PPI Minutes 2021-08-04

Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING

--- 4.8.2021 14:30 UTC/16:30 CEST ---

Big Blue Button Room: https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gre-cnw-a9v

Audio recording: PiratesOnAir Streaming, recording

https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/KZniWPY24w3BoSH

Video: https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gre-cnw-a9v

1 - ATTENDEES

1.1 - Members of the PPI board

participating: Bailey, Mike, Keith, Gregory, Bastian, Manuel,

excused: Dario

unexcused: Dan, Carlos

Quorum:

1.2 - Others

Alternate Board Members

participating:

excused: Ji Yong

unexcused:

Guests:

participating: Tan Siret Akinci, Emir Arda, Ardaissad, Numero 6

2 - PROCEEDINGS

RoP: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board/Rules_of_Procedure

Meeting opened at 14:31 UTC by

Meeting chaired by Bailey

Secretary for this meeting is Everyone

Quorum is established with 6 out of 9 board members present.

Streaming started: started https://piratesonair.net/live-stream/

Recording started: 14:30 UTC

Postal votes: none

Notes on meeting process: none

3 - APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Motion
Do we approve the minutes?
* Minutes of the last meeting: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2021-07-14
Yes : Mike, Keith, Manuel, Bastian
No :
Abstain : Gregory, Bailey
Result: approved

Motion
Do we approve the minutes?
* Minutes of the second to last meeting: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2021-06-23
Yes : Mike, Keith, Gregory,Bailey, Manuel, Bastian
No :
Abstain :
Result: approved

4 - REPORTS

4.1 - Short reports of the board members 1)

Board

• Bailey: I attended the first DAO meeting. Working on an invite for Campaigning During Covid event (Aug.21). Other than that, been more or less AFK the last few weeks but back to business now. =)

• Gregory: I have attended (and organized) the Pirate Summer Camp - we had 16 participants from 4 countries. During the camp we have done a whole lot activities for PPI and worked on a lot of issues. I have cleaned up Redmine a lot and closed a ton of obsolete tickets. We have signed the paperwork for the Bank for the new Euro-Account and access for Bastian. Mike and I have worked on PPI HQ paperwork. We have discussed in detail the steps needed for the PPI Shop - and we now have about 90 PPI Flags to sell (for 20 Euro each, they are made from recycled PET-bottles). I have participated in the DAO test. We talked about two projects for the pirate community - the free scores project and the international pirate cookbook. We also had a pirate beer during the camp. Next year's registration for the International Pirate Summer Camp is open at http://ps22.eventbrite.com/

Furthermore I am busy with the ongoing election campaign in Germany and also the Freedom to Share ECI and in preparing a talk for the Pirate Security Conference 2021, that will be an online event Aug. 14-15, 2021.

• Dario: not present

• Bastian:

Attended Pirate Summer Camp 2021, I attended the second DAO meeting and "Pirate Beer".

All the financial information I have is on the PPI wiki. But I need access to the bank account and the Kraken (Bitcoin, Ethereum) as soon as possible. #Groundhog - We arranged paperwork for the Euro-Account during the PS-Camp

I took care of PPI technology as I do every day (even from PS-Camp):

All systems are running fine now, necessary updates are done ;-)

• I put a summary from the PS-Camp regarding PPI in the preparation pad, which can now be seen as AOB.

• Manuel: I was unable to attend the July meetings because of connectivity and timezone complications. I had to move due to in-person classes resuming in my university. I'm resuming work on the Pirate Parties CoA Rules after it was solicited by the Chilean PP. I have contacted a pair of people (an artist and a Right to Repair advocate) with the purpose of increasing content submissions on Pirate Times. There is already a video and script that can be presented to the PT editors.

• Mike: Attended the Pirate Summer Camp and the 2nd DAO meeting (I have my login now and it seems to be working) and also met the . Also just registered for the 2022 camp - register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/international-pirate-summer-camp-2022-registration-130928054335. We worked with Gregory on the PPI HQ address transfer - I have everything I need, waiting for the current board members' information and ID copies. As far as the Czech Pirates go, we're currently organising a booth at Prague Pride (this entire week) where I help and we're still polling between 1st and 3rd place, depending on the poll. The current best estimate of how many mandates out the 200 total we'll get can be found here: https://mandaty.cz/. That's about it.

