Czech Pirate Party seeks political backing for web freedom bill enshrining basic principles of non-interefence with the Internet into law.
The Czech Pirate Party (ČPS) says it wants to force through a constitutional change guaranteeing freedom from interference on the Internet.
The main lines of the proposed change have been drawn up, and exploratory talks will be launched with political parties to see how far they are prepared to support the constitutional change, ČPS chairman and spokesman Ivan Bartoš told Czech Position.
Earlier on Tuesday, deputy party chairman Jakub Michálek told public broadcaster Czech Television (ČT) the law should “guarantee that the Czech Republic, under the influence of economic and political interest groups will not try to impose restrictive laws on the Internet which would be incompatible with freedom of the Internet.”
The proposed law is primarily a reaction to the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), an international initiative aimed at stepping up copyright protection, whose ratification Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas (Civic Democrat, ODS) has stopped in its tracks following protests and hacking of government and political party websites at the start of the month.
But the move would also go further by banning disconnection from the Internet without a court order, blocking of information, tracking of the computers of users without clear reasons and remove responsibility from the Internet Service Provider (ISP) for how a site is used once the connection has been established.
“We feel that this is the only real path open to us,” Bartoš told Czech Position.
The ČPS has the impression that the biggest opposition party, the left-of-center Social Democrats (ČSSD), would be sympathetic to the proposal for a constitutional law following the general backing given over ACTA, he added. “We intend to have talks with the leadership of the ČSSD. We have reason to hope for their support but at the moment there is nothing explicit,” Bartoš said.
A constitutional law would require the backing of three-fifths of the members of the lower house and upper house of parliament. Whatever its sympathy for the pirates, the ČSSD alone has a thin majority in the upper house of parliament, the Senate, and just over a quarter of the seats in the 200-seat lower house.
Czech Television suggested that the center-right coalition’s smallest party, Public Affairs (VV), might also be sympathetic to the Czech Pirate Party’s bill, adding that its lower house lawmaker Viktor Paggio had said he was ready for talks.
Bartoš said that he expected most mainstream parties would not give any clear signal of whether they might support or oppose the party’s innitiative, saying that it would be left up to individual lawmakers to decide how to vote if the proposal got that far.
http://www.ceskapozice.cz/en/news/society/pirate-party-seeks-support-internet-freedom-bill
