The "Pirate Party" has started to enter the mainstream. Regional pirate parties with a focus on promoting Internet privacy, digital intellectual property reform, and government transparency began forming around the world in the past few years. In 2010, the Pirate Parties International was formed as an umbrella organization to help support and promote the movement and its ideas. This post was originally published on the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal website on February 13, 2012. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.
This article draws on a series of interviews with members of the Pirate Party, a political party focusing on copyright and information politics, in different countries. It discusses the interviewees' visions of democracy and technology and explains that copyright is seen as not only an obstacle to the free consumption of music and movies but a threat to the freedom of speech, the right to privacy, and a thriving public sphere. The first part of this article briefly sketches how the Pirate Party's commitment to the democratic potential of new communication technologies can be interpreted as a defense of a digitally expanded lifeworld against the attempts at colonization by market forces and state bureaucracies. The second part problematizes this assumption by discussing the interactions between the Pirate movement and the tech industry in relation to recent theories on the connection between political agency and social media. ; Funding text: Helge Ax:son Johnson foundation; Olle Engqvist foundation; Ake Wiberg foundation; Lars Hierta foundation; Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences) ; Piratkopieringens ideolog: En studie av piratkopiering, upphovsrätt och modernitet i Sverige, USA och Australien
Transparency in all political processes is one of the core values and core demands of the Pirate Party. Born in 2006 as one of the numerous offsets of the Swedish mother party founded the same year the organization reacts to what it perceives as dangerous disregard established politics shows towards the emerging features of the so-called information society. In contrast, the Pirates identified the internet as the means to achieve their political vision: creating transparency in decision-making processes on all administrative levels, enabling as broad a participation in the political discourse as possible, and engaging in collaborative political action. The underlying rationale for demanding transparency in political processes and for using tools to support this demand is the ideal of a democratic system in which every individual is enabled to impact political processes as widely as possible. A full elucidation of the concept of transparency within the Pirate Party has not been undertaken, though. The need for conceptual clarity becomes apparent now that the party operates in state politics and therefore in a system whose hierarchical structures and conventions of secrecy it seeks to change. Furthermore, the emergence of the so-called "internet-party" raises the fundamental question if information technology yields the potential to alter political processes towards more citizen participation - or, in other words, if the internet can "create" democracy.
Целью работы выступает изучение практики использования цифровой платформы LiquidFeedback Пиратской партией Германии. Процедура и методы исследования. Методология исследования основана на принципах case study с применением формально-логических методов познания, а также анализе внутренних документов партии. Результаты исследования. В работе делается вывод о причинах неэффективности платформы LiquidFeedback, которые заключаются в противоречивости требований анонимного и прозрачного голосования, в манипулятивном характере «делегативной демократии» и несовершенстве правовой базы. Теоретическая значимость работы заключается в возможности использования рассмотренных критериев при оценке деятельности других цифровых партий или трансформации партийных институтов. Практическая значимость выражается в потенциальной возможности учета опыта Пиратской партии Германии при адаптации партийных институтов к расширению политического участия в условиях цифрового общества.
This article draws on a series of interviews with members of the Pirate Party, a political party focusing on copyright and information politics, in different countries. It discusses the interviewees' visions of democracy and technology and explains that copyright is seen as not only an obstacle to the free consumption of music and movies but a threat to the freedom of speech, the right to privacy, and a thriving public sphere. The first part of this article briefly sketches how the Pirate Party's commitment to the democratic potential of new communication technologies can be interpreted as a defense of a digitally expanded lifeworld against the attempts at colonization by market forces and state bureaucracies. The second part problematizes this assumption by discussing the interactions between the Pirate movement and the tech industry in relation to recent theories on the connection between political agency and social media.
Falling participation, which involves less and less legitimacy leads to increased dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy. New communication technologies in the area of policy by many was considered a remedy for the problems. Pirate parties present in dozens of countries postulate to return democracy to the citizens. One of the instruments is the Liquid Democracy, which can be found in their political agenda. This solution is not merely a theoretical construct, because for two years it was implemented in one of the German counties. Although Liquid Friesland met with massive public interest in the county of Friesland, the level of participation did not differ from other projects to participate in a digital democracy. ; Wykorzystanie nowych technologii komunikacyjnych w obszarze polityki przez wielu uważane było za remedium na jej problemy. Spadająca partycypacja, która pociąga coraz mniejszą legitymację ugrupowań zasiadających w parlamentach prowadzi do wzrostu niezadowolenia z funkcjonowania demokracji. Partie Piratów obecne w kilkudziesięciu państwach postulują, by demokrację zwrócić obywatelom. Jednym z instrumentów, które temu mają służyć jest płynna demokracja, którą znaleźć można w ich programach politycznych. Rozwiązanie to nie jest jedynie teoretycznym konstruktem, bowiem przez dwa lata wdrażano je w jednym z niemieckich powiatów. Choć Liquid Freisland nie spotkał się z masowym zainteresowaniem obywateli powiatu, to jednak poziom uczestnictwa nie odbiegał od udziału w innych projektach cyfrowej demokracji.
