Let's take this to the world!

Hi all, I can confirm that values and objectives can be considered quite similar... I've been personally involved in Italian and Swiss Pirate Parties since 2010 for example... ;)

Hi All. I enthusiastically joined the Pirate Party of Switzerland in 2011, I became one of their vice-president. I enjoyed a lot the international pirate community. I left the Pirate Party by the end of 2014, here some lessons learned:

1 - Political parties are not the future of democracy. Internet is about collaboration. Parties are about division. Call yourself 'Internet Democracy' instead ('ID' would sounds like 'idea'). As a party you will loose a lot of energy in things that are not necessary to reach the goal set by Kim ("Rise up against power abusing elites, corrupt media & deep state.").

2- You think the people in power abuse their position? Take them that power! The best way I found is to get rid of elections and go back to a real authentic democratic mecanism called drawing by lot (sortition). Reducing the power of lobbies and money. We started such an initiative in 2015 in Switzerland (http://piratetimes.net/initiative-in-switzerland-calls-for-a-referendum-on-elections-by-sortition/ or read this article that is available in 10 languages https://www.swissinfo.ch/directdemocracy/inclusive-democracy_what-if-the-house-of-representatives-were-chosen-at-random-/43168412 or check our website, www.genomi.ch, available in French and German ) THIS is a real change.

3- The future is project-oriented action. Not being a party and loosing energy, being defocused of our goal. With some friends we even thought of creating an antiparty, i.e. a party that do all opposite of 'normal' 'boring' parties. I would suggest to not go into the 'party business', you could be disappointed. Instead do what others do to take over influence and power: create a well funded fundation to buy major media, finance projects like ours that aims at a real direct change (get democracy back, get our monetary system back, stop wars, change education system, build networks of autonomous collectives etc). Watch the French documentary DEMAIN (Tomorrow) to find ideas.

Before you start with IP, find the time to listen to those who already tried.

I would be pleased to get some comments on that.

Best greetings from Internet, Charly Pache (www.charlypache.ch)

HI Charlie, that's interesting.. I have spoken to a former UK PP volunteer who said some similar things. Seems there was an ideological split among you guys at an international level.

What you say about party politics is true, but it's the system we have for now and only political parties will be able to actually decide the future of party politics. So by getting involved in party politics we can actually change democracy for the better.

Remember lobby groups suggest policies but they don't implement the political parties do...

The Pirate movement should have been an Internet lobby, not a party, we would have been more efficient. As a lobby you can talk with everyone, as a party you are in competition with other parties. In Switzerland it's through some MPs of other parties who liked our ideas and expertise that we could have some influence, as we didn't succeed to have any MP ourself.

Building a new party is like bringing a new product on an established market, you need a lot of money for marketing and/or a big popular support (ie voters are fed up with current parties). It's a real challenge. Most of voters won't vote for you if they don't know you. If you prefer to play the game of party politics, I would suggest to apply to an existing party and try to make your ideas get real there rather than creating a new political 'brand' from scratch.

In Switzerland - and I think there are not a lot of modern democracies who provide these tools - the citizen may change the constitution (initiative) or reject a law passed by the parliament (referendum). It means that in Switzerland, not only political parties - whose members represents in fact a tiny minority of the population (if I remember well, 3% are members of a political party in Europe) - can decide about the future of politics.

For the lobbies, they do more than just suggesting, they help to write the laws! When a MP accepts to work for a lobby, it happens very often that the MP gets assistance from 'experts' paid by the lobby to help him write legislative texts in a way that supports their interests.

Yes, the lobby groups are involved in the law making process, but it is the majority political parties in government who pass those laws. And they pass laws based on the manifesto and vision they campaigned on.

Most parties these days are bought out by the lobby groups and pass laws that are based on a questionable research. It doesn't matter what lobby group you set up when the main parties are already bought out. They will just ignore you and listen to who they are told to listen to.

