Episode: 1411
Title: HPR1411: ohmroep live 1, 31-06-2013, pirate parties
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1411/hpr1411.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 01:03:13

---

All right.
Good evening and welcome to Omrub Radio.
This is Nidomedia reporting for Hacker Public Radio, Hacker Public Radio Live.
Here at Omrub at 104.7 FM.
I'm here in the studio with four other guests from different pirate parties.
On the other side of me there is Fabrizio.
Hello in the mic.
Next to him I have from the Dutch Pirate Party I have the Sir Derek Poet.
Hello.
Next to him we have Jonas Draff from the Belgium Pirate Party.
Hello, thanks for inviting me.
And next to me is Thomas Gordon also from the Pirate Party Belgium
and Helper in setting up the Antwerp chapter.
Good afternoon.
Welcome, I'm delighted to see you all here.
And I wanted to talk today about the Pirate Party.
So we start about the different Pirate Party started.
Derek Poet, could you tell us a bit about the beginnings of the Dutch Pirate Party?
The Dutch Pirate Party started around 2006 as an informal group of people
meeting online and afterwards meeting AFK.
And around 2009 it became a little bit more official.
2010 all of a sudden we were confronted with elections in Holland.
And then within two months the whole party was officially registered, officially started.
So we basically have two starting points, 2006 and 2010 for the records.
OK, well let's continue about the specifics in a moment.
How about the Belgium Pirate Party?
Jonas?
Well, the Belgian Pirate Party started about the same time as a Dutch Pirate Party.
We started in 2009 as a small informal group in Brussels.
And we were waiting for elections in 2010 at the time.
So we had plenty of time until our governments just stopped functioning.
And there we were, we had two months to collect about 10,000 signatures all across Belgium.
And yeah, we had major problems.
We got to wrong documents from the government.
The government didn't know how to add a new party to the system.
And yeah, from there on we quickly grew.
And now we're preparing for, we were preparing for the elections in 2012,
which was a major boost for the party.
And now we're preparing for 2014.
All right, Thomas, do you have any comments about the Antwerp chapter?
How it started?
Well, basically the Antwerp chapter is a part of the Belgian Pirate Party.
But I think what's most interesting is the general idea of starting a Pirate Party.
What we didn't end where basically was come together with a couple of people
and say, OK, we're now the local chapter of the Pirate Party.
And I think in general, if you think about how it's starting,
that's an interesting feature.
The fact that everywhere in the world actually people just say, OK,
we'll start a Pirate Party here.
There's no real way of getting an official, you don't have to ask for permission to do it.
We didn't ask for permission in Antwerp.
And then basically what you usually do is you come into contact with other Pirate parties
or other parts of the Pirate Party.
In our case, we went from the local chapter, we obviously contacted the federal
and we started engaging with the other groups, other cities,
and people that were working on the federal level.
So that's kind of like a miniature version of how it happens everywhere.
Yes, Fabricio, can you confirm this for the Belgian or I'm sorry for the German
and for the Brazil chapters?
Yes, the Germany, I think, has started the same time a little before
and already took part in the federal election in 2009.
Missing it shortly, it made a little above 4%
and missing the 5% necessary to join the parliament.
And in 2011, first in Berlin in October, we got to 9.6%
in the city council then.
And after that, four more states joined in Germany,
where we have a Pirate in the opposition there.
The last one, but we lost there in Germany.
So it's a very critical situation in the moment.
We have in September the next elections again,
where we needed to get the 5% but someone there.
And regarding Brazil, Brazil is also since quite the beginning together,
but it has a problem that's very difficult to become official party there.
The guys have been struggling and trying and last year, finally,
they have a new attempt, they made a general assembly
where they make the internal organizational steps for that.
But I think now they have to collect 500,000 signatures.
But more than that, it's important.
I think it's 20,000 years than put me fast in the number,
but they have to publish the national program and the national newspapers
and they have to pay for that.
So that's something difficult to get a official party in Brazil.
So the guys are organized.
It's a very disentral and beautiful to see several cities have a party,
parties organize it.
They are very active.
We can see on the Facebook.
But to become official, there is a problem.
If the by advertising space in the national newspapers and it's the first.
You have to publish your program in the national official newspaper.
So I have maybe a fun story about that.
We did local elections last year and for Antwerp,
while actually in Belgium, what happens is to be able to have a local party
or to be in the elections with local party,
you either have to collect signatures.
And I think for it depends on the size of the city in Antwerp, it was like 10,000 maybe.
But the other trick was to have a signature from somebody
that was in the previous council.
So if you had somebody that was elected before,
they could just give you one autograph, one signature bang and he can be in the election.
But the rules don't specify that they have to be from the same party.
Because obviously what happens is that a lot of people were elected
and then they start their own party and then they can do it with one signature.
And then what we did, we contacted all of the council members of the previous year.
And we said, hey, we want to participate in the elections.
So one of you actually want to give us this signature.
And in fact, two people did.
So there were two council members that were quitting.
They were kind of angry, I guess.
And is it fine?
I mean, they gave us a signature.
And on top of that, we also did the 10,000 signatures just for fun.
Oh, you guys were lucky.
We had like one week to collect our signatures and we had to stand in every province in Holland
in front of the province house.
There's only one specific week when you can collect your signatures in Holland.