Wykorzystanie nowych technologii komunikacyjnych w obszarze polityki przez wielu uważane było za remedium na jej problemy. Spadająca partycypacja, która pociąga coraz mniejszą legitymację ugrupowań zasiadających w parlamentach prowadzi do wzrostu niezadowolenia z funkcjonowania demokracji. Partie Piratów obecne w kilkudziesięciu państwach postulują, by demokrację zwrócić obywatelom. Jednym z instrumentów, które temu mają służyć jest płynna demokracja, którą znaleźć można w ich programach politycznych. Rozwiązanie to nie jest jedynie teoretycznym konstruktem, bowiem przez dwa lata wdrażano je w jednym z niemieckich powiatów. Choć LiquidFreisland nie spotkał się z masowym zainteresowaniem obywateli powiatu, to jednak poziom uczestnictwa nie odbiegał od udziału w innych projektach cyfrowej demokracji. ; Falling participation, which involves less and less legitimacy leads to increased dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy. New communication technologies in the area of policy by many was considered a remedy for the problems. Pirate parties present in dozens of countries postulate to return democracy to the citizens. One of the instruments is the Liquid Democracy, which can be found in their political agenda. This solution is not merely a theoretical construct, because for two years it was implemented in one of the German counties. Although LiquidFriesland met with massive public interest in the county of Friesland, the level of participation did not differ from other projects to participate in a digital democracy.
Although political scientists and political theorists rarely recognize liquid democracy (LD) as a distinct model of democracy, LD has its own history, theoretical underpinnings and practical applications. The article fills this gap by conceptualizing LD as an original decision-making procedure and a mode of political representation based on mechanisms of authorization and accountability that are fundamentally different from parliamentary representation. Yet the first practical applications of LD have occurred within representative institutions such as the German Federal Parliament and political organizations such as the Pirate Party Germany. These have experimented with two different LD software, Adhocracy and Liquidfeedback, whose design enables two variants of LD, the former aimed at assessing the quality of opinions and the latter aimed at transforming experts into decision-makers. After examining the impact of the adoption of Liquidfeedback on the internal organization of the Pirate Party, the article identifies two challenges that have emerged through the use of LD software: the conflict between the participants' right to privacy and the transparency of delegated decisions; and the concentration of power in the hands of few delegates. The article concludes by noting that only the variant of LD oriented toward assessing the quality of opinions is fully compatible with representative democracy.
This research examines the rapid growth in popularity of Iceland’s Pirate Party (Piratur) by analyzing recent election results and public opinion polling (2013-17) on the popularity and ideological placement of the Pirate Party. We find that most respondents viewed the Pirate Party as centrist, and the majority of the respondents were neutral in their view of the party, although negative assessments rose by 2017.
In the 2009 Swedish European Parliament election, the Pirate Party gained 7.1 per cent of the votes. We evaluate the sudden and unexpected success of the Pirate Party by testing two competing explanations: did voters cast their votes for the party as a protest against the established parties, or can the result be explained by voters' opinions regarding the party's main political issues? Contrary to popular beliefs, empirical evidence indicates that the success of the Pirate Party cannot be explained with reference to protest voting. Rather, the most important reason why individuals voted for the Pirate Party was the importance they ascribed to the party's main political issues.
In 2017, in addition to the traditional, old, and more recently established political parties, a new formation – the Czech Pirate Party – espousing more participative principles, including the use of online platforms for discussions – arrived on the political scene in the Czech Republic. This newcomer to the parliamentary ecosystem, shortly after achieving success at the national level, also managed to attract significant support in local elections. For this reason, there is currently a Pirate Party parliamentary group present in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber of the Czech parliament), while simultaneously the mayor of Prague and members of the ruling coalition in Brno – the second biggest city in the Czech Republic – also represent the Pirate Party. Furthermore, recent opinion polls show support for the Pirates running at about 14%. This is coupled with another new feature: the young age of the party's elected parliamentarians and local councilors, which brings new challenges to politics. After the elections, a number of commentators immediately dubbed the Pirate Party a 'youth party.' But is this really the case? What forms of participation do the party and/or its members use and encourage? This article offers answers to these questions. In particular, it presents the electoral base of this new political party through interpretative analysis. The data are based on election results triangulated with other sources – specifically, a Czech election study is juxtaposed against a quantitative survey carried out by three academic institutions in the Czech Republic (the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University, Brno; Palacký University, Olomouc; and the Institute of Sociology at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague). These statistical tools enable us to identify in great detail the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of Pirate Party voters (for instance: age, education, their views about contemporary democracy, and the timing of their decision to vote) and map their attitudes towards other parties and their leaders. The article reveals how popular the Czech Pirate Party is among the younger generation of voters, where the latter come from, and what political preferences they had previously.
In 2017, in addition to the traditional, old, and more recently established political parties, a new formation – the Czech Pirate Party – espousing more participative principles, including the use of online platforms for discussions – arrived on the political scene in the Czech Republic. This newcomer to the parliamentary ecosystem, shortly after achieving success at the national level, also managed to attract significant support in local elections. For this reason, there is currently a Pirate Party parliamentary group present in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber of the Czech parliament), while simultaneously the mayor of Prague and members of the ruling coalition in Brno – the second biggest city in the Czech Republic – also represent the Pirate Party. Furthermore, recent opinion polls show support for the Pirates running at about 14%. This is coupled with another new feature: the young age of the party's elected parliamentarians and local councilors, which brings new challenges to politics. After the elections, a number of commentators immediately dubbed the Pirate Party a 'youth party.' But is this really the case? What forms of participation do the party and/or its members use and encourage? This article offers answers to these questions. In particular, it presents the electoral base of this new political party through interpretative analysis. The data are based on election results triangulated with other sources – specifically, a Czech election study is juxtaposed against a quantitative survey carried out by three academic institutions in the Czech Republic (the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University, Brno; Palacký University, Olomouc; and the Institute of Sociology at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague). These statistical tools enable us to identify in great detail the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of Pirate Party voters (for instance: age, education, their views about contemporary democracy, and the timing of their decision to vote) and map their attitudes towards other parties and their leaders. The article reveals how popular the Czech Pirate Party is among the younger generation of voters, where the latter come from, and what political preferences they had previously.
