Press release archive for April 2012

Site blocking isn't the solution to anything - it's just censorship, and ineffective censorship at that. It's laughably easy to circumvent; we've been running a Pirate Bay proxy for ages, and there are many others out there. In the meantime, the public interest suffers, the big ISPs suffer because they have to censor the internet while their smaller rivals don't, and artists suffer because they've lost a new and innovative platform.

Internet rap star Dan Bull is on track to be the first musician to hit the charts with a song available to download, entirely legally, on the Pirate Bay.

The campaign is being backed by The Pirate Bay - the notorious file sharing site with over 20 million daily users. The Promo Bay is the The Pirate bay's latest project - a campaign to give unsigned artists exposure by featuring them on the Pirate Bay homepage, and Dan has secured the latest spot.

A parliamentary committee chaired by Claire Perry MP today published its report into Online Child Protection, saying that ISPs must be forced to provide "opt-in" porn filters for all customers.

Firstly, filtering and censorship aren't the right way to protect children. No filter is perfect, as we'll discuss later, and the only real solution here is parental responsibility - parents need to understand the situation, and talk to their children about what they might see on the internet - whether there's a filter or not.

Secondly, as anyone who's ever had an email account knows, filters aren't perfect - whether they're for porn or for spam. The danger is that parents get a false sense of security from these filters, and as a result become complacent about their children using the internet. Meanwhile, any filter also has false positives - educational material on biology, breast cancer, or, for ...

The Pirate Party UK were invited to a seminar organised by David Martin, the European Parliament's rapporteur on ACTA, at the weekend, along with representatives from the Open Rights Group and the Anti-Counterfeiting Group. At the end of a healthy discussion, David Martin indicated that he was going to recommend against the European Parliament adopting the treaty, and has since declared the treaty to be "dead" in Europe.

But a leaked document from the G8 suggests that there is already work in progress on a "new ACTA" [2]. Whilst this document seems much more closely focused on dealing with fake medicines, there are still several areas of concern.

If ACTA is now dead, it's good to see that some lessons are being learned by legislators on IP enforcement - that a "one-size-fits-all" policy does not work. The Pirate Party will continue to demand assurances that neither lives in the ...

Too many of our civil liberties have been eroded. The Pirate Party says enough is enough: We call for transparent government not transparent citizens!

When the Prime Minister said "If we want to stop the state controlling us, we must confront this surveillance state." he was right. We can't trust Labour, Lib Dems or the Conservatives any more, none of them have the principles or the guts to fight the surveillance state. Only the Pirate Party is in tune with the public. Only the Pirate Party remains committed to fighting for your freedom. Take a stand. Join us at https://www.pirateparty.org.uk/party/membership/