I am humbled and gratified to address you as the new Leader of the Pirate Party of Canada.

In my time with the party, I have worked diligently to serve our needs and our interests to the best of my ability. That motivation has led me here, determined to serve the Pirate Party as we forge ahead into uncharted political waters.

Jake Daynes, my colleague and former fellow leadership candidate, will serve alongside me in Federal Council as Director-at-Large. He has behaved with vision and integrity during the his time as party leader, and I expect no less of him in his new role. To those who supported him in the election, rest assured that his skills and leadership will not go to waste.

I am gratified to see how close the election was, with Jake and I separated by a margin of only 4 votes (2.4%). This is a sign of true democracy at work, where strong candidates can stand side-by-side and every vote counts. Unfortunately, the contest for the position of Director-at-Large was not so heated, but having personal experience with all of the new and returning Directors, I have the utmost confidence in their abilities and commitment.

It will be our job to carry this democratic spirit into the next federal election. To that end, the work begins now of building the Pirate Party into the strongest candidate that it can be, and we can’t do it alone. By volunteering, contributing, and getting the word out about our party and our vision, you can help us to build the party and the Canada that we all want to see.

The work begins today, not just for myself, not just for my colleagues in the Federal Council, but for all of us. There are monumental goals to achieve and tremendous obstacles in our way, but together, we are equal to this task.

Thank you all for your support, past and future. Let’s start building.

Mikkel Paulson
Leader
Pirate Party of Canada

Today we celebrate the 143rd anniversary of Confederation, 143 years of building and growing, reaching ever higher. This is a noble Canadian tradition, and it is this tradition that has built the beautiful nation that we are proud to call home.

The Pirate Party of Canada joins with you in celebrating the achievements of the past, but also in anticipating the great achievements yet to come. We, too, seek to continue the never-ending push to build the Canada capable of ever stronger feats and guided by ever deeper convictions.

There are as many visions for a perfect Canada as there are Canadian citizens, and ours is of a Canada where those visions are protected, where the freedom to culturally express oneself is encouraged rather than restricted, where innovation is protected not stifled, where Canadians can live without fear of identity theft and abuse of personal information, and where their desire and right to monitor the activities of their government is defended.

In short, our vision of a perfect Canada is a Canada that every Canadian visionary, every Canadian, can help to build.

Happy Canada Day.

The Directors of the Pirate Party of Canada

“Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.” —Terry Pratchett

It should come as no surprise that after last month’s bill C-32 our dear minority government would like to top it off w/ the ACTA. It’s also a no brainer that the Pirate Party of Canada is against such reforms as they are clearly NOT the right choices for a culturally sane future.

Join us now and make your voice heard. The poker faces of Mr Harper and his party need to stop.

Email submissions to PR@PirateParty.ca

Start Writing!

Jake Daynes
Leader of the Pirate Party of Canada
Chef du Party Pirate du Canada

Today, June 2nd, 2010 the Conservative Party has restarted a process which it had hoped to finish years ago. Today they opened their Copyright Modernization Bill to the public. To give a brief history on the bill:

In 2005, the Liberal Party of Canada introduced the controversial Bill C-60, which was met with public outcry against its assault on personal freedoms, and died on the order paper when the opposition passed a motion of non-confidence and sent Canadians to the polls. An even stronger version was introduced in 2008 as Bill C-61 by the Conservative Party, which also died when another election was called.

Seemingly in response to this strong opposition, the Conservative government launched a consultation on the subject in the summer of 2009. Response was immediate, and over 90% of the more than 8,300 submissions were opposed to a repeat of Bill C-61. In fact, most favoured shorter copyright terms, strengthened fair dealing exceptions, and the elimination of legal prohibition on DRM circumvention.

As we can see based on the new bill, the government has no regard for the clear and overwhelming opinion of the Canadian public. Instead, it wants to introduce another draconian bill, known informally as the “Canadian DMCA” for its similarities to the controversial and ineffective legislation present in the United States. The bill includes prohibitions on the breaking of digital locks which will undermine fair-dealing by making it next to impossible to copy most media bought for personal use. This defeats the Tory attempt at balancing out their bill, by allowing consumers to copy media for personal use, yet not allowing them to unlock the media in order to copy it.

In response to this legislation, the Pirate Party of Canada is preparing to flex its growing network of activist muscle to arrange protests against this violation of Canadian consumers’ rights, coordinate with other concerned organizations, and reach out to politicians and news organizations to reinforce the past and inevitable future outcry against this legislation.

As the only Party in Canada genuinely concerned with protecting Canadian’s Digital freedoms, the PPCA is advocating for the expansion of fair-dealing legislation, in order to preserve, protect and increase the consumer’s personal-use rights on their media. We would also like to scale back Copyright to a period between 5-15 years, as opposed to the current Life of Author + 50.

Ultimately, the Party will be running a number of candidates in the next general election, standing as the only Canadian political party genuinely concerned with protecting all Canadians against the growing influence of copyright lobby groups.

Founded in 2009, the Pirate Party of Canada was established to protect the rights of consumers of intellectual property against increasingly-draconian laws enacted in response to the demands of corporate interests. Specifically, the Party is committed to reforming Canadian copyright laws, encouraging innovation through patent reform, protecting all Canadian citizens with strengthened privacy laws, and affirming their right to monitor their government by promoting the ideals of open government.

For more information on the Pirate Party of Canada, please visit our website at:

http://pirateparty.ca

-or-

http://partipirate.ca

Thank you for your time in reading this release. The Pirate Party of Canada will be posting all releases and content in regards to this bill on http://pirateparty.ca effective immediately and on http://balancedcopyright.ca starting on the 6th of June 2010.

Last summer, an extensive consultation conducted by the government found that an overwhelming majority of Canadians support shorter, more relaxed copyright laws. While we hold out hope that the government will heed its own citizens’ concerns, we are nevertheless expecting and preparing for yet another repeat of bills C-60 in 2005 and C-61 in 2008, both of which met with massive public opposition and died on the Order Paper when elections were called.

We will provide a subsequent statement once the bill is available to us later today, and will continue to analyze its contents, effects, and motivations in the days and weeks to come.

The Pirate Party of Canada does not condone illegal behaviour. However, in our estimation, The Pirate Bay has broken no Swedish laws, and should therefore be defended against predatory legal action. We fully support the Piratpartiet in its defence of this valuable tool for the free exchange of information and ideas.

The PPCA operates our own BitTorrent site, the Canadian Pirate Tracker (CaPT). CaPT is intended to showcase the possibilities of file-sharing as a promotional medium for musicians and artists of all backgrounds. All material available on CaPT is released under an open license and is uploaded by or with the explicit approval of the creators themselves. The site can be found at capt.pirateparty.ca.

Founded in 2009, the Pirate Party of Canada was established to protect the rights of consumers of intellectual property against increasingly-draconian laws enacted in response to the demands of corporate interests. Specifically, the Party is committed to reform Canadian copyright laws, encourage innovation through patent reform, protect all Canadian citizens with strengthened privacy laws, and affirm their right to monitor their government by promoting the ideals of open government.

For more check our forum http://www.pirateparty.ca/forum/read.php?9,10372

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm2010