And outside of the week, it's impossible.
And it's middle of the holidays.
And basically you're standing there an entire day.
And at the end of the day, maybe they have your signature.
You have to be in a specific spot too.
Well, you have to be in a specific spot in the city because there's only one place in the city
where you can have your, where people can sign for the, for the elections.
And they have to have their identification with them.
So there you're standing for the pirate party.
Do you have identification with you?
So you can already see how rules, electoral rules have an enormous impact on even the ability
to join into an election.
And that's actually quite interesting if you compare it between different countries.
Well, the thing that they all have in common, what I see from here is that the political
parties that are in power make it incredibly difficult for new people to join in.
But if you're already in power, then they make it as easy as possible, that's the thing,
yeah.
Yes.
Um, okay, um, let's see, well, there's, so it's pretty much, it always starts as an
unofficial thing.
And then later it gets to get official.
How big was your unofficial group when you started up?
Was it like five persons somewhere in a, in a hallway?
It was like five people, just five people who met on the internet and said, like, oh,
yeah, we could do this too.
You know, and they just got together in Brussels and they said, yeah, okay, now we're the
pirate party.
And that's it.
That's basically all you need to do.
You need to say we're the pirate party.
And from that point, the hard part is actually getting registered.
So that's the signatures which you need to collect.
And then for that, you need to gather as many people as you can to join the party and
to really become a big organization.
But I think the big challenge maybe even isn't the signatures and the logistics of being
able to participate in the election.
But it's a simple fact that you're basically being thrown in a room with all of these people
that are interested in doing politics.
Most of, well, usually none of whom have experienced in politics, all of whom have a very
strong idea of how it should be done.
And then so the biggest challenge actually is I think to get everybody to get along and
kind of cooperate with each other and find a way of, I think that's, it's a way, way
bigger challenge than getting the signatures.
I mean, not in time and physical effort, but then I would say like mental and social
effort for sure.
You have to try to build an organization out of anarchists and that's always difficult.
We've seen in Holland in the last century when the liberal party, they started out liberal,
it took them 10 years to get a party together for exactly the same reason.
They just, they didn't want the authority.
That's also a mark that it's, I don't know how it is in you guys organizations, but in Belgium
definitely there's an incredible anti-authoritarian vibe inside the pirate party, which results
in oddly enough, like almost if somebody's acting like a leader, you know, you might get
hated instantly.
It's kind of, there's a kind of funny, funny thing that happens.
So you know, every time we have to make decisions and you have to make sure that nobody comes
out too strongly because then their heads go off.
It's kind of, it's a bit of a theme, I guess.
It's a, it's a challenging team that I think that everybody has and what, what, what, what
we notice in Holland also during the elections, what is, for us a big problem is that every
media organization in Holland has, for a long time for ages, been related to a political
party and a church in, in the Netherlands.
So all the media organizations have an affiliation already.
And during the elections, they are trying to get their affiliated parties to fill as much
of their airtime as possible.
So when you're a new party and you don't have a media organization standing behind you
like that, you also notice that you don't get any invitations for the televised debates,
for the radio debates.
It's all gone to the, the friends of the people that are already in the media.
And that's, I think, was in Holland our, our, our biggest challenge.
So we had the same thing, yeah.
Yeah, so that, that's where social media kicks in, I guess, because social media should
be a strong point of the parties that the media we could use as our media, like, like
the media we are specialised in.
Yeah.
And when the time comes, a couple of years from now, when, when most voters will use mainly
social media as their, as their most important communication tool, right now in Holland, most
of the voters still watch what's on TV and if, if you're not on TV with the other political
parties, they don't even know you, they don't know your participating.
I have an experience now in polluted discussions.
Because I'm a direct candidate in Berlin for the national election, where I share the
stage with the candidates from the other party.
And in several discussions, I could feel that I come much better than the others of the
feedback from the public.
And then the report from the journalists, the mass media, I was not mentioned.
Right.
So it was like big, huge paragraphs about the other candidates and about me was one
line and nothing about content.
So you see that sometimes the cards are played and this respected the media is really a tough
number now because they do watch the main media, who is compromised.
Yeah.
So in Holland what we're doing now is we try to, to build as much report with the media
during the, when it's not election time and you try to use that when it's, when it's
election time to, to also get in.
I actually was lucky yesterday because something very, very special happened yesterday and
I think they're going to understand when I say this.
It's the first time that I, that we've been called actively by the national television
for an opinion on something.
Yeah.
And that's actually for us, it was like a major breakthrough.
Keep in mind, we've been active since 2009, but it's the first time the journalist calls
for an opinion.
In this case, it was about Bradley Manning.
That's not election related and they said, you know, who would know something about this?
Those pirate guys and they call this and I think that's, you know, that's kind of the
steps that you have to go through as well.
And about the debates, the, the argument that they used for, to exclude us from certain
debates was, well, you don't have any elect, people elected in, in the current council.
You're like, okay, wait, you're only going to have debates with, with parties that already
have an elected person.
You don't see a problem with that.
No, you know, you can't, see that's the other thing.
You can't really fight with them because then they definitely will kick your ass.
So it's kind of, it's, you have to be nice to people that aren't nice to you.
That's the, the reality.
Yes.
Well, let's return to the, how did the parties get started, their quote.
