Why the UK Needs the Pirate Party

Barence writes "The UK Pirate Party wants to reform copyright and patent laws, abolish the surveillance state and increase our freedom of speech, and it's just been recognized as a political party. In this interview with PC Pro, UK Pirate Party leader Andrew Robinson explains how he's planning to shake up the political landscape. 'What we really want to do is raise awareness, so that the other parties say "bloody hell, they've got seven million votes this time out," or one million votes, or enough votes to make them care and seriously think about these issues.'"

Arr!

[mach1980]

First things first. Top priority for the pirate party should be to make speak-like-a-pirate-day a national holiday.

Re:Sounds promising, but...

[Thanshin]

It makes sense to decrease the legislation that is heavily in favour of the company rather than the consumer (things like making it illegal to make personal backups or making fines for infringement hugely out of proportion) but if they get to complete freedom to pirate everything then they've taken it too far the other way and the economy will falter again.

That's why I don't vote the left.

It makes sense to go for a system that takes into account the general population and tries to protect the less favoured, but then they could go for utopic communism, the abolishment to private property and in the next legislature, they may enforce genetic manipulation to make us all identical. And replace names by numbers, so nobody has a better name.

And then, they'd probably forbid the use of the singular in language. We'd have to use plurals for everything.

tl;dr: Don't worry, a couple million votes to the pirate party won't destroy UK's economy.

Re:I might vote for them, but it is futile

[damburger]

Indeed. The City still hasn't figured out you can't generate electricity with smugness.

Re:ïI might vote for them, but it is futile

[damburger]

You read that and placed me as a daily mail reader? What the fuck?

Re:So, about that DMCA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the Democratic Party is essentially the Ass-Pirate Party. Is that close enough?

Re:This is your life, Slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how this was modded "Redundant" - as in, "Yes, we already know."

Re:This is your life, Slashdot!

[TheP4st]

And yet you keep on coming back. Say more about you than the rest of us.

Re:ïI might vote for them, but it is futile

[backwardMechanic]

Stagnation is perfect. If there were some big political issues being played out (something like the poll tax, privatisation of the railway, etc), the Pirate Party would have no hope. But I can't really see the difference between the major parties, and really can't find anyone I actually want to vote for. So, rather than striking my vote, I'll vote Pirate Party. If enough of us do, it'll make a point and maybe we'll see some reform on copyright and patents. It's a long shot. I don't expect the country to be run by the Pirate Party (although I'd love to hear the Queen's speech, the Royal Family have a long history of supporting pirates!), but I don't think I'm losing anything by not voting for a major party.

Re:Need yes, Succes?

[daveime]

0.003% of the population can't be wrong ...

Cardassians!

[mrsurb]

Can we really trust a political party run by Andrew Robinson, a known Cardassian spy [wikipedia.org]?