Pirate Party

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The ship has sailed!

A Pirate Party is a political party that is modeled after the Swedish Piratpartiet. There are dozens of Pirate Parties around the world and their political goals are loosely connected. There's also a Pirate Party International, in which the original Swedish Pirate Party is not a member.

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[edit] Political goals

It doesn't stop at the water's edge:

Politics

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The ideologies of regional Pirate Parties vary, but a common pattern is economic centrism or pragmatism, social liberalism, an emphasis on privacy, transparent and/or open government and human rights in general. Depending on the country, reforms of copyright laws may be in favor. While environmentalism isn't a number one issue, it's up there as well.

The background ideologies vary from member to member. Some are old-school libertarians with an emphasis on technological topics, some are centrists that like the freedom the Internet provides them, others are anarchists that view freedom of information as one way to cause a power shift.

[edit] Schools of thought

There are two distinct schools of thought in international Pirate Party movement. One is a tradition of specification on several limited topics like copyright reform, transparency of states, and individual freedom specific to the internet and privacy. These parties tried to be big tent parties, but in the voting booths this concept proved unsuccessful.

The other is what some call the "German School," a distinct ideology and view of the world originating from contemporary technophile twenty-somethings in Europe. This worldview is being in favor of same-sex marriage, LGBT rights, a modern definition of family and a pluralistic society, and center-left to left-wing (inspired by the Pirates of the City of Berlin, which has a left-wing tradition), in favor of the welfare state and a basic income guarantee. Other important parts are a general tendency toward direct democracy, e-democracy, citizen participation and a constant platform-oriented discourse between citizens, making the German School a rather inclusive school of thought. The school also supports the environmentalist concept of sustainability (which is in the German mainstream and therefore not really surprising) and international and European cooperation. Pragmatism when searching for solutions to a problem is valued highly, and through the architecture of the German Pirate Party, inofficial inclusive expert councils (based on interest) in their online platform liquid feedback have formed. In short, the German School is a nerdy form of American progressivism.

After four good outcomes in German regional elections, other, previously traditional Pirate Parties have openly discussed transforming their party to the wider base of the German school; this school has been favoured by leading members of Pirate Party International.

[edit] History

The term "pirate" stems from political campaigns by the music and film industry against the illegal download of their material (the common Internet response is that these were smear campaigns, dramatizing the issue). The name of these parties is therefore slightly satiric, but the term is today used self-referentially with some pride.

In 2006, the Swedish Pirate Party went online (literally, as the website went up first) and in a time of not even two months the party qualified for the 2006 Riksdag (the Swedish parliament) elections. Much media attention, especially in Europe, rose around the party and 0.63% of the vote were gained. Some parties, especially centrist and left parties, changed their stance on copyright issues. In the same year, Pirate Parties in Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, Denmark and Finland popped up.

In 2006, the United States Pirate Party and its Dutch brother De Piratenpartij were founded. In 2009 the Pirate Party UK, Pirate Party of Canada, Pirate Party Australia and the Pirate Party of New Zealand were founded.

In the 2009 elections for the European Parliament, the Pirate Parties of the participating countries granted support for each other and worked together on the so-called "Uppsala Declaration," declaring common goals but in the election "only" the Swedish won seats (2 to be exact). In the same year the German Pirate Party won 2.0% in the federal elections, constituting it as the most voted party that wasn't in the Bundestag.

In September 2011 the German Pirate Party won their first seats in an election of matter, with 8.9% in the regional elections in Berlin; they won 15 seats of an overall 149.

In the 2013 Icelandic elections, the recently-formed Icelandic Pirate Party - founded by an incumbent MP - won 5.1% of the vote, translating to 3 seats in parliament out of 63.

[edit] Criticism

The chairman, executive vice president and chief strategy officer Dean Garfield of the Motion Picture Association of America, criticized the American party the following way:

There's nothing about what the Pirate Bay does or what the Pirate Party does that is legitimate. There's nothing philosophically principled about it. They steal copyright content and accept advertising dollars based on taking other people's work. There's nothing noble about it.[1]

That every member of a Pirate Party automatically and illegally downloads! Also implying that sharing is stealing, and that any producer has a monopoly over the work and the right to restrict humanity from using technology to produce copies.

That said however, there are actual valid criticisms of Pirate Parties. For Evgeny Morozov for example, the Pirates' overriding emphasis on the Internet means that they tend to come across as Silicon Valley-lite and little much else outside of net-related issues. The Parties' focus on their ideals' novelty and processes also offers more in rhetoric and a desire to bend politics to be more like the Internet than political acumen or presenting actual policies. In other words, as one Pirate Party spokesman put it in 2011:

What we’re offering is not a program, but an operating system.[2]

The waning popularity of the German Pirate Party and its recent failures have likewise called into question just how relevant the Pirates really are in practice.[3]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

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