The UK's Pirate Party are celebrating 6 years since forming the party by launching a campaign retrospective; a series of blogs, posters, podcasts and videos.
On 30th July 2009, Andrew Robinson registered Pirate Party UK as a political party for the first time. Today, we are proud to celebrate our 6th Birthday, and launch #WeArrSix, our Pirate Party campaign retrospective.
Over the last 6 years, the world has changed dramatically, but Pirate Party UK have campaigned tirelessly for civil liberties, digital freedoms and democratic reform. During this time, PPUK have fought to create a dialogue around issues that are core to how people live in the modern age.
Over the next 4 weeks Pirate Party UK will be running a series of blogs, posters, podcasts and videos looking back over the last 6 years of UK political and Pirate history in detail, as well as looking ahead to the next 6. This includes raising the funds we need to make it all happen through a Crowdfunder at http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/WeArrSix
(Score: 5, Funny) by penguinoid on Sunday August 02 2015, @05:42AM
♫ Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Pirate Party, happy birthday to you! ♫
Oh, was someone claiming copyright over that?
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @08:38AM
Reducing copyright term is generally a good idea. However it places free software at a definite disadvantage compared to proprietary software as the source code for the latter is not made available. https://gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html [gnu.org]
Looks like the UK party also has this issue, at least they're saying nothing to fix it. https://www.pirateparty.org.uk/policy/digital-economy-and-digital-rights/reduce-copyright-terms [pirateparty.org.uk]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Andy_R on Sunday August 02 2015, @07:36PM
When we set up the party 6 years ago, we had a lot of discussions over this. We received about 10 emails a day quoting that post by RMS, which is about the policy the Swedish Pirates had at the time for a 5 year copyright duration.
The fix was quite simple - write to RMS and ask how long he thought copyright should be to not put free software at a disadvantage. He told me that 10 years would be ok with him. The Pirate Party UK has never campaigned for anything shorter than that, so RMS is perfectly happy with our policy.
Sadly, we've never managed to make the fact that RMS is happy with our UK policy anywhere near as famous as the fact that he wasn't happy with the Swedish party's policy six years ago.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:57AM
I stand corrected, thank you for the reply! Looks like I should've looked closer at the durations. (Of course 10 years is arbitrary and I think the problem could have a much better resolution, like the escrow proposed in the article. After all, only that would be in line with the stated purpose of copyright.)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Andy_R on Monday August 03 2015, @02:34PM
Source code escrow is a really nice idea - but the downside is that it would make the party's policy a lot more complex to explain, and the one thing we really don't have enough of is time in front or large audiences to explain things. Getting the press to cover nuanced political positions is really really tough, so the simpler and more soundbite-friendly a policy is, the more change of it getting accurate press coverage.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Sunday August 02 2015, @05:55PM
Not trying to be a dick here (I don't have to try: it comes naturally, ha ha). But serious question for discussion: OK, the Pirate Party has existed for six years now. What have we gained as a result of it? Yes, they've campaigned. But other than raising awareness of our God-given right to free entertainment, have we really changed anything in the way modern society operates?
Again, not trying to be incendiary here: I'd really like to know and don't want to have to wait for their powerpoints in the undetermined-future.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Andy_R on Sunday August 02 2015, @07:55PM
That's a fair question. We haven't won any elections, and with the UK's first-past-the-post system, we're not likely to any time in the near future. One thing we have achieved is hard to measure - political influence. When the government says it's planning to do dumb things to do with technology, we put the opposing view across in the media, by lobbying, by submitting consultation responses that are well respected and well informed, and by meeting with MPs who know us from campaigns as sensible, clever people who really know our stuff. Even I'll probably never be 100% sure about this, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the reason the Digital Economy Act was quietly swept under the carpet a few years back and nobody ever had their net connection cut off despite that legislation passing with cross-part support is that I and a few others in the Pirate Party were able to set up meetings with the right MPs at the right time, and politely explain the actual consequences of going ahead.
Beyond the UK, the people we have managed to get elected are very highly respected. The Pirate movement played a really big part in stopping ACTA, with Swedish Pirate MEP Amelia Andersdotter getting a near unanimous no vote on ACTA in the European Parliament. German Pirate MEP Julia Reda is likely to be the first politician to actually roll back any part of copyright at the EU level, while in Iceland their Pirate Party is leading the opinion polls, which is where I think the other thing we've achieved in the UK will prove more important - we've built a solid, functioning (if small) political party that has the capacity to expand when public opinion swings our way as it did over the Digital Economy Act and and ACTA.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Sunday August 02 2015, @09:05PM
That's a great answer. Many thanks for it.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey