Sign the petition, and Talk Talk like a Pirate!

Recently we've seen a wide array of campaigns and discussion forums about pirate politics. Billy Bragg has started a discussion blog, the Open Rights Group have done a lot of good work to raise awareness and talk sense about disconnection, and of course they have been a lot of petitions set up on the Number 10 website aimed at pointing out how wrong the government are to wage war on their own citizens over file sharing.

Now, a new player has entered the field of pirate politics, with a campaign against disconnection. Andrew Heany's petition against disconnections is different in one major way from all the others because it has the backing of the company he works for. Since he's Executive Director of strategy and Regulation at Talk Talk, this means we now have one of Britain's biggest ISPs actively supporting pirate policies.

Talk Talk sponsors the X factor, with an ad campaign of shapes drawn with light ("brightdancing") starting and finishing every ad break. Regardless of your opinion of the show, I'm sure you'll agree it's a memorable big budget campaign that reaches millions of people. The adverts have concentrated on happy smiling faces and funny images until now, but the latest variation on the advert shows something more sinister, the lights draw a wire and a pair of scissors poised to cut it, representing Lord Mandelson's plan to cut off internet access to whole families on the basis of unproven accusations.

The Pirate Party UK approves of the Dont Disconnect Us campaign, and as party leader, I urge you all to sign their petition. Not because it's the best, or the first, or the most radical, but because it's backed by big business, and we all know that while Lord Mandelson seems happy to blindly to ignore the Police, MI5 and 70% of the UK population when they call for an end to 3 strikes and disconnection, he does actually listen to big businesses.