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Pirate Party Unites In Australia
bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports that the Pirate Party has opened a branch office in Australia and is recruiting office bearers and supporters. The group updated the Australian website it registered last year and advertised for a president, treasurer, secretary, and supporting positions. A party spokesman, Rodney Serkowski, said the group was close to establishing a beachhead in Australia. He said that with 300 supporters it was on its way to signing the 500 it needed to become an official Australian political party. 'We are currently an online community, working together with the intention of becoming a registered party, and we're coming closer to reaching that goal,' Serkowski said. 'If we can get the required 500 members, and be registered by year's end, I think it is highly probable that we will contest the next Federal election in Australia.' At the weekend about two percent of Germans voted for the Pirate Party, although it needed five percent to gain a seat in the Bundestag."
During the elections on Germany the Pirate Party there could rake in 2% of all the votes: almost a million people voted for them! Kudos, and keep going!.
If the U.S. doesn't want its own Piratpartiet, the government had better consider that the reason these branch offices have popped up is precisely because of heavy-handed laws that attempt to usurp the inalienable rights of users to download content for free off the internet.
Any action against Net Neutrality, for one, will be one step towards establishing a Pirate Party here at home. Any action that tries to legislate morality on the internet will be one step towards a viable Pirate Party third party. The only real chance legislators have in the U.S. of stopping the growth of the Pirate Party here is ironically to embrace the tenets of the Pirate Party and implement the freedom of information it espouses.
Princess Leia once put it very succinctly, "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
The website link is here. :)
Disagree != mod troll.
I signed up as a supporter. If you're Australian and involved in IT so should you. Even if you're not but care about censorship and IP related issues, sign up. Dont let people whose policies are dictated by industries who only have how much profit they can squeeze out as their only lobbyists on such issues.
Help fight for your own rights, dont rely on others to do the work for you. Its time, step up.
Sign up! Sign up! Sign up!
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Pirate_Party
This may not sound much, but it is actually pretty good for a new and totally unknown party with a scary name. Hopefully the aims of the party (internet Censorship, civil rights etc) will now get some public attention.
2 percent in Germany might not be correct. Pirate party votes have been lost in at least one voting district and it only came out because the result said no votes were cast for them, while at least three voters report voting for them. The official preliminary results for Berlin do not show pirate party votes either, although this is probably just a glitch as 3,5% were reported for Berlin before.
Investigations are ongoing.
blow your mind already
This is only the beginning. PP has shown that change is possible, that it is possible to reach positions where you can affect actual policies:
The swedish Pirate Party has one member in the European Parliament since this summers' election. This MEP is now one of the 14 MEPs in the group working with the european commission to work out a final solution for the Telecom package.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
For a political party?
"What's the name of your organization?"
"The Pirate Party."
"Oh, aren't those the ones that believe in pirating other people's hard work?"
"No uhh... the name is a uhh... shut up, Arrr!!!!"
German Pirate Party gets some attention, though it could be more. They have been successful this far, because they address topics that major parties ignore (internet cencorship, civil rights, privacy, government transparency, open access, copyright, patents, ...). They got 0.9% at European Parliament election in June and now they got 2% in federal elections. Their membership number is exploding (currently almost 10,000, graph).
Even though some pirates hoped for a better result, 2% is absolutely astonishing. If their success continues (and polls show that PP has 13% of all first-time voters, some time is working for us), they may very well be in the Bundestag (parliament) in four years. By comparison, Green party had 1.5% in its first federal election in 1980 and since the following election, they are represented in the Bundestag with constantly over 5%.
I think the Pirate Party should rebrand itself as the Internet Party, Digital Party or Future Party, some such thing, and just fight for the rights of all things that service the good of the Internet, which is kinda what they're doing anyway, except to the layman, who asks "what the hell has pirates got to do with the Internet"?
Perhaps the answer to the problem of teenagers dropping bricks from motorway and railway bridges is to sue Tetris.
I want a British pirate party now. We need one :/
That's okay, because we've got one! Just passed 500 paid-up members, too.
Pirate Party UK
would gain any ground in the states, and for two reasons.
1. the average american has been boiled like a frog into accepting the illegality of downloading content that majority shareholders and major corporations deem "unsuitable." id hate to even think it, but it almost seems as though we just dont care about or rights and freedoms as long as we're marketed a product that appears to cater to our wants reglardless of our rights (ipod and zune for example)
2. most americans and lawmakers especially would have a terrible time not associating the pirate party with somali pirates, if not at least subconsciously. This would need to be retooled to have a prettier name at very least.
finally for extra credit, americans have trouble with things like sex and sexuality, so if there were an initiative as pervasive as AU to censor our tubes, its hard to think there would be much if any resistance to it simply based on our culture. Just my theory.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They may just get a seat.
One of our current federal senators is Seven Fielding, of the christian political party called Family First. http://www.stevefielding.com.au/
That fool got his seat with only 1.8% of the primary vote. The remainder were on preferences.
That's not the Pirate Way. What they needed was a Captain, A second Officer, Master at Arms, Helmsman, Navigator and you certainly can't forget cook. That's what it takes to run each and every pirate ship we have, not some new fangled rank like President.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown