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Pirate Party UK Looks Forward To 2012
Ajehals writes "The UK Pirate Party New Years message suggests a new sense of direction for the party, with a focus on policy and politics beyond what was seen as the party's norm, single issue position of copyright reform. Hoping to learn from and emulate the German Pirate Party's success in Berlin, Partly Leader Loz Kay is looking back over 2011 and to the future." I'm a slow learner; the Pirate Party for years struck me as mostly whimsical. If you live in a country with an active Pirate Party, what do you think of its impact? (According to Wikipedia, there are now PP organizations in at least 40 countries.)
Things only get better for the Pirate Parties all over the world. Technology evolves a lot faster than the means to control information.
Getting more laws to control society is wrong, but I guess the Americans and other SOPA adopters will find that out the hard way.
I was very impressed with the German Pirate Parties success last year, but if the UK PP wants to emulate it then it needs to be more vocal, and on a wider range of topics. If they don't they'll never get the attention of anyone who isn't already passionate about copyright abuses, or the attention of any part of the UK electorate that automatically dismiss the party because of the fact they have Pirate in thier name.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
Did the tory's keep their promise to the liberals to put into place avt+ voting which would make a third party possible, or did they get sold out like the rest of the UK?
You're totally right. They're still talking about freedom when they should be talking about terrorism.
Did you just crawl out of a rock?. Terrorism is the new Freedom. It has been for ten years. What do you think bringing Freedom to Iraq and Afghanistan was all about?
You can be forgiven for your false accusation, because understanding a two sentence summary could be a lot to ask of an AC. Especially one who fancies himself a psychoanalyst of overseas strangers whilst being undecided on his own mental state.
FWIW, I'd say yes, you appear to be confused.
They should stand their libertarian ground on social issues, but take sensible positions from both left and right on economic issues. No hard right or left idealogical nonsense. Stand up for workers rights yet don't be socialist nutcases. Let the free market do it's thing but not at the expense of human rights and individual liberty.
The Conservatives in Canada might qualify. It's been all down hill for everyone but their friends since they took over.
Per their UK manifesto:
Copyright should give artists the first chance to make money from their work, however that needs to be balanced with the rights of society as a whole.
As someone not generally affected by copyright issues, can they explain to me what benefits there are to society of reforming copyright? Tangible, measurable benefits.
Society should be about more than pop music and blockbuster films. Frankly the Pirate Party has to convince me that laws which deter people from sharing such things are actually bad. Perhaps they are actually a positive influence because they nudge people into doing something productive instead of passively consuming. Maybe someone decided to go outside and play football with their kids because they couldn't find a copy of a film to download; in that instance, society benefits.
Do I care that Cliff Richard's recordings won't reach the public domain in my lifetime? Not at all. Society will continue with or without music.
Do I care that public forests and parks are being sold-off? Absolutely, as that directly affects our society.
In France the pirate party underwent a ridiculous war between two "factions" for several years. It has been reunited since several years but has been unable so far to present candidates in any major elections.
European countries have different "details" in their election laws that make it easy or hard for small parties to be heard. For instance, in Germany, you receive public funds for your campaign when you reach 0.7% of votes. In France it is 5%.
I think the most important vote for the French PP will be the European elections : this one has a proportional part. There are already , thanks to Sweden, several pirate European MPs and this election has the same rules everywhere. I hope we focus on it.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
/ propaganda out there. That's our main problem today. Our agenda is basically all the good of the other parties, plus all the good us people from the 21st century want. In other words: We're you.
Don't believe me? Come meet us.
The established parties seem to have some crazy fearful knee-jerk reaction of what they don't understand, but play it cool on the outside. They don't get things like that we from the PP openly say we are not perfect, that we make errors, that we do not have one global set-in-stone party line but are a living group of real humans, and that we do not give a fuck about "political correctness", because it's just a part of for dishonest sliminess. (That's why we kept the name.)
I found this here to be a very inspiring way of saying that: http://en.gandi.net/no-bullshit
If anything, I suggest NOT to vote for any party that was in control once in the past and fucked up. Because if you vote for them again, despite being fucked over, over and over again, then your lose your right to complain about the situation.
Go ahead and vote for whatever you like, as long as you don't do the same error twice.
If you choose us, and we fail, then at least you did try it. But since we are basically made out of people like you, the likeliness of us having a bigger set of common goals is practically a given.
