You probably heard a bit about the success of Sweden’s pirate party in yesterday’s elections. Here’s my favorite Swedish pirate prank:
Antipiratbyrån lawyer Henrik Pontén, one of the Pirate Bay’s arch rivals, had quite a surprise recently when he received an unexpected piece of mail. The letter from the Swedish tax authority informed him that his request for a name change had been accepted and from now on, he would be officially known as ‘Pirate Pontén’.
[….]“The pirate movement have previously tried threats and when that doesn’t work, they do this,” Pontén told Aftonbladet.
NobodySpecial
This is good news in combatting global warming.
geg6
I love these guys. I’m seriously considering moving to Sweden just so I can join the Pirate Party. And so I can change my name to Pirate G—. I’ll bet you get an eye patch and a parrot when you sign up.
Pirate Svensker
How do I look in my new eye patch?
Zandar
FOR YOU! ARE! A PIRATE!
Sadly, we need a Pirate Party here. Pirate Gingrich, Pirate Cheney, and Pirate W. Bush would be great for morale.
argh
This must be the Swedish version of “libertarian” which means anything the individual person wanting it … wants.
Now we just have to make sure we can force artists to create stuff that’s worth stealing, then we’ll have something, boy! That is the TICKET!
All of these “pirates” will, of course, pay for a gallon of gas. They have values, after all. It’s not like they are criminals or anything.
argh
They is jes teh uder 30 yeer old yung-uns who unerstan tis new wurld bEst! lulsz
NobodySpecial
I’m trying to think when any artist was ever forced against his will to post videos or music on the web.
I’m also trying to think how many musicians have gone bankrupt because their stuff was ‘pirated’ versus the number who actually got more stuff sold because they were much more easily available to the public at large.
Here’s a Pew survey on the issue.
Lupin
Swedish pirates = good. Somali pirates = bad. Pirates of the Caribbean = teh gay.
The 21st century is getting too complex for me.
Cris
Argh: they’ll only pay for gas until somebody posts a torrent of it.
Lee from NC
Best. Prank. Ever. Seriously, I loled reading the name change article. On a less humorous note, my niece actually named her recently born son “Pirate”. I kid you not. And it is not a good fit for our last name either, which I won’t post but makes the name twice as dumb.
bago
@Cris: Seeing how bit-torrent is kind of like the hybrid of downloading technologies, it makes sense.
Marc
Booty?
Bobby Thomson
Shorter Nobody Special:
Because I don’t want to pay for music, that’s why.
Bruce
@argh:
actually, the pirate party, however flawed…is actually pretty serious about internet access, freedom and the surveillance acts that have recently been accepted into law in sweden, google FRA and IPRED if you want to find out more. Lobbyists and activists like Pontén will always be there to intimidate and obfuscate, but the dialog about the internet, surveillance and piracy/immaterial rights on goods and services has just begun. Don’t muddy the waters…
btw…i do get that this prank doesn’t exacly frame the dialogue in a serious manner, but in their defense, Pontén is a douche.
SueinNM
I don’t post often here, but this is a subject that brings out the rage.
As a novelist, I make my living selling books. I don’t get a dime from used books or pirated books on the internet, which I have seen frequently. Used books I can live with; stolen books I can’t. I found one site where EVERY ONE of my books was available for stealing. And that’s supposed to help me how?
This is theft, pure and simple. I seems to be a “thing” now with “younger” people who grew up with the internet. But it’s still theft. If I can’t make a decent living writing, then I’ll have to stop. If theft contributes to this, then those thieves are robbing my LEGITIMATE readers of something they enjoy. That’s double theft.
As I often say to the thieves … if you’ll fix my car, do my taxes, and work on my computer for free, I’ll let you pirate my books.
The Other Steve
demimondian
Actually, the Pirate Party in Sweden is a lot like the Libertarian party here in the United States — it’s basically a bunch of right wingers who want free music instead of a bunch of right wingers who want to smoke pot, but, otherwise, it’s really quite similar.
