partyinformation

Name (abreviation):

Pirate Party of Belgium (PPBe)

Country:

Belgium

Status:

active

Founded:

June 2006

Registered:

Officially registered

Foundingplace:

-

Slogan:

-

Co-Chairman Flanders:

Jonas Degrave

Co-Chairman Wallonia:

Paul Bossu

Co-Chairman Brussels:

Marwan El Moussaoui

Treasurer :

Nofel Tiani

Secretary General:

Line Callebaut

Political Secretary:

-

International Coordinator:

-

Members:

Active: ~120

Total: ~2300 (29.03.2012)

Percentage of women:

~5% Percent (01.07.2008)

Campaign finance:

???€ (2007)

Subdivision:

National

Regional

Local

Headquarters:

Brussels

phone:

-

eMail:

info@pirateparty.be

The Parti Pirate de la Belgique/Piratenpartij van België/Piraten Partei von Belgien (official abbrevation: PPBe) is the pirate party of Belgium.

Status

Not for profit organisation for the financial and legal asset, factual association for the political asset.

Organisation

National Board which gives the mainline and establishes the political agenda. District Managers who are responsible for the local coordination and the field actions. Local Teams, that are the closest entities.

Achievements

The Pirate Party of Belgium participated in the federal election of June 2010, in the district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvorde, obtaining a score of 0.26%. The timing and organisation was very particular as the incumbent representatives decided to precipitate the anticipated elections.

Plans

Program

--- Principles of Belgian PP ---

Introduction to Politics and Principles

The Pirate Party wants to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected. With this agenda, and only this, we are making a bid for representation in the European and Belgian parliaments. Not only do we think these are worthwhile goals. We also believe they are realistically achievable on a European basis. The sentiments that led to the formation of the Pirate Party in Belgium are present throughout Europe. There are already similar political initiatives under way in several other member states. Together, we will be able to set a new course for a Europe that is currently heading in a very dangerous direction.

The Pirate Party only has three issues on its agenda:

Reform of copyright law

The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a balance in order to promote culture being created and spread. Today that balance has been completely lost, to a point where the copyright laws severely restrict the very thing they are supposed to promote. The Pirate Party wants to restore the balance in the copyright legislation. All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created. The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today's copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead. No film studio or record company bases its investment decisions on the off-chance that the product would be of interest to anyone a hundred years in the future. The commercial life of cultural works is staggeringly short in today's world. If you haven't made your money back in the first one or two years, you never will. A five years copyright term for commercial use is more than enough. Non-commercial use should be free from day one. We also want a complete ban on DRM technologies, and on contract clauses that aim to restrict the consumers' legal rights in this area. There is no point in restoring balance and reason to the legislation, if at the same time we continue to allow the big media companies to both write and enforce their own arbitrary laws.

An abolished patent system

Pharmaceutical patents kill people in third world countries every day. They hamper possibly life saving research by forcing scientists to lock up their findings pending patent application, instead of sharing them with the rest of the scientific community. The latest example of this is the bird flu virus, where not even the threat of a global pandemic can make research institutions forgo their chance to make a killing on patents. The Pirate Party has a constructive and reasoned proposal for an alternative to pharmaceutical patents. It would not only solve these problems, but also give more money to pharmaceutical research, while still cutting public spending on medicines in half. This is something we would like to discuss on a European level. Patents in other areas range from the morally repulsive (like patents on living organisms) through the seriously harmful (patents on software and business methods) to the merely pointless (patents in the mature manufacturing industries). Europe has all to gain and nothing to lose by abolishing patents outright. If we lead, the rest of the world will eventually follow.

Respect for the right to privacy

Following the 9/11 event in the US, Europe has allowed itself to be swept along in a panic reaction to try to end all evil by increasing the level of surveillance and control over the entire population. We Europeans should know better. It is not twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and there are plenty of other horrific examples of surveillance-gone-wrong in Europe's modern history. The arguments for each step on the road to the surveillance state may sound ever so convincing. But we Europeans know from experience where that road leads, and it is not somewhere we want to go. We must pull the emergency brake on the runaway train towards a society we do not want. Terrorists may attack the open society, but only governments can abolish it. The Pirate Party wants to prevent that from happening.

Come talk to us on our Forum!

Our full Declaration of Principles is available in PDF format and in OpenDocument format (version 3.2, 5 pages).

Also see an alternative to pharmaceutical patents.

Transparency in public affairs

Participative democracy