I know that especially in the US, there is this weird seemingly brainwashed concept that everything other than the two big parties has to be a whimsical joke. And those that are the only ones who stand up for your rights, are left out in the cold and laughed at.
I think the UK is different in this matter.
It's the only hope we have in democracies. There's a phase in the life of a party in which it has not much to lose. In which fights are carried in the open. In which the corruption machinery of the industrial/financial sector hasn't invested enough to set roots in this party.
It happened in Germany in the seventies/eighties with the Greens and now with tne Pirates.
My fear is that it's just glitches and that the industrial/financial sector will find ways to "fix" that. Once and for all.
Invent party first, come up with policies (other than their 98% bullshiat 'i want free stuff' core platform) later. Umm, no thanks.
They may get some interest (as they do in germany) from disaffected youths essentially making a protest vote. but other than that, the sense of entitlement that surrounds these pirate parties is staggering in its shamelesness.
Just read their manifesto, they believe in free speech up to military secrets.
Would the Reuters reporter killing and the other wikileaks material come under their definition of 'military secrets'?
If so...screw 'em. Bradley Manning for public office instead.
1. There is a significant number of single-issue voters supporting a position
2. None of the more mainstream parties will support that position.
This is a clear case of both of those conditions being met. So long as both are true, a party will exist in one form or another.
It's the same basic process that lets the BNP exist: Plenty of strongly anti-immigration voters, but none of the main parties willing to risk losing the minority votes or being branded as racist by even acknowledging the issue.
The Pirate Party is totally irrelevant.
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In Sweden they have had no influence whatsoever. You could compare them to one of those facebook campaigns. People are willing to show their sympathy for the thought that "everything should be free" (its the beer part that matter to people, In Sweden, we are not so much in to liberties), as long as it is effortless and doesn't cost anything. At the end of the day, taxes, interest rates, unemployment and day care is what sets the agenda.
Sure they did well in the EP elections, but that's only because the EP is a phony parliament.
What the PP did do is to vulgarize the debate to the point that no serious politician, whether interested in liberties or in economic efficiency, would dare to touch the issue of reforming the "intellectual property" system with a ten foot pole for the risk of being labeled a wingnut. Any legal system needs reform from time to time, but this issue has been put in the freezer.
It is of course of no help that the founder and until recent party leader of PP is an alternative economy conspiracy theory wingnut.
The bottom line is that the PP is not going anywhere as a political party until it has an opinion on day care. It is questionable whether it has it in itself of getting that, and if not it should stay out of elections. Be a thought smithy, lobby organization, discussion club, what ever, but don't pretend you belong in parliament.
Judging from the praise given to walled garden environments, like Apples app-store, I not so sure we can depend on technology to automatically free us from monitoring and control, by either government or big corp. However, such a fringe openion will never stand a chance in the 2 party systems of the US and UK. Even in the multiparty systems of continental Europe, the PP will struggle at elections, if it does not adopt some policy on mainstream subjects like employment and healthcare. Of course those passionate about the civic liberty agenda, will struggle to find agreement on the mainstream topics. (pardon my typos, I'm writing on an iPad. Can't wait to get back to my model M)
Run with the lemmings, and you'll get your feet wet.
Their core issues have been under constant assault with harsher laws, less privacy and deterioration of due process. There's very little ground that's been gained, the question is how much more would have been lost without them. They've been in public debates, organized demonstrations, written opinion pieces for the papers and tried to influence other parties. The main battle has been for the public opinion, saying this is not wrong. This should not be illegal. It means a lot to have public faces saying that, a million people go speeding too but nobody stands up and says speed limits should be abolished. That it's not something you do just because you can get away with it, but that sharing is right.
Lately here in Norway there's been a lot of articles saying in no unclear terms that the domestic book industry has purposely sabotaged the Norwegian eBooks. They've launched a service that's so poor, confusing and splintered that it's being called a planned failure. And of course, you won't find these books on international sites like Amazon, Apple etc. - it's their crappy "Book Cloud" or the paper edition. Did I mention that three companies own pretty much the whole domestic publishing industry and all the major bookshops? You wouldn't want to cut out the middle man when you are the middle man. What do I expect will fix it? Piracy. Lately piracy, not copyright has been the dominant source of innovation in the entertainment industry and they are dragged kicking and screaming along.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
is why so many researchers are working on 'luxury' diseases instead of the disease that decimate the third-world, even in universities that should do fundamental research.
