Until one of them publishes a book or writes and records a song. "But wait!" they'll say. "I should get paid for that!"

I think software should be free. Hell, I think carrots should be free too. While you're at it, why not make flat-screen TVs free, and snow-cones, and amusement park rides. They should all be free, because I think they should. That logic is good enough for me! I want it, so it's mine. You got a problem with that?

Cool. That'll be 29 cents please, for that blog posting you just read. And a further 29 cents for everything you've read on the 'net today.

There is some fundamental misunderstanding about the Pirate Party.

Yes, they attack Copyright. Ans patents, to some degree.

But what we are really seeing here is the classical Generation conflict.

In a nutshell, Europe's aging elites have declared war on their own youth. The internet is attacked in the feature pages of national newspapers, intellectuals with noted names have called for war on open publishing, lacking anything as robust as the first amendment censorship is spreading, more and more intrusive surveillance and control laws are enacted all over the place, computer games and modern sports like paintball get outlawed - the list is endless.

And there is no hope in traditional parties. Their eyes firmly on the mass of elderly voters, and more and more out of touch with anything internet, their financing firmly secured by state laws, they have made themselves the vanguard of yesterday.

German Chaos Computer Club called them - fittingly - the "internet printers" - those who read email by having it printed out by their secretaries. People in power and authority who refused to enter the modern online age.

There is, apparently, a large coalition of people who never intended to cross the digital age divide, and who are malicious and angry at those who did, and try their best to destroy this new thing and make it go away.

The Pirate Party is one o several groups that have sprung up to counter this threat. Unsuccessfully so far, one might add, despite this small victory.

Expect more of the to show up in coming years.

There has to be some middle ground. Saying "everything should be free" doesn't make sense, nor does "Pay for everything."

29 cents for reading a blog post is like 29 cents to drive down my street to the corner, then 29 cents to turn the corner. Neither is workable. I never intended to get paid from a blog post, and very few people do.

But people do need to get paid for their work. I've made my living all of my adult life off of strong copyright laws (at software companies and now at a small publisher). The only way those entities stay in business is with copyright protection. If all the world's software is developed by volunteers who hope you'll cough up the dough if you like it well enough, we'll be in a big mess very soon. No one loves to complain more about software more than the general public but I can tell you how exponentially worse it would be if people are writing it all at home in their spare time.

Publishers are not bloodsucking leeches on the author's creativity. I'll happily share my slush pile with you some time to show you the difference between what the authors give us and what we actually publish. It's a partnership between author and publisher. We find the readers, we market the thing, we do all the legal legwork, we do one hell of a lot of editing. The writer writes the manuscript. We all make some money. I have a job. The writer publishes a book. All is good.

Take away electronic copyright law, and the readers can dig high and low all over the net for horribly badly written manuscripts like the ones I get, and they can glean out whatever use they can find out of them. Because I don't do book editing for fun, I do it for a living, and I get paid because of copyright law.

...is not so much about copyrights and patents as it is about their country being affected by other countries' (The United States, specifically) laws. The RIAA and MPAA sent the Swedish police in to bust up the Pirate Bay's operations despite the fact they are American organizations run by United States based companies. They feel its a threat to their sovereignty. This is a big middle finger to the RIAA and the MPAA rather than support for a organization (that I will admit I use) whose existence is objectively for breaking the current laws that are on the books. People will vote for real parties once this has died down, and the teenagers on the internet who are taking this "freedom" fight so seriously right now will move onto whatever comes out with a better product than what the Pirate Bay is giving right now.

The problem isn't copyright per se - it is its heavy handed enforcement.

The content industry is facing the worst crisis of its existence over the internet. And the main problem isn't copyright - it is the publisher's loss of their gatekeeper function. That one is irreversibly gone, and that was the center piece of their business model.

We see an industry unable or unwilling to adapt, blindly hitting on anyone and anything it blames for its woes. From a social point of view, they have become a danger to themselves and others.

One aspect is the sue everyone, monitor everything policy they run wrt the internet. This is what people perceive and this is what they react to.

There is a threshhold on the number of people you can sue in a democracy - if they are more they just have your laws quashed.

The industry should have known that. You can not basically threaten every young internet user and expect no electoral backlash. FWIW, you cant' even do that in a dictatorship, as most skilled dictators in history have understood, and as the less prudent regretted ignoring when ending standing under some sort of gallows or on front of some wall.