• Dan: not present

• Keith: I held SCURVY DAO meetings and separate DAO meetings with the Aragon development group. I also discussed NFTs with other organizations and worked with Gregory on the IGF presentation. I want us to move our crypto funds to a new account ASAP. I am also working with Israel and other countries who want to set up DAOs as crowdfunding platforms. I hope we can make progress to set this up on mainnet.

• Carlos: not present

Alternates:

• Svein: not present

• Ji Yong: not present

• Thomas: not present

5.1 - Proposals

• Issue: Congress of Korsan Parti

Submitted by: Emir Arda - PPTR (new)

Justification: Our party congress is due to 8 August 2021. We want to meet and talk with you as new party members about reforms. It was always the general secretary attending PPI boards so we wanted to do a change.

Emir Arda: We're promoting Pirate politics. Our congress takes place on August 8 and will select new president and general secretary there.

Tan: Our Party is an active organisation and we can guarantee to achieve more transparency and democracy within our organisation. So we would like to invite you guys to see our internal democracy with your own eyes.

Bailey: Can you give us any time and location, so we can join? Even though we probably wouldn't understand much, but perhaps you can summarise what happened at the congress when it ends - that would be really great.

Tan: 11 CEST, maximum of 6 hours and we'll launch a bulletin summarising the main points of the congress. We would like to have someone of the PPI board to have an opening speech.

Bastian: We can certainly do that.

Bailey: Let's make a video - let's meet at let's say 8:00 PM CEST (6:00 UTC, 9:00 PM Turkish time) we shall meet in this room (BBB) and record the video for the congress!

• Financial Support for Freedom to Share ECI

Submitted by Gregory

Justification: [Freedom to Share] is a European Citizen Initiative that PPI is already supporting, by including its signature collection widget in our site https://pp-international.net/freedom-to-share-eci/ - The goal of the F2S ECI is to raise awarenes about the current european copyright legislation in regard to file sharing of protected works and to pave a way for new legislation that balance the interests of internet users and content creator better against the distribution companies and publishers. The European Commission has extended the time for signature collection until August 1st 2022, due to difficulties in classical signature collection that raise from lockdowns. However, more time means also more expences - the ECI monthly platform hosting fees accumulate to 333 EUR. Freedom to Share have collected about 3,200 Euro in donations so far, with biggest contributions from PPI's Members Pirate Party of Germany (2,500 EUR) and Pirate Party of Hesse (500 EUR). This money was only sufficient to pay the expenses until now. There is an urgend need to collect further 5,500 EUR in contributions. Therefore, I propose that PPI contribute 750 EUR to the Freedom to Share ECI. Our (PPI's) current balance at the Bank is 4,749.11 EUR

Gregory: Freedom to Share is mostly run by European Pirates, with core , it's supported by many NGOs, incl. Pirate Parties; the project got started in 2019 and it took us almost a year to get the burreaucracy sorted. We're using a dedicated server running Open ECI. The people who created the SW are running the server for us. Basically they do a lot but not for free. The ECI gives us one year to collect signatures from all EU member states. If successful, the EU Commission will hold a talk on the topic. We now have until 1st of August 2022 due to pandemic extension, so we need more money to host the SW. We need to collect the money quickly, otherwise we'll have to stop the ECI. Most contributions came from Germany, namely PPDE and PP of Hesse. PPI supports this by having a widgit on our website. I think it's a good investment to contribute to Freedom to Share ECI. I suggest 750 EUR is within our means. The ECI is transparent and any donation is transparently documented.

Bastian: We're on a budget. We can vote on revising the budget but cannot give more than 950 EUR that we've put aside for events. 750 EUR is quite a lot. I would suggest 500 EUR.

Gregory: You're saying we cannot decide but have to reshuffle the budget?

Bastian: We need to do both.

Keith: I saw that PPDE and PP Hesse have already contributed; there's also donation from other sources. Has PPEU contributed?

