According to Florida law, a political party must have a minimum of three officers (Chairman, Vice-Chairman, and Treasurer) so we had to start a search for the third member (Carlo De Leonibus will remain as Treasurer).

We received emails from many qualified applicants, but one stood out from the rest.

We have chosen Tallahassee resident Blayne White to be the next Vice-Chairman of the Florida Pirate Party. In his own words:

What sorts of things can I bring to the party, hmm?

I have a long history of activism on a pretty broad range of social issues, and being here in Tallahassee, I’ve learned a lot of useful skills and methods of effectively getting messages to places where it can be heard – I’ve worked on writing press releases, spoken with state representatives, etc. I also have many friends and contacts in the community here who can (and do) help in spreading the ideas of the Pirate Party.

Also, as an alumnus of Florida State University I’m very familiar with the student body, and would be able to outreach to the students – who make up a large portion of Pirate supporters, but who generally need some motivation to go out and vote in elections. While I’m no JFK when it comes to public speaking, I am generally competent at it and can speak comfortably and in a well-informed manner about issues of copyright/intellectual property, government transparency, and other key planks of the Pirate platform.

As a Computer Scientist I’m very familiar with all of the technological aspects of what we hope to achieve – for example I can explain to a clueless politician the difference between hosting a torrent file and hosting a movie itself in a way that they ought to understand, or how undermining net neutrality threatens to destroy the internet as we’ve come to know it. As an educator, I can bring first-hand experience to conversations about the FCAT and standardized testing, and how it’s hurting Florida’s education system – in addition to all the other draconian education reforms being put forward by the current administration.

Please welcome Blayne White to the Party.

This is a big step for a Pirate Party in the United States to join their international brethren in Europe and elsewhere.

When video is available, if it is available, it will be linked here.

In six months, there will be another PPI meeting, no one knows where yet. At that time, the FLPP may decide to apply for full ordinary membership status.

Stay tuned.

On April 14th-15th, the organization Pirate Parties International will be holding their yearly conference in Prague.

On the first day of the conference, PPI’s members will vote for the applicants for membership and observer membership status. The Florida Pirate Party is up for inclusion in PPI as an observer member. We are confident that the FLPP will be accepted as an observer member.

The Florida Pirate Party is one of two officially recognized Pirate Parties in the United States (the other being Massachusetts). We are also the group behind the popular book (and ebook), No Safe Harbor, which has been downloaded and read by Pirates around the world.

Be sure to keep an eye on this site and our Facebook page (and the below linked PPI site) for news about our admission into PPI.

Thank you.

http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Conference_2012

Just a little over a year ago, I embarked on what would be an incredible journey for me. With the help of then-USPP Records Officer Bradley Hall, the Florida Pirate Party became the second Pirate Party to be recognized in the United States (just a few short days after Massachusetts). We joined the greater worldwide Pirate movement in demanding the evolution to 21st century governance, respect for liberty and our personal freedom.

From those humble beginnings, our party has grow by leaps and bounds to include hundreds of other Floridians in demanding more from our leaders. The ground-swelling of grassroots support from these freedom-loving Americans has been nothing short of astonishing, and truly speaks volumes about the brighter future laying ahead for our great nation. Through your help, we have provided a loud and clear counterpoint to the Hollywood lobbyists and fought back blatant attacks on our first freedoms. We have fought against censorship in every form, and have campaigned tirelessly to preserve our rights as enumerated in the Constitution.

I have been proud to be a part of this party and this movement. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that I am announcing I will be stepping down as Chairman of the Florida Pirate Party. Circumstance has ordained that my time as this party’s leader has come to a close, and that I must step aside for new leadership to take my place at the helm and lead this party forward. I will continue carrying on the day-to-day responsibilities as Chairman until such time as new leadership is chosen to ensure the smooth transition this party and it’s members deserve.

I am confident the members of the Executive committee and the party membership at large will find new, strong leadership and will continue the fight to make this nation ever-better for its citizens.

I would like to thank all of you for the support you’ve given me. My time here has been an experience I will never forget, and I know I’m a better man for it.