Could you tell us a bit about the very beginning of the Dutch pirate party, how many people
and where, I personally wasn't there.
I didn't join till 2009, but there were like six, six people and yeah, they just started
out as friends who met online and were very worried about the direction that internet
in Holland was going and from there, it started to grow, but it just started as a small
bunch of people getting together and worrying about what was going on.
Okay.
Fabricio, do you have any comments for the, about the start and the, the way the bell
German?
No, yes, German, let's start with the German, yes.
Oh, I heard that the German party started out of the Coscom computer club, mainly meeting
in the C-base in Berlin, but I was not there.
I moved to Berlin in 2010, not only.
And what I noticed that the German, I think, was a, I think up to now one of the biggest
breakthrough, no, there was the first breakthrough having two persons in the European Parliament
from Sweden.
And the Germans in Berlin, what I testified that it was a beautiful situation where I don't
think more than 100 people got to almost 10% of the vote in Berlin, was a small number
of people very engaged, worked, very intelligent and made it.
Also lots of planning, like we see the German mentality of really working properly and
hard.
That also you see that your German party's also doing that and was a beautiful thing to
see during the elections how they all managed and like all the other parties have companies
to put their posters on the road.
And those companies, or most of them, they are paid for the job.
And when you could put the poster was raining the first weekend and the parties running under
the rain took the best place.
And so that was a kind of way that it was a very positive experience to see a few people
working harder and getting this 9.6%.
And they spread it as a wave in Germany, that other three other Parliament's also got
pirates into it.
Yes, they also got the other local chapters running.
And can you give us a bit of background about the very beginning of the Brazil chapter?
Well, it's not official one of the vivid information that I know.
First there was the World Social Forum, one or two in 2003, where a Brazilian guy present
a paper on liquid democracy, together from the American guy.
And that said is one of the births of liquid democracy, like officially.
Nothing to do with the Pirate Party at that time, but the ideas were already in Brazil.
And I know that in the first meetings of Pirate Party International, there was someone from
Brazil already into it.
I remember in 2010 when I helped Brazil, there was two Pirate parties group and a big issue
because every time a group would put a website to be attacked from the other.
The Pirate Party Brazil was already hosted for instance in Sweden and was expelled from
there because whatever the Pirate Party Brazil would put their website, there were de-attacks.
And so no servers would like to host the Pirate Party.
And that comes out of a story of two groups there that I have the pleasure to go to know
both of them and kind of mediate together and understand the frictions.
And that was a part of the history of Pirate Party Brazil.
It's interesting to notice it, but because we had in Spain and other countries this kind
of situation where a group of people, very well-intentioned, occupy the Pirate Party name.
And who are we from outside or who is the PPI to say who are the real Pirate Party?
That was a part of the Brazilian Pirate Party story because we had two Pirate parties.
Spain has the same problem.
In Spain it's maybe even worse because what happened there is that you have the Pirate Party
Catalonia, but of course in Spain there's already a discussion about Catalonia, about independence,
that sort of thing.
And as far as I know, it's still the case that you have the Spanish Pirate Party, you have
the Catalonian Pirate Party and they kind of work alongside with each other.
I guess they try not to fight too much, but what happens?
But there is no such thing as a Pirate Party that represents the whole of Spain that doesn't
exist, for example.
I think in Belgium, that's kind of a very interesting case study as well because in Belgium
we have a federalised state and all of the political parties have split in Belgium, except
for maybe one.
The communist party, but even there, it's different.
So all of the socialists, the Democrats, all those parties they split into a Dutch speaking
and a French speaking part, even though we still have federal elections and we have a
country, and that has very, very strange effects on everything from debates to media to...
But I think that the weirdest part about it is how we deal with it internally.
Because internally we try to have one party for a whole of Belgium, but externally nobody
cares.
Everybody ignores the French speaking part of the Pirate Party Belgium if you're in the
Dutch speaking press and vice versa.
They will never invite somebody from the other side of the country, even though for us
is the same party.
So it's kind of weird, I guess.
Yeah, I remember going to the press once and the co-president, who spoke French, was
with me.
And the journalist just said, oh, wait, no, no, please don't go into the camera, just the
Dutch part of the story, please.
So that's really the way it is, that's how it goes in Belgium.
Yeah.
I think it's a very nice thing to look into that because you have in the microcosm Belgian
and international issue there.
I'm facing some examples between Brazil and Germany that are beautiful to see, that the
German Pirate Party voting should Brazilian issues has to do with Germany.
The one was the export of an atomic nuclear plant from Germany in a technology that's
not allowed in Germany anymore.
The president government bought it and the German is giving financial support to it.
So it's an ethical issue when the government does not allow something to be built in
that country and exports to another.
And so the German Pirates voted, there was some involvement of Brazilian pirates into
it.
The very issue was the German Pirates voting about solidarity to the indigenous tribes
in Brazil.
So that shows a point where the geopolitical borders are not that important.
But what is when inside the country already have it?
So you have a beautiful opportunity to solve some problems that would be an example for others
outside.
A person I would rather not have to deal with all that, but okay.
Have you guys, has there ever been any discussion in Belgium about two Pirate parties?
Yeah, definitely.
The big problem with that is that it's perceived as Flemish nationalism by most people.
