TorrentFreak

Peter Sunde has announced he will run in the European Parliament elections next year. Sunde, the former spokesman for The Pirate Bay, will participate for the Finnish branch of the Pirate Party. Sunde has yet to sit out a prison sentence for his previous involvement with the infamous BitTorrent site but hopes to emulate the Swedish Pirate Party’s previous successes when they claimed seats for two MEPs.

The Pirate Party in Iceland seem to have booked a major victory in Iceland’s parliamentary election today, scoring 5.1% of the total vote. It’s a truly remarkable achievement for a party that’s only a few months old, and also the first time that a Pirate party anywhere in the world has been democratically chosen in a national parliament. One of the main goals of the Pirates will be to fight increased censorship and protect freedom of speech.

Wikileaks loves to share secret documents and pirates are all for sharing culture, but can these movements share voters in the upcoming Australian elections to ensure at least one of them gets elected?

France may be stepping up their HADOPI scheme, but not every European country is heading the same way. In Finland, a new procedure, passed last year might bring a radical change to the copyright law. The secret is public participation. There is some history of public participation schemes in several countries already. The US government [...]

A Dutch court has declared a criminal case against a Pirate Bay uploader inadmissible. The man admitted uploading more than 5,000 e-books to the popular BitTorrent site, but the court ruled that copyright infringement cases belong in a civil, not criminal court. Current policy rules prescribe that copyright infringements should only be handled in a criminal court if the defendant is part of a criminal organization, or when the infringements are carried out as business activities.

It’s been an up and down week for Pirates, as official party status has been decided in two countries. In Australia it’s a big G’day to their Pirate Party, while the Russians yet again heard ‘Nyet’ from their Ministry of Justice.

TPB-AFK, the upcoming documentary about The Pirate Bay and its founders, is finally ready for a worldwide premiere. The film has been in the making for four years and aside from funds received from “the Internet” it received financial support from major broadcasters including the BBC. Director Simon Klose hopes that the film will be picked up by a film festival soon so it can be shared on the Internet, for free.