Patrick Sunter
Sounds like you should start an Aus pirate party Ben if you're going to use the scare quotes around all possible uses of the word ;)
As already noted, there is a Pirate Party Australia URL:http://pirateparty.org.au/. We are looking forward to a visit from a representative of the party, Ben McGinnes, at our next Free Software Melbourne meeting 2013-08-18. But it's a mistake to think I'd use scare quotes around all possible uses of the word “pirate”. That word is entirely appropriate for some uses. I would describe violently attacking a vessel, kidnapping or killing those aboard and depriving them of what the vessel carried, as piracy. Real pirates exist today, their actions are physically harmful to their victims and damaging to society, and it is right to criminalise their actions and seek to restrain them. We correctly feel moral outrage at (non-fictional, especially modern-day) pirates. Copyright infringement is not an attack, is not violent, does no harm to the physical safety of anyone, and deprives no-one of any goods. To call that “piracy” is a canard. It plays directly into the hands of “intellectual property” maximalists who seek public moral outrage against, and extreme criminalisation of, the sharing of information. URL:https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy Sharing information – whether with the consent of the copyright holder or otherwise, even if it might be considered morally wrong – is never theft and is never a violent act. So it's at best confusing, and at worst deliberately misleading, to use the term “piracy” for that. So no, I won't be starting or joining a Pirate Party. I do support the general aims of civil liberty, free culture, government transparency, etc. that the Pirate Party Australia espouse; but I don't think it helps these aims to use a term that already – and rightly – denotes a violent society-harming property thief for someone with those aims. It further entrenches and empowers that canard. I look forward to meeting members of the Pirate Party Australia again when they visit our next Free Software Melbourne meeting! We have many goals in common and a lot to discuss, I'm sure. -- \ “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in | `\ choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” —John | _o__) Kenneth Galbraith, 1962-03-02 | Ben Finney