Political pirates aiming to unfetter information in the Internet age are hunting for official party status, hoping to sail onto Ottawa’s federal stage in the coming months.

The Pirate Party of Canada is building a platform that includes, among other things, reforming copyright laws, which currently keep copyrighted materials from the public domain until 50 years after the creator’s death.

“Right now, copyright is stifling creativity,” 19-year-old party leader Jake Daynes says.  “We believe that it is too strict, and needs to be brought back to the way it was originally planned, which was only against commercial use.”

The party’s zeal for the issue is connected to its philosophy of information ownership and Internet use.

“Information wants to be free and it wants to move around, so we have to consider the Internet a free zone,” party spokesman Daniel LaSalle explains. “Nobody’s going to have the joy or luxury of mixing, for example, a Queen song or a Guns N’ Roses song in our lifetime, and we think people need to decide with the ever-present Internet, do they really want to contain that kind of thing, or do they want to reform the copyrights for everything to be accessible to everybody on a non-commercial basis?”

Aware that combining the party name with this concern makes for a small leap to digital piracy, LaSalle remains specific about their goal.

“Of course, we are for copyrights, and we’re for patents. But there’s a sane usage that needs to be set up that currently is not,” he says.

Aside from mitigating copyright laws and Internet restrictions, the PPC hopes to bring more political attention to patent reform, privacy rights for citizens, and government transparency.

Having achieved non-profit corporate status earlier this month, they are now waiting to become official in order to take these issues to Ottawa.

“We’re hoping to see confirmation in the next 60 days,” Daynes says. “About 400 or so members have sent us their forms so we can register with Elections Canada, and the number they require is 250.”

The captain and crew share similar interests with Sweden’s Pirate Party, which formed in 2006, and gained its first seat in European parliament last June after bolstered clampdowns on filesharing precipitated a groundswell of support.

In Canada, it has not taken long to garner considerable public interest for the party, which formed in June 2009. It counts 1,501 official members nationwide, and has made strong use of the Internet to stimulate popularity, with 942 fans on Facebook, and 1,094 followers on Twitter as of last Monday.

Official members range in age from 18 to 49 Daynes says, with Ontario and British Columbia being the most pirate-friendly. Quebec follows, while across the land-locked Prairies pirates are finding it more difficult to gain ground.

In Edmonton, only three members managed to attend a party meet-up at the Elephant and Castle Pub on Jan. 10, but organizer Mikkel Paulson is undeterred.

“We were getting together to make sure the party stays on the social radar,” says Grant MacEwan student Paulson, the party’s social media coordinator. He is in charge of Facebook and Twitter accounts.

His enthusiasm for the party, which he hopes will spread throughout the Edmonton area, originates from an enduring interest in ownership issues regarding information.

“I’ve been reading in the news for years about how copyright is essentially sold to corporations time and again,” he says.  “In determining copyright policy there is very little consideration given to consumers, and I think they should have more say. “Corporations are only interested in pushing for more and more draconian, longer copyright terms, whereas consumers could benefit more from a shorter term.”

As the party waits for official entry to the political scene, Daynes divides his time between studying animation game design at Vancouver’s Pacific Audio Visual Institute and preparing to dive into the turbulent waters of Parliament.

Along with developing a plan to approach the Green Party for partnership based on non-conflicting agendas and a similar successful relationship between the Swedish pirate party and the European Green Party, he and other members are strategizing for their first election.

 “Our target riding is going to be Kitchener/Waterloo, based on the three giant polytechnic universities in the area,” he says. “They make up quite a large chunk of the population in that riding, and since they are polytechnic institutes, our issues definitely affect them.”

At this point, serious treatment or flippant reactions to their name, platform, and relative youth from established national parties prompt little concern for the crew, who perceive current political proceedings as important yet unsophisticated.

“Canadian Parliament looks like a jungle, a movie, a comedy act, so I would not have any problem playing the gimmick, dressing up as a pirate and running in saying ‘Arrr,’” LaSalle says. “But it is not a comedy act, it is real.”