Pirate Party Germany gets into the parliament for the state of Berlin | Hacker News Reader

Pirate Party Germany gets into the parliament for the state of Berlin

web.piratenpartei.de

253 pointsFrojoS65 comments

Arrrr, me hearties, I still can't get used to the term 'pirate' that is slapped upon people who copy digital music.

A pirate is a criminal at sea, who inititiates violence against sea travelers. Pirates steal property (like vessels) and valuables, and it's not uncommon that pirates murder their victims, or take them hostage for a ransom.

How the term 'pirate' ever could be used to denote kids swapping MP3's, is unfathomable to me. The analogy is ludicrous. But maybe it could be because pirate (the seafaring kind) communities in the 18th century had a liberal approach to freedom, which was unusual in that time, and maybe that extrapolates somehow to the liberal file swapping in our digital age. Which doesn't, by the way, harm anyone, nor takes away things from people.

I'd like to add that I don't condone the act of illegally duplicating CDs/DVDs in high volumes (complete with liner notes and backcard) with the intent to sell them on the black market. That's just a ripoff. I think such duplication is different from digital music file sharing.

Note that this usage of pirate goes back several centuries, e.g. see these entries from the OED:

1668 J. Hancock Brooks' String of Pearls (Notice at end), Some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies.

1703 D. Defoe True-born Englishman in True Collect. I. Explan. Pref. sig. B3v, Its being Printed again and again, by Pyrates.

The term is metaphorical in origin, and in that regard I don't think it's particularly outrageous. If you say that he's "a lion of a man" you're not arguing that the person in question has got large teeth, a mane, or hunts antelope.

Piracy has been a term for unauthorized copying of works for over 400 years [1][2]. It's not an analogy; it's just one of the meanings of the word.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#.22Pirac...

[2] http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/yeare.html

I didn't like the name at first, but you can get used to it. Also I think in former times pirates were actually often endorsed agents of some empires (supporting their war efforts, at the very least). And they are famous for being early democrats.

"Privateers" and "mercenaries" have a long history, and more recently "Private Security Contractors" and "Private Military Companies" are widely used.

There are also entities which can provide electronic attacks against networks and servers, as well as various entities that provide defenses against these attacks.

And there are those entities which provide for information and propaganda distribution for both private and governmental interests, as well those that can provide astro-turfing, sock-puppeting, trolling and other services, and of course entities that provide the analysis to detect and potentially thwart these information-related efforts and to reduce the effects of these attacks.

Pirates endorsed as agents of a sovereign nation were known as privateers, not pirates.

OK, didn't know that. Or maybe most pirates tried to be privateers as often as possible, but if no empire endorsing was at hand, they reverted to just being pirates?

One country's privateer was another country's pirate. Drake was given letters of marque by the english monarch to raid the spanish around south america.

The British empire has the distinction of being the first founded on systematic piracy.

Oh I don't think we were the first :) But we perfected it.

one shouldn´t take this too literal and see the diversity of this term. Especially in political context a pirate is someone whos challenging the status quo. Pirates/Buccaneers also established some kind of grass roots pre-democratic system while everyone else at that time still praised their god-given leaders

I like RMS view on piracy : "attacking ships is very bad, but helping your friends and your neighbours is good"

The Pirate Party uses that term in a humorous way. It all started as a joke after the Pirate Bay was attacked in a court of law.

If you're referring to the raid of TPB[1], it actually ocurred almost 6 months after the Pirate Party was founded[2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_raid [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_%28Sweden%29#Histo...

How strange, I remember distinctly reading that it was a legal action (not the raid) that gave the idea to the founders to make a political party but I don't manage to find references.

There is a funny fact, that shows that even the Berlin Pirates them self did not dream of a greater success: According to the current exit-poll estimations, they would get 15 seats in the parliament. That's exactly the number of candidates they assigned. Would they get more seats, those seats would have to stay empty.

Though, as others have pointed out, its more likely, that their share will go down once all votes are counted out.

The German political spectrum is interesting to watch at the moment. There are substantial changes, with real consequences on all levels. So far I think this is democracy doing its job well. Thus established parties, like the "liberals" (FDP) and the Greens, have neglected topics like data privacy, net neutrality. The creation of a new party, like the Greens in the eighties and the Pirates in the aughts, is a drastic sign that the agenda needs updating. Let's hope that the German political system is stable enough to sustain substantive changes to the political landscape without instability.

> "liberals" (FDP) and the Greens, have neglected topics like data privacy, net neutrality.

They didnt neglect them, they in theory represented the same values as the pirate party, but after the elections, they ritually neglected their promises in order to get into coalitions with the two big parties and into goverment. So for a certain number of younger, technology-savy people they became literaly worthless to vote for. The Pirate party rose at a such fast pace, because an increasing number of people and their concerns werent even taken seriously by the opposition.

I don't know, the greens seem to be a lot less progressive, in theory and pactice. The greens are certainly a lot less willing to embrace technological change.

In Finland the Greens were considered for a long time the only defender of any issues related to the information society. But indeed, they've sold a lot of principles to stay in government.

