I wrote the following a few months ago with the intention of using it as a handout material (with pictures). This never happened, but I'd like to put it forward to you all. I'm afraid I may have been a little liberal with my use of the branding. I hope it is at least interesting to someone here. I warn you, it's a really rough draft, but here you go!<div>
<br></div><div>--</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; "><div style="margin-top: 6px; margin-right: 6px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-left: 6px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); min-height: 1100px; counter-reset: __goog_page__ 0; line-height: 1.5; ">
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Homesteading is an American Tradition. The ever present migration of people and their cultures to the United States, the push for the populace to always head west and stake claims to unknown territory, and the movement of residents into cities all represent the American right to locate and relocate where desired. The US Pirate Party believes that the free flow of people IS the free flow of information. This has been seen historically, within social and cultural movements; these movements directly match the movement of people. Imagine that you where choosing a new place to live. Job availability, housing costs, educational institutions, crime rates - there are many metrics for choosing. What if your virtual community was settling with you, together purchasing of an entire city block or an apartment complex. Would a U-Haul be much different than a Conestoga wagon?</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Content creators of all sorts have an exciting new frontier ahead of them. Bands have a wide assortment of possible distribution and monetization experiments from which to take and traditional artists are finding homes for their works in various non-traditional replacements of a gallery. Video media workers are able to directly engage their audiences without need of much in the way of resources. These are all examples of an iceberg tip that is responsible for sinking entire industries. The print industry is on the wane but readership is on the rise. Obviously the reporter who is trained to ask, “Who, What, Where, When, and Why,” is still needed and will have a place in the new America, yet this does not change the fact that his industry is collapsing. Each of these types of skilled laborer must now strike out into the frontier of future America. Many will have to take a hand at shaping these industries; industries they will have to create and define anew as they work. The US Pirate Party wants to make sure that no remnants of the old are able to block options from future innovators and pioneers who are, even now, ensuring that America survives a transition already underway.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Great swaths of the American populace are, today, woefully underrepresented. The atheist, the homosexual, and even the small business owner are all traditionally living in a representative democracy without a voice, even while in some areas of the country, they make up a majority. The days of the two party political system are numbered. Even those two parties are unable to maintain cohesion of message as the populace becomes more and more engaged in the world. As the 3<sup>rd</sup> and 4<sup>th</sup> parties rise in prominence, as well as the rise of regional parties, the fragmenting of constituent representation will ensure that these smaller groups of citizenry are represented more fully. The “All or Nothing” approach to democracy cannot hold up any longer, not under the weight of an ever more empowered and vocal majority of minorities. We are not the only 3<sup>rd</sup> party in the United States, nor are we the largest, yet our message is being heard.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Having a political ideology that does not extend beyond national borders is foolhardy. We would not tolerate such a nationalistic approach to science or religion, so why would we continue to accept it in our politics? Good ideas, developments, and experiments happen every day all over the world. Politics itself is undergoing radical redefinement by the ever changing political landscapes that straddle the world. The United States firmly refuses to modernize its approach to politics, only because any change whatsoever would instantly uncover a depth of incompetence and corruption; the country would have to contend with an immediate crisis of identity. The innovators of the day, the next generation of Americans, are eager for this process to start, so that we may all get over our expectations and start fixing. It is as simple as destroying the 90% retention rate of our elected representatives, and we can start the healing process that we so obviously need. The Pirate Party International movement proves that we, at least, recognize the value of ideas and politics that are without borders. There is no need to view the entire world as a “Them” to protect “Us” from anymore.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The next generation, and in many ways the current generation, are monstrous. These generations are so different from their predecessors that they have powers and abilities only dreamed of by generations past. One can whisper and be heard in Australia, a feat even the Greek gods could not oft perform without a messenger. Virtual spaces are holding just as much cultural influence as physical spaces, and the new generation has become accustomed to this. They even seem to be blending the two on top of each other. Nuclear reactors are being built in basements, radio telescopes and satellites are being built by private citizens who are merely ‘interested,” and our workspaces are shifting into the co-op and out of the garage. The future is not ours to tell, as it will not be contained by any theory we may have. It is assumed that a child living right now may live to 500 years old. What does that child’s culture look like? We must ensure that those who are our innovators, our payloads into the future, are given the ability and tools they need to build the world for humans that are nothing like you or I.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Mutant Cultures have a right to exist. There is a tapestry of cultures stretched across the United States. Though many people believe that America has been overtaken by a corpolitikal monoculture of Walmarts and McDonalds, anyone who takes a step outside their front door and ventures to talk to others, knows that this is not wholly true. Just off the beaten track of mainstream culture there lie land trusts, co-ops, collectives, communes, and more, each staking out a frontier for themselves and their participants against zoning laws, fire codes, permits, outright banning, and a never ending dread that ‘the city,’ or ‘the government,’ are going to shut them down without warning. These communities have a right to thrive. The natural growth of mutant cultures has been impeded for too long in the United States, and the Pirate Party hopes to one day represent them in the making of law and policy. When these types of living arrangements are truly decriminalized and no longer looked down upon, they will provide us invaluable information and raw data from experimental microcommunities inside the American nation. This data may very well reveal important facts about the reality of living in America.<br>
</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Most users of computers and modern gadgetry are criminals, by the letter of the law in the United States. Accidentally becoming a pirate can very easily happen. It is possible to own media, physically, that you cannot legally use in ways that we would consider fair use (such as adding an album you own to a music playing device you also own). Some lobby and lawmaking bodies argue that your “Fair Use” of technology is extremely limited. The laws that exist today that define the legal use of patent and trademarks are often skewed to ensure the public have little to no control over what they can do, often without some form of corporate sponsorship. It is even argued that opening up a device that you own is a violation of patent laws. It is increasingly obvious that we are not ready, legally, to move into a culture of information free flow. Horror stories of small farmers being shut down by multinational genetics companies are growing more frequent as the media lobbies push steeper and steeper fines onto individuals who are involved in the promotion and distribution of media. The Pirate Party does not believe that there is such a thing as "piracy," and that the concept is merely another remnant of a bygone era that refuses to modernize with its populace. No publically available media or data access can be controlled by circumvention, without the criminalization of knowing; a situation that cannot ever happen. There is no such thing as an illegal idea. As the old Pirate Party axiom states, “If speech is free, and music is speech, how can you steal free speech?”</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Fair use is an American legal doctrine that states that copyrighted materials can be used without permission in use of academia, in parody, for review, or for other somewhat nebulous uses. The public domain is a concept of materials that are now, and are forever, free for anyone to use. Currently, things fall into the public domain much slower than they used to. In some cases, the life of an author plus 70 years, which ensures that many cultural icons in our society are locked off from public use. We recognize in art and creative works that we build onto what already exists and very rarely create something truly new, but without having access to a wide and rich field of public domain works that are relevant to us culturally, we have very little to build onto. Permission culture is the culture of requiring permission to do much of anything, and it’s on the rise. Imagine trying to take an image of a crowd of people and enter it into the historical record. Then imagine the sheer number of trademarked and copyrighted symbols that the crowd is peppered with. Without permission from all the holders of those things, does that picture not get entered into our historical record? Sure they can be removed, but do those insignias convey a cultural phenomena that should be on record? It’s a complicated issue that cannot be truly described here, but it’s a core tenant for the founding of the Pirate Party movement.</p>
</div></span><br>-- <br>Ryan Martin<br>Administrator<br>United States Pirate Party<br>
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