The Pirate Party of the United States, a sister organization to the Swedish Piratpartiet, has officially announced that it is forming a state party in Utah. This is the first state that this burgeoning political party has announced it is forming in.

With the focus on the mine collapse in Utah high in the news right now, cynics might say that this is nothing more than a cheap attempt to gain publicity, at the expense of others. To that, Ray Jenson, the interim administrator for the Utah party responded “We’ve actually been working for quite a long time on this–over a month–and the timing really couldn’t be helped. It was ready when it was ready. If it had been two days, or two weeks from now, I’m sure we still would have had the same result.” He also added, “It’s a tragedy. Our best wishes are with those miners and their families, wherever they might be.”

Utah is, of course, no stranger to debate on copyright and its infringement. Some of the most controversial statements and proposals on dealing with it have come from Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. Mr Jenson commented “In general, he seems as though he sincerely believes what he’s doing is the right thing. I hope that some education on the issue can alert him to the fact that what he’s been proposing is not always in the best interests of the public.” Indeed, it’s hard to say how destroying people’s computers could be in the public interest, especially when there is no way of definitively proving, even after months of court discovery, that someone was infringing, and as we all know, it turned out that his campaign site was itself infringing copyright.

Mr Jenson has no plans, however, for running for any offices at this time, saying “one step at a time, we’re concentrating on getting the party and it’s issues recognized at the present”.

More details can be found here