Australian Pirate Party sets sail

The launch of the Pirate Party in Australia adds yet another voice to the fast-growing global network of buccaneer politics: a pirate internationale appears to be taking shape. In Australia, as elsewhere, the newly-formed Pirate Party will be campaigning on a platform of anti-internet censorship and the decriminalisation of …

[Anonymous Coward]

The Stupid People's Party

"and the decriminalisation of non-commercial file-sharing."

File-sharing can be decriminalised in many ways - which do not f*ck over the artists. The freetards don't get understand this, and simply want to dismantle remuneration rights.

So the Pirate Party party should be called the Very Stupid People's Party? Why would you join for any other reason?

[Filippo]

Re: AC 12.42

"Very Stupid People's Party"

I though there were already several such parties?

[sandman]

I see a coalition

How about a Green Pirate Sex Party - that would get my vote!

[Fred 1]

@Sandman

As a lifelong member of the Sex Pirate Green Party I'd just like to say that we hate the Green Pirate Sex Party. Bloody splitters!

[Anonymous Coward]

Err...

"...decriminalisation of non-commercial file-sharing..." Soo, this would actually not cover The Pirate Bay - they are commercial as they make money from Advertising and the facillitate the sharing of copyright files. (They host the tracker - they aren't just a search engine.)

@Fred 1 - "Where's the Australlian Pirate Party?"

"He's over there"

"SPLITTER!"

[The Original Steve]

@Fraser

And a tracker is illegal how?

In fact how is it any different than, say, a DDNS service provider?

[Anonymous Coward]

@The Original Steve

A tracker per se isn't illigal, a tracker that facillitates the downloading of copyright material, when the company who runs that tracker have been informed of this is clearly illigal. Especially if that company then makes a profit from offering this service.

I'm not sure how you could liken a tracker to a DDNS service, please enlighten me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Always good for a laugh

The Pirate Party is always good for a laugh. Maybe they should get real jobs?

[Andrew Norton]

@fraser

ah, so you define a commercial activity as any activity that has any form of income;

that's charities f*cked then. They have an income, they're not commercial. Commercial is selling a product or service in order to make a profit. What profit are TPB making? can you show me any profit they've made?

The majority of the profit argument hinges on on the same sort of maths as all 'copyright harm' arguments, that you only look at one side of the equation. The income claims are based on the price a single advert was being sold for, by an advertising agency. It wasn't the cost TPB was charging, or the amount they were getting. It also doesn't take into account the massive COSTS associated with running such a site.

95% of the antipiracy claims are hogwash, that's why they've NEVER released the raw data that forms the basis of their studies. Believe it or not, sales of music is UP. This summer was the best one ever for the US box office. Piracy, what harm? It's lies, just as it was when the same claims were made in the 80s, and 70s and 60s (with home taping, VCRs, cableTV, portable tape recorders) and going even further back, with player pianos and radio. Frankly, I'm still amazed people fall for it, but then, there's no accounting for either gullibility, or corruption.

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is

at some point someone's going to get pissed and start filing a ton of lawsuits (akin to grabbing the football and saying screw you hippies, I'm going home!)

[Big Pete]

@sandman

"How about a Green Pirate Sex Party - that would get my vote!"

Arrr matey, Is that a pork sword i see in your belt?.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely to get far

Voting is compulsory in Australia so the votes for parties like this one are almost always insignificant compared to the votes of the (boring, mainstream) majority. They are unlikely to get very far.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Andrew Norton

Ok, so I should have said that commercial is making or attempting to make a profit, clearly a charity, a non-profit making entity is not a company.

It has been fairly well discussed on the reg and elsewhere that TPB are attempting and presumably suceeding in making a profit., however I don't have their accounts. It costs money to run any enterprise, be it legal or not costs are incurred, so I'm not sure where you were going with that particular argument. It doesn't make it alright if they only make a small amount rather than a large amount, hell it doesn't matter if they make a loss, come to that.

