[pp.int.general] What's the minimal set of axioms for piratic ideology?

[Alexis Roussel]

All,

after doing a lot of this work internally and locally with Swiss
pirates, I can share my point of view.

Most of the points described in this rich conversation, I totally agree
with. But still it makes it hard to define the core set.

A lot of us see that the "traditional" state is not fit for our world.
(let's break it or make it evolve is another debate). We have been
tagged as anarchists some times, or libertarian.

A lot of us want to have a system (social, economic, etc) that fits our
world. However we have a big problem: we do not know how this world will
look like, we are only starting to build it.

A lot of us, sees ourselves as humanists. This is true as we are pushing
for education, human rights, some even the basic income. We have been
tagged as individualists.

I am convinced that we are on the edge of a second civil rights
evolution. The first one took place in the 18th century, hundreds of
years after the invention of printing. It took another 100 years to
build a democratic system fit to it. Now the Internet invention is
bringing another change (much quicker though). And it will take some
time to build the system around it.

So what was the core element of the first revolution. The human being.

The french declaration of rights starts with: "All Men (lets make it
human now) are born free and with equal rights". Before they were not.
Some had rights derived from a divine law, the others were subjects.

In this phrase, the key is the recognition that each human exist before
the structure. What is a human is not an easy matter to decide on. In
these times there was debates if women had a soul, if africans or indian
american were from the same species as europeans. Today the debates
continues asking if an embryo is already an human being or not.

This recognition led to a very simple principle: a human is not for
sale. its physical AND mental integrity are protected against violation.
Of course this is not also straightforward. You can sell you hair, but
not your liver. You can work as an employee, even giving body services
like sexworkers, but you cannot enslave yourself. Human rights were born.

But today, technology is bringing another piece to the human: its data.
Data is today just a fuzzy concept full of servers logs, facebook posts,
gps coordinate, that together say a lot about us. Maybe in the future,
this will be better organize in an Avatar. This is still unknown how it
will evolve.

But the new key, it that us humans have a new part of ourselves, which
is digital. It is deeply linked to our body and soul, and the link will
only grow.

But if you read the European Data Protection Directive, we are only
"data subjects". We are not recognized as human beings in the digital
realm. This is why States can violate our rights of privacy with mass
surveillance, scanning through the data that is not owned by us, and
doesn't represent anything for them. Corporations can gather data
without our knowledge and use it against us.

I would argue, finally, that the Pirate Parties, are the first ones to
fight for the recognition of the human individual in its new form,
including the digital-self. New rights can be derived, like non-disposal
of personal data. Some concepts can be explained more easily:
net-neutrality is the freedom of travel for our digital self.. etc..

We are humanist. Good. But we are more than that. We want to recognize
that the human has a digital integrity that need to be protected like
our body and soul. We will build new rights accordingly, we will build
new structures where needed accordingly. We will build a new economy
accordingly.

my 2 cents





-- 
Alexis Roussel / Pirate / Ancien Président du Parti Pirate Suisse /
www.partipirate.ch / alexis.roussel at partipirate.ch