While I agree to your general sentiment, I am not convinced about this.
Many, if not most, of the diseases that cause large amount of suffering and deaths in the thrid world, are cureable with known science. That's why we don't have them in the first world. And it is not exactly rocket science either. DDT, mosquito nets and good draining will go a long way against malaria. Good sanitation and clean water (proper toilets!) will reduce the number of deaths in a large number of infectious diseases.
AIDS is a big killer (but interestingly not the biggest), but it does get a lot of attention from first world medical research. There is a problem with how the third world is going to get the benefits of these advances, but it is not fundamentally different from how the third world gets the benefit of advances we do in other areas that could improve their lives (such as water treatment and sanitation). It is a problem being poor, you can't really afford it.
The great news is that the situation is improving big time. (Google Hans Rosling for the full story)
... sense of entitlement to free entertainment!
In a shocking turn of events, the leader of the Antartic upstart decides that the standard fare of oatmeal to be dull and uninspired, instead declaring that this year, eggs and bacon should grace the tables of their supporters. Guy Smiley agrees with this new direction whole-heartedly, and predicts a year where people will finally see a champion of change emerge for what are arguably the most important issues facing our planet.
I'm guessing you were aiming for the high moral ground but just wound up sounding like a dick.
If they would change their name to the Privacy Party then they may find they do a lot better...
The information wants to be free, I just give it somewhere to go.
Provided the party broadens its original stands, it potentially can capture all the discontents of the current systems.
Capitalizing on that, it can become a big player. This scenario has already been played in many European countries where the ecologist parties started 20 years ago with a limited idea, managed to turn it into a general platform, and ended up capturing from 10 to 30% of the electorate depending on the countries and the voting systems.
I see the same potential in the pirate parties, provided they manage to move on from DRM and Ip problems and present a real / complete program for the society. Their chances depend on the type of voting system, but also on how willing the electorate is to change (read how disgusted they are with current parties). In some countries recently hit by political scandals, they have a fair chance.
duh!
FRA: STFU GTFO
If I want to know more about statistics, I would have to spend a lot of time making sure I don't waste money purchasing access to the wrong educational material, because if I do, I would be discouraged to learn more about statistics and might lack the money to purchase access to better educational material for some time, and by then my interests may have shifted anyway and I might end up not learning more about statistics.
Should I buy this compact disc, or that one? I don't have enough money to buy both, so spend a lot of time checking reviews and samples and might check prices at various store to get the best deal, perhaps, in fact, there might be a sale at one store or another with prices low enough to buy both. I could also use the time to program free software that automate tasks people have to do manually, wasting labour resources, but I need some music to keep up my spirits.
Some of my free software projects would greatly benefit from computer science research, but the results of that can be accessed only by purchasing access to it on a largely individual basis, and that costs surprisingly much, and it might be best in some cases to purchase access to scientific papers, so again I would have to spend a lot of time playing market participant to make the best decision.
I contribute to Wikipedia, mostly things about the area and the society and their history where I grew up. Say I want to make an article about a local river. There is usually good information on that in books Google has digitized, but Google won't allow me to access the books, and they often are out of print and not available through the libraries I would have access to, so I can't do this, or, again, have to spend a lot of time organizing this.
Somewhere around a third of the cost of a Hollywood movie is marketing costs, to make people watch this movie and not that other movie. With a 33% discount on both movies, maybe you'd go and watch both instead of one or the other?
Why can't I just pay a certain amount and access all generally available books, all music, all films, all TV shows, all research papers, and so on, as I see fit? Well, I would want that most of the money goes to whoever created the better works I access, to discourage bad works and abuse of the system, so we have seven billion people wasting a lot of time all the time on being wise market forces that make the best decisions in redistributing wealth, which they aren't very good at, and they are all the poorer for it, because they only get access to very little of what's out there.
This is not a good system and we need to change it. And we are, we are creating flat rate music subscription services, much as we are creating free server software and free encyclopedias. We do that because it works better, the resources we used to waste on making wise consumption choices are increasingly freed to be used creatively.
> FWIW, I'd say yes, you appear to be confused.
Unfortunately, you can't (freely) administer one of the standard medical tests for that (or even the newest competing test) --- all because of the influence of copyright law. Perhaps, yes, this is the age of where the Pirate Parties' platforms progressively produce politically pleasing positions.
