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Pirate Party Belgium tackles politics differently.
 
We are a XXI century political movement that dares to talk about the issues that traditional parties decided to ignore and believes in the value of whistleblowers to society. Pirate Party has seen the extraordinary economic, social and cultural changes brought to the modern world by the emergency of the Internet. Yet none of these changes can be found in the traditional political programs.
 
Our beliefs are expressed in this program that we consider as a work in progress. It is not finalised and aims to reflect the constantly changing society. Please feel free to share with us your thoughts or comments about it.
 
1. DRM must be abolished.

Digital Rights Management hinders the compatibility between technologies and negates the rights of fair use and personal copies. We will undertake any steps that will be necessary to produce laws which will prohibit the use of such technologies and will guarantee the right to personal copies for non-commercial purposes.
 
2. The copyright laws must be changed.

They are unbalanced and in favour of the copyright holders suffocating our cultural community resources. We support the necessity to obtain a substantial revision of international conventions and directives which will reduce the period of copyrights to a maximum of 20 years. In most cases, a 5 years period will be sufficient. For this reason, Pirate Party commits to cooperate with any initiative pursuing the same goals.
 
3. Derivative use must be permitted.

The basic assumption is that copyright monopoly only covers an exact copy of the creative work. A derivative work is considered as a new and separate piece of culture. Any exceptions to this consideration, such as subtitled movies or translated books (as defined by Pirate Party), must be explicitly listed in the legislation proposed. We will defend open standards, free software, creative commons and any other important part of the read/write society. We defend open culture. Closed culture does not allow you to draw on other's work when creating your own and you will have to repurchase your media when commercial interests decide to change formats.
 
4. Non-commercial file sharing should be legalized.
 
We commit to obtain the depenalization of P2P and private downloading.
 
5. Patents hurt innovation.
 
The scope of patents must not be broadened but limited. The innovative community and scientific progress do not benefit from the current patent system. The long term goal is to abolish the current patent system completely, in particular, patents on anything non-tangible (software, cultural and story plot patents, business models, genomes, etc). We are also against patent-pools, patent pending and unused patents. We will not budge on principles that patents should be completely abolished in such areas as medicine, genes, plants and other living organisms, software, business methods, games and ways of representing information. Business considers "intellectual property" as the "oil of the XXI century". And they mean it. As seriously, as oil wars. We cannot let this happen.
 
6. Domain squatting should be illegal, or at least domain name recovery procedures should exist.

Domain squatters should be deposessed from the domain names they occupy on simple claim addressed to the top level domain name authorities.
 
7. We stand for open source governance.

We recommend the use of wiki like technology for legal documents such as bills, drafts, etc.
 
8. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen?

We stand for complete digital transparency, tracking of politicians and control of instances. We want people to be personally notified of the fact they have been watched or spied upon when their information becomes declassified. We want better definitions about what is classified, when and how this information becomes declassified.
 
9. We promote open source software in government.
 
We recommend the use of open source software wherever possible or the production of new open source software by the government. Many high-quality free open source solutions already exist for everyday computing tasks. By utilising these free and open source alternatives in all publicly funded sectors, the government can save millions of Euros of tax payers’ money collected every year in order to spend them on more worthwhile projects. This would also avoid the dependency on proprietary file formats which may become unsupported or incompatible with future systems.
 
10. People should open their home Wi-Fi environments so that gaps are filled in.
 
As such the whole Wi-Fi environment should be shared everywhere.
 
11. Every nation should appoint a chief technology officer and a Ministry of IT.
 
This should be done as a matter of urgency. Every nation should appoint representatives who are experts in the domain they are responsible for. We oppose the fact that one day you can be in charge of social security and the next – in charge of justice. One cannot be good at everything.
 
12. Electronic direct democracy.
 
We support a form of direct democracy in which Internet and other electronic communication technologies are used to improve the bureaucracy involving referendums and census. We advocate the directness and disintermediation of state administration and more e-government injections. Why would we suffer from the consequences of decisions we did not take an active part in?
 
