousands of Swedes joined the Pirate Party, making it the country's third largest with more than 46,000 members. The core supporters are often young men with backgrounds in technology.
PER Gudmundson: These are more like the kind of guys that run your office help desk.
Per Gudmundson is an editorial writer for newspaper Svenska Dageblatt. He says these nerds were shut out of the political debate by the establishment and have used the Web to build a new kind of political movement.
Gudmundson: The traditional parties haven't really been that good at implementing those social Web techniques that the Pirate Party has mastered.
Recent opinion polls show the party getting as much as 8 percent of the vote in Sweden, enough to win at least one seat in the European Parliament in Brussels, where copyright and telecoms policy is set for the whole of Europe. And the message is spreading to other parts of the continent. There are now registered Pirate parties in several other EU countries, including Germany, Spain and Poland.
In Stockholm, I'm Brett Neely for Marketplace.
Comments
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From TX, 06/03/2009
Musicians do not make their money from selling their music. The average band gets something like $0.08 per $18.00 CD they sell. CDs are there to get people listening to them so that people will show up at concerts. Bands get anywhere from $5.00 to $50.00 per person at a concert. If a CD becomes popular on the internet and everyone downloads it, that band makes more money when more people go to see them live. Hence bands like NIN and Advance Patrol (May have to google that last one). Big movies make their money in the box office, and there are a lot of ways for software companies to do the same if they plan for it.
From TX, 06/03/2009
Musicians do not make their money from selling their music. The average band gets something like $0.08 per $18.00 CD they sell. CDs are there to get people listening to them so that people will show up at concerts. Bands get anywhere from $5.00 to $50.00 per person at a concert. If a CD becomes popular on the internet and everyone downloads it, that band makes more money when more people go to see them live. Hence bands like NIN and Advance Patrol (May have to google that last one). Big movies make their money in the box office, and there are a lot of ways for software companies to do the same if they plan for it.
From Dallas, TX, 06/03/2009
I believe that piracy must be controlled better but there need to improvements to industry and laws as well. Copyright laws are totally far to long now and a mess to understand even for the lawyers. How long will a copyright last, my great grandmother wrote a childrens book in 1924, she was told the copyright would last 28 years, then it changed to 56 years just before it ran out and now it is 95 years. Will adding time to these copyrights ever end and let them go to public domain? I now own the copyright but can't put it in public domain unless I spend 30k to 300k to go to court because of contracts written before I was born. There is no way really to put things in the public domain, you can try and may even do it if there was never a contract but a court maybe the only way. Judges, like lawyers each read the laws and somehow come to different answers.
From Umeå, Sweden, 06/03/2009
The reason I am a member and voter of swedish Piratpartiet is not because everything I care about is legal filesharing. The reason is because Piratpartiet is the only party that truly cares about integrity and our basic rights. The war the copyright industry has called upon the filesharers has created a lot of really stupid laws that is intruding on our privacy and creating a surveillance society that none of us want. All international media seems to think that all we care about is free filesharing.
06/03/2009
If these people want to get rid of copyrights, they should do so by example. Create something, anything,then give it away for free on the Internet.
Once they pay for the software to create, the website, the anti-piracy software, and then the advertising campaign...they will have a point to make.
some artists work for the pleasure of getting their stuff out there, and pay for it out of pocket. If these pirates want to go down that road, then I will be interested in listening to them. But if they are just consumers looking for freebies...I can hear that anywhere.
Its funny how every attempt to create a free market, or anarchist, society where everything is free...fails due to a lack of money to pay for it.
From Santa Monica, CA, 06/02/2009
In 1981 I worked for a startup computer company called Datamost with a great game called Aztec. Before the box was even printed the game was leaked out to a bulletin board called 'pirates cove'. Pirates Cove was a just a few dialup modems connected to a PC, but it was enough to sink Datamost.
Who will make movies or music if it's given away?
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