We'll see about that :-)

I think to stop the lunacy we must build a political movement that includes strong criticism of IP, and challenge established parties for their seats. Wheter this movement is or simply includes the Pirate parties is yet to be seen. Norwegian Venstre (european liberal) recently copied and translated (paragraph by paragraph) Piratpartiets policy on copyright and then (with some small adaptions) included it in their political platform. That is a hopeful sign that we will not have to build Pirate parties in every country to affect change.

AFAIK all swedish euro-parlamentarians voted no on IPRED2. I do not think it is a coincidence that they are well aware that Piratpartiet will be running in 2009. This will be an issue and they prefer not to loose votes on what (from their perspective) is a marginal issue.

And thanks for this diary.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

The Constitution also went down, as you'll remember.

You may be right about the limited stamina of the grassroots, the Surveillance Directive passed pretty much without a fight after the battle against the Software Patents Directive was won.

I don't think the amendments of the EP made IPRED2 worse, by the way. They made it less bad. But the best thing would be not to have the Directive in the first place.