As for comments about copyright harm, this is trotted out all the time with no proof whatsoever. Why would someone download something if they didn't want it? And music sales may well be up, they may have been up even more if it weren't for TPB et al. You've not seen the suffering of small bands who can't make ends meet where a few extra sales would be very welcome indeed, I presume?

[Paul 129]

@sandman et. al.

To kinky for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a crime???

"the decriminalisation of non-commercial file-sharing."

Ouch! I didn't realise non-commercial file-sharing was a crime in Oz.

Maybe we're not so bad off in the UK where non-commercial file-sharing isn't a criminal offence.

[James 63]

Not all or nothing...

"The danger, within the Australian system, is that there are now three very distinct parties with overlapping agendas, all likely to be competing for the same core anti-establishment vote: the Green Party, the Sex Party and the Pirate Party."

Australia has a wacky preferences voting system, you get to specify a 1-2-3- etc choice of who gets your vote. If your number 1 mob don't get enough votes they look at who you put for number 2, and give it to them, and so on until someone's got over the 50% mark. Hence a vote for the Pirate Party can end up getting a member of the Greens into power, and the parties get to see all the preferences, hence they can see what the electorate like. While it's ridiculously confusing it does allow you to send a message to the pollies (e.g. when your local Labor MP gets voted in he knows 30% of his/her electorate voted for the Sex Party at #1, and thus getting all cosy with the Christian right might not be such a good career move...)

[Anonymous Coward]

young, idealistic, enthusiastic...

and have no idea of the real world.

If you look at all the profiles, you would see that they are all under 30, involved somehow in IT and mostly male. Many of them are still at uni and have some interesting descriptions of themselves. Even if I agreed with their entire programme, I would no vote for them based upon their descriptions.

There are also very few candidates, which probably indicates a very small number of people willing to sign up.This may be a problem because to be registered as a political party in Australia, there needs to be at least 500 electors registered with the party. So I doubt if we will hear too much of them.

[Winkypop]

Sex party?

They got F...ked at the last election!

[Anonymous Coward]

@Fraser

"You've not seen the suffering of small bands who can't make ends meet where a few extra sales would be very welcome indeed, I presume?"

Maybe they should try making music people would wana buy then?

[Andrew Norton]

@fraser

yes I've seen small bands, I've seen big ones. I used to be a copyright enforcer for a music label, so I know the REAL facts.

i also know where the figures come from that claim TPB is making millions - The figure came from the price an advertising reseller had a spot on their site up for. The claim of millions was extrapolated by this by multiplying that figure by the amount of adverts on the site, and saying that's tpb's profit. No reference to how much the advertising broker paid tpb, or that it might have been a typo (because we've never seen THEM on advertised prices have we) or the costs of running a few dozen servers, or the bandwidth the site+tracker uses. Or that other adverts would have brought in less. It was as horribly flawed as every antip2p organisations claims of loss.

I like Steak. I went to a restaurant yesterday and didn't have steak. Why? Because the price was higher than I was willing to pay. Now, if it was available cheaper, I would have it. It it's on a buffet I would have some, but generally, I don't buy steak in restaurants. the cost for that product, much as I may like it, is greater than I'm willing to pay. At the price they are offering, I will not buy at all. By the logic of antip2p stats, if I went and had steak elsewhere, maybe at a friends where I got it for free, I've cost that restaurant a sale! That's how the stats work. They've been made up for years.

I remember reading the minutes from a BPI meeting 7-8 years ago, and back then, they were wondering how to fudge numbers to make these losses 'appear' then. You ask 'how many would they have sold without it' - maybe more, maybe less. How many would they have sold if the law required every person to buy 2 copies? What if the law required homeowners to sell their children into slavery before defaulting on their mortgage, and that everyone should have to have an unauthorised overdraft once a month - Northern Rock wouldn't have had any problems. Every failed business can have a 'what if' and a 'we planned this, but it didn't happen'. That's business. If people aren't buying your products, work out why and fix it, don't try and force people to buy it regardless, that's never worked and never will.