They even had an MP who has his site in Klingon: http://kasvi.org/index.php?kli :-)

Glad to see that the party that actually fights for Internet liberties, rather than for the companies lobbying them, is starting to get more and more political power in all these different countries where it exists.

The problems the Pirates face are getting beyond that one issue. I've read their party programme, and it's a bit wishy-washy. Some interesting (and unique) points, but no clear stance on the usual issues of politics (finance, Euro-zone etc.). The run into the the danger of being a one-trick-pony, a pure "option" part, who just add some point of views to the bigger coalition partner ("I'll vote left with side-dish of legal file-sharing").

Same problem the Green party had (or, well, still has), but with even more problems on the horizon, considering that the Greens were quite solidly leftist from the start, where the Pirate party unites lefties and libertarians.

Certainly a party to watch. I'd vote for any party that has a clear emphasis on civil rights (not just for the internet), and their former "champions" in Germany (the FDP) have done a pretty bad job in that regard lately.

I believe they being there at the parlament makes people talk about it and eventually the other parties need to clarify their position on it. Until a bigger party sides by them they might keep growing forcing the others to act.

They don't deny that they are still working out many issues. However, there is currently no danger of them having to decide on the future of the Euro zone.

Also, some of their principles apply to finance as well, such as transparency and simplicity. Open data about government spending might have some impact, too (just my thinking, not official Pirate Party, I am not a member)

It's always interesting to see something in its fledgling phase (hey, we're on a startup site…), so I'm very eager to see how they're going to cope with this.

There seems to be some disagreement about how fast they want to grow right now, and how. While this is certainly nothing that will be topped quite soon (Berlin is probably the epicenter of their target demographics), they are on the map right now, big time.

They still don't want to let some delegation or committee determine their program, but given enough growth I wonder how much they can stick to that principle. You're more likely to get bogged down with minutiae doing something that democratic, and less likely to get down to the very core (e.g. by the time you decided on how to avoid some gender-specific expression in the dreaded German language, your meeting is over).

Either they'll adapt to more common party politics (which could be fatal), or we're going to find out if they can properly harness all our new technology. Getting from a party for the internet to a party from the internet…

I guess the only hope for such total democracy is enough people giving up because the process is so frustratingly slow, so that few enough people remain to become able to execute.

I think this is deliberate; I remember at least one of the Pirate parties saying that they didn't have any economic policies because they'd be a minority partner in a coalition so those policies would never be applied.

Personally I find this refreshingly honest and I wish there was more of it; our Green party, for example, has a very left-wing set of economic policies which get ignored when they're in a coalition, because they're too left-wing for any major party. All having them really seems to do is cement the fact that they won't have anything to do with any party to the right of centre, which kind of sucks when those parties win so the Green votes effectively get ignored. I like the idea that the Pirate Parties don't want to go down the same route.

Yeah the greens in Australia do the same thing and form a full set of policies which usually are mostly ignored. It's only now that they hold somewhat of a balance of power in the parliament that they are getting some action on some of those policies.

With the Swedish pirate party, this is a choice of strategy. They purposefully focus their politics and votes with whoever votes with them, as it usually is with coalitions between political parties.

They did exactly what they promised once they got into the EU parliament, which actually suprised the Swedish newspapers who accused them of 'not taking it seriously' when they focused entirely on their area of expertise rather than pay lip service to other issues.

It's how they become the greenest party in the green coalition, despite not being a green party.

It was a nice change to experience someone doing exactly what they said they would once they'd been voted in.

For what it's worth, the linked page currently does show pre-vote estimates, not the current numbers. The results will be official later.

Those estimates are generally very accurate.

indeed, they won´t change more than +/- 1,5%

True, however there are lots of 'Briefwähler' (absentee voters) in Berlin who voted weeks ago and the Piratenpartei just got a lot of traction in the last few weeks. Additionally there's a rather weird 5% clause in Berlin that differs from the rest of Germany. Parties have to get 5% of all votes cast, not just 5% of the valid ones. (http://blog.zeit.de/zweitstimme/2011/09/16/aus-der-kategorie...)

However they will probably still be in Parliament, I'm not really sure if they will get as many seats as predicted right now.

generally, the absentee voters in germany do not affect the outcomes pretty much

I can't help not to wonder, who's counter-revolution this is exactly...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/09/the_curse_of_t...

This is an exit poll rather than the actual result. Nevertheless, WELL DONE PIRATES!

Yes, but according to the current exit polls they reached 8-9% so its safe to assume that they are above the 5% threshold.

Good Job. Let's see how they will perform over time. At least there will be some very young and motivated people in the berlin parliament.

Great stuff, let's hope this happens in Sweden as well

chart (german): http://wahlarchiv.tagesschau.de/flash/?wahl=2011-09-18-LT-DE...

and some further info: http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=...

And without Flash http://wahlarchiv.tagesschau.de/wahlen/2011-09-18-LT-DE-BE/i...

*Parliament?

Well, Parlament is German for parliament. So that mistake is easily made ;-)

Thanks for pointing out. (In German its 'das Parlament'.)

