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No Safe Harbor. Essays About Pirate Politics
The problem the Pirate Party faces, and clearly, every third party, is “Who are they? What do they stand for? Why should I vote for them?”This book seeks to help alleviate that problem. To that end we have written a series of essays related to our primary platform. We decided to do this for several reasons. These reasons also mirror our platform.
- GenresNonfiction
246 pages, Paperback
First published January 24, 2012
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25 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 21, 2018
The Pirate politics phenomenon is one I find pretty interesting: a political offshoot of a torrent website holds seats in the European parliament! However, they have their epicenter in Northern Europe: German, Sweden, and Iceland namely. Thus, English-language primary resources are relatively difficult to come by, which is why I was so excited to find this publication by the United States Pirate Party!
Truthfully, I was kind of disappointed. The essays were, overall, very hit-and-miss. The gemstone essays of this book were Fluid Democracy and History of Copyright, the topics of which should be relatively self-explanatory. There were a few other good ones, such as the essay on the stripping away of constitutional rights, the privatization and patenting of living beings, real name policies on social media, and privacy violations. Interestingly, the book also contains the entire Universal Declaration of Human Rights! The rest of the essays were anywhere from "kind of bad" to "mediocre".
If you're interested in topics such as privacy, authoritarianism, and copyright reform in the modern era, this might be something you're interested in. The essays are all relatively easily read, although some might require a bit of prior knowledge, especially towards the end.
The book is, however, consistent with its principles. It exists in the public domain, and can be downloaded for free at http://www.nosafeharbor.com/
Truthfully, I was kind of disappointed. The essays were, overall, very hit-and-miss. The gemstone essays of this book were Fluid Democracy and History of Copyright, the topics of which should be relatively self-explanatory. There were a few other good ones, such as the essay on the stripping away of constitutional rights, the privatization and patenting of living beings, real name policies on social media, and privacy violations. Interestingly, the book also contains the entire Universal Declaration of Human Rights! The rest of the essays were anywhere from "kind of bad" to "mediocre".
If you're interested in topics such as privacy, authoritarianism, and copyright reform in the modern era, this might be something you're interested in. The essays are all relatively easily read, although some might require a bit of prior knowledge, especially towards the end.
The book is, however, consistent with its principles. It exists in the public domain, and can be downloaded for free at http://www.nosafeharbor.com/
April 16, 2013
A collection of essays that sets out to show that, despite its name, the Pirate Party is not just about free music and movies for everyone (yar!).
Being a card-carrying Slashdot reader, I found most of the topics and political viewpoints familiar, but it's useful to gather them in a single place. The essays are divided into three groups, "Government and Corporate Transparency and Accountability," "Privacy" and "Intellectual Property" (which is mainly about copyright - there's nothing about trademarks, and almost nothing about patents).
The standard of writing is rather variable, as are the arguments for the various positions that the authors advocate. There are well-argued pieces from Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig and Rick Falkvinge (founder of the original Pirate Party in Sweden), but some others are of about the standard I'd expect from a first-year undergraduate. I stopped reading one essay called "Fluid Democracy" when it started talking about the correlation between character alignment and level in Everquest.
The introduction says, "The problem the Pirate Party faces, and clearly, every third party, is 'Who are they? What do they stand for? Why should I vote for them?'" The book answers the first two questions well enough, but falls short on the third.
Being a card-carrying Slashdot reader, I found most of the topics and political viewpoints familiar, but it's useful to gather them in a single place. The essays are divided into three groups, "Government and Corporate Transparency and Accountability," "Privacy" and "Intellectual Property" (which is mainly about copyright - there's nothing about trademarks, and almost nothing about patents).
The standard of writing is rather variable, as are the arguments for the various positions that the authors advocate. There are well-argued pieces from Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig and Rick Falkvinge (founder of the original Pirate Party in Sweden), but some others are of about the standard I'd expect from a first-year undergraduate. I stopped reading one essay called "Fluid Democracy" when it started talking about the correlation between character alignment and level in Everquest.
The introduction says, "The problem the Pirate Party faces, and clearly, every third party, is 'Who are they? What do they stand for? Why should I vote for them?'" The book answers the first two questions well enough, but falls short on the third.
January 31, 2012
Very nice collection of essays, some of the essays are very specific concerning the kind of background a reader would need to understand the points made. But overall many are interesting for every citizen of any country in the 21st Century who deals with information technology in one form or another. Good read, even though you probably have to be a computer science major to get the most out of it.
February 3, 2012
Good overview of what is going on with the issues. Only one of the essays was a little bit dicey.
February 7, 2012
First few essays did not do it for me, but the essay on the history of copyright was very interesting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews