Swedish Pirate Party Looks to Win 2 EP Seats

Chardee MacDennis

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-wins-and-enters-the-european-parliament-090607/

The Pirate Party has won a huge victory in the Swedish elections and is marching on to Brussels. After months of campaigning against well established parties, the Pirate Party has gathered enough votes to be guaranteed a seat in the European Parliament.

When the Swedish Pirate Party was founded in early 2006, the majority of the mainstream press were skeptical, with some simply laughing it away. But they were wrong to dismiss this political movement out of hand. Today, the Pirate Party accomplished what some believed to be the impossible, by securing a seat in the European Parliament.
With 5593 out of 5664 districts counted the Pirates have 7 percent of the votes, beating several established parties. This means that the Pirate Party will get at least one, maybe two of the 18 available seats Sweden has at the European Parliament.
When we asked Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge about the outcome, he told TorrentFreak: “We’ve felt the wind blow in our sails. We’ve seen the polls prior to the election. But to stand here, today, and see the figures coming up on that screen… What do you want me to say? I’ll say anything”
“Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it,” Falkvinge said. “This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it’s time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples’ lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities’ mass-surveillance,” he added.

Rick Falkvinge celebrating tonight’s election win

The turnout at the elections is 43 percent, a little higher than the at the 2004 elections. This would mean that roughly 200,000 Swedes have voted for the Pirate Party. This is a huge increase compared to the national elections of 2006 where the party got 34,918 votes.
Both national and international press have gathered in Stockholm where the Pirate Party is celebrating its landmark victory.

Falkvinge answering questions

At least partially, The Pirate Party puts its increased popularity down to harsh copyright laws and the recent conviction of the people behind The Pirate Bay. After the Pirate Bay verdict, Pirate Party membership more than tripled and they now have over 48,000 registered members, more than the total number of votes they received in 2006.
With their presence in Brussels, the Pirate Party hopes to reduce the abuses of power and copyright at the hands of the entertainment industries, and make those activities illegal instead. On the other hand they hope to legalize file-sharing for personal use.

Arrrr

“It’s great fun to be a pirate right now”, Christian Engström, Vice Chairman of the Pirate Party told the press when he arrived.

Brilliant, we could do with something like this here...

ShooterSF

Good to see after how the owners of the bay were treated in court.

Dr. Baltar

Let's establish an Irish Wing!
This is fantastic news!

ionix5891

yaaaarrr


anyways

Thats one thing thats pissing me of about all existing parties and independents here in Ireland (suppose were not as "wired" as the swedes)

none of them are trying to address the very important issues of
* privacy
* data protection
* net neutrality
* copyright reform
* government surveillance (of the people)
* broadband penetration

lostexpectation

wonder does the pirate party have the same fascist backing as there torrent site

SeanW

??? I think you'll find it's the facists that want to take it down.

Tar.Aldarion

Haha, that is hilarious.

Kama

Can't stop the Signal! Kinda funny how the biggest effect of the Pirate Bay trial is to give them massive transnational exposure (gotta love free advertising in all the MSM) and boost their political party into an actual force...

Mind you, with all that information wanting to be free, it's hard to keep things like neo-Nazi links in the dark...

conchubhar1

ah

amazing how any party that opposes a centre approach gets branded with stuff like that

either nazi, communist or terrorist links - childish

lostexpectation

what in the register story do you doubt?

ShooterSF

Well as long as the pirate party doesn't change it policies to the redevelopment of auschwitz I think I'm fine with them. It's getting to conspiracy theories to suggest this all a clever guise by one man to gain power and then exact his "neo-nazi" views on the world.

lostexpectation

thats not the point they site has fascist backing, there be no pirate bay without him, they overlap in their libertarian view.

ShooterSF

lostexpectation wrote: »

thats not the point they site has fascist backing, there be no pirate bay without him, they overlap in there libertarian view.

That's fair enough but support of one doesn't means you support the other. If we can agree on that I don't see the concern.
The pirate bay is one area of the guy's interest. I can support it without agreeing with him on all his beliefs.

BeerWolf

Find it curious how people who promote piracy are even in politics to begin with...

ShooterSF

BeerWolf wrote: »

Find it curious how people who promote piracy are even in politics to begin with...

Both are technically crooks...

BeerWolf

ShooterSF wrote: »

Both are technically crooks...

Yeah well, I'm talking about something that's blatent - heck they're called PIRATE (piracy)

:pac:

ShooterSF

BeerWolf wrote: »

Yeah well, I'm talking about something that's blatent - heck they're called PIRATE (piracy)

:pac:

Actually reading up on the party they are separate of pirate bay, to what degree I have no idea. They want to reduce commerical copyright protection to 5 years. The concept is most money is made in your first 5 years and they are looking for a balance of commercialism vs culture. They aren't asking to legally download the latest albums and movies for free.
They are against all types of DRM, obviously.
They also want a change in phamaceutical patents to stop the situation of someone discovering a cure and then hiding it until the patent clears.

Again some interesting ideals.

RHRN

ShooterSF wrote: »

Actually reading up on the party they are separate of pirate bay, to what degree I have no idea. They want to reduce commerical copyright protection to 5 years. The concept is most money is made in your first 5 years and they are looking for a balance of commercialism vs culture. They aren't asking to legally download the latest albums and movies for free.
They are against all types of DRM, obviously.
They also want a change in phamaceutical patents to stop the situation of someone discovering a cure and then hiding it until the patent clears.

Again some interesting ideals.

They're completely separate to TPB and to Piratbyran

ShooterSF

I've been won over. Sick and tired of having no representation so looking at parties for the last couple of weeks and other potential ones I am giving my support to a new Pirate Party.

ionix5891

ShooterSF wrote: »

I've been won over. Sick and tired of having no representation so looking at parties for the last couple of weeks and other potential ones I am giving my support to a new Pirate Party.

aye aye

none of the irish parties are interested in the information tech related issues, which can greatly affect our freedoms (See eirscum as an example)

it has a great potential to generate money, speaking as someone who is making money from the net and is very worried about net neutrality, privacy and ip issues

humanji

Can anyone actually see them getting anything done? I'd imagine any type of proposal that they bring forward would be flung right back at them. Their goals sound admirable, but so do every parties goals when they go for election, and they're usually quickly forgotten about.

Nody

humanji wrote: »

Can anyone actually see them getting anything done? I'd imagine any type of proposal that they bring forward would be flung right back at them. Their goals sound admirable, but so do every parties goals when they go for election, and they're usually quickly forgotten about.

The job of fringe parties is not to get their proposals through but to set the debate. This is already going on in Sweden where both biggest parties are taking a beating internally over missing this issue and I'd expect to see a very different tune in next election.

ShooterSF

Nody wrote: »

The job of fringe parties is not to get their proposals through but to set the debate. This is already going on in Sweden where both biggest parties are taking a beating internally over missing this issue and I'd expect to see a very different tune in next election.

+ 1 From reading what happened in Sweden the Major parties seem to have changed their view on the issues, if only moderately. Don't neglect the mainstream parties desire to adapt to popular opinion in the desire to hold/keep power.