[pp.int.general] Fwd: International Pirate Party meeting

[Florian Hufsky]

Besides them being unable to attend that sounds great!

By the way; We'll have Video recordings of all three days. We talked  
to the Video Team yesterday :)

On May 24, 2007, at 5:25 PM, Juxi Leitner | Piratenpartei Österreich  
wrote:

> Some news from France!
>
> --Juxi
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: parti-pirate at no-log.org <parti-pirate at no-log.org>
> Date: May 22, 2007 10:55 AM
> Subject: International Pirate Party meeting
> To: juxi.leitner at ppoe.or.at
>
>
> Hi Juxi,
>
> things were a bit messy lastly (we switched our server to Debian  
> Etch and
> the SQL export/import was awfully done). Besides, neither  
> Floyd_Le_Barbare
> or myself won't be able to join you guys; though I really *did*  
> want to
> come on Friday june 8th, I've just been offered a job for this very  
> day,
> so PP meeting it's not an option anymore... :(
> This is why I sent you this rather long mail; this way, if anyone asks
> you, wants to know about us or anything, you'll just have to read this
> message, with our apologies to all for not being here among you,  
> where we
> definitely belong.
>
> That said. The French Pirate Party is still here, still very much  
> alive
> (even if its history is quite complicated, "full of sound and  
> fury"). We
> have about half a dozen new registred users per day -that is,  
> *real* users
> and not spam bots; each day I find, on this very mailbox, mails from
> people who share our ideals, our fight, and want to know more about  
> us.
> Pedagogy is our watchword, we try to inform people among and around  
> us. To
> let them know about their disappearing civil freedoms, know the truth
> about the biaised propaganda official medias use to present as
> "information", let them discover alternate, Libre solutions,  
> finally, let
> them make their own mind.
>
> We still lack a decent website (the current homepage/forum are to  
> remove
> when it's ready), and that's a pity (by the way, I *love* what you  
> guys
> did with DrupalCMS; the tags cloud at the bottom of the main page is a
> terrific idea - oh, and I just stole your favicon; hope you won't  
> mind...
> :) ).
> We have chosen to base our portal on the Puntal CMS, which is  
> rather new
> and still actively developed. The tricky part we're working on is the
> seamless integration of the Wiki/Blogs/Forum/E-Zines and so on (as  
> far as
> I can see, you have decided to simply skip this part, and maybe it was
> relevant).
>
> Had I to define any specificity of the French Party, maybe this is  
> where I
> would start: our proximity with the OpenSource movement (which is  
> very,
> very active here in France; RM Stallman comes visit us twice a  
> week, we
> have very-dumb-but-very-efficient opensource lobbyists, who managed to
> make the whole Parliamanent go Ubuntu and to make all French
> administrations adopt OpenDocument format!).
>
> During the last six months, we've been working and discussing with the
> developers of many opensource projects: among others, Scol, Puntal,
> Torpark (I have to mention here the Hacktivismo group, which we  
> were the
> first PP to contact, and which welcomed us very kindly --special
> dedication to Steve Topletz, who's become a good friend of mine).  
> We're
> actively supporting the Jamendo torrent network (free-licensed  
> music), and
> we do whatever we can to promote Open-minded artists (besides,  
> there are,
> as you know, some musicians and some opensource ayatollahs among us  
> --in
> my case, both ;).
>
> I'm not trying to say here that OpenSource Attitude (TM) is a  
> property of
> the French PP, let's make it clear. What I want to say, what I  
> feel, is
> that this direction may be more vital for us here in in France, due  
> to the
> French context. Moreover, this is the only way we could manage to  
> avoid
> legal and juridical issues so far (the bunch of BusinessEurope's  
> poodles
> who call themselves French Government are growling quite a bit these
> times).
>
> A few words, at last, about French PP press coverage. The guy who  
> founded
> our movement in France about a year ago (codename HPK), wanted to  
> make it
> quick and dirty, guerilla-style and shoot-first attitude. That  
> brought us
> a HUGE media buzz, TV interviews, articles, servers constantly down  
> dut to
> massive affluence, one thousand new members a day, etc. This was *way*
> cool. But let me tell : deal with the subsequent hangover wasn't that
> easy... Most of the opensource and human rights activists  
> considered us as
> professionnal teenage troublemakers, and it's been a hell of a work to
> make them change -when possible, that is- their minds...
>
> But I'd like to say the government poodles have done an excellent job
> here, by making more and more citizens unhappy and by demonstrating  
> the
> absence of criticism in official media. I'd like to make an official
> statement here: thank you guys, we did appreciate you efforts to  
> make us
> feel right. Just keep going, you're doing fine. :D
>
> When I talked about situation in France with one of our Pirates who
> happened to live in China, he told me that things might be even  
> worse in
> France than outthere, due to the fact that citizens here actually *do*
> believe they are in a democracy... That was my joke of the day.
>
> Back to business. We've recently learned that a student in  
> journalism who
> interviewed a couple of us IRL had been awarded by a conservative  
> press
> group for his interview. Funny, but we're eager to see how they'll  
> publish
> it (they could very well put us between a paper about New Cyber- 
> Terrorism
> and an article on Anonymous Paedophilia on Internet, which would be  
> rather
> uncool)...
>
> We've got tons of projects; some of them are totally geeky (create  
> a web
> radio, video clips, or a pirate MMORPG...), others are not  
> (maintain our
> wiki -- that isn't more realistic by the way...). There's one  
> project that
> might interest you guys: a young publisher has recently proposed us to
> elaborate the 'Pirate Manifesto', in which we could explain our  
> history,
> the ideas we stand up for, our concrete existence and actions  
> worldwide,
> and the political stakes involved.
>
> This is an awesome idea; we have, here in France, some writers and  
> *real*
> journalists (freescape.eu.org, if anyone of you can read French)  
> who could
> help us, and maybe preface it, but I thought other Pirate Parties  
> might be
> interested in getting involved as well (particularly our Swedish  
> fellows,
> who are way, way, waaay better than us and whose Declaration is a
> Masterpiece).
> Finally, the reference to the Communist Party isn't mandatory here  
> (there
> are tons of other Manifestos outthere), though I'd definitely like the
> first sentence to be:
>
>    'A spectre is haunting the World -- the spectre of Piracy'...
>
> That was my line :)
>
> Cheers (and enjoy this fabulous week-end).
>
> in the name of the French Pirates,
> Valentin Villenave, aka Pers.
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> "We need dreamers 'cuz in our dreams we see not what is but what  
> can be!"
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general

Piratenpartei Österreichs
http://ppoe.or.at