These are the first words of a new book that two Pirate Party icons shared with all members of the European Parliament this week. In a time where copyright laws increasingly violate basic human rights, Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom and Rick Falkvinge want to break this trend.

Instead of merely pointing out what is wrong with current proposals such as ACTA, they’re going a step further by offering alternatives.

“We feel that there are many people who know that the Pirate Party is unhappy with copyright legislation as it stands today, but who are unaware that we have a constructive proposal as to how it should be reformed. We are not just complaining,” Christian Engstrom told TorrentFreak.

In the early years the Pirate Party was often jokingly characterized as a bunch of spotty nerds who simply want free stuff. While this perception has changed somewhat in recent years, especially when Christian Engstrom joined the European Parliament, there is still a need to clarify the Party’s position.

“We wanted to explain why this issue is about preserving fundamental rights on the internet, and not just about getting free films or pop music,” says Engstrom.

“The battle over ACTA has made many politicians aware of the fact that freedom on the internet is an issue that citizens (a.k.a. voters) care about, but most mainstream politicians are not very familiar with the issue.”

The book gives a broad overview of how the current copyright monopoly is starting to degrade free speech and people’s privacy. Internet censorship proposals have become commonplace and alleged pirates are punished without due process, all without any clear evidence that more stringent measures actually cause a decline in piracy.

Therefore, one of the key issues of the book is to offer alternatives. The Pirate Party doesn’t want to abolish copyright, they want to reform it. For example, the moral rights of authors would remain unchanged, but all non-commercial copying would be legalized. In addition, DRM woud be banned entirely.

“I am hoping that the book will be helpful in that respect, and that the timing is quite good right now. If we manage to stop ACTA, the natural question becomes ‘okay, so what should we do instead?’ Then we have a realistic and sensible answer,” Engstrom told us.

Those who are interested in reading the book can download it for free in several formats. A paper version is also available on the self-publishing platform Lulu.

Source: Pirate Party Presents ACTA Alternative to European Parliament

The Party currently has dozens of members in elected offices across Germany, which is more than in all other countries combined. Most notable is the unprecedented win in the elections for the Berlin state parliament last summer, where the Pirates got 9 percent of the vote.

Continuing this success the Party is now conquering the rest of Germany. For the first time in its history the Pirate Party is now virtually the third largest party in Germany, achieving 13% of the total vote in a recent poll.

The Pirate Party surpassed the Green Party, which peaked at 11%.

In common with all other Pirate Parties across the world, the German Pirate Party’s policy focuses around three pillars; shared culture, free knowledge, and fundamental privacy. Based on recent poll results, these key points appeal to a wide audience.

While the results of the polls are promising, there is still a long way to go. The next federal elections are held late 2013, more than a year away.

The success of the German Pirates is mimicked by their neighbors in Austria, where the local Pirate Party got 7% of all votes in a recent poll.

Illustrating that the Pirates are not a fringe group, 22% of the respondents said they could see themselves voting for the Party in the coming elections.

The coming months will be crucial for both parties, as they have to keep the momentum going towards the new elections. Being in the spotlight is great for as long as there’s good news to sell.

Times can change quickly as we’ve seen in Sweden, where support for the local Pirate Party plunged a year after the European elections, resulting in a failed election bid in 2010.

Time will tell whether Europe is ready for the Pirates now.

Source: Pirate Parties On Course for Historic Election Wins

The site looked familiar enough, with plenty of instances of the Party’s famous pirate flag around and Pirate Party written across the top, but the stories on the site made little sense when viewed through the prism of the Pirate Party’s core values. It’s the Pirate Party, Jim, but not as we know it.

I quickly came to the incorrect conclusion that Google translate was messing with me when in fact the truth was even more strange – someone had pirated the Pirate Party.

The real Pirate Party – known locally as Partito Pirata (we’ll refer to them as this from now on to avoid yet more confusion) – have their online base located at partito-pirata.it.

The ‘imposters’, who appear to promote environmentalism, both animal and social rights but nothing remotely ‘pirate’, have set up camp at PirateParty.it. They have been passing themselves off using the Partito Pirata brand for some time.

“We were born in 2006, together with the Swedish movement,” said former Ministry of Finance employee and Partito Pirata founder Athos Gualazzi, clarifying Partito Pirata’s roots. “Those others just want to use our reputation as leverage.”

In an interview late last year, Marco Marsili, the 43-year old professor of communications and journalist behind PirateParty.it, turned things around somewhat.

“We are people with experience in politics, they are just a cultural association,” Marsili said of Partito Pirata.

“They live attached to the keyboard and if the current is pulled they die. In all these years nobody has ever heard of them and now they take advantage of the visibility obtained by us,” he concluded.

But now, following a complaint made by Partito Pirata, perhaps more than a little ironically the Court of Milan’s specialist intellectual property section has moved to defend the name, identity and ‘brand’ of the genuine Partito Pirata.

According to a source familiar with the case, the judge’s reasoning in ruling in favor of Partito Pirata was that the Pirate movement is defined worldwide as being critical of copyright and seeking its reform. The ‘fake’ Pirate Party do not so they are not even conforming to the identity they’re trying to ‘kidnap’.

In his ruling the judge ordered the ‘fake’ Pirate Party and Marco Marsili to cease using the name Partito Pirata, Pirateparty or Pirate Party, on- or offline. The use of the name in a domain name is also banned. The group is further forbidden to use the official Partito Pirata logo and has 15 days to comply or face fines of 500 euros per infraction and 200 euros per day for non-compliance.

But the strange story doesn’t end there. According to Partito Pirata founder Athos Gualazzi, the attack on his Party’s identity has sinister toots.

“From the very beginning there has been an attempt to distract from our political experience by people we believe to be paid by the SIAE and the majors,” said Gualazzi. SIAE are the Italian Authors and Publishers Association, an organization responsible for the protection of copyright in Italy.

As well as being the individual behind the ‘fake’ Pirate Party, interestingly Marco Marsili is also the president of the Confederation of Italian Music, a trade group representing record producers, publishers, authors and artists. According to his personal site, Marsili claims to have “signed major contacts” with, among others, SIAE.

Although some will find this attempt at ‘pirating’ the Pirate Party quite delicious, ‘pirated’ is almost certainly the wrong word here. This appears to have been an attempt at identity theft in order to mislead. Quite how deep the rabbit hole goes after that is a question for another day….

Source: Court Orders “Copyright Lobby-Linked” Group To Stop Pirating The Pirate Party

Quickly, prominent copyright enforcers for the entertainment industries – Hollywood lawyer Monique Wadsted and Antipiratbyrån lawyer Henrik Pontén – announced that the decision would signal a new crackdown on file-sharing sites in Sweden.

Although there was no immediate news of site closures, now there is a significant development. Tankafetast, Sweden’s second largest torrent site behind The Pirate Bay, has announced that it has ceased its operations with immediate effect.

“After many ifs and buts, we have decided to close down TankaFetast,” the site’s operators said in a statement.

“Maybe we can one day see an end to the fascist tendencies that comfortable businessmen in the film industry and corrupt politicians have turned to something common in recent years.”

While Tankafetast may not be hugely popular overseas, its importance in Sweden was reflected by its inclusion in Google’s 2010 Zeitgeist report. At the time the site claimed 39 million page views per month.

“As long as we allow the reality of facing fossils bribe away our rights, they will do it. We will never agree that copying is theft, and will always consider the distribution of culture as something positive,” the site’s operators conclude.

At the start of the month the entertainment industry lawyers said that more than 150 file-sharing sites with Swedish connections would be pressured to close. According to Henrik Pontén of Antipiratbyrån, Tankafetast’s closure is a result of their action.

“We can confirm that we have acted against Tankafetast and many other similar sites,” he told TorrentFreak this morning. The bitterness in the site’s shutdown statement certainly appears to confirm that.

However, the Swedish Pirate Party are claiming that Tankafetast’s loss is their gain. The site encouraged outgoing users to join up to Piratpartiet to assist with the fight against over zealous copyright enforcement, a push which resulted in 250 new members for the Party overnight.

“Tankafetast gave the party the best parting gift you can imagine,” says Party leader Anna Troberg. “By helping the party to get more activists we have strengthened the Party’s capacity to work for a reform of copyright which is in line with the times and can not be used to tighten the thumbscrews on ordinary culture lovers.”

Significant copyright enforcement actions in Sweden have resulted in membership boosts for the Pirate Party not only locally but worldwide. Following the first Pirate Bay trial in 2009, the Party added record-breaking numbers of new members but administrative issues meant they couldn’t maintain all of them longer term.

“We learned a lot from the huge influx of members after the first Pirate Bay trial. Then we weren’t able to take care of all new members,” says Troberg. “We will this time.”

To the south-west of Sweden in the Netherlands, local anti-piracy outfit BREIN is reporting that during 2011 they managed to shut down 383 BitTorrent sites, 83 streaming sites, 71 cyberlocker link sites and 52 Usenet indexers.

The news would of course be even more dramatic if we could back up these claims with some site names and other details, but BREIN are traditionally tight-lipped on providing extra information to accompany their annual reports.

Source: Swedish Piracy Crackdown: #2 Torrent Site Calls It Quits

The treaty eventually passed a few months later, but due to the slow bureaucratic process it would take another two years before this seat could be filled. All this time Amelia Andersdotter had to wait patiently to enter parliament and represent the people who voted her in.

However, now that all member states have signed off on it, Andersdotter and 17 other new members are expected to take their seats next month.

Representing one of the youngest parties in Europe, the second Pirate MEP is about to set a fitting record. When elected Andersdotter was only 21, but the now 24-year-old will still be the youngest member to hold a seat in the current parliament.

“Not having to answer more questions about when I will finally get to fill my seat is what I’m looking forward to most,” Andersdotter tells TorrentFreak. “It feels really good that the when-question is over.”

Andersdotter is a supporter of a united Europe, and hopes that the Pirate Party can help to shape policy in which culture, creativity and innovation will flourish.

“I kind of buy into this idea that the European Union is a good thing, and that closer connections between European nations both political and social are advantageous not only on the level of the prices of groceries, but perhaps even more, culturally.”

“It’s nice to be able to say democratisation of EU governance is moving forward, that individual member states aren’t stalling that democratisation for their own nationalist purposes any more,” Andersdotter tells us.

The unitedness is also one of the downsides. As her delayed appointment illustrates, it can be very hard sometimes to actually get things done in Europe.

“What I’m not looking forward to as much is perhaps the fear that I will realise most of EU governance is actually a battle between various national interests, rather than one interest in having a good, strong European Union. But it’s difficult of course. ”

“The EU is a big place, and one reason people feel closest to ‘their’ member state is because they know most things about it. I remember the first time I was in Belgium a few years ago and the prime minister resigned and I thought ‘oh no!’ but another Belgian just said to me ‘again?’ with a deep sigh.”

For the remainder of her term as MEP, which end in 2014, Andersdotter will focus on issues like competition in the telecommunication area.

“European approaches to competition law need to be changed, at least a bit. Better sector adaptation, for instance. The lack of real control over vertical integration creates the situation where telcos (or media enterprises) own everything from the backbone cables to the music streaming service – that’s not good. One would at least expect some obligation to keep the different tiers apart,” Andersdotter says.

“Currently this type of bundling is, more worryingly, encouraged rather than regulated and it creates a very unfair balance between the infrastructure owners (in this case) and users. Competition law just now deals mostly with horizontal integration, which would be say, if one company owns all of the cable in northern Belgium (Telenet).”

Andersdotter points out that the telecommunications sector has some good sector specific laws already, the net neutrality law in the Netherlands being a prime example. The problem is, however, to get all member stats to adopt these regulations.

“Maybe European Parliament or the European institutions need better tools to make sure member states follow their community obligations,” Andersdotter notes.

Aside from defending the public from unfair competition, the future Member of Parliament will also tackle the various rights issues that are so dear to the Pirate Party.

“I’m also very interested in industrial rights, like, patent rights or design rights, trademarks. There’s an abundance of kind of side-initiatives, data exclusivity in the pharmaceutical industry being a good example, that also reinforce the ‘non-material’ economic position of companies in a way that is not always good for society,” she says.

“One issue that I know the EU deals with a lot in all areas, and that we don’t really think much about at all in terms of industrial property, is certification – what is a certification worth, how are they generated (produced) and traded, by whom? Between whom?”

Andersdotter further hopes that the Pirate Party presence in the European Parliament will be followed by strong representation in national parliaments.

“It’s important for the PP to be represented everywhere, I guess. One of my hopes for the future is that the PP will be represented in all the national parliaments of member states so that we can hold member states kind of accountable more for what happens in the EU.”

“I find it antagonizing that member states and their politicians try to avoid responsibility for their own failures by blaming the EU, but mostly how successful they are in doing so,” Andersdotter tells us.

“When national parliaments have been saying that they can’t do anything about ACTA, activists and media just kind of happily accept. What national parliaments could do, and should do, is obviously tell their national governments not to sign the agreements. That is and would be within their power,” she adds.

Thus far none of the Pirate parties has managed to score a seat in the national parliament through elections, but the recent outcome of the German State elections shows that the possibilities are there. Political change is slow, but things are moving in the right direction for the Pirate Party.

In the European Parliament the seat of Amelia Andersdotter will double the representation of the Pirate Party in Europe’s highest political arena, something the 5-years-young party can be proud of.

