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Canada s chief electoral officer, Marc Mayrand, granted the Pirates eligible party status on April 12, officially joining 19 other registered parties after a 60-day "purgatory period," according to a statement on the Pirates website.
http://www.pirateparty.ca/
Modeled on Sweden's Pirate Party, that country's third-largest political party, which won a seat in last year's European Parliament elections, and established in 2009, the Pirate Party of Canada is committed to reform Canadian copyright laws, reform the patent system, reform copyright legislation, facilitate access to culture, and protect every Canadian's right to privacy, arguing that if we don t adjust copyright to today's realities, artists will continue to be limited in their creative expression as well as their ability to make ends meet while consumers will face ever more excessive measures such as iPod searches by border guards.
The Pirate Party wants to adjust copyright law so that artists can better build on previous works and choose the distribution and licensing model that allows them to make a living, and also to help music artists educate themselves about earning money through other means than selling records, for example by performing live shows and selling fan articles and where feasible. The party pledges to evaluate the introduction of levies to further compensate artists, but in turn, wants to adjust copyright legislation to make private, non-commercial copying of content legal for consumers, which it contends will will promote artists and help spread culture farther than ever before.
As for patents, the Pirate Party notes that currently patent grants its owner a 20 year monopoly over the use of an invention. In the fast moving software industry, inventions however always build on previous work. Issuing patents on software therefore exposes all innovators to the risks of major lawsuits. This reduces innovation, meaning that your software will be harder to use and will not offer the features you need.
The party wants to ban patents on software to spur innovation and allow new start-ups to enter the market without the fear of being sued for building upon previous work. We also want to ban patents on life forms and plants since we find the notion of corporations owning the ingredients to life downright unethical.
The Pirate Party would also strengthen privacy protection, noting that almost all aspects of our daily lives are now affected by digitalization, and the possibilities to track, analyze and monitor us by looking at our digital traces grow with every passing day. For example, if privacy is not reclaimed and actively protected, your communication will be recorded and your movements tracked (your cellphone is an ideal tracking device already today) simply because it can be done without effort as technology becomes ever faster and cheaper.
The party would extend privacy laws to provide the same protections to all of our digital data that already exist today for non-digital items such as conventional mail. We also strive to ensure that government access to our data is only granted for specific, well-defined purposes and in criminal investigations where probable suspicion can be demonstrated.
Pledging to ensure Net neutrality, the party notes that in recent years, several Canadian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have started slowing down certain types of data sent to and received from the Internet by their private customers. These ISPs have stated that they pursue this practice in order to prevent overloading their networks which would negatively impact service for all customers. The issue however arises from the fact that there is little to no public evidence available which proves that this is actually the case and that ISPs are not simply degrading performance so that Internet services which compete with their own offerings are penalized. For example, a telephone company could reduce the quality of Skype calls over their DSL lines to prevent customers from using this competing service.
The Pirate Party would enact legislation requiring all Internet Service Providers (wired and mobile) to offer the same level of service for all applications and Internet services, without discrimination. In other words, we want to ensure that customers get exactly the service they pay for, without exceptions or special conditions for specific services such as Skype or Peer-to-Peer file exchange applications.
The Pirate Party of Canada stands for the principle of Open Government, advocating that government actions and the data it produced must be made publicly available to Canadians wherever possible, using standardized, open and vendor-neutral data formats. They would also strive to guarantee that all research funded by taxpayer money must be made available in the same means as above, thereby ensuring the principles of Open Access. This will help maintain Canada s cultural and scientific heritage by ensuring equal access to these values for everyone.
The Pirate Party's Manifesto, observing that Canada has been a world leader in human rights, says this is a chance for Canada to once again lead the way with a modern lawful society, where all citizens are granted the respect they deserve, noting that as technology has changed the Copyright Act has changed, allowing consumers of creative works to use them in new ways. The way we use creative content now is not the same as it was before the photocopier or the VCR. The balance within the change in copyright has been to encourage the creation, development and dissemination of culture. As Canada looks forward we must balance society s demand for access and dissemination with the proper encouragement to create, the party argues for a society where culture and knowledge are free and accessible to all on equal terms, and says that the present copyright system promotes widespread and systematic abuse that actively limits both the range and access to culture.
The party's goal is to change Canadian and global legislation concerning the evolving information society, which is characterized by openness and diversity. We will reach this goal by increasing respect for our fellow citizens and their privacy, and says that all attempts by the government to restrict these rights must be questioned and opposed. All systems and methods that the state can turn against its citizens must be constantly reviewed and scrutinized by elected representatives and by citizens themselves. When the state monitors people not suspected of crimes, the individual's privacy has been intolerably violated. Every citizen should be guaranteed the right of anonymity, and the individual's right to protect their own personal data.
The Pirate Party says historically Canada's Copyright Act has changed to adapt to technology, allowing consumers of creative works to use them in new ways. As technologies (photocopiers, cassette recorders and VCRs) have made it possible for citizens to affordability make copies and use content in new ways, the Copyright Act has changed to allow consumers the right to these new uses. Consistent within the changes to the Copyright Act is an exchange, the consumer gains the right to use the new technology and the creators get a new incentive to create. They argue argue for a society where culture and knowledge are free and accessible to all on equal terms, as opposed today s copyright system which promotes widespread and systematic abuse that actively limits both the range and access to culture, giving an unfair advantage to large-market players, at the expense of consumers, creators, and society in general, with millions of works - songs, books, movies and artwork - held hostage in media companies' vaults, not requested enough to make re-publishing them economical, but ostensibly too lucrative to be released into the public domain. The Pirate Party wants to make all of these works free and available to everyone, before the inks fade, pages disintegrate and film deteriorates further, and advocates that legislation be amended so that it only regulates the use and copying of works in the commercial context, contending that the sharing of copies or use of another person's work should never be forbidden as long as it takes place on a non-commercial basis.
The commercial side of the copyright law should remain, but the party contends reform is necessary, and that the exclusive right to produce copies of a work for commercial purposes, must be drastically reduced to a period of 5 to 15 years from the work's initial publication, with commercial protection range regulated so that anyone is free to create new works that build upon earlier creations: so-called "derivatives". Any justified deviations from this rule, such as direct translations of books or using new music in commercial films, should be explicitly listed in the law.
Noting that technology makes information easier and cheaper to copy, store and use in new ways, a facility that should not be fought but embraced, the Pirate Party contends that Digital Rights Management (DRM) seeks to restrict the flow of information, and thus opposes legislative measures to protect DRM technologies, and that the idea of consumers paying to have their rights in how they consume content reduced by technological measures is absurd, with legislative protection for DRM bad policy that would only stifle technological growth.
The Pirate party says today's intellectual property rights lead to harmful monopolies, the loss of important democratic values, hinder the creation of culture and knowledge, and hinder the free flow of information between Canadians and their government. Intellectual property rights should enrich individual peoples' lives, enabling a healthy business climate and creating knowledge and culture, thus benefiting the development of society as a whole.
The party's work is now focused on parliamentary means and therefore they seek a mandate from the people to represent them in these issues.
To unite as a strong movement, the party have chosen to not take a stand in any political issues not connected with the principles declared in their MAnifesto, in the belief that members of parliament should represent their constituents while trying to form consensus and compromise in parliament, and so choose to give individual candidates the power to act on behalf of their constituents on all other political issues.
The party's council and administrative team:
Jake Daynes Leader
Stephane Bakhos Chief Technical Director
Bob Jonkman Executive Director
Kevin Price Director at Large
Daniel LaSalle Marketing and Media Relations Director
For more information, visit:
http://www.pirateparty.ca/
Charles W. Moore
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