Wednesday 21 September 2011

Pirate Party wins Berlin seats on platform of internet freedom and free stuff.

The pirate party won 15 seats in the Berlin regional government, astonishing many with their 8.9% voter support.  Scroll down for platform.

"The Greens are a conservative party now."   
The dress and poses of the young men contrast with
the press camera throng for a bizarre stand-off look.


Der Spiegel (english version) adds this:
"The criticism may actually have helped drive young voters to the Pirate Party. Indeed, other parties may have overlooked the fact that the Pirate Party addressed the concerns and interests of a relevant group of voters. The party focuses not only on classic themes like direct democracy, transparency and online data protection, but also on demands that would be unthinkable to traditional politicians. The party wants to see the introduction of an unconditional basic income, for example, and the legalization of soft drugs".
The Pirate's one-page platform (in German) is here. Unsere Ziele.
Copy and paste to make your own garbled English version at Google Translate.

PLATFORM  (my German is shaky).
1.   Defend civil rights  (Bürgerrechte verteidigen)
2.   Individuals should control who gets information about them and be able to edit it. (Informationelle Selbstbestimmung)
3.   They're for "sustainability" of the environment with a nod to the Greens. (Umwelt)
4.   Government should be transparent, its workings fully accessible to all citizens. (Transparenz)
5.   Minimum income for everyone whether they work or not is a Basic Law. (Gesellschaftliche Teilhabe)
6.   All publications and products of the state should be in the public domain, not copyrighted. ("Open Access")
7.   Expand FOI allowable requests to be free and virtually unlimited for every citizen. (Informationsfreiheitsgesetze)
8.   Try to get rid of all copyright and let people freely make their own copies of anything. (Urheberrecht)
9.   Strengthen protection for "whistle blowers". (Whistleblowerschutz)
10. Restrict patent law to exclude anything involving DNA. (Patentrecht)
11. End state prohibitions on any consenting adult lifestyle at home. (Geschlechter- und Familienpolitik)
12. Free education at every level. (Bildung)
13. Individuals and small groups should retain control over how information about them is used. (Freie demokratisch kontrollierte technische Infrastruktur)
14. Free internet for everybody.  (Teilhabe am digitalen Leben)
15. Oppose consent agreements that force you to use courts in one cherry-picked jurisdiction only. (Recht)
16. And whatever else they come up with collectively. (Unsere Themenwahl).

Lots of freedom and protection for me, not so much for you, and handouts from the state.
They raise big points about privacy and control that will have to be addressed in time by everyone.
Added:  They have philosophical ties to the hacker group, Anonymous and favor "liquid democracy" with ongoing directional feedback from the electorate between elections.
NPR adds "free buses to the list.

2 comments:

  1. And I'm sure their answer would be the same as Obama's to the question: "Who pays?"

    All those rich guys hiding pelf inside their 12-high featherbed stacks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perhaps the response to "free everything" is "free money for everybody". If citizens are a little short of cash, they email the treasury to have some moola issued to their account.

    ReplyDelete