Source: Pirate To Join European Parliament As Youngest Member

One group that will not be there, however, are the Swedish Pirate Party.

“The Pirate Party would have been in place inside the show, but now we will not be,” says Pirate Party leader Anna Troberg. “We are simply no longer welcome.”

Troberg says that after the sales people from the exhibition pursued the party for months to participate, they decided to book and pay for a booth. Not only that, the party also agreed to a package of advertising and hotel rooms.

As can be seen from the photograph below of pre-event billboard advertising, everything was in place for the party to participate.

But earlier this week, just before the event was due to start, the Pirate Party received some surprise news.

“On Tuesday afternoon, I called a representative of the show with a few simple practical questions, but she seemed generally stressed out and said something vague about the show and not wanting any problems before she hung up,” says Troberg.

“I thought it was a bit strange, but in the afternoon, the pieces fell into place when the fair manager, Bear Wengse, phoned me and kindly, but firmly, announced that the Pirate Party was no longer welcome at the fair.”

Wengse informed Troberg that the exhibition is a meeting place and not a venue for political conflict and the party’s presence could cause problems, particularly since some of their work “could be perceived as criminal.”

Troberg countered that as a political party they only want to change certain laws democratically, and that can not be considered a crime. Nevertheless, the ban stood.

There isn’t a complete ban on politics at the event, though. The Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (SSU) are being allowed to appear – even though they too support the decriminalization of non-commercial file sharing.

However, the SSU probably fly a little more easily under the radars of some of the more prominent entertainment industry exhibitors at Gamex – Warner, Sony and Disney as prime examples. There’s no proof that these companies objected to the Pirate Party’s presence, but the party’s support for their arch-enemy – The Pirate Bay – won’t have gone unnoticed.

Nevertheless, Troberg is upbeat. She extended thanks to the forces behind the party’s exclusion, the net result of which was more exposure for the party than they would have otherwise achieved at the exhibition, and at much less expense.

Visitors to the show wanting to show their support for the party weren’t disappointed, though. Yesterday the party’s Young Pirate division were outside the event, handing out free T-shirts to be worn inside.

“I find it absolutely hilarious that a gaming fair banned the Pirate Party on the official pretext that ‘our culture is harmful to gaming’,” Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party, told TorrentFreak.

“A decade down the road, people will just shake their heads at that. What else can you do, really?”

Source: Too Controversial: Pirate Party Banned From Gaming Exhibition

This week the Greens released a position paper with their view on copyright in the digital era, which mimics the Pirate Party agenda. The paper goes directly against the current trend of increasing control over copyright, and calls for a society that secures the interests of the public instead of a few multi-million dollar companies.

One of the key proposals is to legalize file-sharing for personal use. “Non commercial sharing between individuals should be allowed, for instance by widening the scope of the existing private copying exception,” the Greens write.

In addition, restrictive technologies such as DRM should be banned entirely, or at least decriminalized.

“It must always be legal to circumvent DRM restrictions, and we should consider introducing a ban in the consumer rights legislation on DRM technologies that restrict legal uses of a work,” the paper reads.

“There is no point in having our parliaments introduce a balanced and reasonable copyright legislation, if at the same time we allow the big multinational corporations to write their own laws, and enforce them through technical means,” it adds.

The Greens also want to reduce the copyright term from 70 to 5 years, with an option for copyright holders to extend it to a maximum of 20 years. The Greens call the current situation “absurd” and argue that society will greatly benefit from a more reasonable copyright term.

“Today’s protection times — life plus 70 years — are absurd. No investor would even look at a business case where the time to pay-back was that long,” they write.

Overall the paper suggests a reduction in the current stranglehold on creativity and a boost for the Internet to allow it to show its full potential. According to the Greens this also means that Net Neutrality should be guaranteed, and that remixes and mashups of copyrighted works for commercial use should be allowed.

Talking to TorrentFreak, Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom says that the Greens proposal perfectly resembles what the Pirate Party has been fighting for in recent years.

“I think it’s great,” Engstrom says. “The paper starts off by first going through what the situation is and what the goals are from a Green perspective, and then ends up in the same proposal for copyright reform that the Pirate Party advocates. This makes perfect sense.”

“The idea of copyright reform has existed among Greens before the Pirate Party got involved, but we have helped giving the Greens a push to really put it on the agenda,” he adds.

For Engstrom and all the other Pirate Party employees in Brussels this confirms that they can make a difference, and that the support the Pirate Party got in the 2009 elections was justified.

“I was sent to Brussels by 225,000 Swedish voters who voted for the Pirate Party, with the task to spread the Pirate ideas in the parliament, so that we can one day get the majority for the ideas that we need. This is of course a very big job, but this is a first milestone. It shows that the Pirates can deliver when they get the chance,” Engstrom concludes.

The enthusiasm of the copyright reform paper isn’t limited to Brussels either. Many pirate party members and volunteers will see it as a sign that they can make a difference.

“We know that our ideas are sound for the future, says Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party.

“It is great to see that they are getting larger and larger support. To see one of the seven party groups in the European Parliament adopt our entire perspective as its own is a gigantic leap forward for the civil liberties of the next generation.

“Just like the Green perspective took some time to be fully understood 40 years ago, so will ours. But understanding and endorsement of the pirate perspective keeps growing, and I expect it continue doing so until it is as common sense as acting sustainably,” Falkvinge adds.

The position paper of the Greens can be called revolutionary. However, the group is only a minority in the European Parliament, so there’s a long way to go before it will become law. It’s nonetheless a clear sign that copyright reform is gaining broader acceptance.

Source: European Greens Want to Legalize File-Sharing, Ban DRM

Founded in September 2006, the German Pirate Party has already booked several successes in its relatively short existence. Before today, the party had over 50 members in elected offices across Germany, which is more than in all other countries combined. However, today’s election win trumps all previous ones.

Never before has a Pirate Party been elected into a state or federal parliament. And with the 5 percent floor that was required to enter, the achievement at the Berlin elections is all the more impressive.

The initial results show that the Pirates received the most support from younger voters. 15 percent of people under 30 voted for the Pirate Party, but even among voters aged 60 years and up, a few percent voted for the Pirates.

Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg was the first region to finish counting, and the Pirate Party got 14.7 percent of all votes there. With all votes counted in the state the Pirates are at 8.9 percent.

TorrentFreak asked Sebastian Nerz, Chairman of the German Pirate Party, what this success means for the party. He told us that due to an increase in funds and influence the Pirate Party will have a greater chance to make its mark.

“At the moment the Pirate Party of Germany does not have any paid employees,” Nerz says. “Everyone working for the party – including myself – is working in an honorary capacity. In contrast, Members of Parliament are paid for their work. In addition they receive state money to pay for assistents and co-workers. This will enable those Pirates to work full-time for the party, thus giving us much more work force.”

“Another very important benefit is, that citizens and media are taking parties with access to the parliament much more seriously. A number of times i’ve heard, “Your party is not relevant because it does not have members of parliament.” Following this weekend’s successes, in this respect the party’s position will be greatly improved.

In addition the Pirate Party expects that their heightened profile will lead to an increase in members and more people working for the party. As for the party’s ideals, they want to be as transparent as possible, secure the privacy of citizens, abolish patents and limit the ever growing control of copyright exploiting organizations.

“We are going to demonstrate that it is possible to conduct a transparent approach to politics. Traditionally politics are a secret ‘no trespassing’ area. Meetings are held behind closed doors, agendas and protocols are closed, treaties are not being published,” Nerz told TorrentFreak.

“We will demonstrate that it is possible to openly and truthfully inform the citizens what is going on, what alternatives are possible and why a certain path has been chosen. We will demonstrate that citizens can be integrated into the fact-finding and path-choosing methods. Why not ask citizens about their opinion before you decide? Its well worth a try!”

One thing’s for certain. The German Pirate Party scored a sensational win today. As a result, the Berlin state parliament will undoubtedly notice the fresh wind coming from the most technology-friendly and privacy preserving party out there. All the Berlin candidates are ready and eager to start according to the chairman.

“In short: We are going to demonstrate that politics can be reformed,” Nerz says.

The election win is currently being celebrated by hundreds of Pirate Party enthusiasts in Berlin, including the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party Rick Falkvinge. Rick already predicted the massive win yesterday and shared a picture of the festivities with TorrentFreak.

“Pirates of Berlin, thank you for your fantastic work in making tonight happen. We all stand shoulder to shoulder in fighting for the next generation — one of succeeding is all of us succeeding. Tomorrow, people will look to your success, and the movement will grow yet more. You are the source of inspiration for the next wave of civil liberties activists,” Falkvinge adds in a blog post.

Source: Pirate Party Enters Berlin Parliament After Historic Election Win

But politics moves slowly. It’s part of what it is. Having successes on this scale two years apart is rapid succession. It takes decades for new values to gain mainstream acceptance, but only a few major successes to turn the tide.

The polls for the German Pirate Party — the Piratenpartei — vary a bit ahead of tomorrow’s election, but one thing is clear; they are well above the five-percent limit needed for parliamentary representation. Newspapers in Berlin had the news of Piratenpartei entering Parliament all over the front page yesterday.

So what does this mean? What is the Parliament in Berlin, anyway?

Germany is not so much a country, as it is a federation of countries (länder). Berlin is a country about the same size as Oregon or New Zealand, with roughly four million people. But being the capital of Germany, it has a certain clout — in particular internationally.

It is the Parliament in the state of Berlin that the Piratenpartei is about to enter (and not the German Parliament at the federal level, the Bundestag; those elections are in 2013.)

Then again, what does this mean in practice?

It will teach the copyright industry that the success of the Swedish Piratpartiet in 2009 was not an isolated phenomenon. I have frequently said that the Pirate movement is for this decade what the Greens were in the 1970s; it is a worldwide grassroots movement present and growing everywhere. The copyright monopoly and security theater pundits will definitely not like seeing this coming true, and political analysts worldwide know that Berlin tends to be an international political trendsetter.

Also, we succeed together. The Swedish success in the European elections in 2009 was a tremendous boost for the Pirate Party movement worldwide. Tomorrow will have the same effect. We fight for civil liberties together, shoulder to shoulder, and we succeed together. News outlets are already talking about the Berlin election and the Piratenpartei worldwide — Taiwan, Africa, Ireland, United States. And that’s still before the election itself.

If you had any doubt and live in Berlin, join in creating history tomorrow. Vote Pirate.

Tomorrow, the 18th of September, the German Piratenpartei enters the Berlin Parliament.

And the day after the elections, the 19th of September, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Isn’t that fitting. I’m sure many politicians will.

Source: Tomorrow, Pirates Write History Again

The 16-year-old from Liberec was accused by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union of publishing links to copyright infringing material on his website, acts which the Union claim have caused damages of more than 5 million euros.

Now, in another “don’t pick on the kid, pick on us” move, the Pirate Party have thrown down the gaunlet yet again to the Anti-Piracy Union by partnering and launching another download site.

The social network, called Moviehome, is being described by the Party as a ‘Facebook for movies’. Users of the site are encouraged to upload links to reviews, subtitles and of course, movie downloads.

“Sharing of links is a principle without which the Internet would cease to function,” says Pirate Party chairman Ivan Bartoš. “Therefore we’re systematically fighting against the criminalization of linking.”

In common with Piratskefilmy and Tipnafilm, the two file-sharing projects proceeding it, Moviehome has been created by programmers who are too afraid to reveal their identities in case they are hounded by the Anti-Piracy Union. The Pirate Party have no such fears, and say they have are yet to receive any complaints.

“The Czech anti-piracy union does not know what to do,” Party Vice-President Mikuláš Ferjencik told TorrentFreak.

“They’re probably focusing on the court action with the Liberec student, with the hope that they might claim eventually that all our websites are illegal. They also do not want to give us publicity and they do not have much to say about it really as our sites actually are legal.”

Ferjencik says that the Pirate Party will run Moviehome.cz for as long as it remains a non-commercial concern. He says that the Party wants to separate business and politics, so if the site’s creators want to turn Moviehome.cz into a business venture, they’ll simply hand the site back and wish them luck.

“As a party, we do not want to depend on the finances from web advertising that’s why all of our linking sites are strictly non-commercial. On the other hand, I must emphasize that there’s nothing wrong about running commercial linking websites, after all Google and Seznam.cz have been doing this for a long time,” adds Ferjencik.

The launch of the third site in a little over a month does not mark the end of Czech Pirate support for further file-sharing ventures, or perhaps even more spectacular adventures.

“We will back anyone with a similar project who asks for our support,” Ferjencik explains, while extending an open invitation to The Pirate Bay to take up Czech hosting should they encounter further legal difficulties.

“We’ll also consider suing ourselves to get it to court before the Liberec case is over, but my flatmates are not in a mood for a police visit yet, so it will have to wait for a while,” Ferjencik adds.

While the Czech Pirates now have three file-sharing sites in their portfolio, adding Pirate Party Canada’s Travis McCrea’s site, Tormovies.org, means that a total of four Pirate-inspired movie download sites have been created in less than two months.

“We cannot lose this war,” says Ferjencik.

“In the unlikely case that the court ‘says linking is a crime’, the public uproar will get us into parliament. People hate it when they lose rights they already had, especially when they fought hard to obtain them.

“People did not carry out the revolution in 1989 to see students paying millions of Euros for helping others to share information.”