So you know there's a big problem with nationalism in Belgium, specifically Flemish nationalism.
And there's a bunch of Flemish parties that basically want to split Belgium.
There's at least two big ones, but that's a lot.
I mean, they take 35, 40% in elections.
And so the problem is if even within the Pirate party Belgium, if you were to suggest that,
you'll basically be branded a Flemish nationalist, and I know because it happened to me.
Because even if you say, well, maybe we should have two press teams because the press doesn't
care anyway, then a lot of it's become less people have become a little bit more realistic
about it, but especially like last year, there was like a lot of friction.
And especially a lot of misunderstanding about the strategy involved.
So I think what we're doing now is we're just trying to do our best to be a Belgian party
because it seems like most people actually want that.
And we just take the bad with it, you know, so we translate stuff and that sort of thing.
Well, it sounds like the Pirate way of doing it, like not splitting up and just doing it
the way.
No, that's interesting.
I don't know what the Pirate way would be.
I think an extra plus point that you have there is that all the other parties have to split
up their finances for the elections.
Socialists have to put the money for the elections down twice.
Pirate party only has to do it once.
So in that case, you have a big advantage over the traditional split parties.
I guess I've never thought of it like that, but that's an interesting point.
OK, we're about 24 minutes into the show right now.
I'm here with some guests from different pirate parties.
We have been discussing about how the different party, pirate parties got started.
And I would like to continue to the subject of what actually is a pirate party.
Fabrizio, you already mentioned a subject called Liquid Democracy.
Perhaps it's a good idea to go into that a bit further, but we continue this discussion.
Yes, well, I'm a almost analog pirate.
I must say, I'm very not the most adequate person, I think, to report.
But from my understanding, the Liquid Democracy offers the possibility of participation.
And that was a big part of what called me into the pirate party to voice as a minority.
I'm a member of a minority in Germany.
I'm a migrant that I could raise my voice, and it would be heard and accepted.
And I could contribute to a formation of a program for a party that was towards the Liquid Democracy.
It makes a big difference for me to be into the politics.
And I think that is the main, let's say, USB, what they call in the pirate party.
But at the moment, as I feel, is also a platform for horizontal decision-making
or a possibility of changing the way of politics are done.
It's not only Liquid Democracy, there is a possibility to offer a vision,
a new way for politics.
That's what fascinates me in the pirate party.
And the Liquid Democracy is a way of executing it.
But I would like very much to share this question around here.
Liquid Democracy, I think, is a very typical pirate party thing.
And the way in Holland, we used to say this, in Holland, politics are ruled by the lobbyists.
And by switching to Liquid Feedback, you can take away the power from the view and give it to the many.
And that, I think, is a key part of pirate party politics.
You have to...
What's happening?
Okay.
All is food.
That was the NSA.
We just got interrupted because I have some very important guests here for everyone who just got in.
I'm a new media here with the Republic Radio.
I have here, one, two, three, four guests.
I have a direct vote from the pirate party Netherlands.
I have a bridge show from the Pirate Party International, Germany is Brazil.
And from the Pirate Party Belgium, I have two guests.
I have Thomas Jordan and Jonas the Graf.
And right now we're talking about the subject of what is a pirate party.
And we had some root interruptions when the vote was saying something.
So please continue.
That was Liquid Democracy.
And then, for rest, I think, yeah, of course, the absolute declaration.
What I really like is how pirate parties worldwide are all banning together to fight patents,
to modernize copyright and to work for an open government.
And when the whole act, I think, was going on.
You saw how national parties were all being split up by lobbyists.
And the pirate parties worldwide were all speaking with the same voice and going for the same problem.
And in that thing, I think the pirate party is a new generation of parties,
where problems are looked at globally and talked about globally.
And everybody has a chance to participate.
I've actually, this is my pet subject.
For this week, at least, because I've been doing quite a lot of thinking about what the pirate party is actually about.
And I've come sort of to my own conclusion.
And I know it's, I mean, every pirate you talk to will answer something different, maybe.
But I think what 90% or 80% to 90% of the topics that the pirate party is talking about concern information.
Actually, they concern access to information.
Who has access?
Who is allowed to collect information?
Who is allowed to use it?
Who can interrupt those kind of things.
And that actually splits up in the whole range of political issues,
going from government transparency, where we want the government to actually give us more information,
protection of privacy, where we want to actually protect the access to our private information.
We have things like censorship, which is a very, and it keeps going like that.
If you think about patent law, it's actually the access to an idea to information.
Copyright.
All the way.
It's a control issue.
So, if you extrapolate that historically, you can think about the fact that a lot of people say
we're going into information age.
You know, we came from the industrial age, and now we're going into an information age,
where a lot of people are working with information with data on computers.
A lot of our, you know, agriculture stuff that's all been automized.
And we're basically doing stuff with our brains, almost all of us, especially in Holland, Belgium, most of Europe.
And so, it's a control issue of how we want to handle that.
What kind of society we want to have, and how we want to deal with all that information,
and those pathways of information.
And so, if I can pick into this, is that we just entered the 21st century,
and what we notice now is that, due to new technology, we have bigger improvements,
and the way we can crunch information.
Now, we have the possibility to actually use new voting systems, for instance,
because, like, one, two centuries ago, people couldn't use actual democratic systems.
