Pirate Party

Pirate Party is a label adopted by various political parties worldwide that share a set of values and policies focused on civil rights in the digital age. The fundamental principles of Pirate Parties include copyright reform (dismantling copyright monopolies), patent reform, strengthening civil rights including government transparency, right to privacy, anonymity, freedom of speech, secrecy of correspondence, the principle of subsidiarity, protection from arbitrary authority and as well as respect for the highest standards of democracy. The movement also advocates for freedom of information, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, digital rights, and internet freedom. The first Pirate Party (Swedish: Piratpartiet) was founded in Sweden in 2006 by Rick Falkvinge. Since then, the movement has expanded to over 60 countries.

Pirate Parties strongly defend open-source, decentralized and privacy-enhancing technologies, including blockchain, cryptocurrencies as an alternative to state currency (fiat money), peer-to-peer networks, instant messaging with end-to-end encryption, virtual private networks, private and anonymous browsers, etc., considering them essential tools to protect personal data, individual privacy, and information security (both online and offline), against mass surveillance, data collection without consent, content censorship without due process, forced decryption, internet throttling or blocking, backdoor requirements in encryption, discriminatory algorithmic practices, unauthorized access to personal data, and the concentration of power in Big Tech. Ultimately, the protection of individual freedom stands at the core of their political agenda, seen as a bulwark against the growing power of corporations and governments in controlling information and digital autonomy. This aligns perfectly with the cyber-libertarian values and principles.

Rather than completely rejecting the traditional political spectrum left–right, Pirate Parties operate on a distinct political axis that political scientists might call authoritarian-anarchist or centralized-distributed in the digital and technological spheres. Therefore, they tend to combine libertarian and anarchist elements on digital issues with progressive (from the American point of view) positions on social issues, while most political pirates support antitrust, enhancement and protection of free market competition against anti-competitive measures, be them state or private.

The first Pirate Party to be established was the Pirate Party of Sweden (Swedish: Piratpartiet), whose website was launched on 1 January 2006 by Rick Falkvinge. Falkvinge was inspired to found the party after he found that Swedish politicians were generally unresponsive to Sweden's debate over changes to copyright law in 2005.

The United States Pirate Party was founded on 6 June 2006 by University of Georgia graduate student Brent Allison. The party's concerns were abolishing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, reducing the length of copyrights from 95 years after publication or 70 years after the author's death to 14 years, and the expiry of patents that do not result in significant progress after four years, as opposed to 20 years. However, Allison stepped down as leader three days after founding the party.

The Pirate Party of Austria (German: Piratenpartei Österreichs) was founded in July 2006 in the run-up to the 2006 Austrian legislative election by Florian Hufsky and Jürgen "Juxi" Leitner.

The Pirate Party of Finland was founded in 2008 and entered the official registry of Finnish political parties in 2009.

The Pirate Party of the Czech Republic (Czech: Česká pirátská strana) was founded on 19 April 2009 by Jiří Kadeřávek.