In response to the raid on the German Pirate Party's servers on Friday 20th May, the following letter was delivered to the German ambassador to the UK this morning.

As you may be already aware, today the Government published the long-awaited Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth.  As we had made clear in our submission to the review, copyright and patents should 'make not break markets', and the rights of innovators and artists must be balanced with those of the public to enjoy such work.

Gavin Meredith has been elected as the new Party Treasurer.

Nominations for the role of Campaigns Officer are now open, and will close at midnight on 21st May 2011.

This time a year ago we were celebrating the first ever Pirate candidates in a UK general election.  In May 2010, we stood candidates in nine Westminster constituencies, and received an average of 0.4% of the vote.

Although many of us were disappointed that the numbers weren't higher, it provided a good benchmark to judge our success in future elections. Over the last year, there've been quite a few of them!

On Tuesday 1st March, the Second Reading of the Protection of Freedoms Bill was debated in the House of Commons. As you may be aware, the Protection of Freedoms Bill introduces the requirement for a Code of Practice for CCTV installations, something that the Pirate Party has been demanding for some time.  Several MPs expressed the opinion that there was nothing wrong with CCTV, and far from demanding regulation, constituents were demanding more of it.