Skip to main content

Pirate Party's Next Target: French Parliament

posted onJune 4, 2012
by l33tdawg

Founded in 2006 by a group of Swedes close to the Pirate Bay illegal download website, the Pirate Party has spread across Europe. The Pirates are the spiritual heirs of the libertarian hackers from the late 20th century, who dreamed of a free circulation of culture and knowledge on the Internet.

But unlike these hackers, the European Pirates have chosen legal political action to make their voices heard. Their success is spectacular in Germany where, since Fall of 2011, they have won between 7% and 9% of the votes in four regional elections, where they now count 45 seats in total. Inspired by the German model, the French Pirate Party decided to pursue the electoral route, aiming to legally implement a series of reforms: free non-commercial use of cultural works, right to privacy for Internet users, reform of copyright and patent law, transparency of the state and access to public records and content.

Maxime Rouquet, the Party leader, is 26 and a video game engineer. He is one of the few with an electoral experience: he ran for a by-election near Paris in 2009, under the Pirate banner, and won 2% of the votes. This year, he is running in the same district. Like a majority of his co-members, Rouquet got into politics in response to these barbaric sounding laws – Dadvis, Loppsi, Hadopi – intending to quell online downloading and strengthen Internet monitoring.

Source

Tags

Industry News Law and Order France TPB

You May Also Like

Recent News

Friday, November 1st

Tuesday, July 9th

Wednesday, July 3rd

Friday, June 28th

Thursday, June 27th

Thursday, June 13th

Wednesday, June 12th

Tuesday, June 11th

Friday, June 7th

Thursday, June 6th