Saturday, August 15, 2009

German version of the Tea Party

Gregg had a post with a comment showing a link that I followed to find this: (It's in German, but the sentiment is pretty easy to understand.)

Apparently, they have the same ideals as the Tea Partiers, more individual freedom and less government. Seems like the fundamental human desire to be free is not just an American phenomenon.

I must admit, I kind of like the name though. "The Pirate Party."

UPDATE: From the comments below, I just found out that there is a US Pirate Party. Check them out.

UPDATE 2 Instalanche! Welcome, and take a look at the other conservative bloggers on the left under Dextrafeed.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve, there is a new US Pirate Party

http://www.pirate-party.us/

thanks for your comment in my GB and promoting this Video from my german pirate party site

www.aenderhaken.de

Jürgen said...

but whats the tea party then ?

Steve said...

It's from our pre-Revolutionary days, when the King of England imposed a tax on tea for the colonies. A bunch of predecessors of Today's Tea Party decided to storm the ship and dump all of the tea into Boston Harbor so that no tax would be collected.
Probably did more for changing American beverage habits from tea to coffee than anything else, but it was a statement that we would no longer tolerate arbitrary taxation by a mindless despot.
Same thing that we have going on today.

Edmund Ironside said...

There is virtually no common ground between The Pirate Party and the Tea-partiers. Fundamental to The Pirate Party is an attack on private property rights. It is yet another iteration of socialist ideas wrapped up in new packaging. The Pirate Party want downloading movies, songs and TV shows without paying to be legal. Bad news if you happen to make movies, music or TV shows and want to pay your mortgage. They are also advocates of the legalisation of hard-core drugs, and all the other hippy tropes. If anything, most Tea-partiers would find that The Pirate Party are very similar to hard-core lefties than themselves.

Steve said...

While I agree that the US Pirate Party is more so inclined, the German one in the clip is more about keeping government influence out of their lives, which is quite a change from the Germany I remember of 15 years ago.

Chris Castle said...

I could try to explain why comparison of the Pirate Party to anything consistent with US law or tradition is about as wrong as it is possible to be, but suffice it to say that the Pirate Party has alligned itself with the Green Party and the Socialists in the EU Parliament.

It seems pretty clear that the Pirate Bay is to the Pirate Party what the IRA was to Sinn Fein. The Pirates deny a connection to the Pirate Bay, but Gerry Adams always denied a connection to the IRA, and no one believed him, either.

There are also news reports that the Pirate Bay was funded by a neo-Nazi (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/17/piratebay_neonazi_ok/print.html) and it all seems a bit Larouchie to me.

SenatorMark4 said...

The perfect way to insure a Democratic rule forever is to join a third party like this "Pirate Party". The Republicans, as worthless as they are, have a national organization that can be pirated by "The People" to take control of our government once again. We can start to base it on principle again, but the policies presented to the electorate MUST be defensible. No more "party of NO". 1099 for All!

Unknown said...

Keep in mind that the Pirate Party wasn't formed until people in Europe who ran file-sharing trackers (different from file-sharing sites, and something that even google does) received criminal sentences on par with violent crimes in their home countries. The group was also formed in response to massively unpopular "3 strikes" laws that deputized ISPs to violate user's privacy wholesale to stop illegal file sharing with zero judicial recourse. These laws were written by the copyright lobby and attempted to ram them through without any period of public comment in France, which actually caused a massive outcry.

They may be fringe socialists by your standards, but it's pretty clear that copyright policy in the Western world has become unbalanced and government efforts to stop a relatively benign activity threaten to seriously hamper citizens' privacy. I would hope that most individuals on the right, like myself, are at least sympathetic to the idea of unintended consequences from government overreach.

Edmund Ironside said...

Matt:
'it's pretty clear that copyright policy in the Western world has become unbalanced and government efforts to stop a relatively benign activity threaten to seriously hamper citizens' privacy.'
What a bizarre argument. Thats like saying 'your exclusive right to the house you buy has become unbalanced'. Either the people who create published works have a right to be paid for their work, or they don't. Your suggestion that there is some 'moderate' half-way house does not stand up to scrutiny.
Is there benign shoplifting? Benign car theft? benign assault? So how can there be benign illegal filesharing?
The reason The Pirate Party is irate is because something they have been stealing they now have to pay for. Boo hoo.
How is enforcing private property rights 'government overreach'? Enforceable private property laws are the foundation of capitalism, you know, that system that has made the United States the richest country on the planet by a country mile.

SH said...

In Europe, anarchism as a political tradition is solidly ‘left’ (incl anti free market). So, when these guys tap into the pirate meme, that is where it goes. In the modern US, not so much now (although, back in the 30s, it was).

Doc Merlin said...

Copyright violation isn't stealing because you aren't depriving someone of the good.
Its "copyright violation" because you are depriving them of a legal privilege created by the legislature under the constitution. (The copyrights and letter's patent clause)

Anonymous said...

The Pirate Party is more concerned about transparency, civil rights and privacy than copyright.
After 9/11 they introduced some laws that are more than questionable, one of the worst is the telecommunication data retention for 6 month. I don't think the government should have access to these private data. These include time and number of your calls, if by mobile also you position. Sending data of emails including subject and your ip while online.
In short, most of your telecommunication can be traced and everybody is a suspect.
Copyright holders get an orgasm just thinking about these data.

There are many more laws passed that are just plain wrong and exchange freedom for security.

Copyright is no ownership, but a right for protected use and I am not sure that it has to endure 70 years after the death of the author and has only been prolonged over time. It should be shortened to a reasonable length, corresponding to the easier and cheaper publication of works.