Certainly the devolved parliaments have a different election system than Westminister allowing smaller parties to get in, plus there is a tendency to more local politics there. However it is not helped by the fact that if you are ambitious or want to make a serious change it seems you go to Westminister, whereas there seems to be a lot of ineffectiveness in the devolved governments. The UK wide political parties inability to do well in the Scottish elections seems to be the fact that the candidates really aren't the cream of the crop and have quite poor policy platforms to stand on.
The Pirate Party of Canada has a long hard road ahead of them. Ownership of the media in Canada is consolidated to an extent not seen in other countries and come election time, 90% of them might as well be an advertising arm of the party for Big Business, the Conservatives. Getting any sort of media attention if you aren't one of the major parties is nearly impossible. Last election I saw more coverage of the Marxist-Leninists than of the Pirate Party, or the Green Party, and the Greens have decent popular support and even managed to elect an MP.
Success without being annointed by the media will mean an incredible amount of work at the grassroots level.
It does kinda make me wonder - if they have representation in forty countries, you'd think they'd be able to come up with some way to hack the political system in at least one.
I'm not about to get AIDS because somebody in the supermarket coughed 10 feet (3 meters) away from me. Almost nobody gets it from mosquito bites. It isn't spread by shaking hands. I won't get it from tap water. Uh, why are we wasting money on this?
Meanwhile, tuberculosis is becoming extremely resistant to every antibiotic. There are mosquito-borne diseases right here in the USA that will make your brain swell up and bleed. An amoeba can survive tap water chlorination, get up into your nose, and then from there go after your brain. MRSA kills too many people to even think about. There are viruses that seem to cause leukemia and heart disease. The ever-present mouth bacteria attack heart valves. Then, oh yeah, non-contagious stuff like cancer and strokes and heart attacks and...
It's horrid that an almost totally avoidable disease is sucking up research money that could go toward stopping numerous other diseases. Are we alarmed or even offended when some disease puts a crimp on our lifestyle, but unimpressed when one strikes people down randomly? People fear AIDS like they fear plane crashes, nuclear accidents, pedophiles, and terrorist attacks. People fear every other disease like they fear car crashes, coal pollution, muggers, and ordinary murderers.
... they are scaring the hell out of the "old" partys after scoring about 9% or so on the Berlin city parliament vote (which is important as Berlin is a county).
Especially the FDP, which traditionally has hold the position of "freedom rights", is below threshold now and in big trouble - and most voters either head for the green's or the pirates.
It's quite obvious that in the current situation, they will make it into the nations parliament on the next voting round; considering how hard it already is to find coalition partners in the parliament right now, that will be a very interesting situation.
The alternative to looking forward to 2012 is looking back to 2012, which hardly seems appropriate seeing as we are only one week into the year.
Hate the politicians for playing war, don't hate the soldiers who are required to fight them....
That seems to be a key debate amongst antiwar activists - whether the average soldier is a victim or a perpetrator.
Maybe it depends on the particular person involved - their reasons for going in and how they act once in service
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Both the green party and the left party now have stances on copyright that are very similar to the ones that the pirate party have propagated.
sounds like a fairly common minor party dynamic - even if not directly successful, a strong presence leads larger parties to adjust their positions accordingly.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I'm a member of Russian Pirate Party ( http://pirate-party.ru/ ). Of course it is not officially registered one, since until now regulations are rather tough for new party registration in Russia. One attempt was declined in 2011 with a reason given - "High Sea piracy is illegal in Russia".
Official Powers in Russia are tolerant with PP agenda - one can remember famous Microsoft vs. school director Ponosov case (Putin sided in favour of Ponosov, who was acquitted eventually), Government Order No. 2299-p, that mandates transition to Free Software by 2015 for all Govt. agencies (which is an official term for Govt. documents), and few months ago President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev held a meeting with Internet activists where the Pirate Party of Russia was invited.
Having said that, there is multitude of criminal cases on basis of Criminal Code articles 271-272 (unauthorised access and viral software) and 146 (copyright related violations), mostly against people selling unapproved software and anti-copy protection code on CDs, as well as people installing same as a service. So far, very few cases of prosecution attempts (without much success) for personal/private use of unlicensed software are known.
Vassili Leonov