And why the downvote below for HnNoPassMailer? All he said was correct. Was it the "failure of the Dutch Pirate Party" bit? Because they did fail. The German and Swedish Pirate Parties are excellent, but ours just keep blundering on public relations, they're geeks with great ideals but they're not politicians. Maybe they should partner up with BitsofFreedom or something, BOF.nl seems to know how to handle publicity.
"The GreenLeft (GroenLinks) and democrats (D66) have the most pro-internet civil rights stances."
G-d only knows what a "pro-internet stance" is, but I suspect HnNoPassMailer was referring to the fight for net neutrality and online privacy, and against data retention and censorship.
If that's the case, the Socialist Party (SP) and the Party for the Animals (PvdD) have the most "pro-internet civil rights stances".
The best way to measure this is to look at how elected officials vote on those issues [1].
BoF follows a long tradition of our local digital civil rights movement itself being formed by a closed and not particularly transparent "elite". This stems from the failure of the first movement (DB.NL) in the 90's which was killed by infighting (and what some may consider agent provocateurs).
BoF has no grass roots support, no transparency, no members, no accountability, no checks an balances. And they like it that way because in the short term it allows them to be highly effective, so they'll never partner up with anything as messy and risky as a democratic movement.
The problem is, they also soak up the support, experience and expertise something like a Dutch Pirate Party or any other democratic alternative would need to get off the ground.
Interesting. How are they not transparent, though?
I still think they're doing good work, so I'm not going to stop my monthly donation any time soon btw :-)
And about your last paragraph, I don't think it's because BoF soaking up expertise that the Dutch Pirate Party couldn't properly explain their position and ideals when GeenStijl/POWnews interviewed them in a very uncharacteristic positive manner (GS wanted them to succeed, but they just stammered).
And even then there was no excuse for blogging "Big Tits Cause Earthquakes" [response to the Telegraaf's "Pirates Caused Pukkelpop Disaster"]--that was the moment I unfortunately could not take them serious as a political party any more. I get it was a joke, but you just can't do that if you're an official political party blog and your 1) alienating some female voter audience with such headlines and 2) communicating to the rest of your audience that you apparently don't understand that [and consequently, how will they be defending their vision in real politics?].
It's sad because I would have loved to have a real good Pirate Party like Sweden or Germany have.
I didn't even see HnNoPassMailer until I turned on showdead, and after I did I only saw an upvote link, not a downvote link. I think it's some feature of HN.
His/her last two comments seem to be dead, which might suggest he/she's been banned and has his/her comments now autodeaded. I don't see anything obvious in the comment/submission history that'd explain why there'd be a ban, but I don't really know how these things work.
ACTA means EU would have to use US's copyright laws, right? So if SOPA passes, doesn't that mean US would be able to do the same thing in EU? Didn't EU Parliament vote just a few days ago that they are against SOPA? Talk about being inconsistent.
And why the downvote below for HnNoPassMailer? All he said was correct. Was it the "failure of the Dutch Pirate Party" bit? Because they did fail. The German and Swedish Pirate Parties are excellent, but ours just keep blundering on public relations, they're geeks with great ideals but they're not politicians. Maybe they should partner up with BitsofFreedom or something, BOF.nl seems to know how to handle publicity.