There just wasn't the power to deal with all that new information.
But now, we have these information crunching technologies, and it becomes an issue,
the same with government, transparency.
One century ago, nobody had the power to check what the government was doing.
The government is too big to do something like that.
Now, we have the technology to do something like that.
So, if you give me the information, I just crunch the data, and I'll tell you where something is going wrong.
So, then the big question is, how do you decide on what's good, what's right,
what should we be able to do with information, who should have access, who doesn't?
And then, it's not that we just think about information, but we think in a very specific way.
And I think, historically, we're descendant from basically the age of enlightenment.
If you think about the origin of liberalism and those things, it basically is about a few things.
Mostly, it's about freedom and equality.
Those are driving factors in, let's say, the moral reasoning behind our prior programs.
What you could say is that we look at a political issue that concerns information,
and then we look what the best way to handle it would be that ensures the most freedom
for the most amount of people and the best equality between people,
even if you're a minority or anything else.
And so, we're, in a certain sense, we're applying a moral reasoning.
It's called humanism.
Basically, we're applying humanist moral reasoning, very technical, to information policy.
And I often compare it to the way that humanism was applied to the industrial age.
If you think about the origin of socialism and communism, they said,
well, you know, you have these big factories, but they should be, you know,
we should distribute this in a more fair way, more equal, more freedom for people.
We can't enslave people to work.
And basically, I think, personally, that the pirate party is about applying the same kind of thinking to the information age.
And we have to do it because obviously the other parties, and especially the older parties,
have no clue what they're doing on that level, or at least don't have a framework that's consistent.
And I think, in a lot of cases, they don't have a framework that's morally right, either.
Okay.
That was quite a bit of...
Yeah, no, you're right.
That's quite a story, but let's continue.
Let's return to what is a pirate party.
What was the country, again, some earlier, where there were two different pirate parties?
Spain. Spain.
Spain.
Italy, I believe.
Apparently, there's more.
But how can such a situation exist?
Where does it come from?
Not only where there is.
Like, I see from Germany else, the between the Norfolk, Berlin parades,
and the Bayern mentioned in a different population, different values, different wishes.
Do you feel good to get together and have a common opinion?
I think the main reason for that is that the pirate party is bottom up.
It means that any three guys, or maybe one guy can sit in the room and say,
I'm going to start my own pirate party.
In itself, you can call yourself a political party whenever you want.
Anybody can do that.
Of course, the difficulty is the logistical difficulty of entering elections.
And even there, local elections, you don't have to belong to a large party to participate in a local election.
But the reality is that the difficulty of participating in bigger and bigger elections requires a larger and larger organization.
So for us, we do bottom up, and then we start working together because we have to.
In certain cases, like in Catalonia, for a lot of the activities,
they just don't have to work together, which doesn't give them a driving force to do something together.
In the same way that maybe the Netherlands is working quite separately from the pirate party Belgium.
We don't really do things together yet.
But we don't have to because we have different elections.
So it doesn't really matter if we worked well.
It would be nice to work together.
But on a lot of levels, it just doesn't matter.
A lot of other parties, I would say, work the other way around.
There's like this one guy or a couple of guys that say,
you know, we've got this political party.
And if you want to have a local chapter, you're going to have to talk to us, boy.
And so they put you what they call in line with the party.
And for us, it's different.
It's kind of like what the pirate party is.
Is the result of all these singular actions.
It's kind of like a chaotic system.
But obviously something emerges.
That's the pirate party.
And it's very different from a design system where somebody goes in and says,
now we're going to do a political party.
And you all have to do it the way I think it should be done.
There's one thing maybe to add another view on that.
But you're saying the beginning that we don't like to have the figure is guiding it.
And if you see a bottom up, I would suggest the pirate parts are trying to do a bottom bottom.
There is no up.
That happens that some people get into the position that get always in trouble.
But our vision is a bottom a bottom.
Well, yeah, except for the problem, which is a real problem in the pirate party,
we have to have candidates because that's how the bleeding elections work.
And this is actually a big, this is major trouble in the pirate party because you have to make lists.
And then somebody has to be the first guy on the list.
And then all the media jumps in and they only interview the first guy.
And so that's for us, it's actually counter to how everybody wants to work.
But the external forces for make us work that way.
You have to act like a traditional political party in some respects in order to participate in the whole circus.
But we have the same thing in Holland.
Once you're the number one on the list for the elections, everybody starts calling you party leader.
Whereas as far as I'm concerned, we're like a leaderless revolution.
So I always said, no, I'm not a party leader.
I'm just a party spokesperson.
I'm the voice of the party right now, but anyone can be that.
I remember having heard in the last one year ago, the PPI general assembly, there was someone from Syria, I think,
telling about his experience, experience of the pirate party and they have a rule there.
At the moment that someone complains, this person gets the job.
And they were very flexible and very motivated, changing a lot.
And I wish sometimes a two in Germany would be more like that.
But I see some positive things in Germany.
Like in the last list, we had a group.
Hello, echo.
What is this?
Somebody broke into your program.
What is?
We are being hacked.
We're this is hacker public radio.
That was not me.
I don't know from the pirate party here.
And probably there are some other political parties who really want to disrupt our show or something.
And then it happens to have had some success.
Luckily, a year ago, I would have said a pair of noise.
