Avian’s Blog

There was a panel on politics and the Internet in Kiberpipa today. More interestingly, the Slovenian version of the Pirate Party was said to present itself there. I missed the first half of the panel and I left before the end because I just couldn't stand listening to it.

I was excited when I first heard that there is a political party in the making in Slovenia that wants to imitate the notorious Swedish and German ones. For some reason I actually believed that there are some people here that will be able to follow in those footsteps. Now that I've seen the performance of their representatives on the panel I have very little hope left. This is a typical Slovenian political failure. People that don't actually know what they are talking about and don't give concrete answers to the questions from the audience. And I foolishly thought that there would finally be an entry on the next ballot that I could choose with confidence.

Also, if I were moderating the discussion I would nicely ask the guy with the mobile phone to leave the stage. I don't care who he was. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think all those people came there to look at him reading text messages from his wife and listen to his comments about them. What kind of an etiquette is that?

Anyway, there will probably be a video recording available soon so you can make your own judgment.

A question for you, if you were so excited when you first heard about pirate party in Slovenia, why didn't you join? I really don't get all the disappointment from people who understand copy rights and patent laws etc. and who didn't make a single attempt to change something, to do something, to be more active.... It is easier to criticize from far right?

Lea, I'm neither an artist, a lawyer nor a politician. I have what I would describe as the basic level of understanding of copyright and patent law that is necessary for an engineer to survive in this world. I'm more likely to be what the pirate party should consider their target audience - an interested observer of the whole big media versus people debate.

Actually, by regularly paying for CC licensed works from independent artists I'm probably doing much more than most people. If you were at the panel you could also hear that people in the audience have actually been at various demonstrations around the Europe. So you can't say that we're just criticizing and doing nothing.

Most questions I heard on the panel were in my opinion well thought out. I don't pretend to know the answers to them, but do I believe I know enough about the topic to know when someone knows what he is talking about. Even before the panel, the original party program published on their website left me with doubts whether the authors actually did any in-depth study of the subject (e.g. fighting to abolish all copyrights?)

Politics probably more than any other field is full of people wanting to use the knowledge and capabilities of others to climb to the top. I can't say if this is the case here, but the panel and things I heard in various conversations did ring a warning for me.