When it comes to surprises, even among pirate observers, this was certainly one.

The title for the first Pirate in a national parliament was expected to go to the Dutch last month, but didn’t happen. Now, in a two-stage runoff election, the Czech party’s Libor Michálek  has become the first Pirate to be elected to a national government seat.

Michálek is a noted whistle-blower in the Czech Republic, who first came to prominence 16 years ago after criticizing the slow privatization of banks. In 2010 he hit the headlines again after exposing irregularities with the State Environmental Fund, which led to a number of government resignations.

The 44 year-old ran in the Senate elections as a Pirate, with the support of the Green and Christian Democrat parties. In the first round of voting, last week, he managed 24.3%, giving him a spot in this weekend’s run-off election.  Here he dominated getting 74.4% of the votes, and is now Senator for District 26, one of 81 members of that country’s upper house.

While some may decry him as not a ‘proper pirate’ but as a whistle-blower on an anti-government platform, Michálek’s primary affiliation was the Pirate Party, because of their transparency and accountability platforms.

Meanwhile, Rick Falkvinge, Pirate Party founder and TorrentFreak Columnist was also eager to point out another fact which many may overlook – Michálek is the first politician elected under FPTP with credible opponents (while Alex Arnold was also elected Mayor under a FPTP system, he had no serious candidates in opposition) .

Now the only major achievement left for any party to grab, is ‘first to keep their seat at an election’, and you can bet the parties will still compete for that.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The Czech dubbed version of The Simpsons Movie made it to BitTorrent trackers a few hours after its world premiere, followed by a Pirate Bay celebration. Due to the Czech Republic screening movie premieres on Thursdays, the Czech fans were amongst the first people worldwide to watch the movie.

The Bontonfilm company – the official Czech distributor of the movie – was apparently a bit surprised when a CAM version of the movie made it to various torrent sites including the Czech tracker MegaTorrent.cz and Sweden’s The Pirate Bay, just a few hours after its premiere.

As for quality, it’s a typical CAM version. People who have already seen this copy are saying that sound quality is satisfying for a CAM version. However, English speaking citizens are likely to be disappointed, its dubbed in Czech and there are no subtitles.

Representative of Bontonfilm Kristina Maixnerová said: “We’ve received an announcement from Czech Anti-Piracy Union that there has been made a recording of this movie directly in the cinema. At this point, it’s still unclear in which cinema, or who made the recording. As far as we know, this is the first case of this type of leak whatsoever in Czech Republic.” She also said that Bontonfilm will make a prosecution against the unknown offender (John Doe) on Monday.

Apparently, the guys at FOX international didn’t like the work of this unknown Simpsons fan either. As Maixnerová said: “Foreign reputation of Czech republic really suffered due this case. As FOX International stated, this will means tightening the security measures in Czech movie distribution.” Night vision goggles, anyone?

This is not the only piracy controversy to hit the Czech republic recently. A DVDrip of Czech film Vratne Lahve (Empties) leaked to the internet a few days ago. The special watermarked copy was originally sent by the Director of the movie to the Czech Culture Department for the purposes of review. Just after this it started showing up on BitTorrent.

As a Czech Homer Simpson might say: “SáákryÅ¡!”

(doh!)

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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