Text 2164, 70 rader
Skriven 2009-12-30 05:26:16 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
     Kommentar till en text av Bjorn Felten
Ärende: Pirate Party
====================
Noted this article in the December 29th issue of the Omaha World Herald
newspaper, page 7A:

FROM:  Los Angeles Times
TO:  All
TITLE;  Group's goal - unfettered Net
-----
Uppsala, Sweden - She can't vote yet, but 17-year-old
Victoria Westburg has thrown herself headlong through
syberspace into the realm of real-world politics.

A teenager who spends hours a day on her computer, she's
angered by laws that allow the government to snoop into or
limit what people do online, and she wants to translate her
outrage into action.

"The Internet is a big part of my life, and I think that it
always will be," she said.  "These laws that have come right
now are very hostile toward the Internet ... and I don't
think that's OK."

So with the click of a mouse, Westburg joined a movement that
has made a surprisingly loud splash in the placid pool of
Swedish politics.  She joined the Pirate Party, a fledgling 
group whose sole aim is to promote the free and unregulated 
flow of information on the Internet for the people of this
generally progressive Scandinavian nation.

Despite its narrow focus, the Pirate Party now holds two seats
representing Sweden in the European Union's Parliament, is
gearing up for national elections next year and has inspired
similar political parties in more than 20 other countries.

It also boasts possibly the biggest grass-roots organization
in all of Sweden.  No other political party's y outh wing has
such a large membership - about 21,000, which is nearly as many
as the rest of the parties combined - or carries such weight
within the party.

They are young people galvanized by the Pirate Party's platform 
of unfettered access to information and the Internet, which
includes an end to restrictive copyrights and an avowed right to
free music and movies.  Taxes, welfare, the environment, foreign
policy - all other concerns are secondary.

"No one is standing up to take on the issues that the Pirate 
Party is," said Max Gnipping, 20, a supporter in Stockholm.
"These issues are more important."

Sweden has been at the forefront in rolling out fast, cheap
broadband service for the general population since the 1990s.

Last year, Sweden's Parliament approved wiretapping laws giving
intelligence authorities wide latitude to intercept cross-border
e-mails and phone calls, on the grounds of national security.
That sparked an outcry over civil liberties - and more interest
in the Pirate Party.

"There's definitely a movement of young people who are really
interested in the freedom of the Web, and a strong ideology
around that, which has emerged since the late '90s," said Karl
Palmas, a sociologist at Chalmers University of Technology in
Gothenburg.

"What you have coming in is essentially the flower-power hacker
movements."
-----

---
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)