[pp.int.general] Pirate Party UK Critism

[Eric Priezkalns]

Hello Janne,

I would rather not talk about the piece you refer to.  The individual  
who wrote it, John, accepts he made a mistake in posting this to the  
party's blog, and hence allowing it to look like an official statement  
of the party.  John is one of the most passionate people I have  
encountered when it comes to Pirate politics, and he probably  
considers me to be rather a moderate when it comes to some things, so  
the last thing I want is to get into a mode of behaviour where every  
individual point of view is raked over, in detail, and measured  
against some ideal of what is or is not considered acceptable Pirate  
thinking.  John and I have talked about the views he expressed, and I  
think we're all happy to move on rather than dwell on the subject  
further.

What I would say is that we are aiming to build a movement of  
thousands, if not millions.  We are going to have to get used to  
people having differences of opinion and finding compromises.  To be  
successful in democracies, we need to accentuate what we have in  
common, not what we disagree about.  The more people we engage, the  
harder that goal is to achieve.  That is one reason why I am not a big  
believer in a political model based on web forums and IRC chat.  They  
may serve a purpose, but they do not scale well, any more than you  
could invite thousands of people to a conference centre and expect  
them all to get equal turns at speaking to the audience.  Even if we  
want to believe such a model could work, you could never force people  
to listen, and the same is true of the internet.  The freedom of  
debate needs to be balanced with the time that people will spend on  
debate, and we cannot allow debate to be won based simply on who has  
the most time and hence who has the last word.  We need to be  
practical in our approach to building a political force.  My concern  
is that you are entitled to your opinion, and John is entitled to his,  
but there is a seductive temptation to focus to much of our efforts  
and debate on disagreeing with each other, because we actually listen  
to each other.  Meanwhile, the rest of the world can go on without  
listening to us.  So whilst I understand the passions, I keep wanting  
to emphasize patience, tolerance, and finding common ground, over  
demanding too much orthodoxy.  We need to find ways for members like  
John to instigate constructive debates, if they so wish, without this  
being a regular and unending source of emotional stress for people who  
either support or disagree with what he says.  Unrestrained internet  
dialogue is poorly equipped to do that, as it tends to bring out the  
most extreme in people, and also encourages every discussion to be a  
gladiatorial contest between individuals.  Whilst I would not  
recommend that John repeats what did in future, I do want John and  
people like John to be committed and engaged in the movement, and I  
can see that there needs to be times where we discuss our differences  
of opinion, but other times where these are set aside and we focus on  
the real and practical challenges we face.  For those reasons, I would  
prefer to shift the focus of discussion away from the rights or wrongs  
of specific points of view, and instead to talk more with colleagues  
from across the PPI about how to manage constructive political debate,  
and use it to deliver consensus, whilst allowing individuals the  
freedom to disagree.

E


On 3 Oct 2009, at 11:23, Janne Paalijarvi wrote:

> Thanks for your post, Eric, it sheds some light on the situation. I'm
> however still pondering the opinion piece text
> http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/blog/2009/aug/19/pirate-party-claims-using-common-sense-under-inves/
> , and mostly the part that says:
>
> "The strict adherence to not censoring books in the UK allows
> perverted stories to be published about illegal acts,  and I for one
> don't understand why this is allowed to continue, let alone allowing
> the same to happen with images.  It's not censorship, it's exercising
> good moral judgement on behalf of the voters who will elect us,
> something that is sadly lacking in Westminster currently."
>
> I'm actually a bit shocked to read this, and I hope that I have
> misinterpreted something or lack relevant knowledge of the overall
> situation (English is not my native tongue). Some people on our
> Finnish IRC channel were also quite surprised to read the text, even
> though it is an opinion piece. Somebody earlier said that Bitplane was
> using straw man strategy when dealing with the Obscene Publications
> Act issue. Straw man or not, I still find the original quoted text
> quite disturbing and would like somebody to comment on it and/or point
> out the facts I'm missing.
>
> My personal opinion about censoring books and images is roughly this:
> As long as individuals were not harmed in the making of an image or a
> book, there should be zero tolerance for censorship. I think this is
> the way most people sympathetic to Finnish Pirate Party think. In
> general laws should protect people from being harmed, not from things
> some individual finds disgusting (and somebody else possibly not).
>
> Janne Paalijärvi
> member, Pirate Party Finland
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