moje odpoved píše:Hello Marco,
I am sorry to be replying so late, although I'm the first one to reply even so, as it seems.
I think I understand your frustration by the situation at hand, however I strongly feel that helping you the way you asked us to wouldn't be very Pirate-like and it might even be in contradiction with the base principles our movement is built upon. What I mean by that is that if we believed the /Pirate Party/idea/know-how/style/aura/whatever can be <hollywood-speak>stolen</hollywood-speak> from a real Pirate Party, then we'd have to believe it would be possible to do the same with a musician's records or filmmaker's movies. And I hope I'm not the only one here who doesn't believe that.
I mean, you can pretend to have written and recorded songs you didn't when the actual author is stupid or when you have a lot of money, but...
- In the first case you'd probably have to find another artist to steal (literally) from next time because your previous object of interest would have learned their lesson and either become more cautious or stopped doing music by then.
- In the second case (the premise being: you have a lot of money so you wouldn't steal any crappy music, but you also don't have a ton of money, because then it would be easier for you to just buy it) you'd probably have to find another job or even identity because they would have made it their life's meaning by then to humiliate and ultimately destroy your effing existence completely (figuratively speaking).
But then again, I believe that doesn't happen too often. However, the "hurt-feelings" case (i.e. yours and similar -- no offense intended) is much more common. And I think bringing attention (usually done by the mainstream media but still) to such cases is what brought us to the point where people don't like Pirates because we supposedly want to /steal the authorship/ from the artists (I am sure I'm not the only one who has heard this from people when campaigning in the streets).
The common voter doesn't see a difference between "theft" being used as a pseudonym for "copyright infringement" or a pseudonym for "plagiarism".
I don't want to be mean but I got quite angry when I heard about the litigation that lead to the court order you mentioned. To me that was like Hitler (self-Godwin-alert-bitch-slap) marrying a beautiful Jewish woman or the Pope sleeping with an adult (I had to redeem myself for the Hitler remark). That's just something you don't do.
Okay, enough saying what not to do. Here's what I would suggest based on the little information I've got about your situation. You're running in a single district, you're Pirates and you're not well-known as such enough not to have to deal with such "pirating the Pirate Party" attempts. That means two things. First, you have no chance of actually winning (getting any - /pun intended/ - seats) and you're probably well aware of that, because you couldn't be threatened by the fake PP otherwise. Second, you're not stupid and you'll only have to cover a relatively small area (i.e. not the whole country). Unless I'm wrong, I say, take them on Pirate-style. If you do it cleverly, you shouldn't go down with them. I can hardly tell you any specific ideas
because I don't see how there could be two (three including you) "Partito Pirata" subjects running for the Parliament in the same district and elections. However, if that's really the case, then I suggest you rename your party (to the extent possible and relevant to these particular elections, i.e. not actually renaming the party in the statutes) somehow so that it would distinguish you from the others but wouldn't make you a no-name party. Partito anti-pirata or something of the sort comes to mind. I assume you already thought and spoke about that a thousand times in the party and I believe you have a lot of reasons not to do it... I really do. But then again, what do you have to lose? If you don't secure your position as _the_ PP of Italy, you'll never change anything. And I think only a very few of the members of your party decided to take on politics as a hobby so that they could do politics and not in order to make a real change.
You asked for international Pirate community support. Well, I can't tell whether I speak for the international Pirate community but I sure as hell speak for the whole PP-CZ and this piece of advice (however ill-informed, not-helping, boring, condescending, insulting or even wrong it may be or seem) is most likely the only support you're gonna get from us. That is unless you come with a Pirate-like action we could contribute to in order to help you or damage them.
I hope you understand I wrote what I wrote because I have (what I truly believe to be) your best interests at heart.
Best regards,
Tom Vymazal
--
Head of the International Relations dept.,
The Czech Pirate Party
