Background
Norton was born in Liverpool, England.
Norton was born in Liverpool, England.
He was educated at Liverpool Blue Coat School from 1991 to 1998 and assisted as an Information Technology technician for four years before studying Robotics at the University of Liverpool.
He is a former Coordinator of Pirate Parties International, and is currently the Chairman of the United States Pirate Party and a previous Chairman of the Board for Pirate Party United Kingdom.
Using his knowledge of robotics, Norton took part in various robot combat competitions in the United Kingdom and the United States, first as a competitor and later as a safety inspector. His team, Liverdyne Robotics, held the United Kingdom Middleweight title from 1998 to 2000. Norton helped run over 70 independent robot combat events around the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2003.
He also appeared in series 3, 4, and 5 of British robot combat television show Robot Wars.
He also worked on several seasons of Comedy Central"s BattleBots. In the late 1990s Norton worked as a commercial copyright enforcer for a London-based record label, however he resigned from this role in 1999 over protests with the industry response to Napster and MP3s.
Norton has been employed by the Dutch news website TorrentFreak for several years, and is their lead researcher and Community Manager. He is also currently a P2P systems researcher and is the assistant director of Electronic Frontier Forums, a series of lectures and panels given at Dragon Con each year.
In 2003, Norton moved to Georgia, United States.
He joined the Conservative Party, but left when he moved to the United States in 2003.
In 2004 he worked on the election campaign for two Libertarian Party candidates for a state house seat in Washington state. However, the campaign was not a success. Norton became part of the United States Pirate Party in October 2006 shortly after its founding, and was made International Coordinator.
In September 2008 he stepped down from Chairmanship to become the first Coordinator of the then-fledgling Pirate Parties International.
He left this role in July 2009, handing the role over to a team of Patrick Mächler and Samir Allioui. He has since criticised the direction of Pirate Parties International.
In 2011, Norton joined the Pirate Party United Kingdom as a member, and has worked as part of the press team since then On 28 April 2013, he became a Governor of Pirate Party United Kingdom. On 28 January 2015, Norton became Chairman of the Board of Pirate Party United Kingdom. He rejoined the Board of the United States Pirate Party on 14 July 2010 as the party"s Legal Officer.
In November 2013 he became the Vice Chair of the United States Pirate Party, continuing in this role until January 2015, when he resumed the role of Chairman.
Since June 2013 he has also been the Vice Chair of the Georgia state Pirate Party.
Norton was introduced to politics in the late 1990s by current Leader of the Liberal Party and family friend, Steve Radford. In March 2007, Norton became Chairman of the party and served in this role until September 2008.