Source: Pirate Party Launches ‘Facebook’ For Movies

However, thus far the Pirate Party hasn’t managed to get a member elected in a state or federal parliament. With 845,904 votes during the 2009 federal elections, the party got stuck at 2 percent of the vote, where 5 was needed to enter the Bundestag.

But this year the local success of the Pirate Party may finally translate into a success at the state elections. With only four weeks to go until the Berlin state parliament election, the Pirate Party is predicted to gain 4.5 percent of the total vote.

If this upward trend continues and the 5 percent floor is met, the German Pirates will be the first Pirate Party worldwide to gain seats in a state or national parliament. The party’s leaders are cautiously optimistic about the promising outlook, but also warn that there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“We are delighted that our demands for more transparency, participation and democracy for the people of Berlin are shared by the public. The Berlin people want change, and they recognize that a vote for the Pirate Party is not wasted,” Pirate Party’s Gerhard Anger said.

“With this poll result we are not in the state parliament yet. However, it is an important step in the right direction. We have to work hard in the next four weeks. In order to see the results of this poll reflected in actual votes on election day, we still have to keep on going,” Anger adds.

Previously the German Pirate Party already held a seat in the national parliament when Jörg Tauss left the Social Democrats to join the pirates. However, having people voted into parliament through an election would be an even bigger accomplishment.

Rick Falkvinge, the Swedish founder of the Pirate Party movement compares the current standing of the German pirates to that of the Swedish Pirate Party in 2009. They were also labeled as a likely sensation by the press, and this eventually paid off as they got more than 7% of the total vote.

“Newspapers are now describing the Pirate Party as ‘the likely surprise of this election’. There are positive articles everywhere describing it as just short of a done deal, and I predict this will have an immense effect in the polls in the four remaining weeks,” Falkvinge says.

Whether the German pirates can copy this success will become clear on September 18, when the results of the Berlin state elections come in.

Source: German Pirate Party On Course to Election Win

The 16-year-old from Liberec was accused by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union of posting links to infringing material on his website, acts which the Union claim have caused damages of more than 5 million euros.

“By bullying young people, the Czech Anti-Piracy Union, with the help of the state, is attempting in vain to salvage the old business model which has ceased to function in the age of the Internet,” say the Czech Pirate Party.

Although the party believes that under Czech law the acts of the teenager do not constitute an offense, the issue is yet to be tested properly in court. So, in true pirate style, the party has embarked upon a huge provocation to draw attention to both the teenager’s plight and the legal situation.

Under the slogan “linking is not a crime” the Czech Pirate Party and project coordinator Zdenek Slezak have launched movie download site Tipnafilm.cz. The site has an attractive layout with movie covers, links to reviews on sites such as iMDb and embedded trailers.

It also provides – crucially – links to where the movies can be downloaded, all sorted by quality and download portal.

The project, which is strictly non-commercial, is the second such venture by the Czech Pirates. Earlier this month they launched Piratskefilmy.cz, a site which carries 20,000 links to more than 5,800 movies.

According to the party’s Vice-President Mikuláš Ferjencik, both acts are deliberately provocative.

“Yes, we unequivocally declare open war on the Anti-Piracy Union. Bullying ordinary people from their side must stop. The Czech Anti-Piracy Union claimed a huge success when it caught the ‘greatest pirate in the country’. But that is absurd, in fact he was just a small fish.

“For this student we have built and launched a similar site. The difference is that there are ten times more links on our site,” Ferjencik told TorrentFreak this morning.

“We denounce that the police should be run by the propaganda of the Anti-Piracy Union and that it should harass anybody who puts a video on his/her web page or Facebook page,” said chairman of the Czech Pirates Ivan Bartoš.

“We challenge the Anti-Piracy Union to stop bullying the under-aged and to aim its preposterous claims at the Pirate Party.”

Mikuláš Ferjencik told us that he finds it interesting that thus far the Czech Anti-Piracy Union have not yet made a formal statement about the launch of either site, noting only that they “do not want to reveal [their] strategy going forward.”

Source: Pirate Party Launches Movie Download Sites As “Declaration of War”

Nevertheless, this is the position Australia’s ISPs find themselves in today. They have a written ultimatum from the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, the anti-piracy group financed by the big Hollywood studios. Received last week, the memo gives the ISPs until close of business today to give their commitment to entering into talks to hinder online file-sharing – or suffer the consequences.

This aggressive approach has already “rubbed up” Exetel boss John Linton “the wrong way”, as Aussies might put it. He has declared that he won’t be responding to AFACT’s threats. Now, according to a new report and contrary to the result hoped for by AFACT, another ISP is trying to form a coalition with its rivals to fend off Hollywood’s demands.

A Telstra spokeswoman quoted by The Australian has confirmed that the ISP is liaising with the Communications Alliance to develop an industry-wide response to AFACT.

“Telstra remains open to discussing how we might assist copyright holders to enforce their private property rights. Given this is an industrywide issue Telstra has encouraged discussions to be facilitated by the Communications Alliance,” she said.

The Communications Alliance was set up to provide a unified voice for the Australian telecommunications industry, offer contributions to policy development and ensure the protection of consumer interests. A spokesperson confirmed that the organization is working with the ISPs to find “an industry-led solution” to online copyright issues.

Rather than adopt ISP suggestions that are unlikely to go far enough for Hollywood, AFACT appears to prefer a fairly aggressive approach to infringement touted by Judge Arthur Emmett during the iiNet trial.

Throwing their 3-cornered hats into the mix, Pirate Party Australia have rejected not only Emmett’s suggestions, but also the manner in which AFACT have approached the ISPs.

“Pirate Party Australia is opposed to the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft’s (AFACT) latest offensive against Australian internet users,” the party said in a statement.

“AFACT’s alleged extreme demands would require ISPs to notify their customers of infringements as alleged by AFACT and disconnect them if they do not respond within 7 days.

“These veiled threats are nothing more than intimidation tactics that once again clearly display the extent that Big Media will go to in their failing attempts to protect their flawed business models. Extortion is a new low even for AFACT,” says Acting Secretary, Brendan Molloy.

“It is completely inappropriate to have closed-room discussions even before the iiNet court case has concluded, and even more inappropriate to make veiled threats to begin yet another court case for not attending these ‘voluntary talks’.”

The party concludes by urging ISPs to unite against AFACT and refuse to become their copyright enforcement officers.

Involving the Communications Alliance in AFACT discussions would seem to be a sensible move by the ISPs. In the light of this development it remains to be seen whether AFACT still feels inclined to go ahead with whatever action lies behind today’s deadline.

Source: As ISPs Mull Pact To Fight AFACT, Pirate Party Condemns ‘Extortion’

The legal action targeted Elisa, one of the largest ISPs in Finland, demanding that the Internet provider stops providing subscriber access to The Pirate Bay.

While the result in that case is yet to be decided, CIAPC have just pulled off quite a victory in their battle against illicit file-sharing.

During the course of their online anti-piracy monitoring, CIAPC discovered five Internet connections which were making available thousands of music tracks on file-sharing networks. According to the group, in all cases the file-sharer was either an actual Internet subscriber or a family member of a subscriber.

CIAPC took the information to court looking for an order to prevent the individuals continuing with their activities. Now, under Section 60c of Finland’s Copyright Act, a court has granted CIAPC injunctions in three of the cases.

What this means is without the sending of a so-called “first strike” letter, the respective ISPs of the subscribers in question are now required to completely disconnect their infringing customers from the Internet.

“This has not happened in Finland before nor did we expect it to happen,” says Joonas Mäkinen of the Pirate Party of Finland.

Mäkinen told TorrentFreak this morning that legal sanctions available to rightsholders should always be proportionate and that these disconnections overstep the mark.

“This is indeed a worrisome addition to the anti-piracy arsenal. It seems that lately politicians and legal procedures alike have been more focused on how civil rights can be restricted rather than how they can be protected. There shouldn’t even exist anything in the legislation that allows such a limitation to people’s right to communicate,” says Mäkinen.

“With no own means of using their everyday social interactions, working or handling their bills and bank account online, the damages to the accused are unreasonable.”

Furthermore, Mäkinen – who is Vice Chairman of Pirate Party of Finland’s youth organisation, Piraattinuoret – raises the question about the neutrality of Internet service providers in respect of this court-ordered intervention.

“It shouldn’t be surprising that we expect all Internet communications to be governed as responsibly as one’s right to send a letter using postal services. ISPs should not be forced to take back anyone’s right to send electronic messages privately, be it love letters or torrent traffic.

“And if there is evidence of misuse, it is up to the police to handle all individual cases, not copyright organisations demanding a total ban on the communication services.”

Large-scale file-sharers in Finland are indeed usually referred to the police, sometimes with severe consequences. Earlier this year two individuals received huge fines and suspended jail sentences for their part in a file-sharing hub. Whether or not they would have preferred to have their Internet connections taken away instead is a question for them.

While the individuals in all of these cases were caught using a sharing system known as Direct Connect where it is easy to get caught sharing many files at once, CIAPC are warning users of The Pirate Bay that they’re not safe either.

“Many might believe that by using the Pirate Bay they can not get caught, when in fact the result can be they have to pay several hundred euros in compensation,” says CIAPC Managing Director Antti Kotilainen.

“Legal services being offered now are so good that no one should have to download music from an illegal source,” Kotilainen adds, a point contested by Pirate Party of Finland.

“The legal options given to music consumers are definitely not ‘good enough’ yet to compare with Internet filesharing,” says Mäkinen, who goes on to bemoan ongoing global music rights battles, lack of better-than-mp3 quality music on streaming services, DRM and counter-intuitive payment systems.

Whether these injunctions will be replicated again against other file-sharers remains to be seen, but in the meantime Finland must sit and wait to discover if ISP Elisa is ordered to terminate access to The Pirate Bay.

Source: Court Orders ISPs To Disconnect File-Sharers

The reason for the raid is unclear at this point, but the Pirate Party believes that it’s unrelated to the party’s activities. The board of the Pirate Party has promised full transparency to assist with the investigation.

“At the moment, the Board does not expect delinquency on behalf of the Pirate Party. The investigation is not directed against the party or any of its subsidiaries, they are only involved as the server’s operators. The results are awaited with curiosity,” the Party said in a statement.

The information which the authorities provided to the Pirate Party suggests that the police were targeting a public service on a virtual server. The service has not been named, but there are concerns that the action to take the party’s entire server network down was disproportionate.

The timing of the raid is also unfortunate, as it happens just two days before the Bremen elections.

“The disconnection of all servers is a massive intrusion into the communications infrastructure of the sixth largest party in Germany. Considering the state elections taking place in Bremen in two days, this caused severe political damage, which the Board condemns decisively,” the Party continued.

“In relation to the ongoing investigations, it will have to be verified whether the issued search warrant was actually appropriate, especially whether the principle of proportionality was followed. After all, this action has led to a large-scale breakdown of the technical infrastructure of Pirate Party Germany.”

Although we can only speculate at this point, a plausible target of the raid could be the Piratepad service. Piratepad allows people to collaboratively draft documents, and unconfirmed rumors suggest that it was used to plan a DDoS attack against a French company.

Thus far, however, no official information has been provided about the nature of the French investigation. We will update this post accordingly as more information comes in.

Update: The Pirate Part released some additional information.

The servers were raided this morning 9:15 am following a warrant ordered by the Darmstadt prosecutor.

The investigation is not directed at the Pirate Party, but at unknown users of the Piratepad service who published an SSH Key which was allegedly used to attack a server of the French energy group EDF.

The Pirate Party stresses that the damage to their organization is enormous. Two days before the election their entire communication system was wiped out, and although the main page was brought back up, most services are still interrupted.

The Pirate Party further distances itself from the attacks on the websites of the German police, which started after the raid.

Source: Pirate Party Servers Raided by German Police

The downtime caused widespread concern, particularly among those fearful that The World’s Most Resilient BitTorrent Site might have finally succumbed to endless entertainment industry pressures. Adding to the worries, simultaneously the Pirate Party’s websites also disappeared, which resulted in the stalling of online pirate activities in more ways than one.

“All the Pirate Party Internet services are currently down,” said Party leader Anna Troberg on the situation. “Due to a sudden situation that has arisen, I have, in consultation with the party’s IT manager decided to immediately move our servers to a new location.”

The Pirate Party had been hosted with Bahnhof, a privacy conscious ISP in Sweden. It appears that it was Bahnhof themselves who alerted the Party to a problem with their server utilization.

“Bahnhof drew to my attention earlier today that a small part of the party’s IT resources were being used for commercial purposes,” Troberg explained.

“I and the rest of the party leadership are extremely concerned about the incident because it is hitting the Pirate Party and the young pirate activities.”

Although yet to be officially confirmed, the problem appears to relate to allocation of Party network resources. As a strictly non-profit organization, the Pirate Party receives preferential rates for its hosting from Bahnhof. However, it’s understood that the Pirate Party-linked ‘Pirate ISP’ – which was launched last year – had been allocated resources which should have been for the exclusive use of the Party.

“Pirate Party IT resources will be used to deliver the party’s message and to support our internal systems. They should under no circumstances be used for commercial purposes in the manner that occurred,” Troberg said. “Such use is contrary to what the Pirate Party stands for. Neither the Board or the party leadership has sanctioned any ‘loans’ of the Pirate Party IT resources.”

A thorough investigation is said to have been launched with the aim of discovering how the problem occurred and how to prevent a repeat in the future.

