Three Pirate Rule

27th February 2011 14:14 | by Peter Brett

At the PPUK conference yesterday, Rick Falkvinge explained PPSE's "Three Pirate Rule". In the finest Pirate tradition, we're copying it.

According to the Three Pirate Rule, if three party members agree that an idea is a good one, they don't need any further "permission" to get on and make it happen as an "official" PPUK activity.

There are only three exceptions to the Three Pirate Rule:

  1. Don't do anything illegal.
  2. You can't allocate party funds (although you can ask for them).
  3. You can't do anything in Northern Ireland, due to current law. If you're interested in doing stuff in Northern Ireland, please contact the NEC for more info.

The NEC receives a lot of requests from members to grant some sort of Official Stamp of Officialness to various initiatives. Hopefully, adopting this rule will make it unnecessary for people to make this sort of request.

Share

15 comments

Feb 27 2011 07:02 by borgs8472
I think some scenarios where this rule would/wouldn't apply would be useful to better spell this out to members.
Feb 27 2011 08:02 by PeterBrett
Do you think it would be a good idea to add:

4. Don't be an idiot.

To the list?


I think some scenarios where this rule would/wouldn't apply would be useful to better spell this out to members.

I think we'll know them when we see them.
Feb 27 2011 08:02 by lhsi
PeterBrett wrote: Do you think it would be a good idea to add:
4. Don't be an idiot.

To the list?


I think some scenarios where this rule would/wouldn't apply would be useful to better spell this out to members.

I think we'll know them when we see them.


I approve of adding anything similar to "Wheatons law" (i.e. don't be a dick). Does that mean we only need one more person to agree to put it on there? ;)

Scenarios would be a good idea (as its a new thing, additional clarity can't be a bad thing), we can start of with the one above: Does three people agreeing to add "Don't be an idiot" to the three pirate rule mean we can add it?

I would foresee this being most important when campaigning (when not using party funds). For example, a group of pirate party members wish to put on a music concert (either PPUK fund-raising or for another charity, but with the approval of the party, additionally, would it make a difference in either case?)

Here are some example scenarios then, which would the three person rule apply, and not apply, to?:
  • Adding anti-stupidity clause to rule
  • Members organising some kind of fund-raising event, either to raise awareness and/or funds for the party
  • Members organising a PPUK related talk
  • Students starting a PPUK society
Feb 27 2011 08:02 by PeterBrett
lhsi wrote: 
  • Adding anti-stupidity clause to rule
  • Members organising some kind of fund-raising event, either to raise awareness and/or funds for the party
  • Members organising a PPUK related talk
  • Students starting a PPUK society


It would apply to all of the above. Yay for Wheaton's Law -- I wasn't aware that it had a name.
Feb 27 2011 09:02 by scuzzmonkey
tbh, most of this would be covered by the disrepute amendment.
Feb 27 2011 09:02 by Duke
Things that might not count under the three-pirate rule would be publishing an opinion of the Party that wasn't. This would include press statements, interviews, comments etc., <i>as the Party</i>, which weren't based on any official comment. i.e. giving an interview saying "the Party wants to reform copyright law" would be fine, but saying "the Party wants to give free cookies to everyone" might not be. This sort of press-interaction was something both Pascal and Rick spoke about on Saturday, from what I remember. It is important to have a consistent message going out.
Feb 27 2011 09:02 by scuzzmonkey
Ah, this is where is got interesting - according to Rick _all_ PPSE press statements are done under this scheme in a very similar way to what we were doing at the GE - you get a bunch of people writing that know the Party line, you'll never have an issue.
Feb 27 2011 09:02 by PeterBrett
scuzzmonkey wrote: Ah, this is where is got interesting - according to Rick _all_ PPSE press statements are done under this scheme in a very similar way to what we were doing at the GE - you get a bunch of people writing that know the Party line, you'll never have an issue.

Indeed. Rick said that they have never had an issue with press releases issued under the Three Pirate Rule. I was genuinely surprised by this!
Feb 27 2011 09:02 by scuzzmonkey
Imo we need a couple more people that can access PRFire, and send from press@ - I know that Jack, Gav and Myself would have no issue with taking on this so that we don't need to have Duke around all the time :P
Feb 28 2011 11:02 by Duke
Anyone on the press@ list has the same ability I do to send things from it. I'd forgotten about the PRFire account - if anyone wants the password to that, email or PM me and I'll let you know it. The other useful thing is access to the /press/ part of the website - I have no control over who has access to that, nor do I know who does.
Feb 28 2011 12:02 by PeterBrett
Ideally we should set things up so that pressing a "make press release" button creates a PDF, puts the release on the /press/ section of the website, sends an e-mail to press output and pokes PRFire. I don't know if that's possible.

At the moment it's just waaay too much hassle.
Feb 28 2011 01:02 by SpudTater
With the proviso that this doesn't apply to things where we currently have an explicit process (e.g. appointing people to positions, kicking people out of the party, making changes to the constitution) yes, this makes a lot of sense.
Feb 28 2011 02:02 by scuzzmonkey
^^all of which are subject to a full member vote as it stands.
Mar 01 2011 06:03 by glambert
I like the idea, I just hope it isn't abused. Would've preffered it to have come in after the constitutional amendments had been voted on, and potentially even added to the constitution...
Mar 11 2011 09:03 by ati
I agree it should be folded into the constitution.

We have all seen the power of distributed decision-making, and we should be at the forefront of embracing this kind of process.
Post a comment