Pirate politics
Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog
One of the most interesting talks at last week's Open Web Vancouver conference was the keynote by Rickard Falkvinge, the leader and founder of Sweden's PiratePartiet (Pirate Party), which recently won its first seat in the European Parliament. Ordinarily, politicians are not people I respect, but Falkvinge and the Pirate movement won my grudging respect for at least two reasons. First, the gleeful chutzpah of the movement's name shows a rare kind of courage at a time when most politicians are obsessed with marketing and optics. Second, for the first time in years, I was hearing a politician talk about issues like copyright and patent reform that have considerable influence on people in their everyday lives -- and do so with considerable realism.
The Pirate Party did not choose its name. The name came from the movement of which it is the political arm. The copyright lobby had already set up The Anti-Pirate Bureau, so what would be more natural that its opponents should call themselves The Pirate Bureau?
Still, using the name carries a certain defiance (and the Pirates know that, or else their supporters would not have been waving the Jolly Roger on the night of the European Parliament's elections). In effect, the name says, "You think that calling us pirates will insult us? Okay, we'll be pirates, then!"
Accepting the name amounts to a detonation of the word in the sense that Lenny Bruce suggested: using it over and over until it loses its stigma. Some might think that the stigma remains -- for instance, the journalists who repeatedly ask whether the Pirate Party has any connection to the Pirate Bay -- but such people immediately reveal themselves as ignorant of the issues. If you do understand the issues, then the name becomes an insider's joke, a shibboleth that identifies one supporter to another.
Ordinarily, I tend to side with the Richard Stallmans of this world, who insist that accurate terminology is the necessary beginning of any discussion. But I admire courage and defiance, and this detonation seems to have plenty of both.
But the main reason I admire the Pirates is that they are talking about issues that concern me greatly yet are rarely discussed by mainstream. The issue, of course, is not file-sharing as such, but the efforts to destroy personal privacy and basic civil rights in order to ensure that large industries continue to be profitable.
Traditional political parties never discuss such concerns. Mostly, they are unaware of them, or influenced by lobbyists or their own fears of appearing too left-wing (yes, even the supposedly left-wing ones).
The result is that a certain falsity has crept into political discourse around the world. Borrowing a term that Gwynne Dyer first used about conventional forces in the nuclear age, I like to call this falsity "keeping the old game alive." By that, I mean that traditional politicians are pretending that large chunks of daily life simply do not exist, and that the solutions that have worked in the past will work in the future. Such an outlook is so obviously untrue that it explains why voter turn out is declining in most places in the industrialized world where it is not compulsory, and that voters under thirty are especially hostile to politics.
By contrast, the Pirate Party chose to talk about issues that affect the online generation in their daily lives. Moreover, they do so with a certain hard-headed realism that contrasts favorably with the imaginary, truncated world of average politicians.
For instance, alone among political parties, the Pirates realize that the time to debate file-sharing is long past. It exists, and, as Falkvinge likes to say, "being for or against file sharing is like being for or against blueberries growing in the forest." Both file-sharing and blueberries exist, regardless of what you think of them, and any rational view of the world has to begin with an acceptance that this basic fact is not about to change. Just as the banning of the printing press in sixteenth century France did not destroy that technology, attempts to eliminate file sharing is not going to stop it from happening -- although the efforts to do so can make life temporarily unpleasant.
Naturally enough, these changes in technology can make business models and corporations obsolete. As Falkvinge said in his keynote, "there's no such thing as right to profit." Just as the ice-cutting industry in nineteenth century Sweden was made obsolete by refrigerators, so record and music corporations are being made obsolete by computers and the Internet.
"It's understandable than an obsoleting industry is fighting for its life," Falkvinge says, "But it's up to the politicians to say, that, 'No, we're not going to dismantle civil liberties, just so you don't have to change. Get out, and adopt or die.'"
This message sounds a little too laissez-faire -- I for one, would suggest programs to help companies threatened with obsolescence to find new business models. But at least it has the virtue of being based on the reality of how the world works.
Where the Pirates will go from here is a question that I can't begin to guess. However, I suspect and hope that the rise of the Pirates will become as important to modern political discourse as the rise of Labour and the Greens have been in their day. We could use a political party or platform that has some relation to reality.
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TUXEDO Computers Unveils Linux Laptop Featuring AMD Ryzen CPU
This latest release is the first laptop to include the new CPU from Ryzen and Linux preinstalled.
-
XZ Gets the All-Clear
The back door xz vulnerability has been officially reverted for Fedora 40 and versions 38 and 39 were never affected.
-
Canonical Collaborates with Qualcomm on New Venture
This new joint effort is geared toward bringing Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core to Qualcomm-powered devices.
-
Kodi 21.0 Open-Source Entertainment Hub Released
After a year of development, the award-winning Kodi cross-platform, media center software is now available with many new additions and improvements.
-
Linux Usage Increases in Two Key Areas
If market share is your thing, you'll be happy to know that Linux is on the rise in two areas that, if they keep climbing, could have serious meaning for Linux's future.
-
Vulnerability Discovered in xz Libraries
An urgent alert for Fedora 40 has been posted and users should pay attention.
-
Canonical Bumps LTS Support to 12 years
If you're worried that your Ubuntu LTS release won't be supported long enough to last, Canonical has a surprise for you in the form of 12 years of security coverage.
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.
-
New Pentesting Distribution to Compete with Kali Linux
SnoopGod is now available for your testing needs
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.