Source: Pirate Bay Back Up, Pirate Party Shut Themselves Down Over Server ‘Abuse’

A case in Serbia this week is certainly done just that. Last evening Aleksandar Blagojevic, a board member of Pirate Party International, informed TorrentFreak of a situation developing there. In recent times an increasing number of people have been targeted for sharing materials online, but this week the government stepped things up a gear.

Under instruction from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Serbia’s Counter-Organized Crime Service (SBPOK), the only police unit to report directly at the political level, carried out a raid in the capital Belgrade.

On 1st March, SBPOK broke down the door of 51-year-old Goran Cujak on suspicion that he had made links to the movie ‘Montevideo, bog te video’ (Montevideo, God Bless You) available on the Internet.

There, a large amount of computer and sundry other equipment was seized and Cujak was placed in handcuffs and arrested for copyright infringement offenses.

“The suspect was a member of one the most popular internet forums [for sharing copyright works],” the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement. “The suspect [posted links to copyright works] to allow others to download movies, music and software material, from domestic and foreign authors, without their knowledge or approval, causing them so enormous material damage.”

At a swift hearing the following day, a judge at the High Court in Belgrade authorized the prison detention of Cujak for up to 30 days, the statement from the Ministry added. This announcement has infuriated the Pirate Party who don’t intend to let the matter pass quietly.

“The Pirate Party of Serbia is unwilling to let this slide just like that, and are organising a formal public protest in Belgrade today,” Aleksandar Blagojevic told TorrentFreak. “Wish us the best of luck! We’re going to need it…”

The protest against Cujak’s imprisonment will begin at 2pm local time in front of the Philosophical Faculty in Belgrade, but if reports are to be believed, further arrests are on the cards. The police say that they will track down the individuals who downloaded the movie from the forum in question and bring them to justice too, although raids on several street vendors have yet to prove productive.

According to Serbia’s PressOnline, Since January 2007, the High Court in Belgrade has convicted 181 individuals for media piracy. Most of them received probationary sentences.

Source: Pirate Party Calls Protest As Movie Sharer Jailed For 30 Days

The protests reached their height a week ago, and in the process several Pirate Party members and other activists were arrested. Last Friday former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali eventually caved in, signed his resignation and quickly fled the country.

Tunisia soon went on to form a transitional government to be led by Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi. Today, several significant changes were announced, including the release of all political prisoners, political freedom and the abolishment of the Government’s information ministry.

Ghannouchi also named the members of his transitional government, which includes Slim Amamou, one of the Pirate Pary members arrested only a few days ago. Amamou is a well-known blogger and activist in Tunisia and played an important role in the ‘online’ revolt against the former government.

Amamou has been appointed as State Secretary for Sports and Youth, and his appointment is most likely the result of his good reputation in the online community, which played an important role in the revolution that unfolded in Tunisia.

On Twitter Amamou, who runs a team of software developers at his company Alixys, describes himself as “against censorship, against the intellectual property rights, for net neutrality,” all topics that are dear to Pirate Parties worldwide.

TorrentFreak has been briefly in touch with Amamou, who is understandably very excited about this appointment, and we will conduct an exclusive feature interview with him in the days to come. Meanwhile, we congratulate all the Tunisians who stood up for their rights, both on- and offline, and hope that their strength leads to a better future.

Update: There is some confusion about the State Secretary / Minister title in Tunisia. Formerly Tunisia had no State Secretary of Youth and Sports, only a minister. However, there are reports that Amamou is a junior/deputy minister rather than a full minister. As the dust settles this will hopefully be cleared up. For now we chose the safe option and opted for State Secretary. Excuse the confusion.

Source: Arrested Pirate Party Member Becomes Tunisian State Secretary

Calls from the public to allow freedom of speech for Tunisian citizens, however, have resulted in quite the opposite reaction from the authorities. Both online and offline protesters are quickly and sometimes violently silenced. A well documented article by Al-Jazeera earlier this week reports of hacked Facebook and Gmail accounts, presumably by the Tunisian Government.

Last weekend the secure https protocol became unavailable in the country and in the days that followed many bloggers and net activists were locked out of their personal accounts. Sofiene Chourabi, blogger and journalist for Al-Tariq al-Jadid magazine was one of the first to notice the ‘hack’ attempts last week.

“My personal account on the Facebook, including around 4200 friends, was exposed to failed hacking attempt last Friday, but I quickly recovered it after an unidentified person had taken control of it,” he told Al Jazeera. This first attempt failed, but a second last Monday was successful as Chourabi lost access to both his Gmail and Facebook accounts.

Another activist and critic of the Government who suffered the same fate is Azyz Amami, a member of the local Pirate Party. Amami had used a secondary email address to register at Gmail and Facebook which allowed him to regain access, but not before the authorities found the login information to his four blogs and deleted all content.

Amami said he thinks that the Government’s hacking and phishing attempts are more widespread, and that those reported thus far represent just the tip of the iceberg since many people fear repercussions from the Government. Only hours after stating his concerns in public on Thursday he was arrested, and he wasn’t the only one.

Slim Amamou and Slah Eddine Kchouk, both graduate students and members of the Pirate Party of Tunisia like Amami, were also arrested by the authorities. In addition several other activists and bloggers were arrested and taken in for questioning, without any specifics being released on the reasons of their arrests.

The arrests are a sign that the call for more freedom of speech on the Internet is backfiring. The more vocal people get the harder the Government is reacting. But the public is not giving up without a fight. Last weekend ‘Anonymous’ activists successfully took down several Government websites, but thus far this has only resulted in more censorship and less openness.

The Tunisian Pirate Party is outraged by the arrests of its members and has posted an appeal for more attention to the growing repression. According to the Party the three members were “kidnapped” by the political police without a warrant, and all three also had their computers confiscated.

“Tunisia is a country where torture while in detention or in prison is very common as reported and documented by Red Cross, Amnesty, HRW and other NGO’s. Pirate Party Tunisia severely condemns the dictatorship of Ben Ali and will engage every possible action to free its members and to seek international legal course in case of torture and inhumane treatment on its members,” the Party announced.

A few hours ago the international umbrella organization for Pirate Parties – Pirate Parties International – also released a public statement condemning the unjust arrests of Pirate Party members and free speech activists.

“Pirate Parties around the World condemn these acts against freedom of expression, human rights and democracy, and call upon governments take firm action against Tunisia for these recent events. Party members are advised to refrain from visiting Tunisia until the human rights situation has improved,” the statement says.

Despite the harsh actions from the police and the ever increasing censorship, many Tunisians are continuing their protests online and offline. Increasingly Twitter is being used to propagate the message they feel the world should know, as it is less prone to censorship than Facebook.

Posting a video, blog post or Facebook status update has become a challenge and a threat at the same time for many young Tunisians. The current situation brings freedom of speech issues closer to ‘home’ than ever before for many Internet users.

Source: Pirate Party Members Arrested in Tunisian Censorship Revolt

The Party gained interest from the mainstream media and at the Swedish general elections in the same year it became the third largest party outside parliament. Inspired by the small successes the Party booked in the first year, Pirate Parties were founded in dozens of other countries as well.

Fast forward three years and the Swedish Pirate Party peaked at over 50,000 members just before the European elections of 2009. In these elections the Pirate Party got more than 7% of the total votes earning them two seats in the European Parliament, a major victory.

Today the Pirate Party looks back on its short history as it celebrates its fifth anniversary. However, this festive day also brings a surprise that nobody saw coming. Rick Falkvinge, Pirate Party icon, founder and leader announced today that he is stepping down as leader. Effective immediately he will be replaced by his deputy, Anna Troberg.

According to Falkvinge, new leadership is what could take the Party to the next level.

“Anna has a cultural background which is precisely what the Pirate Party in Sweden needs at this point,” Falkvinge exclusively told TorrentFreak. “We are well established within the box of technical people, but need to break out of it. To do that, we need a leader who can explain why these issues are important in nontechnical terms. Anna is the perfect fit.”

However, the former Party leader isn’t hanging up his Pirate hat just yet. He stays on as the Party’s chairman while he broadens his scope. Freed from the political shackles, he will continue to fight for the same issues he’s championed for the last five years, but now more internationally oriented than before.

In the coming year Falkvinge intends to work as an ‘international evangelist’ for the Pirate movement and focus on Information Politics. Part of that will include a guest column here on TorrentFreak, as well as a new English-language blog at Falkvinge.net.

Looking back on the last five years it is impressive to see what the ‘Pirate’ movement started by Falkvinge has accomplished. There are now Pirate Parties in forty countries around the world, with city Councillors in Germany, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic and formerly a member in the German Parliament.

It will be interesting to see how the Parties fare in the coming half-decade, where privacy and technology issues are becoming more relevant than ever before. Meanwhile we congratulate Anna Troberg on her new position and wish her all the best. Rick Falkvinge – the man who made Pirates Political – is saluted for a half-decade of hard work as the Swedish Pirate Party leader.

Source: Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge Resigns on 5th Anniversary

Prosecutor Henrik Rasmussen, who is regularly involved in online infringement cases, said in an interview with Swedish media that in its ruling the Court of Appeal looked not only at the defendants cases, but at the issue of illegal file-sharing in general.

Noting that the Court referred to file-sharing as a “serious social problem”, he said that the decision to send the Pirate Bay’s operators to jail will affect how future file-sharing cases are viewed.

“If we have more cases of illegal file sharing we will discuss them in the same way, that it is a thoroughly devastating social problem,” said Rasmussen. “Therefore, jail sentences will be more widely considered.”

While the defendants in the Pirate Bay trial were convicted for a significant amount of copyright infringements, it seems that Swedish prosecutors are now looking at cases where infringements are relatively minor.

One case in hand involves a 26 year-old man from Uppsala, who last summer made 44 tracks available via a Direct Connect hub. After the music industry provided evidence to the authorities which it says proves the man shared the files, he will now be prosecuted for the alleged offenses.

“He risks a fine or imprisonment up to two years,” said Rasmusson. “I have not decided what I’m going to insist on exactly, but it is more likely to be a fine.”

So which variables does the prosecutor consider when presented with a case? What makes one man face a fine and another a jail sentence? We hope to be able to provide more details on this in the near future but in the meantime we spoke to Pirate Party Rick Falkvinge for his take. Not surprisingly, he’s unimpressed.

“This prosecutor is an anachronism and should resign. File sharing is a strong net positive to the community, and should not be a crime at all. I believe the future’s verdict against these regressive people is going to be quite harsh,” he told TorrentFreak this morning.

“If the government should interfere at all, it should rather be to hand out medals and incentives to people who share the most.”

Source: File-Sharing is a ‘Devastating Social Problem, Jail Sentences More Likely’

Stepping away from the massive show of force which had brought down countless websites, Operation Payback adopted a new strategy designed to regain the focus of attention.

The operation’s committee made a list of demands for governments worldwide with the ultimate aim of getting involved in political discussion. They argued that copyright laws need to change and called for an end to anti-piracy lawsuits and censorship.

“What we are now trying to do, is to straighten out ideals, and trying to make them both heard and accepted,” a spokesman for Operation Payback told TorrentFreak.

“Nobody would listen to us if we said piracy should be legal, but when we ask for copyright lifespan to be reduced to ‘fair’ lengths, that would sound a lot more reasonable.”

It didn’t go unnoticed that this switch to a more publicly acceptable path has more in common with the direction chosen by the the UK and US Pirate Party. Indeed, Operation Payback has certainly caught the eyes of the Pirates during their 2 month campaign and today, after a huge amount of hostility in recent weeks, Pirate parties have joined their voices in a plea for peace.

“We, the undersigned, call upon you to immediately cease the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and to instead seek out a legal method to express your frustration and disquiet with the copyright industry, and their perversions of copyright law for personal gain,” write the Pirates today in a letter to the leaders of Operation Payback.

The letter goes on to express understanding of shared frustrations within the current debate but warns that Operation Payback, with its chosen path of aggression and hostility, runs the risk of playing into the hands of their enemy and hinder those who seek to promote copyright reform.

“By continuing Operation:Payback attacks, you will hamper those who promote copyright reform and curtailment of abuses of copyright, but who do so within the bounds of the law,” says the letter.

“Instead of being able to argue for legislative reform of copyright on its own merits, they will be accused of defending criminals and promoting lawlessness. It will be easier for legislators and the media to ignore the clear benefits of fair copyrights and free speech, in favour of clamouring for harsher legislation to ‘stop those pirates and hackers’.”

The letter from the Pirate concludes with a final plea.

“Please help those of us who care about your freedoms, your rights and your liberty, and choose a more moderate and legal way.”

The big question now is whether Operation Payback will respond positively. Despite its anarchic structure and the potential for action by dissenting splinter groups, the early signs are very good for a negotiated and lasting peace.

Anonymous’ spokesperson told TorrentFreak that they plan to adhere to the Pirate Party’s request and “cease activities immediately.” A full statement is expected to be released in the following hours and we will update this article as soon as it comes in.

Source: Pirate Parties Use Influence To Halt Anonymous’ Operation Payback

The Pirate Parties International is the umbrella organization for Pirate Parties worldwide, which are active in nearly 50 countries at the moment. On their mailing list, interesting ideas, links and documents are shared, and a few days ago the idea for an extraterrestrial file-sharing site was born.

Although it is no secret that Sci-Fi fans are well represented in the pirate community, the idea is taken somewhat seriously, both by PPI members and outsiders. Forbes already took notice of the plans and in the PPI members are carefully weighing the pros and cons of their options.