Gregory: PPEU is already listed as supporter by contributing 1500 EUR but that money has never arrived. I'm trying to hold PPEU to it. The initiative needs to raise 5500 EUR more.

Bastian: We have to get hold of Mikuláš and discuss it with him. My proposal is to reshuffle the budget and potentially make the second step and vote on the donation.

Gregory: That's reasonable. We need to ammend the budget and find money for it. If we can only afford 500 EUR, then I'm fine with that. I don't see us doing TT4 for example. I would like to get the decision ASAP, if possible today.

Bastian: We can do sub sections in our budget - 500 from events' budget so 450 will be left in the events budget. Then we vote on the 500 EUR donation for the ECI.

Motion
Create a transfer from sub budget "events" to sub budget "subvention"
* The PPI Budget is being readjusted so that 500 Euro is taken from the "events" sub budget to the sub budget "subvention".
Yes : Keith, Mike, Bailey, Bastian, Manuel
No :
Abstain : Gregory
Result: motion passed

Motion
Financial Support for Freedom to Share ECI
* PPI contributes 500 EUR to the Freedom to Share ECI, payable by bank transfer.
Yes : Mike, Bailey, Manuel, Keith, Bastian
No :
Abstain : Gregory
Result: motion passed

Keith: Since this is an Europen project and not a global one, I would love for us to get some kind of a report for our website on the progress of this project.

Also a note to the listeners and readers of this minutes - you can contribute to Freedom to Share ECI at https://opencollective.com/freedom-to-share (also see this for the transparent finances of ECI)

5.2 - Working Groups Update

• Left from the last meeting:
• Renaming the working groups: I think we could use new acronyms for the working groups to make them more intuitive. Perhaps we don't need to vote on these names, and we can just propose a new name for each group with the next meeting anouncement. I therefore intend to announce the SCURVY group as the DAO working group. I will also rename SCUBA probably then as the UNP working group for UN Pirates, and so on.

Keith: I believe we need to rename the working groups in order to get more people to come to them.

Bailey: I get it. We had comments on the topic.

Gregory: We can use both.

Mike: The working groups can be found here: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=Standing_Committees

Bailey: On August 21st there will be the working group on campaigning, especially during the pandemic. We did this in February, so we will do another one now.

5.4 ECOSOC/UN

Groundspasses are available

Our main submission to the IGF2021 has been declined, however, the Lightning Talk on Freedom to Share ECI have been aproved: https://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/content/igf-2021-lightning-talk-79-legalize-file-sharing-the-case-of-european-citizen-initiative . Our Village Booth application is still open, I have contacted IGF secretariat regarding the expected timeline.

IGF registration is open https://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/content/igf-2021-registration - if you plan to travel to Katowice, the registration in Indico is also required at https://indico.un.org/event/36215/

5.5 PPI HQ update

Process of PPIHQ address change in full swing; Mike knows what to do; board members asked to fill in the spreadsheet sent over Wire and e-mail and send Mike their scanned IDs.

6 AOB - Any other business

• PS21: Results of Pirate Summer Camp (PPI) - (Bastian)

• PPI Shop

Clarify legal basis:

- Who is the entrepreneur? PPI-> German permanent establishment

- Tax location, country specifics, warning security

- register permanent establishment -

- Better outsourcing?

Bastian: I propose that we have a permanent establishment in Germany to run the shop. It's very complicated to follow Swiss or Belgian regulations, especially if you send goods all over the world.

Gregory: We're not talking about a new company, just a branch office of PPI HQ in Germany, getting its own tax number and thus German laws will apply. Whatever profits will be tranferred to Belgium HQ wia license transfer mechanism.

Bastian: In Germany we at least know the rules.

Keith: How will the transfer work?

Bastian: In Switzerland, we would have to be a real separate entity. In my POV, Germany is far better option. Somebody has to do the work and Germans will. It's going to be a branch of the PPI making business, transferring all profits to the HQ. We have to declare the profits in Belgium after paying taxes in Germany. So we won't have to pay the tax twice.

Keith: Can we collect payment for merchandise with crypto?

