You don’t have to do much to participate, starting this discussion is participating. If you ever have ideas for art, culture jamming, flashmobs or anything please suggest them. If you don’t want to do so publicly, email a member of the NC and we can share it without you having to own the project. There is no minimum requirement of how much you must do (unless you run for the NC or something), every little bit helps. 
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Actually i think Progressive Alliance has a better chance than voteflux.org. Our formal involvement in something like that really depends on how or if our niche changes, it can be difficult to change, but its also difficult to start again, so im not sure how its going to end up. But i do expect there is going to difficult choices ahead for a lot of small parties.
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woah. okay. convinced. they lost my primary. that does not align at all with the attitudes of one of their candidates, who I talked with for hours a couple months ago. what the hell.
It’s also worth pointing that that the Greens are backing away from fair use.
I’ll quote that article as it’s behind a paywall:
Greens arts spokesperson Adam Bandt told an audience of arts sector members at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne on Wednesday that the Greens were not in favour of the US fair use model.
“I think this is something we have to get out in front of so it doesn’t become the subject of litigation, and the real question has to be: how do we ensure people are fairly remunerated? For me it is a question of fair pay rather than fair use… If that’s our question, then we can approach the subsidiary questions of how we deal with digitisation, the fact that people’s works can be reproduced easily … I think there’s two camps developing here. One that’s just unequivocally pro-US style approach, pro-fair use, and another that is saying, ‘we’ve just got to maintain existing settings and everything will be fine. If only we prosecuted more people for breaches of copyright it would be fine.”
Bandt said Australia needed to work out how to “get in front of that” because “otherwise Google is going to win".
Whatever our flaws might be, you can be certain that we’d never retreat from supporting fair use and we’d never recycle the copyright industry nonsense that fair use is about “google vs artists”. It’s always good to get a nudge from people who’d like the party to pivot a bit more towards issues they’re passionate about. But be fair to us: we’re clear where we stand on the really big questions. Greens and others who see IP as a peripheral issue are not clear.
I’ve been wondering along similar lines, except that I do still want to vote Pirate.
My misgivings began to gel with the proposal to put Libertarianism at the forefront of the Party.
For me, Libertarians are people who don’t like being told that they can’t do what they want, where they want, when they want. I’ve never seen anything to convince me that a society of such individuals would work.
More recently, Frew indicated that he would vote against anything that he didn’t understand. I see that as a very Conservative attitude. What I don’t understand, I don’t vote on.
That slow drift to the Right worries me. I am looking for alternatives.
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We are a party founded on the need for civil liberties, on the need to limit governmental power over individuals. That has been front and centre of our Party since our foundation. Look at our drug policy, our attitudes to free speech, to surveillance and censorship. They are all about limiting the power of the state over individuals. We are civil libertarian. We don’t go for the user pays, free market everything, screw the poor attitude of right wing libertarians however.
I am the chief advocate for our platform to the media. How the hell do I advocate for something I don’t understand? How the hell do I know if the idea is any good? Why would I support something if I don’t know it is any good? How is that conservative? I don’t understand Christian Theology, it doesn’t mean supporting it would make me progressive, quite the opposite I suspect.
It is incumbent on anyone advocating for any policy within the Party to explain it to members in a way that they understand what they are voting on. It is important to deal with questions and opposition respectfully and not resort to insults. It is the only way it will pass.
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This is absurd. Voting against something one is not knowledgeable is the way we play our critical thinking, and is how our policies have matured in detail. Challenging something gives meaning to debate, to insist on clarity.
To do so otherwise (voting on something you don’t understand) is how the government has fucked us over to begin with. Brandis’ inability to define an “Internet address”, for example, showed the Australian public that he’s not fit for that part of his role, and dealing with this technology is something he’s voted on to support control of.
Do you really want any of us to follow this way of thinking? Do you really want us to undermine our principles?
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Civil liberties and Libertarianism aren’t synonymous. The latter, in particular, has taken on a very dark hue. Even terms like “free”, “freedom” and “liberty” have taken on negative connotations. Perhaps we need a different descriptor.
Advocating for something and voting for or against are different concepts. None of us understands everything. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll concede that. You’ve indicated that you see only two options. I’ve pointed out a third.
If you concede that none of us understands everything, then you’ll inevitably find yourself “advocating” what you don’t understand. It comes down to a question of trust. Observe other political leaders.
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If it’s any consolation, it could well be that their policy on this only really solidified since then.
Hi Bluebie,
I feel you, both from the face of the party at present and the fact that I cannot contribute easily. I’m very proud to have worked on the Cultural Policy, which I believe at least sets out the bread-and-butter of what the movement is about – stuff that I think everyone “gets” and “believes” but isn’t really spelled out for those outside the movement. Hopefully this will evolve over time.
However, there’s a problem. We can’t even talk about culture in a world where our liberties are so far gone. We aren’t operating in the 90s where only certain individuals in certain industries were annoyed and wanted to destroy us. In a way, that was a simpler problem for simpler times. Today, we have hostile governments arming themselves against anything which would constitute a citizenry. I can’t worry about the positive parts of our party when so much is at risk. I can’t think about remix culture when the entire internet is being monitored.
I, too, was disheartened with the proposed name change (I am strongly against it). However, I’ve seen what other Pirates have said. They too are against it. They, too, constantly talk about Patents and IP law, about valuing remix culture. We have a broad policy base which I believe has roots in “Pirate”. You only have to look at the pirate wheel for that. Overall I think it’s a good thing to have a policy for every situation because then it is clear how an MP will vote.
