TorrentFreak

This week the German Pirate Party reached an impressive milestone as it hit double digits in the polls for the national elections. With one in ten Germans embracing the ideas of the young party, the Pirates are on course to gain serious influence in one of the world’s major political arenas.

The European Greens have released a landmark position paper that should guide their policies on copyright in the digital era. The overall theme is a reduction of the copyright monopoly to the benefit of consumers. Among other things the Greens want to legalize file-sharing for personal use, ban DRM entirely and restrict the copyright term to five years.

For the first time in history a Pirate Party has managed to enter a state parliament. With an estimated 9 percent of the total vote the Pirate Party exceeded the 5% floor needed to enter the Berlin parliament with several seats. For the international Pirate Party movement this is the second major success after the European elections of 2009.

Earlier this year U.S. lawmakers proposed a draconian anti-piracy legislation known as the PROTECT IP Act. When the proposal becomes law, U.S. authorities and copyright holders will have the power to seize domains, block websites and censor search engines to prevent copyright infringements. But file-hosting service RapidShare have a lot to lose by its introduction and are now spending a great deal of money countering the views of pro-copyright lobbyists.

With the elections for the Berlin state parliament just four weeks away, the German Pirate Party is on course to an impressive election win. A recent poll shows that support for the Pirate Party is growing, and with 4.5 percent of the votes the pirates are getting close to the minimum 5 percent needed to enter parliament with several seats.

A few months ago 21-year old Travis McCrea participated in the Canadian federal elections as candidate for the Pirate Party in Vancouver Centre. Aside from his political ambitions, McCrea also described himself as an entrepreneur. As with his political views, his business ventures are also focused on file-sharing related ideas, and most recently he started a torrent site to promote the distribution of movies.

In a deliberately provocative move the Czech Pirate Party has launched not one but two movie download portals. The sites, which offer links but don’t host any infringing material themselves, are being launched to protest the plight of a high school student facing a 5 million euro damages claim for linking to copyright works.