Gregory: I believe yes. Up to 17,500 EUR/year, we don't have to submit VAT reports to the German authorities. In case we make more, that's a good problem to have.

Bastian: At this point, we don't have to do any paperwork in Switzerland - our bank does that for us.

Mike: Do you have any people on the ground ready?

Gregory: We need someone to send out shipments for sure. There are companies to run such kind of shops. I've spoken to a Pirate here in Germany who offered to send me documentation on how such an operation might look like. They either just handle the shipping and storage; or they can also run the returns and prints on demand etc. except for the purchase orders. Or they can do all of it, including orders - they just run the shop under our license on their own website. They pay us license fee for using our brand. This is comfortable but less flexible and it's dependent on the company chosen. I'm currently in favour of the middle way, where we handle the orders.

Tan Siret: Can we have PPI HQ in Turkey? And can we run our own shop?

Mike: You can have your own shop. Many parties do (Czechs, Germans, Belgians, Swedish).

Bastian: Let's start the PPI shop first and the we can support the Turkish shop. To Keith: off course we can accept crypto.

Tan: We already have a shop at https://yellowblack.com

• PPI-DAO

- Blockchain

- Voting Tools

- Crypto Currency

Bastian: I don't think the voting is suitable for PPI as we have public voting. But it might be a good solution for our members. But it's quite complicated for people who never had a crypto wallet. But it's solvable.

Keith: I want to clarify that so far we've only tested the beta of the voting. It is open - it could be a way to let our members vote on stuff between the GAs. But DAO is currently functioning and it's like a wallet/bank account. Here's a link to the DAO Aragon has set-up for us:

https://aragonorg.notion.site/PoC-User-Guide-962ae955f9a247ebadaf7ceff0b72895.

I say we set it-up so more board members need to act together to initiate a transaction.

https://rinkeby.client.aragon.org/#/piratepartycdao/0x352c84430a589ec4d1073843744ed0be7f1a7664/

Keith: On the link above, you can test it. It's a way for us to collect membership fees, including the decision on how the funds will be used. It's ready for our approval. Please, have a look and send me any comments. It should all be transparent and the price for the tokens is a yearly membership fee, starting at zero.

• PPI Website

- Theme

- Set up new themes on a separate domain for testing -> Bastian will care of

- Content, Editors, SEO

- Social Media

Bastian: We'll be testing different themes on a test website. We might want to put together a social media team.

• PPI server (technology)

DNS -> clarify by phone with Gregory

Mediawiki

- new skin?

- new plugins?

Bastian: We might get some better skin or additional plugins while keeping it simple.

Discourse

- Hosting by Stefan Thöni / Gregory is admin --> o.k

Etherpad lite / Etherpad Teams --> o.k.

Bastian: When you start a new pad, you get the option to get a public pad. We might want to discuss it.

Lime Survey - > Keith --> o.k

Mumble Server --> o.k

Nextcloud -> consider Archive.org consider --> o.k

- Calendar not useful; Google Calendar is more useful

Redmine

- version

- skin

- usage

- mail inbox (so only one respond to incoming mail gets sent)

- press queue

- CRM? (not being developed any longer, need a different aproach)

-> Close projects/tickets (done by Gregory) --> o.k

Twitter PP-International

- Frequency, administration (who has the master?) Social media team?

Triodos-Bank - Gregory -> contact sister from Nicolas Salquist

Webmail (Postfix/Roundcube) --> o.k

Address database PPI - where? (CRM)

Task: Activate members --> Ask Manuel and Dario?

Bastian: We have a lot of silent member parties. So we can get some board members to contact the parties.

Tan: I would suggest using Collab instead of Google Calendar

Bastian: Google Calendar is very easy to use. I for example have a dozen calendars and it's easy to use.

Manuel: I didn't really understand the role I'm supposed to play.

Bastian: We need someone to get in touch with our silent members. And also to get in touch with Latin American countries where we can spread.

Manuel: I would like to help with that but I can surely get on it.

Bastian: I will give you all the contacts that we have.

===================================================

• Next Meeting: 25.08.2021, 14:00 UTC/16:00 CEST

• Meeting Closed: 16:13 UTC