Cooperators are spoiled for choice in the UK because all the major parties say nice things about cooperatives and there’s even the Cooperative Party, but a lot of us who take a sharing view to software (usually Free and Open Source Software) are concerned by the attitudes of the Top Three Parties towards copyright and related rights. Generally, these seem to have been hostile to sharing and the creative commonwealth, focusing on punishing people for unauthorised copying.
The Green Parties have been fantastic, as far as I’ve seen. When I spoke at the “Resisting corporate monopolies and new enclosures” workshop in the European Social Forum 2004 in London, their Laurence Vandewalle spoke in the same session, as shown in the mugshots.
One relatively new party is the Pirate Party UK, who are hoping for similar success to the similar party in Sweden that has two MEPs now.
Some have questioned their attitude to copyright and how it would affect FOSS. They’ve posted an article where rms talks to the Pirate Party UK to try to clarify it.
At the moment, I’m an independent councillor. I have no particular objection to joining a party – I just haven’t yet. I think the current protectionist pro-WIPO stance of the Big Three means I won’t join them yet. Do you think I should consider GPEW or PPUK?