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Welcome to The Pirate Party of New Zealand! (PPNZ)
Please feel free to contribute to the Wiki (see information at the bottom of this page), or you may want to try:
 * the message boards (although this seems to have become a bit inactive of late)
 * the IRC Channel (meetings held on Tuesdays usually around 8pm, when this wiki page was last updated)
 * the Facebook page

About Us
The development of information technology in the last few decades makes possible the collection, storage, communication, dissemination, and collaborative creation of information, ideas, and expression on a scale and at a speed orders of magnitude greater than ever before, and by a broader section of society than ever before. However information technology is in its infancy. Its complexity and recent rapid development mean that issues such as reliability and security are something of a dark art. All this has implications and possibilities, both beneficial and detrimental, for globalisation, politics, law enforcement, education, science, commerce, public discourse, social interaction, and personal information. At the same time, many things haven't changed much at all.

Large corporations and law enforcement agencies are asking our politicians to revisit long-standing ideas about freedom of speech, privacy, personal property, and the powers of police, and reconsider what remains important, or has become more so, and what is now unworkable, or redundant and safely disposable. The politicians do not understand technology. The corporations and agencies employ strategists to determine how they can best collect and control information to further their aims. The rest of you have civil rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Creative Freedom Foundation, and Tech Liberty, who aim to raise awareness and lobby Government, and us, the Pirate Party, who aim to be a voice in Parliament for civil rights in the modern world.

[ Read more ] [ Constitution ] [ Chapters and Young Pirates ] [ Meetings & Elections ] [ Internal_Contact ]

Commerce and Related Civil Liberty
We believe copyright and patent law can only be justified as economic measures, not as moral rights. Therefore we think these laws should not not restrict personal liberty, and should restrict commercial activity only in so far as is economically optimal and equitable. Accordingly, our policy is:


 * Set the copyright term to 10 years from publication--Current research suggests the economically optimal copyright term to be around 15 years, however copyright is disproportionately burdensome on the less well off.
 * Remove copyright restrictions on personal activities which people do not receive money for
 * Allow circumvention of 'Digital Rights Management'
 * Require warnings on products effectively restricted by 'Digital Rights Management'
 * Exclude life and intangible 'inventions' from patent cover--Patents in these areas restrict personal liberty.
 * Look to replace pharmaceutical patents with direct government funding for pharmaceutical research--We think this may be more efficient, and pharmaceutical patents are disproportionately burdensome on the less well off.

We are concerned by the increasing trend for companies to require the disclosure of personal information. Accordingly, our policy is:


 * When providing services, companies should not require disclosure of more information than is necessary for providing the service

Government and Related Civil Liberty
We believe a right to privacy remains relevant. Accordingly, our policy is:


 * The Government refrain from using new technology for surveillance until the issue has been subject to democratic consideration
 * A referendum or 75% majority in Parliament be required to extend Government surveillance powers under law
 * Privacy measures such as encryption be encouraged

[ Read more ] [ Policy development ]

About this Wiki
In order to gain edit access to the wiki please first add yourself to the 'wiki group' on the forums (user control panel, usergroups) then log into the wiki using the same username and password.

Mediawiki is a place where we can collaboratively work on documents and upload artwork (for example, proposed promotional material). You need to make a phpbb login and then add yourself to the Wiki group in the phpbb user control panel to edit the wiki, the same login and password should then work on the wiki. If it doesn't, please let zcat know and we'll figure out what broke.

Known bugs so far - usernames containing an underscore (_) and possibly other characters are considered valid by the phpbb software, but invalid by mediawiki. If you're one of those users, ask one of the admins (eg Edison Carter) to change your username. Or just make a new login for yourself.

You can discuss proposed changes to a page by clicking the Discussion tab. If you make a change and not everyone agrees with it, this is where you put forward your reasons for wanting the change, others can comment and hopefully we can reach a consensus.

For general discussion it's probably more appropriate to use the forum.

All content on this wiki must be correctly licensed for legal reuse and sharing under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 licence. Please note that although we do not agree with current copyright law, as a political party we aim to work within the law to change it.