Press release archive for March 2012

In addition to promoting freedom of choice and competition in the marketplace, open standards are hugely important for accessibility. Proprietary standards make it hard to develop document readers for blind people, for example. Open standards are also vital for archiving - our culture and our history needs to be available to future generations, not locked up in a proprietary standard lost along with a long-defunct company.

It is typical of the whole process behind ACTA that it is activists who have had to break the news about the latest stage of this controversial treaty. The European Commission has apparently accused us of being anti-democratic. But we are the ones asking citizens to be interested in politics and contact their MEPs.

We can defeat ACTA. It is bad for the net, bad for culture, bad for civil liberties and bad for business. The European Parliament has a real opportunity to show that it can stand up for our rights. Let's make sure it does so.

In the wake of the Cruddas scandal, the Conservative Party are reacting the criticisms being heaped upon them by pointing out all the funding scandals that afflicted the Labour government when they were in power. Mainstream parties are falling over themselves to make new promises to reduce corruption, but are they any different from the promises they've always made in the past? After all, the Coalition Agreement pledged to "remove big money from politics" back in 2010.

Mainstream parties cannot be trusted. By contrast, we at the Pirate Party think we can make believable promises about reducing corruption.

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Patents were supposed to protect the little guy with a great idea. It's a measure of how badly broken our patent system is that patents are now simply being used to bribe big businesses not to leave the UK. While we approve of GSK's decision to invest in the UK, and agree that tax breaks can often be a useful incentive for businesses to invest in the UK, we deplore the anti-competitive, anti-small-business method that the government have chosen to do this.

The Home Secretary has approved the extradition of a Sheffield student to the US. Richard O'Dwyer is accused of running a website that allowed third parties to post links to videos on other websites. Despite the website being operated from and based in Europe, US authorities are seeking his extradition. I am disappointed, but not surprised that Theresa May has come to this decision, despite no evidence being presented that Richard has committed a crime anywhere.

The Pirate party will be contesting 8 wards across three cities in local elections in May of this year.

Local representation is an important part of what we believe in, and greater choice and participation in democracy is something we want to promote. We hear a lot of discussion about regeneration, 'community leaders', localisation and the big society whilst watching communities being divided, isolated, individually categorized, spied on and told to fear those around them. I know we can change that, bring our communities together and stop the Big Society, becoming a Big Brother Society.

"This decision brings the draconian Digital Economy Act another step closer. The coalition government must be clear now once and for all on whether it supports this anti-Internet piece of legislation.

No one has proved that the Act will help the creative industries financially, that is just lobbyists' spin. A recent study on a similar system in France suggests that there is no benefit at all for music sales. Threats to chuck entire households off the web will be bad for the economy, bad for society - and bad for us as a creative nation too."