Violet
Love their name. Not so sure what they stand for, exactly. But if you join, do you get an eyepatch and a parrot? That would be fantastic marketing.
The Moar You Know
As a former professional musician, let me just say I’m all in favor of piracy. The effect it has on my bottom line as an artist is pretty minimal compared to the 95% that a major label will steal (that’s right, I said “steal” and I meant it) for their “services”.
Their “services” amount to them placing your music, which you paid to make and to press, into one of their distribution channels and praying for the best. It’s not like they earned those chanels by virtue of working hard and putting out amazing music – they bulldozed their way in and bought out or bankrupted anyone who was in their way.
Piracy also has the added benefit for me of getting my music out to people who wouldn’t have heard it before and might not have listened to me before, which boosts my attendance at live shows – more on that below.
I realize the situation may be different for film, or for writers. But for musicians, stealing my last five cents when someone else already stole 95 cents before I even got paid doesn’t really make that much difference.
We musicians mostly make all our money off live shows (the record companies are even trying to steal a chunk of that now) and merchandise. Wanna support your awesome local band? Buy their T-shirts.
SGEW
@SueinNM: Out of curiosity, what do you think of the Pirate Party’s proposed five year restriction on copyrighted material (which is their policy platform, rather than (as some are assuming) a complete repeal of copyright entirely)?
I think that most people can agree that 70 years after the death of the artist is an unreasonably long time for a copyright to exist (eat it, Disney Corporation). There is room for debate over the time it takes for a copyright to expire, which is, for the most part, separate from the debate over intellectual property rights in total.
Fulcanelli
I’d bet the price of concert tickets in Europe go through the roof after this nonsense. I can’t afford to see a show here in the US now as it is, and it doesn’t help when I can remember being able to see 3 well known, established major bands on one bill for under $15 per ticket.
We probably can expect more anti-piracy technology on cd’s like root-kits, or having to register the disc with the manufacturer after purchase. Or something.
I’ve gotten to like doing the mp3 download of individual songs and whole cd’s from Amazon. Cheap, legal and with my eyesight being what it is I can barely read the damn CD covers anyway. Sigh.
It was different many moons ago with vinyl LP’s, though. Glaring at the wild cover and inner sleeve art through a haze of bong smoke. Ahhh, good times.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I don’t see this as a prank either. My understanding is that they pretty much want to eliminate every intellectual property right law on the planet so that they can steal however much movies, books and music they can suck down via their widely available and cheap broadband internet access.
Fuck them, I’m sending over the USS Constitution to blast em out of the water like we did with another form of pirates 200 years ago.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@SueinNM:
I understand it’s got to be frustrating to see your work being freely redistributed, but you can’t assume that every time someone downloads one of your books illegally, you’re losing a sale. I’d venture a guess that most of the people who have pirated one of your books wouldn’t have bought it anyway.
Corey Doctorow makes most of his stuff freely available, DRM-less, on the Internet, and it certainly doesn’t seem to have hurt his career any.
The bottom line is that trying to stop Internet piracy is a losing battle – invariably customers who want to obtain their media through legitimate, paying means are treated like criminals, and the pirates just laugh and go on their merry way.
Pirate Sister Machine Gun of Mild Harmony
The record companies are evil. However, I do sympathize with authors, video game makers, and such… provided they don’t expect (as one song author stated in an interview) copyright protection to be a legacy for their children and their children’s children. I can see copyright protection for the life of the artist (not life of the corporation). After that, it sucks. People need the freedom to mock and pivot off of other people’s work. This provides more opportunities for creativity. The way corporations are abusing copyright protection now, it inhibits creativity. If they had their way, we would have a world without Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Gabo
Agreeing with tripletee.
If someone is really reading a book in a crappy format like a .pdf, then they probably weren’t going to buy that book anyway. Maybe checked it out of a library. Maybe photocopied it. I sometimes read things in .pdf, but if I want to read a book I’ll buy it. Who really wants to curl up with a printout or laptop? Book not dead.
