The board and members of Pirate Parties International and the Pirate Party of Berlin are pleased to announce that the 2016 General Assembly will be held in Berlin on the weekend of the 23rd to the 24th of July. It will be open and everyone is welcome to attend. More details will follow.

Pirate Parties International are offering Supporting Memberships for people and organisations who wish to support the work of the PPI. Anyone or any organisation can become a supporting member. For a small annual fee you can become an international Pirate and belong to a worldwide movement.

Late last year Pirate Parties International received the following letter. Clearly a fishing expedition, as the ACUM could not be bothered contacting the Pirate Party of Israel who have a clear claim to fair use provisions.

Dear Sir or Madam,

ACUM – Infringement of Copyrights of musical work "The End"

Pirate Parties International condemns, without reservation, the Paris Attacks instigated by the organisation known as Daesh, ISIL or ISIS. We also condemn attacks made on civilians and civilian organisations by any state and non-state agent in recent times, including assassinations by drone strikes.

COP21

First off: Cop21 is coming up in Paris and if you are going and want accommodation Chemseddine can put you in touch with some squats that will put you up for the duration. Contact him at chemseddine[dot]ben[dot]jemaa[at]pp-international[dot]net

IPU

At the latest meeting of the PPI Board we discussed the International Parliamentary Union (IPU).

@birgittaj presents the new resolution on #privacy in the digital era at #ipu133

The meeting held a surprise for us as Henrique Peer told us he had been approached by David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, asking us to participate in the Snowden Treaty project.

Get involved

We don't want PPI to be some remote organisation that is of no real relevance to the average Pirate. We want grass root Pirates to get involved.

Sunstone

The Sunstone project which is to set up a Pirate Think Tank has appointed Jelena Jovanovic to lead the fund-raising campaign and run the social media
The project has a URL www.piratethinktank.net and facebook and Twitter accounts.

We held our second board meeting in mumble and although it got off to a bit of a slow start we achieved quite a lot. Highlights are:

1) We changed the rules of procedure so that votes cast by the board in our Loomio group can be counted towards the regular board meetings. This is important as the board is spread around the world and the time in never going to be suitable for everyone with people having to work or sleep when it is evening in Europe. You can follow our discussions here https://www.loomio.org/g/XRgnfZLN/ppi-board