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Pirate Party

When you hear the term “Pirate Party” you might think of a bunch of people dressed like Captain Jack Sparrow sitting around drinking cases of Malibu Rum.  However, the Pirate Party is a European political movement that was founded on the principals of maintaining the privacy of the Internet and eliminating copyrights and patents that it believes violate people’s civil liberties.

The movement started in Sweden several years ago. Since then, it now has garnered seats in the European parliament and some city council positions in Germany.

The Pirate Party believes that modern laws pertaining to electronic communication and copyright are becoming too intrusive. Laws the party are focusing on include one that allows Swedish authorities to monitor phone, email and fax traffic crossing that countries borders. The Pirate Party also opposes a European direct that allows copyright holders to discover the Internet address of file shares.

You might recall that Sweden shut down the popular file-sharing site Pirate Bay.

Do you believe that the Pirate Party is a genuine political movement with legitimate goals or people that just want music and movies for free?

To learn more about the Pirate Party, visit the Wikipedia page or their web site.

As the 60th anniversary of Chinese communist rules approaches on October 1st, the Chinese government has said that it will ban web sites from linking to or advertising sites that glorify violence.

A notice posted on the Culture Ministry Web site on Monday said games that promote drug use, obscenities, gambling, or crimes such as rape, vandalism and theft are “against public morality and the nation’s fine cultural traditions.”

Some speculate that the new round on censorship is really a cover for the government to further suppress anti-government political content on the Internet. China has the most users on the Web and the most extensive system of monitoring and censorship.

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