Something that would make a much bigger difference to authors than chasing .pdfs around the intertubes is more print-on-demand so that books never go out of print. If a book goes out of print, I’ve got no option but to find it used, which doesn’t benefit the author at all. Frequently there’s a long (multi-year sometimes) gap between me putting a book on my list and trying to buy it, during which period it goes out of print. If there were a decent print-on-demand option that produced a real book, I’d try that instead.
Augustine
Former professional musician (agreeing as to the 5% argument) and practicing writer here, and in my experience, intellectual property laws protect the capital structure more than they do the artist.
I make far more money from work-for-hire than I do from publishing rights. I’ve always felt that my value in the economy is as an idea-generator (creating and producing)–not as an idea-conserver (restricting and controlling).
You may be interested in the thoughts of Chuck Mee on this subject.
Joshua Norton
That no doubt qualifies him as an elder in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster where pirates are divine beings.
Kewl!
gwangung
Well, I REALLY prefer that all the decisions lie with the creator. If they want to distribute it freely, fine. If not, that should be fine, too. I HATE people who want to take that decision out of their hands.
That said, I really don’t see why the experience of Jim Baen’s authors aren’t relevant. Periodic free distribution of material seems to stimulate demand (albeit that free distribution seems to be for a defined period). I would argue that free distribution, from a known, authoritative source, helps overall paid distribution, hence puts more money into the author’s pocket.
The Moar You Know
@Augustine: Exactly my point.
Get sick of professional poverty like I did?
SpotWeld
..this is all getting rather “Gilbert and Sullivan”, if you catch my meaning.
bago
Copyright was primarily to protect the investments of those who shelled out tons of money for copy machines. A.K.A My printing press cost bajillions of dollars, I’m the only one that gets to print copies of Author X.
Now that copying things is free, that argument looks retarded. However a bunch of people have gotten used to getting their money for nothing and their chicks for free.
Remember back when CD’s cost almost 20 bucks? The artist was lucky to see one dollar of that. The rest was spent on copying and printing and shipping crap to people that might not buy it. This back in the retarded old days when you had to have a physical copy of an album before you could hear it.
Ever since you stopped having to print and physically ship things for people to read/hear/watch them, the entire justification for copyrights have evaporated.
Copy does not cost any money. It’s high time creators stopped paying for the right to copy themselves. Go Galt, bitches!
Augustine
@Moar
That, and 10 hrs in a Ford Econoline to get from Memphis to Lexington only to find out the headliner had trashed the Wrocklage so bad the night before that the club couldn’t open.
Yes, Mr. Westerberg, I am talking to you.
john b
one of the few things i was proud of at nc state when i was there. we elected the pirate captain to student body president.
he maintained the name “pirate captain” and was even on the daily show or something after he got elected. it was funny he pissed off a lot of the people in student gov’t because he didn’t kiss their ass like a lot of people.
The Moar You Know
@Augustine: That would do it. Of course you didn’t get paid.
One of the worst aspects of being a musician is, of course, besides the lack of money and the ridiculous exploitation, the retarded antics of other musicians.
Jen R
@tripletee (formerly tBone):
This. So-called anti-piracy measures cause far more pain to people trying to legitimately use software, music, movies, e-books, etc. than they do to pirates.
chopper
@SueinNM:
what’s your feeling regarding libraries?
PaulW
Let’s do it. Let’s start a Pirate Party.
The stated objectives for the American Pirate Party will be:
1) Rum.
2) File sharing, Internet freedom, reform of copyright and trademark law, reform of the music, movie, and media industry to ensure artists’ protections and greater access to profits derived from their efforts.