For the final time, thank you and farewell.

Ryan Moffitt

Our incredible followers and their savvy use of new media to spread the word of our party has been nothing short of mindblowing. But to compete on the main stage, we need your help once again. A donation of anything from $5 to $2500 will help us continue our fight against censorship, domestic surveillance, warrantless wiretapping and expansion of intellectual property. The Democratic and Republican war machines have billions at their disposal, as well as the backing of Super PACs with undisclosed millions more. Any help you can give us, large or small will go a long way to help us fight the corporate-backed two-party system.

We are volunteers here at the Florida Pirate Party. We promise 100% of your donation will go to straight to the party’s efforts to fight for your rights in Tallahassee and Washington. Please make a one time or recurring donation to help us expand and build our party. Spread the word to as many people as you can. Show the lobbyists in Hollywood and their pets in Congress that we will no longer stand by as our civil liberties are chipped away. Tell Washington their free ride is over, and that the 21st century demands 21st century leaders.

This seizure is just the latest in a long string of abuses by US officials seeking to enforce laws such as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) outside of their jurisdiction. Megaupload is a Hong Kong-based company with servers hosted around the world, and none of the 7 named in the indictment are residents of the United States. This act is a clear and blatant violation of national sovereignty, and of the rights of the arrested individuals. The current attitude in our government that our jurisdiction extends to all corners of the globe is moronic and dangerous. We cannot continue to force our laws down the throats of the rest of the world.

The Florida Pirate Party completely, fully and absolutely condemns the actions of the FBI, ICE and the Department of Justice against Megaupload, and their continued abuses of power in their corporate-backed “War on Piracy”. These crimes by the Department of Justice, as well as the upcoming vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) have demonstrated the need for a counter to the US government’s attack on civil liberties and the immense power and influence of the Hollywood corporate lobby. The Florida Pirate Party is proud to stand alongside other Pirate parties and liberty activists here and abroad to demand these abuses come to an immediate end.

On that day, citizens are urged to call their Senators and Representatives and DEMAND they oppose SOPA/PIPA. It is NOT enough to just sign a petition and change your Twitter icon. Your representatives MUST hear from YOU that you do not support blacklists and censorship, and it is unacceptable to support Chinese-style censorship rules.

The massive success of the Internet Blackout Day has already sent a clear and resounding message to Washington: The internet MUST remain a free and open exchange of ideas and information. Several supporters and cosponsors of the bill have already backed down as a result of the net blackout, but we still have a long way to go. We showed our representatives what an internet under SOPA/PIPA would look like. As the time draws closer to a vote, we must double and triple our efforts to ensure these atrocious bills are roundly defeated. Below is the contact information for all 25 Representatives from Florida, as well as both of our Senators. Call them and demand they vote down SOPA/PIPA!

Call your Representative and tell them to vote NO on HR 3261 (SOPA)! Don’t know your Representative?

District 1- Jeff Miller (202-225-4136)

District 2- Steve Southerland (202-225-5235)

District 3- Corrine Brown (202-225-0123)

District 4- Ander Crenshaw (202-225-2501)

District 5- Richard Nugent (202-225-1002)

District 6- Cliff Stearns (202-225-5744)

District 7- John Mica (202-225-4035)

District 8- Daniel Webster (202-225-2176)

District 9- Gus Bilirakis (202-225-5755)

District 10- C.W Bill Young (202-225-5961)

District 11- Kathy Castor (202-225-3376)

District 12- Dennis Ross (202-225-1252) Former Cosponsor

District 13- Vern Buchanan (202-225-5015)

District 14- Connie Mack (202-225-2536)

District 15- Bill Posey (202-225-3671)

District 16- Tom Rooney (202-225-5792)

District 17- Frederica Wilson (202-225-4506)

District 18- Ileana Ross-Lehtinen (202-225-3931)

District 19-  Ted Deutch (202-225-3001) Cosponsor

District 20- Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (202-225-7931) Cosponsor

District 21- Mario Diaz-Balart (202-225-4211)

