Creating a party

The Pirateparty in Sweden has had some great successes in the past. With the conviction of the Pirate Bay makers, they had a huge surge in users and subsequently landed also in the European parliament.

That the time for such a party is ripe in Switzerland is no surprise. In 2008 I was already working on getting to know the party as such and wanted to get active. Several things prohibited me from doing so, but that all changed at the beginning of 2009. Organizing the people that had already collected at piraten-partei.ch was an easy task, not many were very actively following the ideas behind the pirates. A first date to create the party was set in March.

A couple of things made that date not possible and so it was postponed to April. Then a daily newspaper wrote an article, due to the Swedes showing up in the parliament and all hell broke lose.

Over 2000 people are in the Facebook group and a couple hundred roam the forums. The idea of a few people meeting in a living room, died that day rather violently.

Now the founding is scheduled for Juli 12th, 2009 and somewhere in the range of 200 – 400 people are expected officially. I for one bet my money on more, a lot more.

So now what does this pirateparty do? The goals are rather clear, yet broad enough to encompass almost anything that can be or should be important to modern citizens. Among them are privacy (transparency of government and not of the citizen), monopolies and patents, as well as freedom of culture and knowledge (free filesharing for personal use).

Although we are already allowed to download music and movies to our hearts content in Switzerland, the upload is still illegal. And that download right is under attack as well, so there is already a few things to do. Also a hacker law that effectively renders protection against hackers useless is on the table and needs to be fought down.

So as the pirateparty, we have a big job to do, which means countless sleepless nights, lot’s of stress for little yet deep rewards.

The last thing anyone would want is to be in charge of that monster, scratching up the grounds, waiting to be let loose on the political landscape. So it’s just natural for me to do the insane thing and candidate for the job as president.