So what are these Pirates up to?

The idea is to get away from current ‘restricted’ hosting facilities where the law of the land applies. Initially, a balloon was opted for as the ideal vessel, but others quickly suggested that an actual satellite would be a more durable solution. To fund the project, crowd-sourcing platforms like Kickstarter were mentioned.

As the discussion moved on the more down-to-earth members mentioned that it might be a good idea to start at sea. This would be a nice fit with the Pirate theme and also slightly more affordable. A remote-controlled sail-boat could easily carry the hosting platform and be shipped outside of territorial waters.

Although there is no consensus yet, boat, balloon then satellite seems to be a logical order of approach.

But will this work?

We would be the last to temper the hopes and dreams of any Pirate, but there are some hurdles to overcome. Money issues aside, it’s not going to be easy to launch a website in space without being bound to the laws of a country or company down below. After all, one needs connectivity, a domain name and an IP-address.

It would be a real shame to have a torrent site up and running in space, but have it disconnected because the bandwidth provider receives a take-down notice. Not to mention the logistics that will be involved with replacing a failing harddisk.

To use a famous Sci-Fi quote: “Anything is possible, but the odds are astronomically against it.”

So what’s next?

Encouraged by the recognition from Forbes and the enthusiasm from PPI members, the discussion on what the ideal plan would be continues. And as The Pirate Bay has proven with their Buy Sealand project, raising thousands of dollars is a piece of cake. Time will tell if it’s going to be a homemade balloon, a pirate ship, a satellite, or nothing.

TorrentFreak readers with suggestions are encouraged to post a comment. The previous discussions can be read on the online mailing list, and everyone can join the conversation by signing up.

We contacted the PPI with some questions and a request for comment, but haven’t heard back from them at the time of publishing.

Source: Pirate Parties Plan to Shoot Torrent Site Into Orbit

On the opposing side of the war on piracy we have groups like The Pirate Party. The political outfit has its roots in Sweden but is active in more than 30 countries worldwide, including BREIN’s home The Netherlands where it participated in the general elections earlier this year without success.

The Dutch Pirate Party is headed by Samir Allioui who formerly led Pirate Party International, an umbrella organization for all Pirate parties worldwide. As is his job, Allioui carefully watches the local media for piracy related discussions and he’s not too shy to respond to writings he doesn’t approve of.

So, when the Dutch newspaper De Pers published a column detailing why sharing copyrighted movies and music is wrong, he was quick to respond with a rebuttal piece. On Twitter, he alerted BREIN’s head Tim Kuik to his article, since Kuik had plugged the original piece a few hours earlier.

This tweet was the start of an interesting conversation between the two, starting with the following response from Tim Kuik.

TimKuik: @SamirAllioui ehh, let me think…it’s hard…added a nice drawing…bullshit?…yeah that’s it .. bullshit!”

SamirAllioui: @TimKuik Good to know you don’t have any arguments against it content wise :)

TimKuik: @SamirAllioui ouch, you are so sharp, no wonder you’ve won so many seats, but now I am going back to serious issues

SamirAllioui: @TimKuik The Greens were not taken seriously either. But what they’ve done in 30 years, the Pirates did in 4 years. Time will tell.

TimKuik: @SamirAllioui But Samir … I believe you even applied for a job with us

This last tweet of Kuik doesn’t make much sense. TorrentFreak asked Allioui if he has any clue what BREIN’s boss is referring to, but he drew a blank as well. Our best guess is that Kuik is jokingly referring to Allioui’s byline, where he says he’s doing freelance work as a ‘information security’ expert. We also asked Tim for clarification and are awaiting a response.

After the last tweet the conversation moved on to other accusations. Allioui indirectly accuses BREIN of rent seeking and abusing the legal system in favor of the entertainment industry. Kuik obviously sees things differently and says they only ask the courts to uphold the law.

After some tweets back and forth and a good night sleep (to sober up?) the discussion ended this morning.

TimKuik: @SamirAllioui well, I’ve had enough fun with the Claptrap Party, I’m going back to real work

Claptrap in Dutch is ‘prietpraat’ which is phonetically close to ‘piet piraat’, a Dutch/Belgian kids show about a pirate.

It’s needless to say that both sides don’t have much respect for the opinion of the other, but it’s remarkable that they fought this out in public on Twitter. There seems to be quite a bit of unvented frustration that needed to be released. However, they can throw as much mud as they want but it is unthinkable that they’ll come even an inch closer to agreeing.

Source: Pirate Party Leader and Anti-Piracy Boss Clash in Twitter Fight

Today the Swedes voted for their national Parliament. If the turnout equalled that of last year, the Party would secure more than a dozen seats as the threshold for entering the Parliament in Sweden is 4 percent. However, this was easier said than done.

With 95 percent of the votes counted it is clear that the Pirate Party will not enter the Swedish Parliament. The Party is currently stuck at about 1 percent of the total vote, nowhere near the 4 percent threshold it needs.

This means that Wikileaks nor The Pirate Bay will be hosted under Parliamentary immunity. Even more so, the Party wont get the chance to legalize non-commercial file-sharing or criminalize “copyright abuse” as they planned.

Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that the party is disappointed with the outcome, but that they gave it all they got.

“The Swedish Pirate Party did its best election campaign ever. We had more media, more articles, more debates, more handed-out flyers than ever. Unfortunately, the wind was not in our sails this time, as it was with the European elections,” Falkvinge said.

One of the reasons for the lack of votes is the disregard in the debates of all the issues that are so dear to the Pirate Party, Falkvinge told TorrentFreak.

“The other parties had put a collective blanket over the privacy, culture and knowledge issues, as they had absolutely nothing to gain by even mentioning the issues.”

“If the wind is not in your sails, the sweat on your brow will still not steer the ship. I guess the most obvious example is how the appellate trial of The Pirate Bay will begin just nine days after the election,” Falkvinge added.

Despite the huge disappointment among Party members, today’s result was not totally unexpected. For months on end the polls showed the Pirate Party behind. A miracle was needed to come even close to the threshold.

Falkvinge and the other Party members will now have to wait four more years before they have another shot at conquering the Swedish Parliament. For now they have to settle for their two seats in Europe.

“Each generation must reconquer democracy. Nobody said it was going to be an easy fight,” Falkvinge says.

Source: Swedish Pirate Party Fails To Enter Parliament

Nowhere else was that more apparent than in the June 2009 EU elections, when they carried a surprise 7.3% of the vote. This election result gave them one seat in the European Parliament.

The seat was taken by Christian Engstrom, (who also happens to have been the most popular MEP) with the potential for an additional seat if the Lisbon Treaty went through. The treaty passed in November 2009 and came into force as of December 1st 2009. The Piratpartiet were confirmed to have gained a second seat, which went to 22 year old Amelia Andersdotter, but several months later she still had not been able to take her seat.

Fast forward to August 2010 – almost 15 months after the election and 9 months after the ratification of the treaty – the EU is finally realizing that there are a number of Parliament Members that were elected, but never seated (Ghost MEPs). That may be about to change.

Ms. Andersdotter notes on her blog that she may soon be able to start representing her country, as she was elected to do. She just needs an ‘aye’ from the Council of Presidents (funnily enough, headed by the EU President, a position created by the same Treaty as Ms Andersdotter’s seat, but filled without either election or delay) to gain observer status, meaning they can do everything but vote. They get that ability when all nations approve the ‘transition protocols’. While the first vote could take place within 2 weeks time, the latter will probably take longer, especially as some countries (France) still haven’t assigned their extra MEPs.

A report in yesterday’s Times of Malta has put some doubt on the process though, as the EU is apparently strapped for cash and unable to afford the extra MEPs.

An EU parliamentary official told the Times, “Unfortunately, it seems the new MEPs, including the one from Malta, will not be able to join as observers this year because the EP has not allocated funds for this purpose in this year’s budget,” adding there may be some money to pay for the Ghost MEPs in the 2011 budget, but that it’s not been decided to invite them even then, so it’s not been allocated yet.

Then again, this is a body that was unable to pass a law banning 3-strikes laws, despite 88% support, so anything is possible.

Source: Sweden to Finally Get a Second Pirate MEP?

One of the political parties that has shown interest in helping Wikileaks is the Swedish Pirate Party. Two weeks ago they offered to host the whistleblower site, and during a visit to Sweden Wikileaks’ Julian Assange accepted this offer and signed a deal.

“I’m delighted that we’re able to help WikiLeaks,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak in a response to the news that was made public today.

“I love opportunities to demonstrate that one of the biggest differences between us and the other parties is that we positively leap at any and all changes to take real responsibility for changing the world, rather than just commission reports and avoiding blame like the archetypal politician,” Falkvinge added.

For Wikileaks, support from the Swedish Pirate Party is a significant win. If the Party is voted into Parliament next month it could use Parliamentary immunity to run the site from inside the Swedish Government, making it impossible to take it offline through legal procedures.

“We welcome the help provided by the Pirate Party,” Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange said commenting on the agreement. “Our organisations share many values and I am looking forward to future ways we can help each other improve the world.”

Aside from hosting, Assange also hopes that the new Swedish Parliament will assist the site in other ways. Passing legislation that guarantees press freedom so Wikileaks and similar operations can do their work freely, is high on his wish list.

“We hope that the new Parliament will give serious consideration to further strengthening Sweden’s press protection legislation. Western democracies are not always as free as one might think, and freedom of the press needs constant vigilance,” Assange said.

“In particular, we would welcome Sweden copying Iceland’s Modern Media Initiative, something that the Pirate Party also desires.”

Pirate Party leader Falkvinge further stressed the importance of Wikileaks’ work, which has been sabotaged by corrupt or abusive organizations that try to conceal the truth from the public. “We desire to contribute to any effort that increases transparency and accountability of power in the world,” he said.

Assange on his turn recognized that his organization is fighting for much of the same ideals as the Pirate Party, and said that there might be more joint projects between the two outfits in the future. “We see more opportunities down the road in cooperating with the Pirate Party and look forward to exploring those options,” Assange noted.

Source: Pirate Party Strikes Hosting Deal With Wikileaks

In May 2006, a few months after the Pirate Party was founded, it saw a sharp increase in members after Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay’s servers. As a result the Party gained interest from the mainstream media and at the general elections in the same year it became the third largest party outside parliament.

With three years more experience, the Pirate Party participated in the elections for the European Parliament in Sweden in 2009. These elections came a few weeks after four people associated with The Pirate Bay were sentenced to prison, something that was brought up repeatedly during the campaign. As a result, the Pirate Party got more than 7% of the total votes earning them two seats in the European Parliament.

For the upcoming election, The Pirate Bay will also be a central theme in the election campaign. In May the Pirate Party volunteered to provide bandwidth to The Pirate Bay after previous hosts got into legal trouble. Two months later, the Party surprised again by stating that it would use Parliamentary immunity to run the site from inside the Swedish Parliament.

In the upcoming elections this September the Party hopes to equal the success it achieved in the European elections last year. Today the Party released its manifesto, which has grown from 7 pages back in 2006 to 27 today. The manifesto is divided into three parts, which are the core elements the Party is focusing on – privacy, culture and knowledge.

As expected, the Pirate Party stays true to their well-known principles regarding copyright and file-sharing. The Party believes that non-commercial file-sharing should be legalized. On the other side of the coin, they are proposing charges for those attempting to sue individuals for non-commercial copying. Inhibiting the spread of culture and “copyright abuse” would potentially carry a jail sentence of up to 2 years.

Although they are often portrayed as a one issue party, file-sharing related paragraphs are actually in the minority. Securing offline privacy is also a major issue, such as the ability to travel freely within the country without having to submit to identity checks. The Party further believes that medical, biological and software patents should be abolished, even though they are no longer calling for the abolition of patents in general.

“We’re aiming for entry into Parliament,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak. “Just like in the European elections, anything above four point zero zero percent is a political achievement that will send shockwaves worldwide. At present, we’re polling between one and two percent, mostly because the election campaigns haven’t started yet.”

“We still need some kind of key symbol issue, but then again, we’re much better off today than we were equally long before the European elections last year. We were invisible in the polls until 38 days before that election. We know that we can sprint like no other, and that we have the activists to carry our weight. It’s going to be a tough race right until the vote counts are coming in on election night,” Falkvinge told us.

Based on the current standings in the polls a sprint is indeed needed, but the Party may once again get some help from outside to achieve this. Coincidentally, the elections are held just a few days before the appeal of the Pirate Bay four begins. Because of this, the issues so dear to the Pirate Bay and its supporters may play an important role in the political debates.

“TorrentFreak readers should vote for the Pirate Party because a Pirate entry into the Swedish Parliament is going to make a tremendously larger impact than keeping or switching prime ministers. It’s going to save the Internet from censorship, wiretapping and encroachment.”

An invasion of pirates into the political system is what Sweden really needs in order to save the Internet, according to Falkvinge. “It’s going to liberate our common culture. It’s going to change not just Sweden but the world. Be a part of that change and tell it to your grandchildren.”

Source: Pirate Party Ramps Up To Invade Swedish Politics

Since then there have been thousands of follow up stories which continue today, as people pick through the information on offer and try to work out what it means for authorities around the world and especially the U.S. Government.

While some are trying to play down the implications for the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Wikileaks chief Julian Assange has been more forceful and has suggested that some of the documents show evidence of war crimes carried out by the U.S. military.