But you know, I don't know this year.
Well, let's back what I was saying.
There is in our election, we have the three monkeys had concept in one of the group.
If one of them gets elected, the other two share the money.
I have in my candidature someone else that would work with me and we would split the money and the function.
So you're trying with a small step to show other possibilities on that.
Oh, I don't know.
I keep telling stories.
I guess one thing we tried in Antwerp, another idea, was that anybody who wanted to be a candidate had to sign sort of.
It's kind of like when you become a doctor, you have to do this oath, the Hippocratic oath.
And it basically says how you should act as a doctor.
Like, you know, what kind of responsibilities you have in this and that.
And so we wrote basically the same kind of oath, but then for a politician.
Like what you're supposed to do as a politician, if you get elected, it has all these things in there.
Like you're not actually supposed to just promote your own point of view, but you have to consult and you have to do this and that.
And so we do all these experiments with politics really with new ways of I would say subverting the current system because that's the thing right.
The pirate party has chosen to participate in elections.
We're not an activist group.
We're a political party.
So we chose to be in each country.
We tried to be in the elections. That's a goal of it.
Which means you have to follow the rules, but obviously we're trying to find the holes in the rules constantly.
So we can actually change it in the way that we want politics to run.
And we're not a purely political party, of course.
We're an activist party.
In that respect, we're also different from a lot of other parties.
See, for example, with the Bradley Manning case, most of the traditional parties say, well, that is something that's being looked at by a judge.
And we as a party cannot say anything about that as long as a judge is looking at it.
But we're an activist party.
We want to change things.
And we start calling out that judge right from the beginning of the trial.
And we keep on calling through the beginning of the trial.
We had the same thing in Holland with an organization called Brein, which is the Dutch part of the copyright police.
We've been actively fighting them.
We've started a proxy service in the Netherlands.
We've done stuff that goes way beyond purely political stuff just in order to make our point.
So I think a pirate party in that respect is it is a bunch of activists that pretend to be politicians in order to change the political landscape.
That's why I see you.
To the political system, I would say.
And one more thing that I just thought that we were talking about the cooperation internationally.
I think there's more cooperation than you'd say, but it's not forced into a party line.
For example, we copied the liquid feedback system from Germany.
That's true.
Now, we're working together with New Zealand in order to come up with a different version of the liquid feedback system.
We had a lot of trouble designing our website.
So in the end, well, we just copied the German website.
And in that respect, I think the pirate parties are working together a lot.
But without that party line that you mentioned, it's more helping meetings or we don't do that.
No, it's helping each other out to get to get ahead without trying to force each other to do things against our gut.
Yeah.
But I personally think an interesting problem with the pirate party, especially the hacker community, since we're here anyway, is that I often hear this comment.
A lot of people are disappointed in politics, like really badly.
If you look at the numbers, politicians is the least trusted profession on earth.
Really, it's the absolute bottom journalist, just one position above it.
But think about how bad that is.
It just shows us that the most powerful people are the least trusted people that we have.
It's really, really, really societal problem.
What I notice is that by saying, hey, guys, we're going to participate in politics.
So we have to have candidates and all that.
Then we get judged by a lot of people in the hacker community as a political party.
And I do think that's kind of like a problem that I'd love the hacker community as a whole to get over.
Yes, we have to act like a political party in certain sense, because otherwise we just can't participate in the elections.
But you guys have to help us.
Even if you don't like politics, it's too important to ignore and to just dismiss.
It's a general thing.
And even internally, I find it sometimes very weird that we have anti-political people in the pirate party.
I'm like, well, I don't know.
You know the feeling?
Yeah, but if you've been very disappointed in politics, but feel something should change in politics,
then a pirate party might be a way to work on the future again.
Except when something looks like regular politics, then the panic, which I don't think you should always do.
Yes, I think we should be vigilant and make sure that we don't become a traditional party.
It's obviously a risk.
But we aren't.
None of the pirate parties I can remotely consider to be a classical political party, but you get blamed for it anyway.
But those are the money shots on TV as well.
I saw the German elections.
They had like five, six very stiff, suited up German politicians.
And then you had the one guy from the pirate party just in a t-shirt.
But in the end, he got everybody on arguments.
The t-shirts go straight through the stuffed suits.
And we added in Holland as well, during the elections, you put there together with a very old school politician.
And just by being there, not wearing your tie and just wearing a t-shirt and having a completely different way of looking at things and expressing yourself,
you're showing people already that there's a very big difference between a pirate party politician and a regular politician.
Okay. Meanwhile, we're joined with a new guest, which is Christophart.
Nice to introduce yourself.
Yeah, I'm one of the five heads of the Austrian pirate party.
We don't have one person at the top, but five with equal rights.
And I just heard you on the radio over in our Austrian camp, and I thought,
hey, I'm going to find where you are.
And it took me a while, but so I don't really know what you've been talking about.
It sounds like a mafia movie, the five heads.
Oh, yeah.
We decided earlier. I heard you're talking about people here now.
I heard you're talking about not wanting to have one candidate at the top.
And so we said we also want to have one leader at the top.
Yeah. All right.
We started out with a bit about how the pirate party started.
And now we're talking about the subject of what is a pirate party.
Perhaps you want to talk a bit about the start of your pirate party?
