Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.08.2012, Side 6

6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2012
Opinion | Smári McCarthy
What's your take on all this? Will The Hackers ultimately save us all using their
mad hacking skills? Do we need saving? From what? Why aren't you doing any-
thing about it? Write us a letter explaining why/why not. letters@grapevine.is
Over the last several weeks,
there has been a deluge of dis-
cussion about the Icelandic
Pirate Party. Most has been
downright silly, much quite mis-
informed, and yet some strange-
ly relevant, if slightly off-mark.
So let's clear up a few things.
Pirate Parties derive their name, origi-
nally, from Piratbyrån, the Swedish
organization set up to counteract the
Hollywood-funded lobby group Anti-
piratbyrån. The Pirate Bay also got its
name from there. The respective found-
ers of Piratbyrån, Pirate Bay, and the
Pirate Parties, came from a group of
people who have for the last several de-
cades been doing what they can to stem
the tide against growing government
surveillance and limitations on the free-
doms of individuals.
These people are called hackers—
people like myself who enjoy learning
the details of systems and how to stretch
their capabilities—as opposed to most
users of systems who prefer to learn
only the minimum necessary. The word
“hacker” has been appropriated by two
distinct groups. One uses it derisively to
refer to people who break into comput-
ers. The other uses it constructively to
refer to the tendency to expend effort
towards goals that don’t seem to make
much sense.
One of our goals was to make Free
Software—computer programs that
anybody can use for any purpose—to
study and learn from, share with their
friends, and improve upon at will. This
is distinct from proprietary software,
which restricts a user's freedom. After
that, we started building the Creative
Commons: creative works for free pub-
lic consumption, including the world's
largest and most comprehensive ency-
clopedia, Wikipedia.
A lack of transparency
Increasingly large portions of human ac-
tivity is made possible by stuff that hack-
ers made. We haven’t solved the world's
big problems yet and our anti-author-
itarian efforts have been stymied by a
dangerous lack of government transpar-
ency and accountability.
Back when there were real pirates on
the high seas, the world was undergoing
a transition. The enlightenment was in
full swing, along with its rallying calls
for greater rights of self-determination
for individuals, access to knowledge and
freedom of thought. These ideals can be
summarised in two requirements: de-
mocracy and enlightenment.
Now we're a couple of centuries
down the line and we've had an indus-
trial revolution, two world wars, 48
world economic collapses and the be-
ginning of an information revolution.
We've ousted a few kings, replaced them
with presidents. We have glorified par-
liamentary talk shops on almost every
self-governing landmass in the world.
We have schools, which have confused
process and substance for so long that
we've become blind to institutionalisa-
tion and high-modernism.
But even with all the world’s infor-
mation at our fingertips—sans that
which is hidden from us by govern-
ments, corporations and others who play
power games with the general public—
we still haven't really gotten democracy
or enlightenment.
Hackers like solving problems, and
over the last several decades hackers
have become increasingly open about
their political motivations. So much so
that we now have our own political arm:
pirate parties.
Now, let's not get confused here: Not
all hackers are pirates, and not all pirates
are hackers. But the same core mental-
ity permeates through both groups. The
overlap is substantial.
What's in a name?
Nobody criticises the Progressive Party
for being one of the least progressive
and most repressive parties in Icelandic
politics. Nobody criticises the Indepen-
dence Party for fostering a culture of
strong leadership without independent
thought. The Liberal Party is full of so-
cial conservatives and the Left-Greens
have an alarming number of fascists.
And The Social Democratic Alliance?
Give me a break. Political parties in
Iceland have a long history of adopting
the most (oxy)moronic names they can
come up with.
We chose no to go with "Sjóræning-
jaflokkurinn" because it doesn't sound
cool. "Píratapartýið" however came up
during a meeting where we had been
talking about the ways in which words
keep being misappropriated and re-
appropriated. In Icelandic, the word for
"casino" is "spilavíti"—literally "game
hell." The word for drugs is “eiturlyf”—
literally "poison medicine."
Icelandic is very direct about its
meanings—the language is very actively
used as a tool of political manipulation.
The current favourite is to stick the word
"meint" (alleged) in front of anything—
a similar thing is happening in English.
It's a dampening word which eliminates
certainty.