When added to the outrage caused by the recent ‘Collateral Murder‘ video, Wikileaks is developing quite a problem for itself. Yesterday Assange revealed that he had learned that there had been discussions to charge him “as a co-conspirator to espionage.”

Although it appears those discussions were later dropped, Assange still believes that he could be forcefully detained by the U.S. as a witness in the prosecution of intelligence analyst and video-leaker, Bradley Manning. But while concerns persist over Assange’s personal position, some are already considering the implications for the Wikileaks site itself.

“It would not surprise me at all if Sweden is shortly subjected to American pressure to shut down Wikileaks,” says Anna Troberg of the Swedish Pirate Party. “They have acted similarly in terms of The Pirate Bay, and given that Wikileaks’ activities strikes at the very heart of American power, it’s probably just a matter of time before they act.”

“Now is the moment of truth for our Swedish politicians. Will they have enough backbone to stand up on Wikileaks and democracy, or will they give way to the U.S. and go after PRQ and Wikileaks?”

PRQ is the Sweden-based company run by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij of Pirate Bay fame that currently provides hosting to Wikileaks. Although absolutely no stranger to coming under pressure over the sites they host, should PRQ become vulnerable, Wikileaks now have a backup offer on the table.

Never an entity to shy away from the free flow of information, no matter where it lies or whoever might claim ownership of it, the Swedish Pirate Party recently announced that it would become bandwidth supplier to The Pirate Bay. It now says that if the going gets too rough for Wikileaks and PRQ, they will offer the whistleblower site both servers and hosting too.

“The Pirate Party will under no circumstances give in to pressure,” says Troberg. “We now help democracy activists in Iran, including communication via anonymous servers. We provide bandwidth to our greatest political opinion leaders, The Pirate Bay. If Wikileaks is attacked again, we will immediately offer them both server space and bandwidth.”

“The Pirate Party believes in democracy and we are not afraid to stand up for it.”

Source: Pirate Party Offers Servers and Hosting To Wikileaks

Now the Party have made another interesting announcement. Together with technology partners, they will enter the broadband market with Pirate ISP, a new service designed to deliver consumer Internet in line with the Pirate Party’s ideals.

Gustav Nipe, student of economics, long-standing Pirate Party member and CEO of Pirate ISP told TorrentFreak that Pirate ISP is based on the hacker ontology. “If you see something and you think it’s broken you build a patch and fix it. With that as a reference point we are launching an ISP. This is one way to tackle the big brother society.”

“The Pirate ISP is needed in different ways. One is to compete with other ISPs, let them fight more for our internet. If they don’t behave there will always be someone else taking their share,” Nipe added.

Aside from the competition angle, Gustav Nipe told TorrentFreak that the Pirate ISP will maximize privacy for all its customers. Operated by ViaEuropa – the company behind the iPredator anonymity service – Pirate ISP users will remain anonymous.

The service began beta testing in the city of Lund yesterday with around 100 residents of LKF, a housing organization whose aim is to provide quality accommodations at a reasonable cost.

After the first two weeks of testing, the initial expansion aim is to take 5% of the market in Lund and then set up in further locations around Sweden. This is a reasonable aim according to Nipe, who told TorrentFreak that they start small so they can assure quality service to all their customers.

At the Hacknight conference in Malmö, Nipe told Shane Murray from nrli.tv that they will not allow the Swedish Government to monitor Pirate ISP users and will refuse to retain logs. He warned that any attempt to force it to do otherwise will result in a constitutional issue.

Nipe was also clear on how Pirate ISP would respond to outside interference, in particular that from the United States.

“They can bring on whatever they have, we will refuse to follow there. We don’t agree with what they are saying and we don’t agree with the laws they are making so if they have an issue with us, then we will have an issue – but that’s it.”

For most potential Pirate ISP customers who intend to use the service to file-share, the immediate threats will come from closer to home, primarily from Henrik Pontén at Svenska Antipiratbyrån, the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. Nipe said they are prepared to deal with this challenge.

“It would be a pity to reveal all the tricks that we have, so we will save those for later. But we have ways to ensure that no customer should have to get a sad letter home from Henrik Pontén.”

For his part, yesterday Pontén seemed unimpressed.

“Our investigations have focused on people with much higher safety. The question has been asked a thousand times before,” he said. “When the police come calling, they must disclose the information.”

It seems that the wider Swedish public won’t have long to wait to discover if Pirate ISP can live up to its promises. According to Nipe they will roll out big in Sweden at the end of this summer.

Source: World’s First Pirate ISP Launches In Sweden

This April, nearly two years after the first ACTA draft leaked out, the negotiators caved in and decided to release a redacted draft to the public. The draft itself didn’t bring much news, as nearly all information had been revealed via the leaked documents. However, some had hoped that the negotiators would be more open about the results of future meetings.

Unfortunately, this hope was soon shattered as the ACTA negotiations continued outside of the public eye. Yesterday, it became clear that even elected representatives at the European Parliament are not allowed to share ACTA-related information with their voters.

Following the latest round of ACTA negotiations in Lucerne, Switzerland, the Commission’s negotiators came to the European Parliament to give an update on ACTA’s progress. True to the secrecy surrounding most ACTA meetings, the gathering was closed to the public.

Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom was also invited to join, and at the meeting he asked if this secret setup also meant that he wasn’t allowed to share any of the information with the public.

“At first the Commission seemed unwilling to answer this question with a straight yes or no, but after I had repeated the question a number of times, they finally came out and said that I would not be allowed to spread the information given,” Engstrom explains.

Since there is little value in being informed on something you can’t share with others, Engstrom saw himself forced to leave the room. “I then left the meeting, since I am not prepared to accept information given under such conditions in this particular case.”

Like many others, Engstrom fails to see the benefit of keeping information from the public. “There is no sensible reason why the ACTA negotiations should be carried out in secret, or why Members of the European Parliament should not be allowed to discuss information about ACTA with their constituents,” he said.

“In a democracy, new laws should be made by the elected representatives after an open public debate. They should not be negotiated behind closed doors by unelected officials at the Commission, in an attempt to keep the citizens out of the process until it is too late.”

Even worse, according to Engstrom the secret ACTA meeting violates the Lisbon Treaty which states that the Commission should fully inform the European Parliament. With a secret oral meeting without any documents being handed out, this is certainly not the case, the Pirate Party MEP argues.

“That is disgraceful,” Engstrom concludes.

Source: Pirate Party MEP Forced To Leave ACTA Meeting

The verdict was welcomed by local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, but several copyright lawyers and opponents at the other end of the copyright spectrum have heavily criticized it. The ruling sets a dangerous precedent for future cases and may very well lead to more control and censorship by the pro-copyright lobby at the expense of people’s freedoms, they argued.

Aside from the critique on the decision itself, the integrity of the judge who handed out the verdict has also been called into question. Immediately after the verdict people involved with the Dutch Pirate Party, which is on the ballot of tomorrow’s elections, pointed out that the judge might not be as objective as he could be.

It turns out that the movie company lawyer Dirk Visser, the same person who also scored a victory for BREIN against Mininova, has been organizing a course for copyright specialists where Judge Hensen was once of the teachers. This prompted the Pirate Party politicians to doubt the objectiveness of the judge. Sweden’s Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge, who’s currently supporting his Dutch colleagues in the election run, has been the most vocal about the issue.

“It’s stories like this that show why today’s politicians simply must be kicked from office,” Falkvinge told TorrentFreak in a comment. “If they don’t see a problem with this — and apparently, they don’t — then it’s absolutely critical to the integrity of society and faith in the justice system that, quite frankly, some heads roll in tomorrow’s elections in favor of the Dutch Pirate Party.”

“Every time something like this happens, you think the copyright lobby has fallen to a moral rock bottom. Then as soon as you turn your back, they take out a jackhammer and start digging.” Falkvinge added. “I expect this will boost support for the Dutch Piratenpartij, and for good reason. Today’s politicians need to learn that their seats aren’t taken for granted,” Falkvinge added.

In the current polls the Dutch Pirate Party is still lacking enough support to be able to scoop a seat at the local parliament, but there’s still a day to go for them. Undoubtedly, stories about conspiring copyright lobbyists and possible biased judges may help to give that final push.

Despite the election outcome, FTD announced today that it will appeal the verdict of the case. They don’t intend to follow up the bias claims, FTD’s lawyer told TorrentFreak.

Source: Bias Claims Overshadow Landmark Anti-Piracy Ruling

Westminster Council’s Nigel Tonkin, who has been organizing elections for 35 years, has been commenting to the BBC on the do’s and don’t at the polling station. He confirmed that party insignia and emblems are not allowed, but that Pirate Party voters are free to show up in a pirate costume.

“There’s a candidate standing in Westminster as a pirate. And if he comes in to vote in a pirate costume as is likely, we won’t turn him away. The same goes for any supporters coming to vote as pirates.” Parrots and other pets are also welcome at the polling stations, Tonkin said.

In all seriousness, the UK Pirate Party is no joke. They stand for real issues that are dear to the hearts of voters but are often overlooked by other politicians. The passing of the Digital Economy Act is a prime example of where the public opinion differs from that of the lawmakers.

As with the Swedish party in last summer’s EU elections, not all the candidates are fresh faced youngsters. Quite a few are definitely middle-aged, including party leader Andrew Robinson (41) who’s confident that his party can make a difference if given the chance.

“Today we can strike fear into the hearts of our enemies, Andrew Robinson says. “Today we can show them that we will no longer sit idly by as they take away our rights, as they take away our privacy, as they force greater and greater burdens and costs on us while lining their own pockets.”

“Today, we show them what can be achieved by real men and women, scattered across the country, connected by technologies the other parties still struggle to understand,” Robinson added. The polling stations will close 10 PM local time, the first results are expected to come in later in the evening.

The Pirate Party candidates are:

• Andrew Robinson – Worcester
• Graeme Lambert – Bury North
• Alexander van Terheyden – Bethnal Green and Bow
• Tim Dobson – Manchester Gorton
• Luke Leighton – South West Surrey
• Shaun Dyer – Leicester West
• Finlay Archibald – Glasgow Central
• David Geraghty – Derby North
• Jack Nunn – Cities of London and Westminster

Source: UK Pirates Allowed to Vote in Costumes

This week, the Pirate Party UK, founded last summer, has announced their candidate list. The ten candidates come on the heels of the publication of their manifesto, and cover a broad swathe of the country, from London all the way to Scotland.

As with the Swedish party in last summer’s EU elections, not all the candidates are fresh faced youngsters. Quite a few are definitely middle-aged, including party leader Andrew Robinson (41). Despite characterizations such as ‘kids just out for something for free’, they, like all Pirate Parties, will focus on reforming copyright, privacy and patent laws, while preventing the spread of others.

The candidates are:

• Andrew Robinson – Worcester
• Graeme Lambert – Bury North
• Mark Sims – East Ham
• Alexander van Terheyden – Bethnal Green and Bow
• Tim Dobson – Manchester Gorton
• Luke Leighton – South West Surrey
• Shaun Dyer – Leicester West
• Finlay Archibald – Glasgow Central
• David Geraghty – Derby North
• Jack Nunn – constituency to be decided (London area)

TorrentFreak spoke with Bury North candidate Graeme Lambert, who at 18 is the youngest of the party’s candidates and just old enough to vote himself. Bury North’s current MP, Labour’s David Chaytor, made the news recently as he was charged with theft relating to last year’s expenses scandal, which Lambert has seized on in his campaign.

“The Pirate Party UK is a corruption-free political party which the constituents of Bury North deserve after the actions of David Chaytor,” he told us. Lambert is optimistic of a decent showing, although thinks it unlikely that he will win.

“I’m aiming to secure our deposit, which would require 2500 votes, which I am confident that I can achieve. My chances of winning the seat are relative to Ladbrokes odds of 250/1″.

Indeed, bookmakers Ladbrokes have given all the party’s candidates a 250/1 chance of winning, which is worse than most small parties such as the Green, UKIP and Liberal parties, but better than the 500/1 of long-time electoral jokers, the Monster Raving Loony Party.

Lambert is not the only one running for a seat which has strong resonances with the party manifesto. Mark Sims, a 37 year-old IT teacher, is running against Stephen Timms who is responsible for “Digital Britain”. Last year Timms gave the reason for the rushing of Digital Britain as  ”the plans as they stand could delay action, impacting unfairly upon rights holders”, certain to be a key feature of Sims’ campaign.

Of course, all this comes at a price, and the party is looking for donations and ways to raise money to help pay for the campaigns.

“We’d love to give as many people as possible the opportunity to ‘Vote Pirate’ in the election,” says Peter Brett, the Deputy Campaigns Officer. “Unfortunately, this means we need to raise just over £9000 in addition to the funds previously raised through member subscriptions. This will be just enough for all our candidates to pay their deposits and to have a reasonable amount for publicity materials.”

With the Digital Economy Bill about to be rammed through the Commons, despite protests, will this be enough?

Source: UK Pirate Party Announces 2010 Election Lineup

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/uk-pirate-party-announces-2010-election-lineup-100402/feed/ 48 http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-pirate-party-joins-election-race-100308/ http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-pirate-party-joins-election-race-100308/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:14:59 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=22171 Source: Dutch Pirate Party Joins Election Race
]]> 2009 was a breakthrough year for the Pirate Party movement. With more than 7 percent of the vote, the Swedish Pirate Party secured two seats in the European Parliament.

