TorrentFreak

The Pirates of Lower Saxony, Germany, kicked off their election campaign yesterday with a provocative and clever poster campaign. Engaging in exactly the kind of activity closely associated with the worldwide Pirate Party movement, the German Pirates have copied and remixed the designs and logos of several famous brands to put across their message and outline their aspirations.

The constant expansion of copyright laws and penalties in the US might be facing a radical slowdown soon, as a Republican Party policy brief released on Friday undermines many of the claims made to support such legislation. Among other things it states that today’s copyright law is “a form of corporate welfare that hurts innovation and hurts the consumer.”

Back in August, we mentioned that Pirate Parties International (PPI) – the international pirate party NGO – was poised to join the World intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) as an observer member. The membership application, which had the apparent backing of the WIPO Secretary General, was deferred until next year due to concern by some member-countries. A report from Knowledge [...]

The Pirate Party movement reached a new milestone yesterday with the world’s first elected Pirate Mayor being voted into office in the Swiss town of Eichberg. With an overwhelming 63 percent of the total vote, Alex Arnold defeated two candidates from the political establishment. The 31-year old software programmer is eager to steer the small Swiss town towards a prosperous future.

Ever since the arrest last week of Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm, there has been the usual speculation of who in the United States or Sweden ‘paid off’ Cambodia to make the move. Of course, with no supporting evidence claims that such a deal exists can be brushed off as pure fantasy. But today, in another one of those unusual political coincidences, Cambodian officials announced the “strengthening of bilateral ties” with Sweden – along with a $59 million aid package sweetener.

Next week the Dutch will elect their national parliament for the coming four years, and for the second time the local Pirate Party is on the ballot. According to most polls the Pirates have a decent chance of securing at least one seat, a milestone for the movement as it would be the first democratically chosen Pirate in a national parliament. One of the main goals of the Pirates is to fight increased censorship and the growing influence of the copyright lobby.

With the destruction of The Pirate Bay seemingly an impossible mission for the time being, seeing that the site’s former operators serve their sentences appears to be the next best thing for the authorities. Following the unlikely news last week that site co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm had been arrested in Cambodia, a country rarely associated with its interest in intellectual property issues, it will perhaps be of interest that President Obama’s trade ambassador was in Cambodia on that very day.