Are You a Pirate?

By Sean Corbett in Miscellaneous on Oct 13, 2006 2:52PM

A question that brings to mind both the pirates of yore (and more importantly how they talk) and how millions of people steal money from the pockets of others using nothing but an internet connection. There are other ways to conceptualize what people are doing when they click ‘download,’ the Pirate Political Party does just that. The Pirate Party has aims to reform copyright, intellectual property, and civil rights around the world. Since its beginnings in Sweden in January of 2006, it has gained a sizeable following there, enough to nominate a candidate for Swedish parliament in the recent election.

The Pirate Party in the USA has just started organizing politically minded file-sharers in this country. Its supporters don’t conceal their discontent with the current copyright system and are bold enough to take a stand for something that could possibly benefit us all. Interested pirates are well advised to check out the presentations this Sunday at the first annual Chicago Hackmeeting. The other events of the Hackmeeting look pretty interesting too: learn to build circuitry, hack ipods, and the like.

On the other hand: copyright industries are more than 5% of US GDP and a huge export. The current system seams to work in our favor for the most part, do we really want to raise a ruckus when there isn’t exactly any other proven method of insuring people are compensated for their works?