About InternetPirate.com

Some visitors to internetpirate.com (currently down, maybe forever, perhaps use past tense) may not even find the political party page, since the navigation is unusual, where not deliberately obscure,. The site is amateurish and primitive in design, because I was an amateur ( still am), and it was a very long time ago. From my point of view it was an arts project, a calculated assertion of my 1st Amendment rights, a venue for a few poems, an effort at expressing my political philosophy and my values. I also included a page with links providing potential angles to the intersection of conspiracy theories and truth, a topic of great interest to me. The site is a finished whole. There is no plan to update it in any way, or fix decades old typos, broken links, or imperfect wording of any degree.

Posting carried several kinds of risks, from my point of view. I had to gamble that the people most likely to be inflamed by my most provocative stances, who might be extremely powerful, would respect my right express myself in the way I had discovered, like or not. I drew on faith that I could safely go about my business like any other citizen, without fear of extra-legal retaliation while on legally solid ground. More than twenty years later, I have been mostly successful in this regard. It is a source of unbounded gratitude, inextricably connected to the fact that I am an American. I have pointed a number of my other domains elsewhere over the years, on and off, at my pleasure and whim, or sometimes to make a point, whether or not it might be seen or understood. I’ve built a few other experimental sites, taken most down, acquired a few new domains and let many others go, undeveloped. One relatively long running site was lost in the shuffle. Like other things I should not start here to name, domains are irritatingly priced.

The choice of the pirate theme to go with the plank was deliberate, and it continues on mcpirates.us . The naming of the site seemed an appropriate response to the outrageous copyright and intellectual property claims by the most powerful stakeholders and their stranglehold on lawmaking at a time when digital technologies were evolving rapidly, and business models ought to have been. Maybe counter-intuitively, I thought embracing the aggressive, criminalizing approach of industry, pirate judo style, could provide just the tools that I or others might need to clearly express the mockery and outrage called for by the situation, as well as other sorely neglected problems.

Rather than adjust to the new economy, they chose to enshrine their profits in law and preemptively decimate an array of rights that seemed to be emerging in the internet age. For those who don’t remember, it was sharing of music files, primarily by young people, that woke the lawyer and lobbyist dragons of the entertainment industry. In my opinion, Steve Jobs & Co. saved 10’s of millions of Americans from being criminalized with the invention of the iTunes Store, providing a desperately needed example of a new business model. Now there are many, some quite exploitive, even abusive. Long term trends might be said to parallel those in voting rights.

I co-utilized my digital pirate ship as a platform for nearly online-only write-in run for U.S. President in 2000 (no money raised or spent) because, with the advent of the internet and the personal empowerment it offered and, being of qualifying age, birth, and capabilities, I could. Several hundred people had roughly the same idea that year. It was an unexpectedly enlightening experience and I’m glad for having taken the plunge. I ended up voting for Al Gore, not in a state where he needed my vote. Gore’s cowardice on climate in that campaign (atoned for best as he could later) was also an early source of motivation for the project. Like Mr. Gore, I had been doing my research on that subject and I was Alarmed. By the time the bitterly fought election rolled around I did not desire or have expectations of any votes, and I didn’t check. I moved on to other things, a new family and career.

My attention was drawn back to Pirates and Politics in 2013, when I learned of the success of the Icelandic Pirate Party, and others. More about that here.

Though extremely annoyed I cannot take a stroll with my cat, I have no intention of running for dogcatcher or anything else ever again, for those who might wonder.

Jeffrey Graham Winter

December 2021