PaulR sez, "Swedish, poet, novelist and scholar Lars Gustafsson blogged his reasons for voting for the Pirate Party in the next Swedish election to the European Parliament, to be held on 7 June 2009."
Intellectual and personal integrity for the citizens, briefly speaking an internet that has not been transformed into a government channel by lobby-marinated courts and EU politicians in leashes, is arguably more important than the needs of a primarily industrial scene of literature and music, which is rapidly crumbling away already within the lifetime of the authors. The need of being read, of influencing, to formulate one's times, may but does not need to get in conflict with the wish to sell many copies. When the both needs are getting in conflict, the industrial interest must be put aside and the great intellectual sphere of the arts must be defended against threats.
The essential interest of artists and authors, given that they are intellectually and morally serious in hat they are doing, must certainly be to get read, to let their voice become heard in their generation. How that goal is attained, that is, how to reach the readers, is in this perspective of secondary importance.
The growing defence of the internet's expanded freedom of speech, of the immaterial civil rights, that we are now witnessing in country after country, is the start of an – just as the last time in the early 18th century – liberalism that is carried by technology and therefore emancipated.
Therefore, my vote goes to the Pirate Party.
Lars Gustafsson: "Why my vote goes to the Pirate Party" (English translation of today's text
(Thanks, PaulR!)
