Pirate Party Unites In Australia 173
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."
Freedom is born where oppression reigns (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Re:Freedom is born where oppression reigns (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Which is exactly what the goal of the party should be. They'll never form a government, but by bringing attention to the issues they can do a world of good. When you see the major parties imitating your policy, you haven't obsoleted yourself, you've won.
Pirate Party is too narrow a term (Score:2, Insightful)
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"?
Re:Freedom is born where oppression reigns (Score:3, Insightful)
How much of the general public is going to listen beyond the "free music" point? If you say your party politics revolve around "copyright changes that would allow them to download music for free, implementing fairer copyright terms, ensuring political civil liberties and protecting against censorship" then all they'll hear is "copyright blah blah blah download music for free, blah blah blah blah blah".
The majority of people don't care about the more important values that could be the focus of these policies, they just care about getting something for nothing and not having a potential law suit or internet connection threat hanging over them.
Re:In other news.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah but lots of parties don't even try to get votes. For example here there are parties for Christians, divorced fathers who don't want to pay child support, and the gun lobby who never get a significant vote.
The Pirate Party is a bit more like One Nation because they have a fairly open, vague policy platform. If they find out that in one place there are votes for opposing music festival (they won't let us pirate our music!) they will run on that in that place. Elsewhere the issue might be caps on internet downloads or something. You can drum up votes that way but you can't build a national platform.
They shoudln't have advertised for a President (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yarr (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes. All of those went fine without copyright for centuries, thank you very much, specially art, wich seems to be the more controversial one lately. Granted, much less grand-grand-sons would continue to profit from work they never did, but I really have no sympathy for them.
Re:Freedom is born where oppression reigns (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the U.S. have an official Illegal Alien Party? Stoner Party? Sex Offender Party? Highway Speeder Party? Seems to me that if we made political parties over every group of laws a large portion of the population does not like, copyright would be far down the list.
Re:Freedom is born where oppression reigns (Score:3, Insightful)
Illegal Aliens and Sex Offenders can't vote
Stoners are a subset of libertarians
People want to speed but they also want speeding laws.
Really "pirate" platform is an argument about freedom and ownership rights. It's a lot more philosophical then wanting to break a law, it's an argument that the law is morally wrong. It's closer to the Gun Control vs NRA or Abortion prior to Roe v Wade.