[pp.int.general] Chalk one up for the Swedish PP

[Findeton]

Hi Rick, i'm happy to hear that, because some days before I read the news
here and there and thought: The swedish Pirate Party must be very busy with
this 'thing'! I'm delighted that you are hard-working on the subject ;)

Greetings from the Spanish Pirate Party.

On 3/11/07, Rick Falkvinge (Piratpartiet) <rick at piratpartiet.se> wrote:
>
> A quick success story:
>
> We've been busy lately. There's new big-brother legislation impending that
> would essentially allow the government to eavesdrop on every communication
> all the time without any court order, moving the default to "you are always
> wiretapped".
>
> Slashdot carries the story:
> http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/03/09/1823255.shtml
>
> We've been networking heavily, talking to people, organizing rallies,
> petitions, written and distributed newsletters, etc. A lot of this has taken
> place outside the eyes of the traditional media, in a social network
> context, just like we're good at.
>
> Our work went so-so; we staged a rally in several locations across the
> nation that got 2 minutes of coverage in every news broadcast that night,
> but the break came about 2 weeks ago when we posted a newsletter about all
> the pipeline big-brother laws this spring at the same time as we started a
> petition. It wasn't necessarily the petition that made or broke the push; I
> like to regard it as the small effort that pushed past the tipping point.
>
> If you're interested in reading the newsletter and understand Swedish (or
> have a decent translator), it's here:
> http://forum.piratpartiet.se/Topic71116-69-1.aspx
>
> Anyway, influential bloggers all over the political spectrum picked up
> both the petition (which does not mention us) and the newsletter (which is
> very tied to us) and started repeating the message. Within the first day,
> people from the top brass of the far-right liberal youth league as well as
> the party leader of the far-left communist party (who's in parliament) had
> signed the petition. Some youth league organizations also decided to back it
> as organizations, and repeated the message on their own front pages.
>
> We're not given credit - we chose to not push our name, but rather the
> message - but everybody links to our petition and repeats the words of it,
> and right there at the petition footnotes is "Created by Christian Engström,
> Piratpartiet et al".
>
> Two weeks later, today, editorials all over Sweden are up in arms about
> the impending legislation and it's starting to get mainstream media coverage
> as well. Some are calling the law "Lex Orwell". We're not attributed in
> mainstream media, but the blogosphere is aware of who's been pushing the
> issue and who hasn't.
>
> Politicians are feeling the pressure and are starting to backpedal, going
> defensive instead of visionary.
>
> Would this uproar have happened anyway, without our efforts? Maybe. Hard
> to tell. It's always hard to point at a specific action that pushes public
> opinion past a tipping point. But we CAN say with certainty that it's our
> message - words that we wrote - that is being passed around the most
> influential blogs, word for word, down to the very comma. The most liberal
> blogs, the most socialist. And mainstream media have started to pick up what
> the blogs are writing, and some mainstream media are also linking to our
> petition.
>
> There's not a great many names on it - a couple thousand - but man, the
> names on it! People in Parliament. People in European Parliament. Heads of
> the political youth leagues. The well known influential bloggers. And a
> great many others.
>
> If I had any gripe, it would be that our work is not credited. But for
> now, I'm happy that we have shown - AGAIN - that we can get our message
> across through means that the establishment is completely clueless about,
> and that the blogosphere at least is aware of our work. That's a stepping
> stone.
>
> This is to say that you CAN change the world.
>
> Quoting from Depeche Mode:
> You can't change the world
> but you can change points of view
> when you change points of view
> you can change a vote
> when you change a vote
> you can change the world
>
>
>
> Rick
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
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>
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