The Austrian one was founded in 2006, I think, very soon after the Swedish one.
But it stayed very small for many years.
And only recently, due in a large part to the success in Germany,
suddenly about a year ago, a year and a half ago,
the Austrian pirates started showing up in opinion polls,
even though they were really, really tiny.
And then the people involved were, as individuals, very unknown.
And that caused a lot of people to get interested in the party again and join
and see that there's actually a chance there.
And now we have national elections coming up in three months, I think.
End of September.
And we're polling at 2%, and we are just in the process of collecting signatures
to be able to stand for elections.
We have about 85% of the ones we need collected,
and are probably going to be on the ballot in eight out of nine Austrian provinces.
So that's a big step for us.
That's a threshold.
It's 2,600 signatures, but you have to sign at your local government building
in front of people there.
You can't send it in by email or do it on the net or something.
So it's been a struggle.
We've worked now for three weeks collecting these signatures,
but we're very close to the goal.
And that's for us a huge step because the Austrian pirates have never stood for national elections.
What percentage of the votes do you need to get?
Let's actually get 4% to enter parliament.
So we have to have now.
In the polls, yes.
But if you reach 1%, nationwide, you get funding.
So 1% is a funding threshold.
How about the polls in Austria?
Because we have a feeling now in Germany, we have like 2%, 3%.
But for now, I know the polls are then only on the baseline.
How you say in landline?
Landlines, not mobiles.
It's a different public.
Elders.
And I don't want to talk about conspiracy.
But I hear that the media really decides this week, SPD 23.
And find out how it will come out.
Well, yeah, that is one issue.
I think another issue is just that the sample sizes for these polls, at least in Austria,
that is 400 people.
It's really, really small.
If you're at a 2% party, that's what 8 people in the polls said,
Pirate Party, that can vary wildly.
So you can't make it serious as large.
Yeah.
I see that's a huge problem for us in Germany that are running for election that we are by 2%,
3% and the 2, 2 years ago in 2011, it was like this.
Some weeks before the election, we were not on the cake share in there.
We could not see us.
We are not 4%.
And then suddenly we get 9.6%.
But the polls are a political instrument.
Do you realize that, right?
Yeah.
The polls are not, you know, to inform the public.
The polls are there to manipulate the public.
That's quite obvious.
There's been publications enough about this that basically show how easy it is to do it in a way
that is beneficial for certain, you know, and to have the story going.
But I do think, I mean, I'm not completely cynical in the sense that I don't think that all
media is bought.
So the way I approach it is like, you kind of have to get your story going in the,
because the media does love like an underdog.
And, you know, and I think as a beginning party, you have to try to get the underdog going
about you.
Yeah.
And then then grow, you know.
But the problem is, that happened in Germany.
First, they were like the underdog and then wow, they're the surprise winners and they're up
and they were growing in the polls.
And then you started all these, you start seeing all these bad stories in the press,
which is not a coincidence, because the press is like, oh, now the hero has to fall.
But, you know, it's all something we've seen in Holland over the last, I think, 15, 20 years.
And we have a lot of new political parties coming into the spectrum.
And they start out very idealistic.
And all of a sudden they become huge.
And then everybody and his brother becomes a member of that party.
And all of a sudden that party is hijacked by 20 different groups of people within a year after the elections.
They're falling on the street, fighting and the party breaks up.
So we've been very conscious not to grow too fast, because that's something we definitely do not want to have happen.
We've grown very slowly organically, then all of a sudden explode.
And a year later you opened the door and you see who did we all invite in.
Yeah, that already happens.
I think sometimes you go like, you know, you can't really screen people that come into your party.
You can't say, well, where's your CV, man?
So you run the risk as a small starting party of getting a lot of disenfranchised people from other parties into your party.
I'd like to suggest when you show maybe for the people who are listening and do not know how it works, the part party.
If you could give me some hints, how is the part mandate by you?
How is the, because I see one of the main thing at the part party, it can work very well.
If the people are independent, proactive, constructive, it can get really massive.
Some people has too much time to complain and find problems on the others.
So for people who are outside that are not pirates, which the attitude that you would like to see?
Well, definitely the go get attitude.
I mean, the attitude of waiting and sitting back until something goes wrong and then shouting about it,
that's definitely not an attitude you need in the pyro party.
What I really like is the concept of adhocracy.
Adhocracy is basically whoever does it first does it.
So it kind of like OHM is or OM is itself, you know, you're kind of like okay,
if you feel like there should be a lamp here, you know, hang a lamp.
And if you augment that with the Brazilian rule, that if you have a critic on something that immediately you,
then you hang the lamp.
That happens here.
Hey, that doesn't work. Go fix it.
Go fix it.
Yeah, so I think it's quintessential hacker culture in a political structure really, which is nice.
It gets you have to get used to it too.
Because some people just don't, they come from maybe they have experience in other organizations where it's much more classical.
Or some people, well, I think what mostly happens is that people have very specific idea of how it's something.
And usually their idea is very big and very ambitious and they can't do it alone.
And then you get it because the by definition in an adhocracy, everything has to be attainable by one or two or three people.
If you can't do it by yourself, well, you already have a problem, right?
It's like we should all, you know, sentences that start like that are like a big warning sign, I guess.
Okay, we have about four minutes left.