We wanted to challenge this tyranny
of language. We decided to use "Pírat," a
meaningless word burdened with coun-
terfeit meaning, conjoined with "Partý,"
which means the fun kind of party but
not the political type of party. The name
might still change, but it’s hardly the
most important thing right now.
I really enjoy that the best people
can say against us is that we have a silly
name (oh noes!). A foreign name (gasp!).
A name that doesn't fit acceptable politi-
cal doctrine (shame!) or befit an organ-
isation bent on gaining power (take a
hint!).
Controversial free association
Actually, people have found one other
thing to complain about. It's one of
our members—my colleague Birgitta
Jónsdóttir. I'll admit that in many ways
it would be a hell of a lot simpler if she
weren't a member of the Icelandic Pirate
Party because then self-righteous pun-
dits would have even less to bitch about,
but frankly, she is a valuable asset for a
party like ours.
Birgitta gets this f lak because she’s
a renegade MP. Public figures should
be criticized. It would be nice if it were
levelled at her ideas instead of her per-
sona, but that would require a political
discourse way above the current level.
Some have pointed out that she's been
a founding member of four political par-
ties now, including The Citizens' Move-
ment, which was taken over some weeks
after the last elections, causing the MPs
to split and form The Movement; and
Dögun (“Dawn”), which, let's face it, was
really disappointing.
Freethinkers love to exalt the right
to self-determination, which includes
a right to free association. That means
you can join as many clubs, collectives,
parties and organisations as you want.
Harrison Owen suggested that “if at any
time… you find yourself in any situation
where you are neither learning nor con-
tributing, use your two feet, go some-
place else.” I wish this were common
practice in politics—although it might
leave the Parliament building empty
quite a lot of the time.
Democratsing democracy
Many are confused by our governance
model. It's not entirely ready yet, but it's
more or less emerging as a f lat struc-
ture.
Individuals are the fundamental unit
of society, not hierarchies and commit-
tees. Committees explicitly give people
authority instead of implicitly allowing
them to garner support for ideas. A lot of
the really bad things in any governance
structure stem from explicit power rela-
tions.
Every member has voting rights on
every subject and can propose ideas to
their liking. If people need to discuss
ideas and come to conclusions, we have
workgroups. Their existence is an-
nounced on our mailing list and a page
created for it on our wiki—a kind of per-
manent political memory—for poster-
ity. One or more individuals can decide
to form a workgroup. At least one person
from the workgroup shall submit a final
report to the party.
This is different from a committee
because anybody can found one and any-
body can join one, and anybody can re-
port from one. Workgroups neither need
nor require legitimacy—their only pur-
pose is to expand our knowledge base. If
they want to make proposals, they do so
as individual members.
Trying something new
A lot of fear and loathing is directed at
pirate parties for our alleged interest in
“copying with impunity." That would be
silly, as everybody already copies wildly;
it cannot be stopped. It's how the uni-
verse works. Human societies could not
exist without copying and remixing. Im-
punity is not required.
We do support intellectual monopoly
reform. We see copy rights as detrimen-
tal to artists, consumers and the econ-
omy, and letters patent are useless and
harmful. It is possible to fix society such
that everybody benefits, but we can't do
that while intellectual monopolies are
being granted. It is an unwritten rule
that in democratic societies we do not al-
low monopolistic behaviour, and yet we
grant companies the right to claim rents
on cultural artefacts made by starving
artists for up to 70 years? What kind of
madness is this? We can do better.
Pirate Parties are formed around the
idea that traditional politics is a forlorn
mess, and that a dash of ingenuity, a bit
of playfulness, and a whole lot of hacker
ethic can help us get somewhere else.
Our ideas aren't all about copy rights
and other intellectual monopolies.
They're about information politics in
general: transparency, accountability, in-
dividual freedoms, liberal markets, few
and well understood regulations, and
resilient social infrastructure.
Our question: How can any govern-
ment function be improved by adding
more information?
It doesn't take a Pirate to see that this
makes sense.
“
Hackers like solving
problems, and over the last
several decades hackers
have become increasingly
open about their political
motivations. So much
so that we now have our
own political arm: pirate
parties.” „
Björn Þór Jóhannesson, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Smári McCarthy and Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson meet
at the University of Reykjavík to figure out how to build a decentralised political party from
scratch and embed it into an oversaturated society.
You Have It All Wrong! Pirate Smári
McCarthy sets the record straight
Smári McCarthy is a freedom of information activist who
works for IMMI. @smarimc