Today, 20th of November, is election day in Spain. The new Prime Minister will be decided and probably the right-wing candidate Mariano Rajoy (PP) will win by a landslide, ousting the party in power since 2004 (PSOE). However, these elections are also important for the International Pirate movement, since they are the first general elections in Spain with Pirate candidates for both Congress and Senate.

And they're not only Pirates, but very exceptional candidates as well. For instance, the head for Barcelona's constituency is no other than Josep Jover. He is a famous lawyer in Spain for many reasons, but most notably because he managed to overturn in Brussels the Spanish digital tax: an arbitrary charge on all digital equipment, collected to be paid as a compensation to Spanish artists, as for their hypothetical losses due to what they call "piracy".

On November 9, 2011, President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev met with the Russian Internet community. The discussion included the entire Internet spectrum; bloggers, people involved in Internet projects, online media and movements, a number of celebrities and 3 Pirate Party representatives. Even though the President of Russia appears to be interested in gadgets, the change of copy law, Internet freedom, and Free Software implementation in schools and agencies, it was his first meeting with Internet activists to which the Pirate Party of Russia was invited.

Throughout the two hour meeting, the following Pirate topics were discussed:

More than seven months passed away since the last PPI General Assembly (GA) had taken place in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The time has come to arrange the 2012 GA, therefore, we call and kindly request for offers of hosting the next annual PPI GA. As all previous PPI conferences had been held within Europe, we strongly encourage especially the non-European Pirate Parties to send their offers. A list of requirements and more information on the conference can be found in wiki.

The following text is a press release of no patents on seeds.

EU governments urged to take legal action

Munich, 26.10.2011. Three hundred people representing a broad range of environmental activists, farmers and development organisations held a protest against patents on seeds and animals outside the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich. With six meter long flying vegetables, a stall with patented broccoli and agricultural machinery, the focus of the protest was the sell-out of resources needed for daily living. After the EPO announced that the patent on the broccoli (EP 1069819) would not be revoked, speakers from various organisations are now looking for political action. Speakers at the demonstration included representatives from organisations such as Friends of the Earth, the German Family Farmers Organisation, the international coalition of “No Patents On Seeds” and others.

The Czech Pirate Party is drawing attention to the dangerous ramifications of ACTA. ACTA is an Anti-Piracy agreement signed last Saturday in Tokio, bringing global Internet regulations, restrictions of digital technology, and a possibility of inspections of computers on the borders. The agreement has been signed by the governments of the USA, Japan and 6 other countries. The European Union and the Czech Republic are only preparing to sign the agreement.

There was no access for the public to the ACTA negotiations that started in 2007 and there had been no access for the representatives of the participating countries for a long time either. Full access to the information from the negotiation meetings, however, had representatives of corporations:

• Warner Bros,
• Motion Picture Association of America,
• BSA (Business Software Alliance) et al. [1]

The Minister of the Interior Friedrich and President of the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation Ziercke have become intolerable
Press statement by the Pirate Party Germany - 08.10.2011 -23:45

The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has published an analysis of the "Federal Trojan Horse". It reveals that the program is able to download and install additional malicious programs, and that it suffers from massive security breaches. Even servers in the U.S.A. are used for the surveillance. Furthermore, the program's functionality goes far beyond the limits prescribed by the Federal Constitutional Court.

Loz Kaye—Pirate Party UK Leader:

On Tuesday I met with the Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey, along with interested groups including ORG, Coadec, LINX, a representative of the ISPs, and the Tax Payers Alliance. The meeting was intended to address the outcry over secret meetings between Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the big media industry players, and to put forward a different view to the lobbyists from the publishing groups, who have dominated the Internet policy agenda for far too long.

A new addition to the "Linking is not a crime" campaign has been reported. After web sites piratskefilmy.cz and tipnafilm.cz, the Czech Pirate Party spreads its protective wings over another project, a movie-oriented social network moviehome.cz.

Similarly to tipnafilm.cz, the project has not been initiated by the Pirate Party but by a team of programmers who have turned to the Pirates because they are afraid of bullying by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union and similar groups. The Czech Anti-Piracy Union have yet to make a formal statement concerning the websites piratskefilmy.cz and tipnafilm.cz, however, they still claim millions of Euros from high school students running similar sites.

[...] The big winner was the Pirate Party -- which campaigned on reformation of copyright and patent law and opposition to a wiretapping law proposed by the Swedish security services. The Pirates secured a whopping 7.1% and one seat in Parliament. The party, founded in January 2006, attracted young voters angry over the guilty verdict in the Pirate Bay trial, the unpopular EU Ipred directive, and new national laws criminalizing file sharing and authorizing monitoring of emails. [...]

The Pirate Party of Kazakhstan is organizing the "Kazakhstan championship for building websites based on free software". The competitions will take place from 13 to 15 September in the "Situation Center" in Almaty. The competitions will allow to decide on the best site constructors on free software and to enhance interaction with the Internet and social media communities. The participants come from all regions of Kazakhstan. During the event there will be a round table with the topic "Copyright and implementation of Creative Commons licenses in Kazakhstan" as well as several speeches about "Use of free software in universities, schools and administrative facilities - free software's situation in Kazakhstan". A press conference with the sponsors and organizers of the event will be held.