District 22- Allen West (202-225-3026)

District 23- Alcee Hastings (202-225-1313)

District 24- Sandy Adams (202-225-2706)

District 25- David Riviera (202-225-2778)

Call Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson and demand they vote NO on S. 968 (PIPA)

Senator Marco Rubio (202) 224-3041 Cosponsor

Senator Bill Nelson (202) 224-5274 Cosponsor

On January 18, many websites will voluntarily go on strike [1] to demonstrate against the threat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) bills, pending US legislation that would restrict freedom of speech, negatively impact economies, and degrade internet security. Participation in the strike has been confirmed by Wikipedia [2], Reddit, Mozilla, and Free Software Foundation, among others. Many organizations, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have expressed grave concerns over the bills [3].

Regardless of whether its purpose is legitimate or whether it will work; the legislation is not compatible with democratic values. It promotes censorship by giving the US Government and corporations the power to block access to – and take down – websites that they consider to be infringing on their copyright monopoly, including search engines or blogs which link to such sites. This would be done by ordering Internet Service Providers to censor access to the Internet and by cutting funds to the infringing websites by forcing the advertisers and payment services to cancel their accounts [4].

These laws would make social networks, search engines, and all websites providing space for discussion and information exchange impossible to run without massive surveillance of all users and the censorship of everything they publish. A link placed by a user in the comment section of an article in a regular Internet magazine could result in the magazine going bankrupt and the owners being charged with a crime. This would not only cripple innovation and entrepreneurship, it would be a flagrant violation of the fundamental human right to free speech. The bill’s supporters refuse to acknowledge the anti-democratic aspects of the bill as a problem; instead pointing-out that the proposed filtering mechanisms have been proven to work in countries like China, Iran, and Syria [5] – nations infamous for their official suppression of free speech and expression.

Pirate Parties are joining the protest and oppose these bills on the grounds that they will erode the rights of every internet user around the world. Pirate Parties object generally to any legislation that would toughen intellectual property law, but these acts go beyond file-sharing – they harm everyone’s ability to participate and interact online, both personally and commercially.

Pirate Parties urge other websites to join the strike on the 18th.

Pirate Parties who will black out on the 18th:

The following Pirate Parties support it:

Australia
Belgium
Catalonia
Czech Republic
Canada
France
Germany and Young Pirates Germany
Greece
Italy
Kazakhstan
Luxembourg
Massachusetts and Georgia
Russia
Slovakia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
The Netherlands
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom
Pirate Parties International

Links:
[1] Strike Against SOPA: http://sopastrike.com/
[2] English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout
[3] List Of Those Expressing Concern With SOPA & PIPA: https://www.cdt.org/report/list-organizations-and-individuals-opposing-sopa
[4] PIPA/SOPA Breaks The Internet: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/
[5] It Worked For China, Why Not The United States?: http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/it-worked-china-why-not-united-states

== END OF ENGLISH PRESS RELEASE ==

The Florida Pirate Party is pleased to announce the release of No Safe Harbor: Essays About Pirate Politics. The book can be bought in dead tree format at the following Amazon link, or it can be downloaded as a PDF (and other formats) at the site linked below.

The website for the book is http://www.nosafeharbor.com

The Obama Justice Department has denied the FLPP FOIA request for the Office of Legal Counsel memo outlining the administration’s belief it has the ability to order the killing of an American citizen without due process. Furthermore, the administration has categorically refused to acknowledge the memo’s very existence.

This development, while unsurprising, is a blatant violation of the basic concepts of government transparency and the fundamental right to a fair and expeditious trial based on fact and evidence. The very notion that the President, the military or the intelligence community believes it has the power to order the killing of a passport-holding American citizen it unilaterally deems dangerous or inconvenient has potentially dangerous and far-reaching consequences for activists and political opposition.

An appeal is now in the works, and will be filed immediately. If this appeal is denied, we reserve the right to begin litigation against the Obama administration’s Justice Department. We call upon the Justice Department to release the Awlaki memo before such drastic steps would become necessary, however.