“I would rather vote for a pirate,” proclaimed one proud Haligonian on Q104, “than a crook!” That was Tyler Jacquard’s favourite answer to the station’s question: “Would you vote for the Pirate Party?”
“That was some wonderful feedback.” More importantly for Jacquard, it was “wonderful” exposure for the east coast Pirate Party, a sparse community of party members that Jacquard organizes and maintains—mostly through online chat channels and discussion forums, of which he claims no one is older than 29. For Jacquard, a high school junior and too young to vote, the youth of the members is the party’s greatest strength.
“With the issues that we’re focusing on,” explains Jacquard, “it definitely interests the 18- to 25-year-olds.” He and others in the party believe that young voters have been turned off by politicians who either ignore their issues or patronize them, attending to worries about rising tuition fees as the key to the youth block. “That’s awesome, but not everyone’s in university.”
Instead, the party turns to media rights and privacy advocacy, a campaign platform familiar to anyone with a life online, regardless of age. Keeping a short leash on social network sites like Facebook and guaranteeing federal protection of net neutrality are two hot issues already facing the departments and ruling parties of the government that the Pirates intend to champion. But the meat of their agenda firmly remains pro open-source innovation and peer-to-peer media sharing, arguments that led their Betamax and mix-tape-making ideological forefathers to be branded “pirates” during the 1970s and 1980s.
One pilot program already underway is targeted directed at the country’s independent artists. The Canadian Pirate Tracker, or CaPT (Captain), as explained by party leader Jake Daynes at pirateparty.ca, “is a creative commons torrent tracker,” dually promoting Canadian artistic talent while providing a safe place for members to share files without the threat of copyright infringement. Although still relatively small with 11 bands and artists signed up, the torrent tracker is another political first for Canada.
Jacquard and other Pirates hope that such hands-on innovation between the party and the people will turn heads come the next election. He will be hard at work whether he’s of voting age or not, generating support for the cause on a local level, as they struggle to survive their first foray through a federal election—hoping to achieve the two percent of the popular vote necessary to qualify for funding status. Jacquard is aware that none of those votes are likely to come from the Maritimes, which so far lacks a candidate. “In other parts of the country, it’s a bit more organized, it’s more official, and there are people stepping up to the plate to say, ‘I want to be a candidate.'” But he’s hopeful that an upcoming public meeting on May 26 will help stir up local support for the party, and possibly enough interest to someday soon attract a candidate. “If we don’t get a seat, at least we’ll get attention to the issues.”
This article appears in May 13-19, 2010.
In reading some of the Party’s forums, it seems many of these guy’s are completely fine with burning music & DVD’s & seem to think they have a right to do so…-Their opinions all seem to be- no one should cry for the big Commercial Companies that make ( in their opinion) huge obscene profits.
The fact the Producers risk money to produce marketable goods, that because of technological advancement are not just easy, but simple to take, they believe they have some ‘right’ to take it for free. But this inane logic of their’s believes the Producers have no ‘right’ to be paid for their product(s).
I wonder how this system would work if we were instead talking about cut & packaged food items…would it then still be ok to just take it ?
Walk onto a local car lot, take a car out for a free test drive then never return it ??? This by their odd logic must also be ok, after all no matter how you look at it, they are taking the works of others & giving it away for free or taking it for free.
IF these actions are not ok. Then downloading music or video for free that someone else has produced ( often it is a large group of people invovled in producing a CD or DVD) must also be wrong.
It is wrong, it has & is costing people their jobs & IMO needs to have harsh penalties for those who attempt to profit by their efforts on the work done by others. Attempting to say that those attempting to stop the piracy of their work are dinosaur’s & should instead sell T shirt’s or reduce their prices to the level Pirated CD’s & DVD’s are sold for is naive & I wonder how these people would feel if they managed to produce a DVD & before it was released to the public forsale, someone was selling it online for little or nothing ?!?
Pirate Party Council in Halifax ! – http://www.piratesofhalifax.com
Halifax Pirate Party Counsel – http://www.piratesofhalifax.com
It is not likely anyone is selling them online but distributing freely. We have taken a firm step into the Information Age where information begs to be freely shared. This is likely to change many business modles; some already in thst Flux of change.One wonders of the fate of capitalism itself as we enter more fully into this new Age. There is no value judgement meant in my remarks; the only intent is to speak of the obvious.
Ironically recording costs have declined due to the new technology of this Age. It is no longer a huge financial barrier to own the tools required to produce good recordings. The lion’s share of costs even in pre-Info Age times was in promotion. That is true in films as well. Again, the social networking technologies of this new Age helps to combat those costs.
My guess is that recordings will become the business card of musicians and they will garner most of their income the old fashion way…. playing live concerts. Perhaps crowd funding will catch on to the extent that writers and film makers shall make their pitch to the world at large for support.
The times are changing. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.