While most purported Internet pirates choose to try to avoid the eye of government, some are actively engaging the government in the political sphere. All across Europe, small political parties have formed to campaign for looser intellectual property rights and greater flow of information online. The Pirate Party UK, for example, has issued a manifesto calling for new users' rights, including the rights to shift formats (converting a DVD to a iPod-playable movie file, for example) and to share media with friends and family.
The various Pirate parties in Europe and around the world coordinate under the umbrella of the Pirate Parties International (PPI), a nongovernment organization established in April 2010. And while the Pirate parties have largely been unable to enter government so far, they have not been without success. The German Pirate Party won 15 seats in Berlin's state parliamentary elections last September. And Tunisian Pirate Party member Slim Amamou was briefly named the country's minister of youth and sport after the ouster of President Zine Ben-Ali, though he resigned after only a few months in office.
The PPI members were also vocal opponents of the American SOPA and PIPA bills, with parties from Australia to Russia joining the Jan. 18 protests against the US legislation.
(Incidentally, if you go looking for the Russian Pirate Party on Russia's official political register, you won't find it. When the party tried to register in 2011, the Russian Justice Ministry turned them down, ruling that the party's name promoted criminal acts because "piracy is an attack on sea or river craft, which is a criminal offense." After losing their appeal, the party adopted "the No-Name Party" as its official moniker. But Mr. Rassudov said that even with the new name, "our principles, ideas and our website remain unchanged. I ask the public, journalists and all reasonable people to continue calling us 'Pirate Party of Russia.'")