Exposing the corruption of both the Parties and lobby groups will be part of the strategy of how we gain both support and funding for our party.

You can try to discourage all you want but I wont be discouraged.

At the moment IP UK is barebones... it doesn't even have an Executive committee or anything. Even when we do have an executive committee, I don't think it would be a good idea to start campaigning in elections until we have generated significant interest and have a significant following on social media.

Diving straight into elections campaigns is probably not a good idea. Instead we can begin conducting ourselves as if we are a lobbying organisation, and insodoing attract interest from among the experts involved in policy research who may find our manifesto more appealing than who they are currently working for. Once we have enough industry support then the reach of our opinions will hopefully be strong enough that we will no longer be able to be kept out of the public debate, and the mainstream media will do most of our marketing for us. That's when we should begin our election campaigns.

I don't see how being a political party will be a hindrance to our lobbying / policy making efforts. Infact by being a political party we have a greater opportunity to publicly challenge the policies being presented by the mainstream parties.

Edit to add:

Based on my preliminary research it seems there are many public policy organisations in the tech-world who are quite left leaning, but their views are not being represented by the government or opposition. The internet party may be the perfect way to help bring those groups together and help get their policies and research taken more seriously.

Great thoughts Felix. Would also add that even by getting our ideas on the table, other parties are under pressure to review them and adopt them where they see fit. Even though Internet Party didn't get into Parliament in 2014, we see some of our core 2014 policies which we were even ridiculed for back then already being adopted by both government and by opposition in 2017. So this game isn't just about winning or just about votes. We can effect change simply by stepping up and having a voice.

Hi Felix, I don't want to discourage, on the contrary, I'm still trying myself to find a way to change this system with little means, I just share experience so that you can know what works and what is harder to achieve. To not make the same mistakes I already saw. To not loose too much energy in unrealistic hopes. Case-studies are a great common learning tool in the anglo-saxon culture. Building links with other tech-world policy organisations is a great step! Meet them, ask them what kind of support they would need, ask them to be partners. Raising a lot of money helps too. In the ideal case you will become a professional NGO with a permanent office. Instead of putting your own politicians on the scene, try to convince existing open-minded elected politicians to join your 'network' of politicians who support your vision of an open and fair world. Look at this example, in Switzerland again, where /ch/open (https://www.ch-open.ch/fr/ueberuns/) succeeded to create a group of MPs (49 out of 246 joined the group!) called 'Parliamentary Group for Sustainable IT' and organise regular meetings and conferences about those topics: http://www.durabilite-numerique.ch/about/ (available in French or German). I don't know whether in the UK you have this kind of groups, but you could imagine to create one called 'Parliamentary Group for Sustainable Politics'. Good luck with all this, sincerely! Charly

Furthermore - and I dare to tell this because we are in an open discussion, don't hate me too much :-D - I find the name inappropriate. Kim's phrase states a fight against corruption, influence of money. Call yourself 'Incorruptible Party' 'The Untouchables' or 'Anti-corruption Party' or 'Transparency Party'. 'Internet Party' is like someone would have created an 'Television Party' in the seventies :-D On Internet you have the best but you also have the worst. It means nothing, it's barely a media. There is no common values linked with Internet nowadays. Internet can be restricted, closed, violent etc. And one important point, less and less people are attracted by political parties, to call yourself a 'party' is like to cut yourself a leg before to run a marathon. Keep in mind it's all friendly remarks, like a big brother (hahah) would do.

Unlike Television, Internet can be a two way conversation. And that is the Paradigm/panacea to the systems currently controlling information. This is why we see this control rushing into the ISPs - so Internet Party sits well with me, now and into the future. We are the digital revolution, the people who lived at the time when everything changed. As empowered people let's change everything.

Hi guys I'm Alex i live in Barcelona and I'm a digital activist with many online civil rights campaigns done in the last 10 years! I want really to say SPAIN ready!