3) Women. Respectfully and honorably pursued, of course. And for the women pirates… more women, respectfully and honorably pursued, of c… whadda ya mean, women pirates aren’t bi-curious??? Arrrrrr…
4) Open government, via improved Freedom of Information Act, transparency laws, a constitutional amendment spelling out that the President and his/her office is NOT above the law (up yours, Nixon/Cheney/every other goddamn WH crook over the last 40 years), a 72-hour review period for all legislation on the floor of Congress to ensure our legislators get a chance to actually read the damn things, restricted access of lobbyists to politicians, public financing of campaigns, and easier methods of registering independent or third party candidates for elections (it costs HOW MUCH to file as an independent candidate???).
5) Lessee, we’ve covered rum, women and song, and open government. What’s left? Oh yeah. Free parrots and eye-patches for everyone!
demimondian
@Augustine: Professional software developer here — this statement is true:
I’ve adapted to the system as it stands by recognizing that the value of anything important which I do is very transient; I won’t see long term income when I make a long term difference. That’s sad, and, yes, I resent it, but the world is full of sad, and resentment doesn’t put shoes on the kiddie’s feet. Sometimes, you’ve got to shrug and move on.
(By the way, chopper, libraries pay a special royalty rate on materials, just so that creators do see a more equitable return.)
The problem is that I also agree with @gwangung:
Copyright? Meh. It’s freaking *rude* to take my work and misappropriate it. I bled my soul into something; the least you could do is acknowledge my work!
Marc
The indefinite extension of copyrights is a scam, pure and simple. There should be a public domain. 75 years is flatly insane.
I pay for my books, movies, and music – unless the authors are intellectual property jackasses, in which case I refuse to have anything to do with them.
bago
demi: I’m mostly opposed to the biz guys that think because they arranged a few meet and greets they are owed a chunk of source. More along the lines of it’s a rip to pay 20 cents to an artist out of a 15 dollar cd, because they don’t own a cd stamping machine.
argh
Libraries are legitimate, piracy is not. Or were you kidding, I hope?
I take it the visionary pirateers are fine with the ongoing Google copyright infringement case (Google scanned thousands of copyrighted books into their database). The world’s literature and information is going digital and print on demand, and without copyright protection for creators the corporations will OWN IT ALL. Copyright protects the little and usually (initially) poor artist, NOT the wealthy fucks of the world.
These “pirates” are just the usual rightwing tools for corporate greed, ladled out with all the usual sauce of hooligan aggression and high times on offer. Yes, this first step looks okay and even justifiable. It is meant to. Wait.
People just aren’t learning fast enough: you don’t dismantle things just because YOU might happen to think you know how it is. Because you really don’t. The world has come to its solutions through trial and error, not proactive happygoodness, and copyright exists for a very good reason.
Thinking ahead to the next iteration:
1) artists lose copyright protection and so the merry Corps eat their work (the only thing standing between an author and Amazon’s wily ways is copyright law),
2) so talented (but financially strapped and powerless) artists quit and leave the field,
3) to the happy Corpses who are VERY HAPPY to peddle their stupid, dumbing-down propagandized trash at a loss.
4) EPIC FAIL
Now granted, I’m talking about reading and books. Maybe that is a needed distinction.
Right now good, inspiring, meaningful soulful work of truth is hated competition to manufactured propaganda, but remove copyright and propaganda will be the only thing that will be profitable to create.
Google and Amazon and the rest of the drooling greedmeisters are circling to own all of human knowledge. It sounds silly until you actually look under the covers and see the infringements, the lobby arguements, the collusion. Pirates are well-named, and they are doing the dirty corps work.
That is the rest of the story.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@argh:
You also don’t maintain the status quo just for the sake of maintaining the status quo when there’s been a seismic shift in technology. The movie, music and publishing industries as they exist today have to adapt or die. The sooner they get on with it, the easier the transition will be for the artists. The music industry is starting to get there, the movie industry is where music was 5 years ago, and the publishing industry (judging by the ridiculous flap over the Kindle’s text-to-speech feature) is Metallica in 1998.
