On January 19th through 21st, 2010, the first elections of the Russian Pirate Party's leadership have taken place. The eight members of the party's founding committee voted through the party's public forum, according to the election rules set up previously.

The newly elected chairman is Stanislav Shakirov, recently turned 23, a MSU mathematics graduate from Moscow who runs a small IT consultancy. He received 7 of 8 votes. Edgar Voskresensky from Moscow became vice-chairman. The founding commitee decided unanimously that all its members should join the Party Council.

Currently the Russian Pirate Party is an unofficial organization and part of the international Pirate movement.

Dear Pirates,

The PPI conference will take place on 16-18th April 2010 in Brussels. Most of the information below is aimed at Pirate Party leaders, but some is relevant to all pirates.

We would like 2 delegates per nation to exercise voting power. For EU-based pirate party delegates we can provide free entrance; however due to the nature of the funding, delegates from non-EU-based parties will likely have to cover their expenses on their own budget. More details on the financing will be announced when we have more information (hopefully before the end of January).

As it is difficult to get a the space to host hundreds of pirates and we have limited financial resources there may have to be a limit on the number of guest pirates from each party.

In preparation for the conference, we are setting up two taskforces. If you are interested in helping out with either taskforce, please read the details below:

Currently we are particularly interested in hearing what ideas pirates and PPs have about PPI. In particular, we would like to know what people want or expect from PPI, how it should operate and what functions it should have. (We are aware that some parties have proposed starting an internal work group on these sort of issues, but think it would be best if we all worked together on this.)

Just a note to make it clear: In our sense the name PPI stands for "Pirate Parties International", not "Pirate Party International". Both have been used in different circumstances and we would like to remove any confusion about this, e.g. for the sake of corporate identity. The original idea behind PPI was not that it would be a "party", but a NGO - an umbrella organisation for all pirate parties around the world and to focus their efforts. We feel that "Pirate Parties International" makes this more obvious. Thus we'd like to ask whether there are any objections if from now on we stick with "Pirate Parties International" and discourage the usage of "Pirate Party International".

If you have any thoughts on this please contact us either through the coreteam email, the mailing list or use the comments section.

The Pirate Party Austria regrets to announce, that its founder and
former board member, Florian Hufsky, deceased on December 16th .

Thanks to Florian Hufsky's pioneering spirit, Austria was one of the
first countries with an own pirate party, founded in summer 2006. Back
then he was one of the few brave people, who stood up against those,
who want to enforce economic or governmental interests by sacrificing
civil rights.

Florian's enthusiasm was a huge inspiration for pirates on a national,
as well as on an international level. The pirate movement would not be
the same today, if it wasn't for Florian's untiring support at the

Hi PP-leaders,

We in PPI have been made aware of the PP's initiatives to fight ACTA
such as the Swedish, Australian, Austrian and German press releases.
There are also initiatives for national taskforce in Germany etc. so
we in PPI see this as a international issue due to the scope of ACTA
where me and Laurent Le Besnerais
(laurent.lebesnerais@pp-international.net) are leaders of a taskforce
against ACTA. We started working on a DRAFT for a action plan against
ACTA and we want your feedback before proceeding (publish etc.) so
please have a look at the DRAFT or send to your national ACTA

The German Pirates were able to score 2% at the
parliamentary elections.
Despite a historically low turnout of only 70.8% this still
means over 845.000 votes for the Pirate Party.
Also via the reimbursement of expenses coming from the state
they could now get about 720.000€,
depending on the funding they can raise independently.

The Swedes are first to acknowledge, already having pirate Members
of the European Parliament. Germany joined as the irreversible
information revolution is growing stronger. More than 35 pirate
parties already sprung up all over the world. Next time, the torrent
of information revolution will inundate even more land.

The French PP is proud to announce that we have reached the score of 2,08% in a partial legislative election one week ago. It was our first candidature, so we can say without shame that this gained score means an encouraging and strong signal a few days after the vote of the law Hadopi 2 there. Indeed, It officializes the French PP as a political party able to gather people who do not tolerate private violations

Laurent LE BESNERAIS AkA Cwicket

The Swedish and German Pirate Parties are today celebrating their election success, after each gaining more than 200,000 votes in the 2009 European Parliament elections. This result marks the first ever elected seat for a Pirate Party, and fittingly comes from the piratpartiet, who has been awarded one MEP seat.
Press Release (English, PDF)