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

[Rick Falkvinge (Piratpartiet)]

Great! These last days have been absolutely stunning with regards to how
we've started to come together. If Parti Pirate has a dozen new members
every day, they're doing very, very well.

Too bad we won't see them in Vienna -- will have to hope for next time.
Is anybody from the French Parti Pirate on this list?

Rick


> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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