The Moar You Know
@argh: Hey, you know what’s weird?
In spite of still retaining copyright protection, steps one through four are exactly what happened to the music industry and the artists working in it. Right down to the end result, unless you want to make the argument that Britney Spears and Lil’ Jon are artists and not lifestyle purveyors.
The corporations already own it all. Who are you kidding? As a writer, are you self-published? No, of course not – why? Because you can’t get a book in a bookstore that’s of any size to make printing it worthwhile. So you let Random House (or whoever) take most of your money and effective control of your copyright (give them exclusive rights or no publishing for you!) – that is if you don’t sign it over to them outright for next month’s rent – and regardless of what route you take, the fact that you hold copyright doesn’t mean squat any more.
Music industry works exactly the same way – and this is something I lived, I’m not yanking this out of my ass.
The only thing that copyright protection does these days is insure that wealthy corporations can legally maintain a monopolistic stranglehold over what material gets published and when.
And maybe if they like your
propaganda idealifestyle videomusical masterpiece enough, they’ll publish it and give you a few bucks for having helped dumb the population down a little more.Karmakin
Copyright should be 10 years, or until it goes out of print. Period. Want to keep making money? Keep producing! That’s the entire point.
The bigger “problem” is that content and culture, in our society is something where we pay for the container, and not the content, or more precisely, exposure to the content. Thusly, piracy, libraries, used media shops, loans, rentals, radio, television (cable and free both), and probably other social and economic institutions, are in fact all coming from this mindset.
That some of these things are legal (and encouraged!) and some of these things are illegal, points to the inanity, and the lack of understanding that exists about the subject.
That said, 0-day piracy can be bad. However, there’s a lot of holes with this where the companies simply are not offering the content in the desired package. This is where the change has to occur.
TenguPhule
Always buy your books used whenever possible.
Recycle!
bago
@TenguPhule: That’s the exact opposite of paying the author.
The Moar You Know
@bago: Exactly. So why is it still legal?
Hint: the furor over copyright infringment is not about the poor, poverty-stricken, abused artist.
sugarfree
Copyright is a societal contract.
Society gives you legal protections to distribute your works as you see fit for a limited period and in exchange, your works go into the public domain for others to use, alter, reinterpret, etc.
Unfortunately, by extending that “limited period” indefinitely, copyright holders have decided they don’t want to hold up their end of the bargain. Most of them, Disney being the main offender, made billions on the public domain but now they don’t want to contribute back.
The law may not have realized this but society has.
NobodySpecial
Erm, no. I happily pay for most of my music, whether physical or through iTunes. About the only things I haven’t ‘paid’ the artist for are CD’s I’ve bought used or tracks I’ve downloaded that are out of print or (or were never IN print in the first place.)
My entire argument is that more people who have actual experience of the web for distribution of works overwhelmingly think it’s a good thing because it spreads their work wider. That’s analagous to getting airplay on the radio – the more people hear it, the more people will want a copy, and a large majority are quite willing to pay for the privilege BECAUSE it supports the artist.
Roger Moore
@SGEW:
I think 5 years is too short. The original 14 years with the ability to renew for another 14 years seems reasonable. I might be convinced to go to a slightly longer term. The big thing for me, though, is that there should be a requirement that creators renew their copyrights periodically if they want to keep them. Orphaned works- ones that are under copyright but for which the copyright holder is difficult to identify and/or contact- undermine the whole purpose of copyright.
TenguPhule
And I’m not paying $12.95 for something I can get used for $1.50.
Either fix the system or the system fixes you.
TenguPhule
A ship and a star to steer her by.
brantl
An author’s work can’t be passed down to his kids? It should be. If you want to change copyrights agreeably, change them to where copyrights can only be held/passed to people, not companies. Then they can be an inheritance, as they should be. And if there isn’t any inheritor by common law application or a will, then they become public domain.
TenguPhule
Uh no. Grandkiddies are not supposed to be raking in money based on something that was written before they were born.
