Talk Like a Pirate Day pillow fight for cancer support!

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MELBOURNE — At 6:30 pm today, Pirates of all persuasions will descend upon Federation Square to engage in a swashbuckling pillow fight. Money raised by the event, organised by Pirate Party Australia, will go toward the charity Childhood Cancer Support. The charity’s website can be found here: http://ccs.org.au

“Despite perceptions of parrots, swords and eye-patches, when Pirate Party Australia talks like a pirate it usually means discussing copyright and patent reform, and other policy areas,” said Pirate Party Deputy President Melanie Thomas. “While it’s not always fun and games, we are more than happy to have a bit of fun for a good cause!”

By hosting a pillow fight on Talk Like a Pirate Day, Pirate Party Australia is hoping to draw attention to the need to better enable research opportunities in the field of health and pharmaceuticals. The Party is agitating for reform of patent laws to assist medical research across a range of illnesses, including cancer, and enabling cheaper access to medication and treatment. It is an unfortunate effect of drug patents that they shut down free market competition which might otherwise drive improved manufacturing and delivery techniques.

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CrimTrac net widened to catch suspects’ families

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In a never-ending quest to distort the presumption of innocence and reduce privacy, CrimTrac — Australia’s law enforcement data coordination agency — is proposing to expand its DNA matching powers.

Currently CrimTrac checks DNA collected during investigations against samples collected from suspects and convicted criminals to find a match. CrimTrac plans to widen the scope of the matches to include familial links, allowing the agency to uncover relatives of the person whose DNA has been found[1].

“DNA, like fingerprints, is a unique identifier of individuals. While collecting DNA from suspects and criminals is a practice that has been extensively used, caution should be exercised when expanding the net,” said Simon Frew, President of Pirate Party Australia. “There are strong privacy implications for those who may be related to suspects, and to unfairly drag them into criminal proceedings would be a grave error of judgement.”

“It is obvious that there may be advantages in locating relatives of unmatched DNA samples and persons who cannot be located, however it may run the risk of creating a class of persons under increased scrutiny merely because they are related to a suspect or a convicted criminal. What is needed is a high degree of oversight, preferably judicial, to ensure that there is reasonable need to extend the scope of a particular query beyond exact matches.”

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Telstra throttling an unacceptable solution for network congestion

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After an announcement eight months ago that it would be trialling a system to reduce the speed of certain types of data, Telstra has confirmed it will be going ahead with a controversial network management trial. The telco has said it was conducting the trial to identify different options and pricing plans for its customers in an attempt to manage congestion issues[1].

Among the types of data being ‘throttled’ is peer-to-peer traffic, and participants in the trial will be asked about speed differences with applications such as BitTorrent. This raises concerns for the Pirate Party with regard to Internet traffic prioritisation.

Pirate Party Australia considers that ‘net neutrality’ — where types of traffic are not discriminate against — is essential for modern Australia. The Party’s policy pushes for a ban on screening and prioritising of traffic based on content, source or destination, with opt-in prioritisation if subscribers choose[2].

“Net neutrality is vital for a free Internet,” said Simon Frew, President of Pirate Party Australia. “Throttling certain services and promoting others will damage any new service or product coming online. Differentiated services is a slippery slope to a situation where companies could pay for their content to be prioritised. The next Google or Facebook, being a start-up would not have access to a comparable speed and would find it more difficult to compete with the more powerful incumbents purely because they could only afford access to the B-Grade Internet. For the Internet to remain a place of innovation any attempt to benefit some sections at the cost of others must be resisted.”

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The Pirate Party’s plan for copyright reform

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Pirate Party Australia is part of a global movement founded to fight for reform of copyright laws.

Copyright laws are among the most expansive intrusions by the state into our daily lives. They control what we can see and read and say. They impose artificial scarcity on expression and content, which mimics the genuine scarcity of physical resources. They influence art, culture, and technology.

Copyright laws were intended to encourage creation of content by providing a limited monopoly for creative work, after which material entered the public domain to inspire and inform other artists. However, this historical function of copyright has been pushed aside by the demands of powerful lobbyists. Copyright duration has been extended from 14 years to over a century. This effectively cuts the flow of material to the public domain, and perpetual copyright duration has shifted the bulk of creative material into corporate vaults. The ability to exploit the same material in perpetuity acts against the creation of new material, completely undermining the purpose of copyright.

All over the world, members of the public are being threatened for fictional crimes[1], sued for millions of dollars for copyright infringement[2], and collectively forbidden access to their cultural heritage[3]. Most worryingly, corporate copyright holders have lobbied for the right to monitor private communications and disconnect people from the Internet without engaging in due process[4].

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Pirate Party Statement on Liberal Internet Censorship Policy

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The Liberal Party has announced a broad Internet censorship policy less than 48 hours from the 2013 Federal Election, in order to shield the policy from detailed scrutiny[1].

“The Liberals’ decision to release a draconian Internet censorship policy this close to an election is utterly disgraceful,” said Brendan Molloy, lead NSW Senate candidate for the Pirate Party.

“The policy seems significantly broader than the defeated Labor policy, and is simply a waste of money. The mandatory installation of censorship software on devices seems to be very similar to a policy that China has previously implemented, a state renowned for its Internet censorship regime, and even they dumped it[2].”

“Opt-out filtering treats everyone like a child by default, and puts those who choose to opt-out from the Government-chosen list of acceptable websites on a list of deemed “undesirables” that can be later abused. This is a reprehensible policy and we will fight it to the death.”

“It’s simple: the Liberal policy will make censorship malware mandatory on your devices. That’s not okay,” he concluded.

The Pirate Party has released a pledge detailing the 16 policy areas they will focus on upon election to Parliament[3]. The third pledge focuses specifically around standing against any mandatory censorship regime.

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