When
the phrase “a typical social movement” is brought up, what regularly pops into
someone’s mind involves a group of people becoming frustrated with the way
things are in their life to the point they are willing to raise their voice and
let the world, or at least a larger group of people, know their frustration to
gain support in changing what is causing them pain in their life. This however, is bigger than a social
movement. What is going on in a large
part of Europe and pop up spots around the globe involves more than a mere
social movement but a political movement.
People are not just voicing their frustrations to encourage other people
to make a change for them. Pirate Politics is about being fed up enough with the way things are to actually get
out there and make a change in a democratic manor.
In his book, Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests, Patrick
Burkart examines how the take down of The Pirate Bay, a website devoted to
sharing copyrighted material to people on the internet, was taken down and how
that has encouraged people to form the new political party, Pirate Politics. Pirate
Politics works to try and strengthen access to copyrighted material as they believe
everyone has a right to freely access the true fruit of the world,
knowledge. Burkart moves his way through the book by
first setting up the context of the political party and how they came
about. He then goes on to describe
antipiracy movements by the European Union and the American government and how
that has also inspired Pirate Politics to respond to the restraint copyright/patent
laws create. In the latter half of his
book, Burkart moves to try and explain why the Pirate Party is not just out to
gain things for free, despite their label of “free culture” they are trying to
promote. It is, he believes, a
libertarian movement that wants to have great effects on the cyber world. Burkart believes they can do this by playing
on their relation to the environmentalist movement in how it encourages parts
working together as one, instead of independent entities. From these claims, Burkart argues this is a
revolutionary party that is going to bring forth big changes in the way
information is transferred online (Burkart, 2014). Throughout this blog, I analyze some of his
arguments, good and bad, and why one ought to believe them, or not, using
different authors I have recently become acquainted with.