We are getting a few requests for interviews and while we are up to date on the latest issues with COICA, ACTA, Wikileaks, and full body airport scanners, we want to know what our members and supporters want us to emphasize. So please feel free to offer your suggestions for what our talking points should be in the comments for this post. Thanks!
If asked for the most serious issues the Pirate Party wants to stress, you should point out that the Trans Pacific Partnership would ban people from importing books and newspapers from other countries, and that if it weren’t for a whistleblower’s leak of the document, this agreement could have been passed completely in secret without any Congressional or public knowledge of its contents. Freedom to read material that you have legally purchased and own is actively under attack. The name “Pirate Party” does not mean participants disrespect content creators, it’s rather a tongue-in-cheek response to industry spokespeople who denounce copyfighters as “pirates”.
Instead of claiming that you are going to challenge Democratic control on Beacon Hill, stress instead that you represent a new movement of young people who want to take political action to protect the freedom of information that they understand to be changing the world, i.e. Wikileaks, North African protests. The PP is in opposition to the two major parties because they lack this popular understanding.
On unrelated subjects like health care, I don’t think it makes sense to turn off either libertarians or socialists by taking a position this soon, but rather claim that freedom of information could inform these debates as well.
I think network neutrality is one of the most important fights of our age for those who believe in the free expression and exchange of ideas. Some of the largest broadband providers in Massachusetts are asserting the right to censor and manipulate their subscribers’ traffic. If the FCC is unwilling to take action to prevent this, it will fall to Congress to do so, and that’s an area for urgent political action.
Thanks Avery and Paul for your well thought out suggestions. If either of you have time to expand what you wrote into policies we could adopt, it would help tremendously.