piratesofmovie2k

when your business model is threatened a lot of companies tried to preserve it as long as possible. they pay millions and billions of dollars for political lobbying instead of fostering innovative ideas. business models like itunes or netflix show that it is possible to make money as a content delivery network, but many other companies tried to scare users away from filesharing and introduce DRM like steam or origin in order to retain their sales. that may have helped in short terms but we dont think those companies have a future.

as far as studies tell us, there is no harm or damage caused by filesharing

• European Union says filesharing helps artists

• American Assembly - Copy Culture Report

• many other papers

there is a website on copyright reforms with further information

Today’s copyright legislation is out of balance, and out of tune with the times. It has turned an entire generation of young people into criminals in the eyes of the law, in a futile attempt at stopping technological development. Yet file sharing has continued to grow exponentially. Neither propaganda, fear tactics, nor ever harsher laws have been able to stop the development.

It is impossible to enforce the ban against non-commercial file sharing without infringing on fundamental human rights. As long as there are ways for citizens to communicate in private, they will be used to share copyrighted materials. The only way to even try to limit file sharing is to remove the right to private communication. In the last decade, this is the direction that copyright enforcement legislation has moved in, under pressure from big business lobbyists who see their monopolies under threat. We need to reverse this trend to safeguard fundamental rights.

edit: formatting

It happened last friday. We were notified by torrentfreak (see this post) and indeed there was much more DNS traffic than usual on our servers (especially since they gave negative responses that did not get cached). Oh, and various cops also called us and our providers, but this time, they at least didn't take our servers again.

Since there was a massive press shitstorm (probably fired up by the content mafia PR departments) going on against the site, we laid low for a short while, then finally deployed the site today.

The result was this and then it was like this.

short version: openness (open government), copyright reform and civil rights (opposed to anti-terror legislations).

there is a translation of our program available at http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Parteiprogramm/en - there you can find our positions in regards to other important topics. We also put up a short summary on the info page:

The section on copyright:

The German Pirate Party (Piratenpartei) does not want to abolish copyright, but we do want to give it a massive overhaul. Private (file)sharing must be legal and must not be hindered by lawsuits or DRM. Protected works must not be withheld from the public domain for 70 years after the death of the author anymore.

We also want to improve the situation for authors by strengthening their position against the RIAA/MPAA-style organizations (like the GEMA, which is responsible for blocking a significant part of Youtube videos for German viewers).

You can read more about the copyright policy of the German Pirate Party in the copyright section of our election program (in German) or the manifesto (english).

Note that while most Pirate Parties worldwide want copyright reform, the exact policy may vary. Find your local Pirate Party on Pirate Parties International - nearly every country has one.

For the more general topics, see this section:

The common aims of the international Pirate Parties are copyright reform, privacy, transparency, and public participation. Find your local Pirate Party on Pirate Parties International - nearly every country has one - and inform yourself about their aims!

Although the German Piratenpartei sticks up for the rights of Internet users, we are not just an "Internet party". We fight for privacy and civil liberties, both online and offline, be it a privacy for your e-mails or a strong right to assemble and protest. We fight for an unconditional basic income and a general minimum wage. For free access to education without open or hidden fees. For real equality. For a healthcare system for everyone. A drug policy that gives addicts the help they need instead of threathening weed smokers with prison.

This is just a small excerpt from our comprehensive Manifesto (English translation here) and the even more detailed Election Program for the federal election. (Sadly, many people appear to be unable to read even the table of contents, since there are still people claiming we don't have any ideas what to do or are "just an internet party". Think freely and inform yourself!)

As stated above, we are not the ones who ran the original site, we are just hosting the replacement after the original owners redirected it to us. We do not know the original operators. Thus, we don't know if the site will be ever back up to original.

However, we have heared that there is a site called "Movie4k" that is quite similar.

Of course we recommend voting for the Piratenpartei, if we wouldn't fully support its aims we wouldn't be spending quite a few nights keeping the IT running. If we get into the parliament, we get a lot of useful tools even if we aren't part of the government coalition. For example, we may ask questions formally which the government has to answer ("Kleine Anfrage"), making it possible to uncover corruption and stop bad laws by public shaming. Next time the government tries to get a new anti-privacy law approved with like 5% of the members of parliament present at 2 o'clock in the morning, we can show full attendance and actually reject the law - or at least request a check for Beschlussfähigkeit (a certain number of members of parliament must be present in order to pass laws), stopping the law and drawing public attention.

If you are afraid of a CDU-led coalition (e.g. the "big" black-red or a black-green coalition), take into account we are the only party to strongly oppose a coalition with the CDU (due to their anti-freedom politics) besides the Left party (Linkspartei). However, the SPD said they won't do a "big" coalition source