Tuesday June 9th 2009, by Piers Strickland
An article from the Guardian (link) reports that the “Pirate Party” has won 2 seats in the Swedish European Parliamentary elections with a whopping 7.1%. This seems quite a large number of votes for a single issue party.
While this Pirate Party is not the same organisation as that behind the torrent site, the Pirate Bay, whose founders have recently been found guilty by a Swedish Court and face imprisonment, the Pirate Party’s manifesto aims are aligned with their fellow pirate conspirators.
According to the Guardian, the Pirate Party’s platform is to:
“increase people’s privacy on the web, and to protect freedom of speech…to reform the copyright laws and patent system.”
Of course, part of the reason why such parties wish to ensure that privacy on the Internet is enhanced is to make it harder for rights holders to monitor who is engaging in unauthorised and infringing P2P file sharing.
The Pirate Party’s success might well be a direct protest from certain sections of the Swedish public following the treatment of the Pirate Bay’s founders. However, the poll results do point to the fact that governments and the rights holding industries, in Sweden and beyond, have a struggle on their hands to win the hearts and minds of consumers against such a political movements.