13. Open Society, not Closed Government.
 
We want a society where the leading force for progress is social responsibility, not state control or state institutions. It includes a whole set of unifying approaches like giving back the power to citizens and making government more accountable. It also implies a redesign of the ways in which communities were working until now, by giving the opportunity to neighbourhoods and various communities to take control and tackle their problems on their own. We also want a people owned Open Society Bank which will leverage both public and private sector investments to provide new finance for neighbourhood groups, charities, social enterprises and alike. Priority should be given to Belgium's poorest areas. Providing new funding to support the next generation of social entrepreneurs, and helping successful social enterprises to expand and succeed, should be considered as a priority.
 
14. Spyware contained in any system should be punished.
 
We do not like bugs. We want to prohibit law enforcement agencies from monitoring specific people, or tapping any private communication, without a warrant, and to forbid such surveillance by other agencies, governmental or not.
 
15. It should be forbidden to subpoena ISPs and telecoms for their customers’ data usage in civil cases.
 
When public instances and private third parties would like ISPs and telecoms to work for them, they should pay these companies for the work and means consumed. ISPs and telecoms are just ISPs and telecoms. Nothing more, nothing less. They cannot be transformed into private surveillance companies.
 
16. We want a Tax Shelter for all artistic disciplines.
 
This measure will prompt individuals and companies to invest in art and creation. Patronage is very important for creation and has to be promoted.
 
17. Privacy in the workplace.
 
We believe that the right to privacy is a basic human need. Therefore, indiscriminate governmental intrusion into the sphere of personal privacy is intolerable. The basic assumption must be that an individual not under suspicion of a crime must be guaranteed privacy. This right includes the right to privacy in the workplace.
 
18. We want a thorough reform of the public media.
 
Public media should not be subjected to market economy rules. Journalists working for public media have to regain true independence. Public media should not be subject to political influence.
 
19. Collection of private data is an individual right.
 
We believe that individuals have a right to dictate and determine how their private data is collected, stored and processed by both governmental and commercial entities. (Private data means any non-public information about an individual.) Any entity collecting private data must inform the individual how the collected data will be used and be held accountable for its use. Individuals also have a right to revoke the right of a non-governmental entity to hold or use any private data concerning them. People should have the option to "opt in" by default and not the current "opt out" imposed choice.
 
20. Government must be open as to what it collects on its subjects and strict laws of monitoring should be required.
 
Special agency must be established in order to monitor breaches on data retention. Nowadays, under the pretext of terrorism, individual privacy of all citizens is being jeopardized. (Art. 12 of the ONU Declaration of Human Rights).
 
21. The use of free, open source software in schools is of paramount importance.
 
Current school system educates students with the same limited suites of software and a single operating system throughout their time at school, creating a strong dependency of the whole society on a small group of proprietary software. The use of free, open source software, including operating systems like GNU/Linux, will allow students to become much more knowledgeable of the computer systems they use, and be able to adapt to ever evolving world of computing in their later lives. We believe the money saved on licenses for expensive proprietary operating systems and office suites could be spent far more effectively on computers and teaching materials for all subjects.
 
22. We want Net Neutrality.
 
When a user pays his ISP for a certain level of service, he should always get this level of service, primarily connection speed and latency, besides in exceptional cases (technical issues). The level of service he receives should never depend on which applications or protocols he uses, which sites he visits or what kind of data he downloads or uploads.
 
23. We are neither "left-wing" nor "right wing".
 
The Pirate Parties throughout the world follow a philosophical doctrine that has arisen out of the new needs of the XXI century global society. Call us heterodox dissidents.
 
24. We will not participate in the community debate.
 
Participating in the community debate is legitimating it. Community debates are harmful for a society as a whole. Differences are normal and we should be able to accept them and live with them, all of us together. We do not subscribe to the diktat of the majority. We want respect for ALL minorities.
 
25. We are future-friendly and believe that technology is beneficial to the world.
 
26. Access to communication and information is a fundamental right.
 
We want a fibre high speed Internet connection in every home and guaranteed basic access to GSM/3G services. Download quotas should be abolished. Telco operations in Belgium should be split in 2 separate services: carrier and service provider organization(s). All operators should have the same rights and obligations.
 
