The Power of the Internet!

[Noreen]

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - If tech-savvy campaigning helped power Barack Obama to the White House, the election of Sweden's Pirate Party in Europe signals that Internet and related privacy issues are political drivers for young voters.

The party, which wants an Internet filesharing free-for-all while beefing up Internet privacy, won 7.1 percent of Sunday's votes, taking one of Sweden's 18 seats in the EU Parliament................

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090608/tc_afp/euvoteswedensocietyinternet

[Rik]

I do think they are being a little disingenuous, they want to make money, but feel it's OK to steal from others to do it.

[Noreen]

That's not the point of my post, Rik!

[Rik]

Oh, I realised that, it was just the language they used which hit me.

[drummer]

I don't think the Pirate Party are being disingenuous in the slightest, although they certainly are being deliberately provocative in order to nudge people into giving some serious thought about internet privacy in particular, and civil liberties in general.

There are some who believe that losing twenty nine shillings and three ha'porth a year in royalties is a good enough reason to deprive the rest of us of our internet privacy and, inter alia, all our civil liberties to boot.

Sometimes it's necessary to take an absurd stance in order to highlight the absurdity of mainstream politics and politicians and their constant pandering to corporate lobbyists.

Our civil liberties are much more important than someone's royalties ain't they?

I've actually lost out on royalties because of internet piracy but it never once crossed my mind that infringing everyone's internet privacy and civil liberties was an acceptable solution to my perceived penury.

Meh!

http://pirateparty.org.uk

[Rik]

OTOH, Drummer, the same people want to make money from their activities. If they weren't so keen on the latter, I might accept what they say. (Though I agree that the approach to solving the piracy issue is not proportional to the problem.)

[john]

Apparently these pirates as well as ignoring the law are also ignoring letters  (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8091107.stm

Among the topics considered by the wide-ranging report will be recommendations that ISPs investigate "technical solutions" to piracy which could involve slowing down connection speeds for unrepentant pirates.

How would they tell the diffference between their ISP slowing their connection due to them downloading stuff they shouldn't and their usual performance they get from their ISP anyway ? 

[Rik]

 

Here we would know. I just wonder how ISPs are meant to identify illegal downloads.

[john]

Here we would know.

[colonelsun]

And exactly what is an illegal download? For us in Europe and the U.S it may mean video or music....in China it can mean something else. Far from the web being equal or liberalising each country terms illegal in different ways or will make one particular type of download a priority...so right now music seems to be a priority in the U.S.

Luckily if you're a basic Sky broadband subscriber this subject means nothing when it can take 20 minutes to download an email. Oh how i laughed when i'd spent 35 minutes downloading anti virus additions only to be told my computer had been unplugged from the web for the past 30 minutes.