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Pirate Party Demands To Be Paid For Its Hard Work
Pirate Parties
Pirate Parties
Since 2006, the Swedish Pirate Party has worked to improve the dissemination of culture and the safeguarding of people’s privacy. Up until now, this work has been done for free, but that’s coming to an end. The party has had enough of the freetard generation and demands payment for its hard work.
“Society at large and individual citizens both benefit from the hard work of the Pirate Party. It is not reasonable that we should do it for free”, says party leader Anna Troberg. “If the freetard generation in Parliament and outside of it wants to reap the fruit of our hard labor, they’ll have to pay for it from now on.”
This is a rough English translation of a press release issued on the morning of April 1, 2012 by the Swedish Pirate Party. Yes, now that the date has passed: it’s an april fool’s joke. We have a tradition of making fun of copyright math; also check last year’s press release.
In the European Elections in 2009, the Swedish Pirate Party achieved about 7 per cent of the national vote. This means that about 280,000 people voted for the party. It is reasonable to assume that these people, on average, have spent ten hours of work spreading culture and safeguarding privacy every month – counting the six years since the party was founded. This means that pirates have worked over two billion hours without payment.
“It’s shocking that we are expected to do all this work for free”, says Troberg. “Pirates, just like everyone else, are in no position to pay for food and board with air and gratitude. It is about time that we claim our obvious right to get paid for the valuable time that has been stolen from us.”
Therefore, the party has calculated a standard remuneration of 30 euros per hour for the performed work. This sums up to about 61 billion euros – money that the party will demand from those who have stolen so much time from the party’s activists, stolen it through their lack of interest for culture and privacy.
“The Pirate Party will send invoices this week to all the parties in Swedish Parliament, demanding remuneration for our hard labor”, says Troberg. “If they had done their job, our activists would have been able to spend their valuable time elsewhere.”
About The Author: Rick Falkvinge
Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He has a tech entrepreneur background and loves whisky.
Absolutely agree and the pirate party should demand also loyalties from the entertainment and high-tech industries for each time as they used without permission the name of the party or its derivatives, full or in part ( so for words as “piracy” or “pirate”) in relation with their products or services.
But I think the Pirate party has the most smart, educated and qualified voters, so the rate of 30 EUR for their labor must be an April joke – it has to be at least the double!
“…… the rate of 30 EUR for their labor must be an April joke – it has to be at least the double!”
Look, 30 euros per house is quite a bargain, true, but we have to be careful: we DON’T want to alienate the younger generation of potential voters, right?
Nowadays, the normalized criminal behavior in the young is more widespread than most people realize. The hours of work, AND the hours that this work has been enjoyed, used and shared all over the world are increasing every day…. often without a single penny being paid for the effort! It is a monumental problem that we must tackle with great care, especially since many do not even realize this is a crime!
Perhaps even YOU guilty of one or more of the following:
Discussing Pirate Politics around the dinner table?
Mentioning privacy, censorship, or creative business models to your friends?
Debating the dangers of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, or any other 3-12 letter acronyms formed from the following capital letters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ….. in online forums, blogs, with your friends, coworkers, or even complete strangers?
If so, then you have used the labor of the Pirate Party for your advantage–did you ever think to pay for the right to reproduce these conversations, debates, and passing mentions? If not, then you too are guilty of stealing the Pirate Party’s work!
Surely, the Party will soon be collecting for these hours of toil as well.
One step at a time.
*edit: per hour, not house. Grrr. *Needs edit button…*
Oh lol… Almost posted serious crap about this being a silly post. Then I remembered the date… Doh!
Where do I send my invoice for my share of the booty me hearties?
btw, I also want to claim compensation for time wasted in having to research, download and operate all sorts of computer and privacy protection software simply to thwart the greedy, grabbing fingers and spying eyes of the MAFIAA, Governments, Big Business et al.
There’s a translation of your “how shall the artists get paid?” article in French on http://ompldr.org/iZDd6Nw
Now, Rick, either you pay me or I’ll sue you!
I would like to make everyone remember the countless ours eMule developers put into the client during the past 10 years.
This necessarily has to be repaid in hard cache.
100.000€/year/emule dev is the appropriate minimum.
You can pay us in bit coins or in pay safe cards, I’d personally also take gold.
David X.
lol!
L (0401) L
:)
Didn’t get the joke until I read the amount :D
harharhar, gimme da booty
I’m _not_ joking.
Omg why do I fall for every April fools joke article!!!
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Falkvinge.net lacks one thing. The date toward the blog post. Damn it!
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