So how about we take some time or eight minutes?
Yeah, there's some.
Okay, we have about eight minutes left.
So let's do one more commercial.
Let's do one or something.
We're talking about the dig pot.
I would like to ask you about the upslide and maybe after that, we can all say how to reach your local pirate party.
Oh God, do we know that?
Yeah, we need signatures in the Belgian hackerspace village signatures for next election.
Hey, I have a local phone number.
Do you dare say it on the radio?
Sure.
Sure, it's four six six seven, but it only works when you're on four six six seven babies.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to have a coffee with a pirate, I didn't quite get your question.
What did you do?
Well, earlier, you mentioned the upslide declaration.
Yeah.
Could you go into what that means?
Basically, it's, it's, it's, it's what the all pirate parties in the world agree on as, as, as are the, the, the three main points that they should strive for and all.
Every part of the pirate party is free to add other points.
Those points are an open government that you can control instead of a control government and controls you.
Abandoning patents and changing copyright.
And those are the three main points that come from, yeah.
Well, interestingly enough, the BPI has just voted a new manifesto.
And it now includes net neutrality as well.
It has a clause on whistle blowing.
There's a few new things and actually direct democracy is in there in a certain way as well.
Okay.
Yeah. Now, I don't know if all the pirate parties have signed it yet, but it's quite interesting.
It's a major step because our, what you mentioned is actually like last week's.
I'm just kidding.
It's so important.
Let's, let's, let's hope that that the newer, the new thing gets, gets approved.
I think it has been.
Okay.
Yeah, I think at least nine countries have signed it, but I, I don't know how many have now, but it was happening in.
I guess in Poland, right?
Yeah, washer with the representatives are in washer right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's good news.
You can probably look it up soon.
All right.
So in the final minutes, say we have some listeners who are interested in the pirate party and they are anywhere on the globe.
What would you recommend they do to get involved?
Start.
Do it.
Just, just go ahead, take the concept and do it.
Make your own pirate party or find the pirate party nearby and do it.
That's the most important thing.
Find a couple of friends in your, in your neighborhood, in your, in your university, in your local bar, and just start a local pirate party and, and grow.
We accept pull requests, by the way, for the gigs among us.
No.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to be here also for organizing it and enjoy it and join the pirate party who wants to change the politics.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
You do.
Thanks also for the brief chance.
I just like to emphasize one point, which is European corporation of pirate parties.
I think there's too little of that going on and I hope maybe if all of us are together here, we can discuss briefly how to, how to.
Deepen that because all the threats that we face are not national threats, but global threats and we need a global movement to counter them.
I think we should have like an informal pirate meeting here.
Well, we'll set up a pirate beer or a little pirate beer at home.
No, it's, I think that you're absolutely definitely right there.
That for me is, as always, been one of the main, main points of a pirate party is that it's an international organization of people from all over the world who.
Want the same things and who try to bypass their existing political elected officials because they haven't got a clue about it.
So I think that it's extremely important that in 2014 when we have the European elections, there's one united front of European pirate standing there.
I actually have the feeling that maybe that's a bit of good news.
I know that the last couple of years, especially in PPI and organization like that, it's been a struggle.
It really has been a struggle, but personally, I have the feeling that it's starting to get really a lot better.
I'm thinking like things like the manifesto and we're just getting more experience with how to do it on an international level.
And that's my personal experience in the pirate party in general is that sometimes you really just have to be patient and optimistic at the same time.
And just allow it to grow by itself.
I don't think we can force it to go faster than it's going right now, but it's going in the right direction.
And there's a deadline and that line's always worth magic.
I love the sound they make when they come flying by.
Yeah, the most of the pirate parties, the official part was right before the election if I'm not mistaken.
So you mentioned an informal meetup.
Should we just tell people to search the only key for pirate party and we will put something up that tells you when and where.
If you like, we can do it right after this.
We can just go to the other tent on the other side and then we'll have a meeting with ourselves there.
I think it is a good idea to have that.
You want more or less like pirate party somewhere else.
First, we would need to pick up my kid at four from the child activity.
The same way.
Well, we have some time left, so we need a location.
Where do we have a location?
Well, I guess the Belgian pirate party has a tent.
No, no, no, the Belgian village.
The Belgian village.
I guess we could do it there.
We have a bar and Belgian beer.
I have a Belgian beer with a CC license from Germany.
Belgian beer from Germany.
So that's settled in.
We'll look at the agenda.
We'll tell you guys.
Can't we now say like tomorrow be there at some time?
Sure.
What do you have time to do this?
Don't you think?
I have a kid.
Evening.
8 p.m.
All right.
There we have it.
We're still looking to participate with the pirate party.
Be at the Belgian village at 8 tomorrow.
It's the red tent with the white...
What should we call it?
A roof.
Yes, it's a white roof.
Bring your own parrot.
Bring your own parrot.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever consider recording a podcast, then visit our website to find out how easy it really is.
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the Digital Dark Pound and the Infonomicom Computer Club.
HPR is funded by the binary revolution at binref.com.
All binref projects are proudly sponsored by Lina Pages.
From shared hosting to custom private clouds, go to LinaPages.com for all your hosting needs.
Unless otherwise stasis, today's show is released under a creative commons,
attribution, share a life, lead us our lives.
