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In 2006, Rick Falkvinge, a Swedish software entrepreneur, founded a new political party centred around the subjects of file sharing, copyright and patents. He called it the Pirate Party and it rose to prominence after a government crackdown on the file-sharing site, the Pirate Bay. Since then, the Pirate Party has swept Europe and beyond to become an international political movement, active in 40 different countries with representation in the European parliament.
In Sweden, it’s the largest party for voters under the age of 30 with 25% of the vote, and in September 2011, the German Pirate Party won an unprecedented 8.9 per cent of the vote and now has several members in the Berlin state parliament. Focused on the subjects of government transparency, internet privacy and copyright law, the Pirate Party hosts Wikileaks on its servers and uses new technology to leverage political power in new and interesting ways. In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine called Falkvinge one of the top 100 global thinkers.
Encouraging.
Now what we need is some sort of cohesion- any cohesion. What we need is a lessening of the micro-fascist tendency of control freaks to dominate their followers. Plus hacktivism is important: the files governments keep to possibly conscript youth into future wars ought to be attacked if we are serious about being pirates. Such is advocating illegal activity yet we can't be Buddhist GoodThinkful all the time-- we are not Jains. We cannot assume that people who have spent a sizable fraction of their lives gaining power are going to simply give up.. such does not appear likely for the near future, we have to anticipate contingencies. Don't know about Europe however in America if one is serious in wanting to change things positively one has to fight about everything all the time, this is how our Madisonian mode of changing works. Unfortunately it is far easier to change life in America in a negative sense; far easier for white nationalists-- or any number of microfascists of all colors-- to act as spoilers. As for Europe: you tell us.
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The IEET is a 501(c)3 non-profit, tax-exempt organization registered in the State of Connecticut in the United States.
Contact: Executive Director, Dr. James J. Hughes,
Williams 119, Trinity College, 300 Summit St., Hartford CT
06106 USA
Email: director @ ieet.org phone:
860-297-2376
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