A few weeks later, the Pirates in Germany entered the local Parliament after a member of another party switched sides.

In 2010 the Pirate Parties hope to continue this hot streak, especially during the Swedish national elections later this year. However, Sweden is not the only country where a Pirate Party will end up at the ballot. In the UK the local Pirate Party hopes to compete as well and the Dutch party has now decided to do the same.

In recent months there has been a lot of political debate regarding Dutch copyright law which currently allows people to download copyrighted movies and music for personal use. Several established parties have shown interest in criminalizing file-sharers, something the Pirate Party hopes to avoid.

Instead, the Pirates would like to shorten the copyright term to 5 years and legalize sharing of all copyrighted material on the Internet. Tim Kuik, head honcho at the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, is not afraid of politically organized pirates and described the Party’s plans as short sighted and unrealistic.

Samir Allioui, Chairman of the Pirate Party, told TorrentFreak that he’s very happy with Kuik’s negative comments. “He gives people a good reason to vote for us,” he said, referring to the negative view that most people have of BREIN.

If elected, the party will do everything it can to stop abuses of copyright, promote Net Neutrality and push for patent reform. The party is further committed to increasing transparency, strengthening fundamental rights and protecting privacy.

Despite the enthusiasm of the party’s members, there is still a long way to go before they can actually compete in the election on June 9th. One of the biggest hurdles is the requirement to deposit a sum of 12,000 euros, a barrier which is meant to prevent too many parties from entering the election.

Samir is confident that they will be able to raise the money in the weeks to come. He encourages all sympathizers to become a member of the Party and help to get the Pirate Party on the ballot.

Source: Dutch Pirate Party Joins Election Race

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-pirate-party-joins-election-race-100308/feed/ 58 http://torrentfreak.com/aussie-pirate-party-to-shake-up-politics-down-under-091201/ http://torrentfreak.com/aussie-pirate-party-to-shake-up-politics-down-under-091201/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:30:31 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=19377 Source: Aussie Pirate Party To Shake Up Politics Down Under
]]> 2009 has been a disastrous year for several well-established torrent sites, with The Pirate Bay and Mininova losing in court against the entertainment industries. Not completely unrelated, this year has been a very successful one for the political Pirate Party movement.

The Pirate Party currently holds two seats in the European Parliament thanks to the massive support from Swedish voters. In the aftermath of this accomplishment several new parties were founded worldwide. In the UK the Pirate Party was officially registered at the Electoral Commission in August and Canada has been pursuing the same goal for a while, now followed by Australia.

The Pirate Party Australia just announced that it is now accepting founding members in their attempt to get the party officially registered with the Australian Electoral Commission. In order to get registered the party needs 500 members who sign and send in their application form, plus a $20.00 founders fee.

“With this small but significant step, we will be one step closer to providing Australian electors with the option of voting ‘Pirate’ at the next Federal election, to fight for a fairer and more balanced copyright, greater innovation and access to culture, information and knowledge, greater government transparency and the protection of our civil liberties,” the Party announced.

David Crafti, President of Pirate Party Australia, stresses the importance of a political party that defends citizens rights against the ever-growing power of pro-copyright lobbyists.

“With the current government attempting to implement an Internet censorship regime, continuing secretive ACTA negotiations and an increasingly belligerent war on sharing, here and across the globe – it is now more important than ever that we work to protect our civil liberties, and our democracy,” Crafti said.

The Aussie Pirate Party hopes to have the 500 required membership applications in before the end of the year. They encourage prospective members to send in their application forms (pdf) as soon as is possible, so the party can become officially registered and get to work.

Source: Aussie Pirate Party To Shake Up Politics Down Under

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/aussie-pirate-party-to-shake-up-politics-down-under-091201/feed/ 63 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-gets-second-seat-in-european-parliament-091104/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-gets-second-seat-in-european-parliament-091104/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:38:21 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=18587 Source: Pirate Party Gets Second Seat in European Parliament
]]> With more than 7 percent of the vote, the Swedish Pirate Party secured a seat in the European Parliament in June, and the possibility of gaining another if the Lisbon Treaty was signed by all member states.

The Lisbon Treaty was ratified yesterday by Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, who was the last to sign the document.

Ironically, The Pirate Party was against the Lisbon Treaty, which has now doubled the number of seats the party has in the European Parliament.

The newly gained seat will be awarded to Amelia Andersdotter, who will become the youngest Member of the European Parliament. In order to free up time for her political career, Amelia recently decided to quit Economics and Spanish at Lund University in Sweden.

Besides fighting for fairer and more sensible copyright legislation, she will also spend time on education and the development of Europe’s knowledge economy.

“The Parliament needs to be going for a sustainable knowledge economy, and that’s where I come into play,” Amelia told TorrentFreak.

Amelia will officially take her seat in Brussels on December 1st, where she will be joining Christian Engstrom. The two will have plenty of work to do in the years to come, countering the growing influence from pro-copyright lobby groups.

Source: Pirate Party Gets Second Seat in European Parliament

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-gets-second-seat-in-european-parliament-091104/feed/ 169 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-condemns-5-4m-claim-against-p2p-hub-091015/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-condemns-5-4m-claim-against-p2p-hub-091015/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:44:59 +0000 enigmax http://torrentfreak.com/?p=17977 Source: Pirate Party Condemns $5.4m Claim Against P2P Operator
]]> Finland’s Pirate Party (Piraattipuolue) has today condemned what it describes as an “astronomical” claim against the operator of a Direct Connect file-sharing hub. The individual faces a huge claim for damages amounting to 3.6m euros ($5.4m).

The claim, which originates from 2007, comes from Finnish anti-piracy group CIAPC (Copyright Information & Anti-Piracy Centre) and is leveled at the operator of a hub known as BAWD Rinkeli. The man, who lives in Espoo, Finland, says that he set up the server to chat with other Internet users and no copyright material ever passed through the hub.

The anti-piracy group, which is working on behalf of Teosto (a performance rights organization that collects royalties on behalf of songwriters and composers in Finland) and IFPI, is demanding huge compensation direct from the 34 year old.

“With such extreme demands the antipirates do not even intend to get any money”, the Pirate Party told Piraattiliitto: “Their only intention is to destroy the life of the accused so that he will serve as a warning example for others.”

The Pirate Party goes on to say that the anti-piracy group has not been able to provide any evidence of wrong-doing via the hub. Instead they point to the man’s large bandwidth consumption on his private broadband connection as “evidence” of infringement.

“CIAPC bases its claims solely on the bandwidth consumption of the accused. They have not been able to point out any specific infringements,” says the Party. “With such information, how can they even claim to have suffered millions in losses when the international scientific community has not been able to show any such losses even after a much more careful analysis?”

The leader of the Party, Pasi Palmulehto, says that he has personal experience of running a Direct Connect hub and notes that evidence of bandwidth consumption alone means nothing. The man’s claimed bandwidth utilization of 1 Mbit/s is easily achieved by social communications alone, says Palmulehto.

No file-sharing is carried out directly from a Direct Connect hub, which in very basic terms operate in a similar way to a torrent site, in that any file-sharing activity would be carried out from user to user. All Direct Connect hubs operate in this fashion, with users making folders and their contents available to other users for sharing. Although it is possible for a hub operator to also share files, this is denied.

“No one can claim compensation for what others have done,” the man told Finnish media.

Source: Pirate Party Condemns $5.4m Claim Against P2P Operator

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-condemns-5-4m-claim-against-p2p-hub-091015/feed/ 68 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-books-moderate-success-in-german-elections-090929/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-books-moderate-success-in-german-elections-090929/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:11:45 +0000 Ben Jones http://torrentfreak.com/?p=17478 Source: Pirate Party Books Moderate Success In German Elections
]]> Going into the elections, the ‘Piratenpartei’ must have been on a high. In local elections two weeks ago members of the Pirate Party were elected onto the city councils of Munster and Aachen, and just one week ago, in youth elections, they scooped almost 10% of the youth vote.

Despite all this, 2% was the best they could achieve in the Federal elections, although in itself, that is still not an easy figure to achieve. However, it is short of the 5% barrier required to enter the German Parliament. It also means that the seat they gained from the defection of Jörg Tauss has been lost.

Yet positives remain. Like their Swedish brethren, the Pirate Party is now the largest outside of government, eclipsing many established ‘broad spectrum’ parties. It also qualifies for federal funding, which at 0.85 Euros per vote nets the party somewhere in the region of €720,000 (or $1,050,000 US) from their 845,904 votes, plus additional money to match 38% of contributions and membership fees.

Perhaps the biggest accomplishment is that the party has gained more votes in this election than the entire movement has before. It got a very strong showing with first-time voters, with Business Week reporting up to 13% of that group went Pirate. The party has also grown its membership tenfold in just a few months, to around 10,000. Not as fast as seen in Sweden, but still impressive.

Jens Seipenbusch, national party chairman, was upbeat about the results. “Our new style of politics touches the nerve of the people in Germany. We will continue to bank on participatory politics and to fight for civil rights online as well as offline.”

While it’s easy to focus on the negative, the positive is there as well. The party doubled its vote percentage in just a few months. With the funding, the rapid growth of members and the high profile the party has received in the media, it can only be a matter of time before the party gains more seats.

Source: Pirate Party Books Moderate Success In German Elections

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-books-moderate-success-in-german-elections-090929/feed/ 55 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-canada-starts-a-bittorrent-tracker-090925/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-canada-starts-a-bittorrent-tracker-090925/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:54:08 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=17410 Source: Pirate Party Canada Starts a BitTorrent Tracker
]]> The Canadian Pirate Party is one of the youngest Pirate Parties around but they are not too shy to make a statement. Today the party has launched a BitTorrent tracker of their own.

By starting a BitTorrent tracker the Pirates hope to show that BitTorrent and filesharing are not a threat, but a great tool for artists to promote their work.

“We’re starting a BitTorrent tracker to show artists how to properly use P2P technology in order to gain access to a cheap and efficient marketing and distribution network,” Pirate Party spokesman Jake Daynes told TorrentFreak.

“In addition we hope to show the public that P2P is not only for ‘illegal’ activity, and that it can be used to allow aspiring artists access to the global stage. A tracker is the epitome of filesharing, and one of our platform ‘planks’ as it were, is about the promotion of filesharing,” Jake added.

The Canadian Pirate Party is using RivetTracker‘s tracker software and they will be featuring content from artists who release their work under a Creative Commons license.

In the future the Party hopes to add more content to the tracker though. “Right now it is only artists, though we hope to include a lot more CC material. If an artist would like to submit their work, they can email it to us with their info, and we will host it,” Jake told TorrentFreak.

Currently there are just a few releases on the tracker, but the Party hopes that this will grow exponentially in the weeks to come. If you’re Canadian and you want to support the Pirate Party you can do so by signing up for a free membership.

Source: Pirate Party Canada Starts a BitTorrent Tracker

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-canada-starts-a-bittorrent-tracker-090925/feed/ 73 http://torrentfreak.com/german-youth-would-vote-pirate-party-into-parliament-090920/ http://torrentfreak.com/german-youth-would-vote-pirate-party-into-parliament-090920/#comments Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:34:02 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=17230 Source: German Youth Would Vote Pirate Party Into Parliament
]]> The youth organization U18 aims to promote political awareness among the German youth and traditionally they hold their own election prior to that of the adults. This year the Pirate Party was one of the surprising winners.

This Friday more than 120,000 youngsters cast their votes at one of the U18 voting booths. Of these, a massive 8.72% voted for the Pirate Party that currently holds one seat in the German Parliament.

The result of this election is encouraging for the Pirates, who already had a great run at the European election earlier this year where they surpassed some of the established local parties in some districts.

“The outcome of this election shows us that young people recognize the importance of ‘having a vote’,” Pirate Party Charmain Jens Seipenbusch said. “The fact that many of them have chosen us, shows that young people find it important to defend their civil rights and that the Pirates tackle the crucial issues of the 21st century.”

The ‘real’ German federal election is scheduled for 27 September, and the Pirate Party hopes to gain a few dozen seats in the German Parliament so they can do something about increased Internet censorship and abuses of copyright by multi-billion dollar companies.

Getting into the German Parliament will not be an easy task as it requires a minimum of 5% of the total votes. Let’s hope the German parents listen to their kids for once.

German’s youth votes Pirate



Source: German Youth Would Vote Pirate Party Into Parliament

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/german-youth-would-vote-pirate-party-into-parliament-090920/feed/ 84 http://torrentfreak.com/former-mp-joins-pirate-party-germany-090828/ http://torrentfreak.com/former-mp-joins-pirate-party-germany-090828/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:20:49 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=16642 Source: Former MP Joins Pirate Party Germany
]]> Just weeks after the Swedish Pirate Party entered the European Parliament, the German Pirate Party unexpectedly gained a seat in the German government when Jörg Tauss left the Social Democrats Party (SPD) to join the Pirate Party.

The ambitions of the Pirates don’t stop there though, as they are currently preparing for a successful run in the upcoming elections. With Herbert Rusche, the Pirates add another experienced politician to their team.

Nicole Hornung of the Pirate Party says he is pleased with gaining such a prominent new pirate: “Herbert’s long political experience is invaluable for us. In addition, he has already helped to develop a group of dedicated young people in the direction of governing a party.”