Copyright for the life of the creator +14 yrs after death I can understand.
Copyright into perpetuity for any reason = Fuck no.
bago
@TenguPhule: Off of the top of my head I can imagine an IPID registration where you pay a fee for access to a book, and gain the ability to showcase your library with public and private collections.
You get an author’s work for a minimal fee, you show to the entire world how much you paid the author as a part of a public library, and you still have a private option 4tehpronz. For books in a more tactile format you can get a pdf or whatever of the work and have it be graced by a unique tag verifying payment to the artist.
If you’re a cheap pirate it won’t be hard to tell, and you’ll look like a cheap pirate. Social enforcement mechanisms, rather than legal ones. This will also have amusing effects on the scientology/right-wing book clubs that claim sales numbers via pulped copies bought up by the church/thinktank. Very easy to query the DB for unique sales.
Sophist
Yeah, like that’s going to stop the companies. They’ll just have the copyrights held in trust by the CEO, or enact some other such legal jiggery-pokery. It’ll work for about as long as it takes to call the legal department for an emergency meeting.
Prezactly. Part of why people are so willing to pirate is because they know that if they bought a cd at a shop only a couple of cents would go to the artist, and the rest would go to a series of middlemen. It’s a lot easier to justify screwing over a huge corporation that adds almost nothing to the work than it is to screw over the artist.
geg6
@PaulW:
I’m in. If only for the free parrot and eye patch.
TenguPhule
I think you need to look up the definition of tactile.
Xenos
@TenguPhule: I don’t even buy books used any more. I live in a university town and there is a free book exchange at the landfill. Amazing the stuff that gets left there.
The Moar You Know
@Xenos: True story: I was dumping some construction debris at the Santa Cruz landfill quite a few years ago, pulled up to the pile, and right at my feet in a box was a twenty-volume set, printed on archival paper, of the Annals of America. A great set of books. A set goes for about $150 bucks on Amazon, and mine is in perfect shape, just like the day I found it.
At the landfill.
Amazing what people will throw away. The least the person could have done was to take the set to a school.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
You might want to reconsider the parrot part. Parrots are obnoxious. They’re noisy, messy, destructive, and demand lots and lots of attention. Somebody has described having a pet parrot as like having a 3 year old who never grows up and can outlive you.
demimondian
@The Moar You Know: The man nailz it…
I still would like some control, and I still reject that core claim that there’s some moral reason people pirate. Sorry, folks, but…it’s because you’re cheap. If it weren’t, iTunes wouldn’t work — it’s a MORE restrictive distribution format than a CD, at a higher price/song!
Augustine
@Moar
@demimondian
And as the legal infrastructure dedicated to protecting the rights of capital is an inherently retrogressive construct, there is absolutely no chance of the law adapting at the rate technology does.
mey
Pirate Party is closer to liberals than libertarians.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@demimondian:
Point of order: iTunes, like Amazon and (I think) Zune Marketplace, is now completely DRM-free. With the exception of being unable to sell back to the used marketplace, I don’t think that counts as “more restrictive.”
And the higher price per song thing only holds up if you bought each track individually, rather than the full album. In most cases, buying an album on iTunes/Amazon/wherever is cheaper than brick and mortar – although less so now, since the record labels (read: assholes) finally got variable pricing implemented.
in canaduh
this whole mess makes me laugh out loud :]
corporate “arts and media” support a LOT of mediocre crap that should never be duplicated and distributed..the lowest common denominator is ALWAYS in effect. screw the labels and the artists, you don’t hear much complaining about piracy from independant labels and artists releasing good music..
MNPundit
@Bobby Thomson: IP law doesn’t give a flying fuck about individuals. It’s purpose was to make people money so they could invent more cool stuff to benefit society.
Current copyright law enriches corporations and allows them skate by on a single good idea, forever taking it out of circulation.
Andrew
Todays sesame street is brought to you by the Letter “Arrrgghhh”