27. We do not need and we do not want a “Great Belgian Firewall”.
 
We do not need and we do not want a "Great European Firewall". No government censorship over access to a site, whatever it is. Firewalls set up by the state harm freedom and business.
 
28. We want a thorough reform of the artist's status.
 
Artists are not to be treated as unemployed. They need a revenue allowing them to live and create. They benefit to society as a whole. Artists should not to be subjected to the will of oligopolistic major entertainment companies and their heirs, reducing them to mass sellable average mediocrity.
 
29. The electoral threshold should be abolished.
 
It maintains political monopolies and oligopolies and as such harm evolution of the open and free society. It also impedes emerging ideas, movements and parties to be financed.
 
30. We want a (better and improved) open source, public domain electronic voting system.
 
All voting software and hardware should offer the possibility to be monitored and reviewed. We want the community to be able to control, verify and enhance what is happening with the electronic votes. Procedures, workshops, stores and contracting agents should be VERY CLOSELY monitored. Public transparency regarding the whole procedure should be TOTAL which means MUCH more than a one page PDF file explaining what's happening.
 
31. Bloggers should benefit from the same protections as journalists. At least, as long as they abide by the same obligations and laws.
 
32. We do not like fixed programmes, hence this is a placeholder. One never knows. It's all about flexibility and adaptability.
 
33. We strongly believe in the benefits of maximalized e-Government and e-Governance.
 
34. We want an anonymous public transportation card (unlike MOBIB) to be provided on request.
 
You can get anonymous customer cards at your privately owned supermarket hence why cannot you get this from a public service? We want the fines for not using the MOBIB card suppressed. It is unacceptable for people who do not commit any offence to get fined if they do not log every single trip they make. Paying users do not have to be forced to work for free for a public transportation company. Yes we say work. People get fined because they refuse to feed a marketing database which in turn will be sold and/or used to get in profitable publicity deals. As an alternative a public transport company which forces their users to work for free should provide their service to them for free too.
 
35. We want the Commission for the protection of privacy to get real power.
 
This means that this institution should be empowered and have the right to sue, and fine any offender. The commission should watch the watchmen.
 
36. D.I.Y. Do It Yourself.
 
The state should provide people with all means and resources needed to develop, maintain and enhance their local communities. This implies providing means to people to grow their own food, to produce their own energy, to build their own houses, to upkeep their own roads and parks, to engineer their own life. People need a purpose and freedom.
 
37. We want the non-voters, blank and null voters count to be calculated within our representative system.
 
If 40% of the people don't vote then the parliament does not have any legitimacy to represent them, to speak for them, to vote for them.
 
38. We want the electoral code to be revised and enhanced.
 
It is old fashioned. For instance, we want fax and even e-ID signatures or duly signed emails to be accepted as being valid signatures/proofs when wanting to submit a list of candidates to the chamber or the senate. Whatever happens, fair democratic procedures should be respected.
 
39. We will not support any law prohibiting free expression of culture, belief, religion or opinion. Anywhere. We want to abolish any law which does so.
 
40. We want any citizen living in Belgium for 5 years or more to have FULL political rights at level of towns, regions or state.
 
If you are good enough to pay taxes, you are good enough to have the right to voice your opinion and to vote too. We want 100% inclusion of whoever lives in our country. When you have duties, you have rights. No more "foreigners" when it comes to having rights and participating fully in our society.
 
41. More money for brains. Heavily support the big "BANG". Bits, Atoms, Neurons, Genes.
 
We want the 2.5% fraction of the Belgian GDP for R&D and Science to be risen to at least 3.5%. 4 % or 5% would be even better. We want education to be revisited and improved. We want innovation to be promoted and supported heavily at level of our Belgian companies. We want Education-Science/R&D-Innovation to be tightly coupled. All of those investments will have one sole goal, i.e. drastically improve all aspects of everyday's life in society by addressing the new challenges we are exposed to.
 
42. The answer: Openness, Sharing and Transparency.
 
We want people to adopt a distributed response to everyday problems. Our fuel is the failure of the traditional political and business elites. The next political movement to happen is a practical rather than an ideological one. We are coming. We are Pirates.