Had no idea thank you for the clarification!

BTW: The parliament in Berlin is actually not called "Parlament", but "Abgeordnetenhaus" because it's a city state.

Nice this is just like the Swedish party that took seats in the European Parliament in 2009.

No, they doesn't get into the parliament, it's only an exit-poll, not official.

as written above, exit polls are quite accurate and won´t change much

Is it because of Apple suing Samsung? (PP is against patents)

Yarrrrr! Still voting green, but good job!

I'm little confused that this is a popular news at HN. They fight for Internet stuff but they also deny that there was an Holocaust in Germany.

For me this is pretty bad news to hear that they will get into the parliament.

Source for denying the holocaust: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js...

To be fair that was only one member and that member has been thrown out of the party a long time ago.

Also, while I didn't follow it too closely, I suspect it was more a case of extreme free thinking (question everything, don't believe anything) rather than right wing extremism.

I don't think this is valid criticism of the party in its current state. If you can't give any evidence other than a post from two years ago based on a Twitter message (!), we can assume that, if someone denied the Holocaust, that was the opinion of a single individual. All established parties have nutters; what counts is how the parties deal with them once the nutters make their nutty views public.

It's based on more than merely a Twitter statement, and as far as I can tell, the guy is still a member (though he has no more official responsibilities). Aaron König, another prominent (in his case: former) pirate had his own crude and/or right-wing extremist views. He now spreads them from a new populist right-wing platform of the Geert Wilders kind. Despicable people, all around.

All that said, I agree that it's unfair to condemn the PP because of those individuals. They're far from the norm.

Here you have an other one from Bodo Thiesen, who is still active in the Pirate Party:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js...

the Pirate Party is a very liberal party and as such attracts all kinds of people with varying viewpoints. Im pretty sure that holocaust denial is not the norm.

Even if it would be just A SINGLE PERSON who is denying the holocaust we should fought it. But I see that some people want to have better internet rights and willing to forget the most tragic event in the human history.

You can down vote me as much as you like but I will never give my vote to a party who has member who are just lying like that.

AND YEAH he is still active in the Piraten party. Source from december 2010: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js...

But I see that some people want to have better internet rights and willing to forget the most tragic event in the human history.

So you'd support a party who censored its members' and didn't support freedom of expression? You're right, maybe PP isn't right for you.

Freedom of Expression is one thing but lying and denying a horrific fact is another. Are you saying that it is ok to denying the holocaust in Germany only cause every one should freedom of expression? I'm no friend of censorship but this has nothing to do with censoring this is just to protect the truth and the history. Such an horrific event shouldn't be forgotten neither should it be "over simplified to show it as it was ok cause there was no holocaust at all"! If you think this kind of stuff is ok then you should really really overthink what you are doing there. I would like to see how you want to explain the families who lost members in the holocaust this "freedom of expression" statement!

Freedom of Expression is one thing but lying and denying a horrific fact is another. Are you saying that it is ok to denying the holocaust in Germany only cause every one should freedom of expression?

OK? No, I think it's a terrible thing and the world would be better off without him. BUT, I believe in Freedom of Expression, which forces me to defend his right to say such barbarities.

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

I'm no friend of censorship but this has nothing to do with censoring this is just to protect the truth and the history. That's what every censor says. "We're just defending the public decency", "We're just protecting the rights of X".

You protect the truth with facts and arguments, not censorship.

Such an horrific event shouldn't be forgotten neither should it be "over simplified to show it as it was ok cause there was no holocaust at all"!

If you don't want it to be forgotten, it's your job to divulge it. To show to people what really happened. Silencing others makes you no better than any totalitarian government.

I would like to see how you want to explain the families who lost members in the holocaust this "freedom of expression" statement!

First, that's a terrible argument. Secondly, I lost family members because the fascist censors didn't like what they had to say.

Lastly, I'd give them the words of one of the sons of an Holocaust survivor:

"(...) If you want to know the Holocaust deniers in your midst, you can find some of them here, out in the open. You can confront them, debate them, call them out as they go about their lives, or ignore them. Suppressing these groups or individuals will not make them disappear.

Personally, I am against making any form of speech a crime, unless it is clearly linked to acts of violence or the planning of acts of violence. The way to fight speech that you think is bad or offensive is with more speech, better speech. (...)"

(http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/facebook-free-speech-and...

i agree to your first statement, but i won´t dismiss any organisation just because one member is a dumb-ass.

and honestly, the source you´re citing is a bit offside.

official statements are; http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js...

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js...

however, its a young party and until this they weren´t properly set up to deal with such a case. i can´t understand why they haven´t kicked him out so far but according to a current interview of a member of the PPs federal board this will happen soon; http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js...

> I will never give my vote to a party who has member who are just lying like that

If you are going to base your vote on one extremist member, you won't be able to vote for any party!

There's a party fighting for freedom of all information of any kind and someone who criticizes that there's one exception for freedom of opinion immediately becomes a denier? What are you? A zionist? A Nazi-hunter? Give me a break.

If you want to fight fascists and become one yourself, you failed ..

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