Pirates and politics

As far right extremist groups seemed to dominate the geadlines following last week’s European Elections, a slightly quirkier and more interesting story seems to have been missed by the more mainstream media – the rise to prominence of the ‘Pirate Party’ in Sweden. The group has campaigned on reformation of copyright law and secured 7.1 per cent of the vote – and a seat in the European Parliament. At face value it sounds like a novelty vote, but if you scratch the surface of what the party wants to do it pretty much affects every single person that reads PT, although in totally different ways.

Let’s rewind a little first. The party was founded in 2006 with 900 members signing up within the first month. They grew steadily until May 31, 2006 when Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay. Suddenly the party found themselves in the public eye. Before the raid, the Party was steadily growing with some 10 new members every day, but the aforementioned raid by the police led to more than 500 new members by the end of the day, with a membership count of 2,680. The next day another 930 people had register membership, giving a total of 3,611 members, more than doubling their original number. With the bit between their teeth the party lobbied with other political parties and the right to free information became their main focus. In April 2009, after The Pirate Bay trial was over, the Pirate Party gained 3,000 members in 7 hours, making it bigger than 3 of the 7 parties in the Swedish parliament. One week later it had already 40,000 members – compared to 15,000 members before the verdict and has now more members than 5 of the 7 parties in the Swedish Parliament, with over 46,376 members as of 22 May 2009.

With a ready-made audience and a 21st cause to fight for, there’s no surprise the party has become popular with younger people. Not just that, but they’ve also changed the stance of other political parties in Sweden. In 2006 both prime minister candidates stated publicly that it shouldn’t be illegal for young people to share files. Additionally, the Swedish Minister of Justice, Thomas Bodström, announced on June 9 that he was willing to negotiate a possible revision of the law introduced in 2005 that made unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material illegal, introducing a new tax on broadband Internet access, but he later denied having changed his stance on the issue. In January 2008 seven Swedish members of parliament from the Moderate Party, member of the governing coalition, authored a piece in a Swedish tabloid calling for the complete decriminalization of filesharing. The Swedish members of parliament wrote that “Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It’s the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet.”

Now the party can take their fight for internet freedoms to a bigger audience. The Pirate Party is spreading its wings with active political groups in Germany, Spain, Austria, Poland and Finland. In Germany the party received 200,000 votes at the Euros, although this accounted for just 0.9 per cent of the total. So how does it affect you? If the Pirate Party’s ideals managed to get wider support then it could open the doors for downloading to go from illegal status to legal. Obviously that’s a sweeping statement, but the fight against illegal filesharing is totally and utterly pointless. Short of shutting down the internet, there’s no way you could ever stop it. The merits of whether it is right or wrong are becoming pointless – the system and set up needs to adapt and change; those who react the best to change will survive. Is it right for politicians to get involved in copyright law? Would you vote for a UK Pirate Party? How would it effect you?