I can identify a couple of problems: One is that the party is spread too thinly. We have to be economical, and that means we cannot speak about our core issues at times. We also have no solid “movement” attached, in that the arts and culture which represented pirateness (for lack of a better term) has been thoroughly co-opted into mass culture. Part of the problem here is that there is no safe space where we can operate with impunity. We’ve often used anonymity to great effect, and we feel the chilling effects of the Snowden revelations very strongly. Finally, the centralisation of the internet (videos are on YouTube nowadays, not on BitTorrent) means our channels are dry.
In short, we need pirates more than ever. But in order to do so, we need a community with the ability to create a safe space where we can operate freely and impactfully. We just have to figure out a way to get there from here.
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Agreed. It’s best not to vote on something you don’t understand. Voting against anything however, simply because you don’t understand it, is the democratic equivalent of witch-burning.
Brandis was advocating something that either;
- was beyond his intellectual grasp or
- he hadn’t bothered to study.
Nobody would expect anyone in that position to understand everything about a field so complex. That level of ignorance however, does not show him as fit for the position.
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The Left as being about putting collective rights and responsibilities ahead of individual rights and responsibilities, the right are the opposite, they put individual rights and responsibilities ahead of collective rights and responsibilities.
Libertarians focus on rights, authoritarians focus on responsibilities, in practice you cant have one without the other, its about finding a balance.
I expect most people in the Pirate Party are Libertarians, but only about collective rights, not individual rights.
We want individuals to have more control of their own lives, we dont want to empower individuals to have control over the collective society.
I dont think we should hide from our Libertarian side, but perhaps we do need to better articulate the difference between us and others.
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Free Speech is what bigots, murderers, and and right wing pundits use to incite hate and violence to me and my kin. Free Speech is when men on the internet threaten and harass me. Free Speech is when a man sending a pull request to an open source project I founded calls me a bitch and a slut on github and other websites because I rejected his changes. Free Speech is when neonazis trawled through my facebook pics and found evidence of my illness and queerness and publically bullied me, and called their friends to do the same. Free Speech is the american politicians inciting violence against trans people, and the bathroom bombings inspired by their words. Free Speech is what drove one of my friends to a suicide attempt two years ago, when hundreds of anons on tumblr started harassing her with incitements to self harm and bullying, that pushed her over the edge of an already precarious mental health situation right after a breakup.
Free Speech is code for Legal Hate Speech in my community. That’s one hell of a phrase to be holding up as a virtue. This god damned week especially.
But I guess it’s hard to be sensitive to things like this when the party has nearly no diversity and nobody really knows what it’s like for free speech to be a weapon people use to beat you down and kill your kind. If there’s some kind of speech you value that’s being obstructed, be specific.
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Sadly, that’s what Libertarianism and variations on the theme have come to mean. 
(these are my views only)
Free speech should not imply that people arent responsible for what they say.
All rights should come with responsibilities, what you describe is harassment, its destructive because of the persons intent to cause harm, and i expect there are laws against behaving like that. It should be more about intent than the words they use IMO.
But there are two sides to it, if we isolate the haters, they dont converse with those who have moderate views, they find each other, they reinforce each others narrow minded views, thats probably where people become radicalised.
Its better for people to talk about their hate than for them to bottle it up and then practice it in person.
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yeah okay but can their therapy not involve killing my friends
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No, that’s a criminal offence in Australia. Section 474.17 of the Criminal Code (Cth) Act (Using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence).
This is also a criminal offence in Australia. Same section as above.
This is also a criminal offence in Australia. Same section as above.
Inciting violence is a criminal offence in the US and one of the very express limitations of the First Amendment in the US. Bathroom bombings are also a crime.
Criminal harassment is not free speech.
Then your community needs to stop perpetuating the lies that give the assholes the power in this broken world. Hate speech is hate speech, both legally and conceptually, and separate from the legal doctrine of free speech.
Free speech is referred to in the preamble of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which refers to its by its proper name of “freedom of expression”. It also makes it clear in paragraph 3 that limitations on freedom of expression are expressly permitted to protect the rights of others.
Free speech is the ability to speak on issues that the government would prefer that you didn’t without fear of legal penalties. Active incitement to crime has never been considered a valid form of “free speech” anywhere in the Commonwealth.
Perhaps the issue is that law enforcement agencies do not enforce the law. This is a different issue entirely, but one that constantly gets conflated with any discussions around freedom of speech and freedom of expression.
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Left-Libertarianism. You can continue to try to mislead people on that, but it won’t fly around here.
@piecritic You don’t get it, Mr Lets Change Our Name to Left Libertarian or whatever. Words have meaning. Words have emotional impact. Words can hurt. When nazis, biggots, and white terrorists use a word as a rallying cry, and that word gets associated more to their movement than anything else, using that word without tact or context breeds miscommunication at best, and alienation or even violence at worst.
I don’t want to be associated with something that uses the same language as white terrorists. I don’t want to occupy the same space as people who are attracted to those words. I don’t want them to feel any familliarity in any space I exist.
I don’t care about your dictionary definition. Language is fluid and evolving. When people say “free speech” it puts to mind abusers, for me. When people say “libertarian” it puts to my mind right wing extremeists who would rather I be dead and sometimes try to bring that about. Don’t be that guy who goes around saying how the nazi emblem is a symbol for peace. It’s fucking not. Things change.
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