**Summer 2023 PPI Board Report
*Members of the Board
:There are 9 members of the board (Florie Marie-chair, Gregory Engels-vice, Keith Goldstein-secretary, Bailey Lamon-treasurer, Michal Gill, Alexander Isavnin, Julian Häffner, Mauricio Vargas, Maycow Toledo), and 5 alternates (Sebastian Krone, Mia Utz, Raman Ojha, Carlos Polo, and Adam Wolf).
*Board Meeting Attendance
:In total the PPI Board held 8 meetings since the last GA. The board is currently meeting once a month. Recently the Pirate Beer social event is taking place directly prior to the board meetings, enabling the Pirate community and public to interact with the board and provide ideas that can be discussed later by the board. Board meetings are currently held on Wednesdays with a rotating basis for start times between 05:00 UTC and 21:00 UTC.
*Financial Issues
:The board addressed issues with affiliation fees, acknowledging issues with their payment. The board also recognized issues with payment of invoices.
*UN Activities
:ECOSOC Groundspasses were arranged in January, including groundspasses for PPI members at all 3 UN centers. After a 2 year delay due to the pandemic PPI was able to send representatives to the UN. This was a huge success, as we were able to issue the groundspasses at the beginning of the year and send numerous representatives to attend UN events. We attended events about AI, criminal use of the internet, and various meetings about NGO collaboration. Carlos Polo and the team in Geneva made numerous visits to UNOG and a blog was created. Ohad Shem Tov spearheaded meetings at UNHQ. We created a new UN activities email list unecosoc@pp-international.net to receive updates from the UN, addressing previous issues with emails not reaching all members. The SCUBA working group had several meetings on submitting session proposals to the IGF. They proposed sessions with Japanese Pirates and others on topics related to computer ethics and digital totalitarianism, with links available on the IGF website. The proposals passed the first judging, advancing to the second round, but they did not make the final cut of 80 chosen workshops (less than 10% of proposals were chosen). We are currently waiting to see if we can have a booth at the event for which a separate application was made.
*Tools
:The board revised slightly its primary tools. A renewed emphasis was placed on using Discord and Discourse. The board continues to use Wire for its internal communications. The Rules of Procedure were updated to use Discourse, Discord, and Wire instead of Redmine and Loomio. There were concerns raised about using Discord due to data privacy issues.
*Issue with Discourse Admin
There was an issue with the Discourse platform and administrative rights. Cedric Levieux, the IT secretary, explained his decision to revoke administrative rights from some board members. This sparked a heated discussion particularly regarding the proper interpretation of the statutes. The Discourse admin access was removed for everyone by Stefan Thoni and then quickly reinstated following a decision by the board that all board members should be the only admins of the Discourse. Cedric voluntarily withdrew from the IT position. A proposal was made by Mike Gill to revoke Cedric’s membership from the Court of Arbitration. This decision was later referred to the GA.
*Communication Group
:The lack of regular social media content motivated the board to discuss setting up a new working group, a Communications Group, that would ensure regular content posting. This group still needs to be properly established.
*PPIHQ
The possibility of moving the PPI headquarters from Brussels was discussed, with some members considering the advantages of a location change. However, no formal decision was made, and further discussion was proposed for the next meeting. Further discussions were made about the utility of PPI’s separate registrations in Switzerland, but also no decisions were made to change anything. Sebastian Krone discussed tax consequences in Belgium and obligations as a Swiss association. The decision to move would require approval from the General Assembly.
*Other Updates
:Florie Marie shared her experience of being banned from Twitter and proposed filing a complaint against Twitter at an international level in the name of freedom of speech.
:PPI adopted the PPEU Code of Conduct.
:PPI will commemorate Aaron Swarz Day in November (spearheaded by Maycow Toledo).
:PPI provided a memorial message about the passing of David Miranda, a supporter of the Pirate Party in Brazil who was actively involved in their activities (spearheaded by Maycow Toledo).
:The Board reviewed the list of Ordinary, Observer, and Other Contact for members and updated its contact database. More work needs to be done especially with social media. We should also attempt to add more people to the pp-leaders mailing list to ensure that everyone hears about our activities.
:Pirate Party of Australia attended several of our meetings and has expressed interest in joining PPI, but we are still waiting for an application.
:The US Pirate Party attended several of our meetings as a new member.