Pirates, Politics, and Principles
Written Jun. 15, 2009 by Larry Rosin in with 2 Comments
Of course, the European Parliamentary elections do not get a ton of attention in America. But there was the very interesting victory for a couple of seats in the Parliament by the Swedish "Pirate Party."
The party was formed in the ashes of the Pirate Bay Web site, one of the largest download sites for music, video, and games. True to the name, the Pirates were willfully flouting the copyright laws and encouraging the free 'illegal' downloads. And the four owners of the site were prosecuted and now sit in a Swedish jail.
Instead of saying: "Gee, I guess stealing that stuff really is illegal", they have turned this cause into a kind of 21st century civil rights. Campaigning on the themes of "Internet Privacy" (read: "I can download what I want") and shortening of copyrights, the Pirate Party turned out about 7% of the vote in Sweden.
One has to respect the supporters of piracy turning their thoughts to the political system to achieve their goals, as compared to, say, denial of service attacks and the like. And it does sound oh-so-Scandinavian to believe that music, video games, movies and television shows should be entirely free to everyone...let the producers figure out how to make money to pay for it.
But at the same time, it is a struggle to associate the 'right' to download your music for free with actual 'human rights'. It will be interesting to watch if the Pirates are the next 'Greens', who have turned ecology and sustainability into an ongoing, legitimate political force. Or is this just the latest joke party? And will we see a Pirate Party in the USA?
Reader Comments
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Most Europeans don't take the European Parliament elections very seriously; turn-out is low and people have no idea what the parliament does. I would bet that if people took it more seriously, they would be more likely to vote for serious parties.
One thing you have to also take into account is that while in the US, digital content is now widely available at reasonable prices and in ways people might want to see it. Like movies on their TVs instead of computer screens with a wide range of devices and stores to choose from. (Apple, Netflix, Amazon, the list goes on) In Europe there is only AppleTV, really. If there is anything available at all as it varies wildly per country. Cable On-Demand is also almost non-existent.
Every year more and more people want this stuff and STILL nobody is seriously offering it in Europe. (or here in Australia for that matter) What did old media think was going to happen? People would just continue going to the video store when a more convenient option is available?
Piracy is piracy, darn the torpedoes. The law still has to be upheld no matter if we like it or not. Two seats in a no-name parliament is not going to change anything.
That said, this whole matter shows how screwed up the big labels are. Will they, because of the many smaller labels out there, end up like GM and have to go bankrupt and out of business and some small label that has a clue about worldwide marketing and the smarts to set up agreements within countries and with many different countries be able to do what the big league labels won't do?
Maybe it's got to come down to exactly that. Warner, Sony, etc., going belly up. They're going to, given their arrogance of late over the matter of royalties in the US, stations are going to go to smaller labels they can cut deals with over royalties and payments, and that will leave all the big-name acts of today well, basically screwed over.