Indeed, Rusche has plenty of experience. He is one of the co-founders of Germany’s Green party for which he served as a Member of Parliament for several years.

This fall, the Pirate Party hopes to do well in the German federal election so they can do something about the increased censorship of the Internet and abuses of copyright. The party is further committed to increase transparency and strengthen the fundamental rights and protection of privacy.

According to Rusche the Pirate Party can do a lot of good work for the German people by addressing these issues. “The established parties fail completely, for many people these issues are of paramount importance,” Rusche concludes.

Source: Former MP Joins Pirate Party Germany

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/former-mp-joins-pirate-party-germany-090828/feed/ 41 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-uk-officially-registered-090811/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-uk-officially-registered-090811/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:59:37 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=16072 Source: Pirate Party UK Officially Registered
]]> In June the Swedish Pirate Party shocked its critics and secured a seat in the European Parliament, with no less than 7.1 percent of the vote. The Pirates received more votes from those under 30 than any other party in Sweden, which went beyond all expectations.

This achievement motivated supporters of the Party’s ideals in other countries to become active as well. Last month the Swiss Pirate Party was founded and the Canadians are mobilizing too. In the UK the local Pirate Party hasn’t been sitting still either, quite the opposite.

Today the Pirate Party UK announced that they are officially registered at the Electoral Commission. The paperwork is done and all the bureaucracy has been dealt with, so now the party’s biggest challenge is to increase its membership.

“Now the party can really start. It’s time for us to tell the world that we exist, to recruit members, raise funds and gear up to fight the General Election,” Pirate Party Chairman, Andrew Robinson told TorrentFreak. “The officers and web team have built the framework that the party needs to get going, now it’s time for the public to make things happen,” he added.

Increasingly the UK copyright lobby is pushing politicians, ISPs and law enforcement to take action against those accused of copyright infringement. If anywhere, a Party devoted to protecting online privacy and weeding out copyright abuse is much needed in Britain. However, they can’t do much without the help of actively involved members.

“Join the party, tell the media about the party, tell your friends about the party, take part in policy and news debates on the forum, join our Facebook group, donate or set up a regular payment to provide financial support, set up a branch in your constituency, school or workplace,” Robinson suggests, emphasizing that the success of Britain’s newest party depends on its members.

All over the world the Pirate Party movement is growing, with new parties being founded every month. For those who want to get involved locally, a full list of all the parties can be found at Pirate Party International.

Pirate Party UK Campaign Poster



Source: Pirate Party UK Officially Registered

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-uk-officially-registered-090811/feed/ 76 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-enters-the-german-parliament-090621/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-enters-the-german-parliament-090621/#comments Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:35:04 +0000 Ben Jones http://torrentfreak.com/?p=14426 Source: Pirate Party Enters the German Parliament
]]> When it was said by some that the Swedish win in the European elections would act as a catalyst, nobody would have thought that the results would start to show so quickly. Two weeks after getting 230,000 votes in the EU elections, the Pirate Party has gained a seat in the German Federal Parliament.

Politician Jörg Tauss left the SPD yesterday over concerns about Internet censorship. The German Pirate Party had been running a petition against an attempt by the German government to have a censorship list, which, although at first applied to child pornography, has already been considered for expansion to cover other areas.

Faced with this censorship system, which has not been proven to do anything to protect children or do anything except stifle free speech, Tauss decided to leave his party and join the Pirate Party instead.

In a statement the Pirate Party welcomes him into the party as “one of the most experienced politicians in the areas of education, research and new media,” and calls the defection the “culmination of a long chain of failures of the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) in the areas of civil rights in the digital age and shows a dramatic loss of their credibility inside and outside.”

However, there is also controversy as Tauss is currently under investigation over allegations that he was improperly in possession of child porn images. Tauss claims that such images were sent to him during the basis of an investigation into that subculture, in line with his official government work. Criminal charges on the possession of the images may be pending soon, with Die Welt quoting the prosecutor as saying charges will be brought “within a few weeks”.

Regardless, the Pirate Party is standing by Tauss, who has been a member of the parliament since 1994, at least until a determination of charges is announced. “As long as there will be no criminal conviction against Mr. Tauss, the Piratenpartei has no reason to question Mr. Tauss’ innocence and moral integrity.”

With their seat in the German Parliament the Pirate Party hopes to do something about the increased censorship of the Internet and abuse of copyright by multi-billion dollar companies.

Source: Pirate Party Enters the German Parliament

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-enters-the-german-parliament-090621/feed/ 79 http://torrentfreak.com/how-pirates-shook-european-politics-090608/ http://torrentfreak.com/how-pirates-shook-european-politics-090608/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:17:33 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=13973 Source: How Pirates Shook European Politics
]]> Late Sunday night, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt congratulated the Pirate Party on their unprecedented win at the European elections.

The Pirate Party is seen a serious competitor in Swedish politics now, a fact underscored by the Prime Minister who said that his own party will formulate a clear policy regarding net integrity and copyright issues in preparation for the Swedish national elections in September 2010.

A few hours earlier, the party dinner had come to a close with volunteers and members singing “The Broadband Hymn”. They had fittingly gathered at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and as Swedish TV published the exit polls results indicating that the Pirate Party would get around 7% of the votes, wild cheers broke out. Party leader Rick Falkvinge took to the stage.

“Together we have today re-shaped the political map in Europe,” he said. “Right now, Europe is watching what is happening here and politicians everywhere are scrambling to understand our issues. They now know that the party that has information-political perspectives can win many votes.”

And yes, it did. 214,313 of them in Sweden on Sunday. 7.1 percent of the vote and a guarantee of at least one seat in the European Parliament.

The Pirate Party was the most popular party among voters under 30 years of age. Taking into account that Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s Moderate Party is the most popular party among voters over 65 years of age, one can understand why Reinfeldt later in the evening said he will sit down with the Moderate Youth leader Niklas Wykman – a critic of the surveillance legislation and anti-filesharing laws – to discuss Internet issues.

“We’ll share files in Brussels!” a young man shouted as he ran to the bar at election night. Meanwhile, journalists from all over Europe who had flown in to cover the unique occasion tried to get their piece of party leader Rick Falkvinge and vice chairman Christian Engström.

Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström



The latter, who will probably take the party’s seat in the EU parliament, held a short speech in which he thanked all the volunteers. The Pirate Party stays true to its net-roots and has no formal organization. Anyone who thinks he or she can contribute is welcome to do so simply by posting on the forum and going out and doing it. No formal decisions on campaigning are taken and the thousands of party ballots have been distributed to voting centers simply by someone living close and wanting to play their part.

“It’s amazing that it worked. I never thought it would,” Engström joked.

A journalist from Swedish radio broke into the celebrations with a question for party founder Rick Falkvinge on how he felt. With champagne in his hand and pride in his eyes, he just smiled: “How does it feel to write history? It feels pretty damn good.”

Today, after a night spent drinking rum and chanting seafarer standards, the pirates woke up finding themselves on the front pages of the Swedish newspapers. Pirates waving Jolly Rogers. Pirates taking celebratory late night dips in fountains. Pirates laughing. Pirates hugging. And there is consensus among the op-eds and political pundits on how it could happen: Enthusiasm paid off.

The two large parties in Sweden, the Social Democrats and the Moderate Party, are heavily criticized because of their lack of engagement in the European Parliament. Meanwhile, the Green Party (which also had a great election with 10.9%) and the Pirate Party positioned themselves on their respective expert issues and built a lot of support from the base.

When the EU parliament meets after summer, there will be at least one pirate in the midst of European parliament. If the Lisbon treaty is voted through, there can be two. It may not seem a lot in order to make a difference, but as a blogger put it: One pirate can hijack a whole ship.

Source: How Pirates Shook European Politics

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/how-pirates-shook-european-politics-090608/feed/ 140 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-wins-and-enters-the-european-parliament-090607/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-wins-and-enters-the-european-parliament-090607/#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:55:07 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=13917 Source: Pirate Party Wins and Enters 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 99.9% of the districts counted the Pirates have 7.1 percent of the votes, beating several established parties. This means that the Pirate Party will get at least one, but most likely two of the 18 (+2) 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.

Update: Sweden has 20 seats, but until the Lisbon treaty passes only 18 with voting rights. This means that the Pirate Party will have 2 seats.

Update: In Germany the Pirate Party got approximately 1 percent of the votes, not enough for a seat in the European Parliament. Andreas Popp, lead candidate for the German Pirate Party is pleased and told TorrentFreak: “This was the first time, we ran for the European elections. And although many voters have hardly known us, we got a great result. This shows, that many citizens identify themselves with our goals. I want to thank all people who supported us, we could not have done that without them. We have fulfilled our minimal goal of 0,5%. Now we can start up for real!”

Update: Here’s a feature article on the election night and outcome.

Source: Pirate Party Wins and Enters The European Parliament

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-wins-and-enters-the-european-parliament-090607/feed/ 390 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-backed-by-swedens-most-prolific-writer-090527/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-backed-by-swedens-most-prolific-writer-090527/#comments Wed, 27 May 2009 17:36:43 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=13590 Source: Pirate Party Backed by Sweden’s Most Prolific Writer
]]> Lars Gustafsson is a Swedish poet, novelist and literary critic whose controversial writings often go against the establishment. For several years he worked as a professor at the University of Texas teaching philosophy and creative writing, until he retired in 2006.

True to his defiant nature, Gustafsson – who has moved back from Texas to Sweden – is now openly supporting the Pirate Party‘s ideologies. In an editorial he wrote for the Swedish news outlet Expressen today, he explains why he decided to vote for this up and coming political movement in the upcoming European elections (translation).

People’s freedoms and privacy on the Internet are at stake according to Gustafsson, something that can be largely attributed to draconian laws that are passed based on proposals put forward by the pro-copyright lobby. Furthermore, patents on medicine and Monsanto’s copyrighted crop have an equally negative impact on people’s freedom and even their health, something the Pirate Party is also strongly against.

“We’re delighted that one of Sweden’s most senior and respected writers came out in full and unreserved support of the Pirate Party”, Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate Party told TorrentFreak. “Not only in support, but he is also spot on in his reasons. Starting his editorial with the story of how the ancient Persian ruler ordered the sea whipped because it gave him unfavorable winds, and moving on to repression of the printing press in France, he has understood the issue thorougly.”

“I can only hope that his piece serves as a wake-up call for parts of the elder creative community that has still to see beyond the lobby propaganda,” Falkvinge added. Luckily Gustafsson is not the only public figure supporting the Pirate’s cause. In fact, many others begin to understand that the anti-piracy and pro-copyright lobbies are overstepping their boundaries. Writer Unni Drougge, who spoke out in defense of The Pirate Bay recently and held a speech at a Pirate Party rally, is also sympathetic towards Sweden’s third largest political party.

“Today I want to distance myself from the greedy and power hungry copyright lobby that willingly plows the field for the Big Brother society, and also give my full support to The Pirate Bay, by donating my latest published book. And I don’t think I’ll lose a penny by doing it,” she wrote in a recent editorial, giving one of her books away for free.

Support for the Pirate Party is still growing in Sweden, especially among those outraged at the recent Pirate Bay verdict. Rick Falkvinge is confident that they will make it into the European Parliament with at least one seat. “I’m extremely optimistic,” he told TorrentFreak earlier. “It’s not a question of ‘a’ seat any more. If everybody who is angry with the Pirate Bay verdict goes to vote, we will get at least one seat, and probably more.”

The European elections take place in early June throughout Europe and early voting has already started in Sweden. The German Pirate Party is also contending for a seat in the European Parliament.

Source: Pirate Party Backed by Sweden’s Most Prolific Writer

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-backed-by-swedens-most-prolific-writer-090527/feed/ 61 http://torrentfreak.com/german-pirate-party-sets-course-for-european-parliament-090522/ http://torrentfreak.com/german-pirate-party-sets-course-for-european-parliament-090522/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 09:00:36 +0000 Ben Jones http://torrentfreak.com/?p=13051 Source: German Pirate Party Sets Course For European Parliament
]]> The German Pirate Party (or Piratenpartei) is often overshadowed by the success and popularity of their Swedish brethren. Recently they were even removed and banned from a major German social networking site. They shouldn’t be discounted though, as they have every bit as much grit and determination as their Nordic associates, as one of their adverts for their European Election campaign shows.

TorrentFreak spoke with their lead candidate, Bavarian party chairman Andreas Popp, to discuss his views on the upcoming election.

What do you see as being the most important issue in the election?

Currently the most important issue in EU (but also national) politics are the civil rights. This includes the fight against the censorship of the Internet as well as against the transformation of our western societies into police states. IT, especially the Internet, plays a very important role in these topics. The politicians who are in power right now fear the Internet and are doing everything to get control over it, just like the content industry does. What makes these topics so important is the immediate danger we are facing. If we do not fight for our civil liberties now, we might just find ourselves in a new form of dictatorship.

What is your opinion of Commissioner McCreevy’s attempts to extend copyright terms in the EU?

This extension really was some kind of a joke. They said they wanted to enhance the financial situation of retired musicians. This is already strange, since while other people have to save money for their retirement, musicians get their pension for free by copyright. But then all the experts stated that musicians will not benefit from this extension, because they normally sell all their rights in buy-out-contracts. So only music labels benefit from the law. They passed it anyways.

What about copyright in general?

I think it would take too long to explain what needs to be changed here, but you can read about it on the program (english) page of our campaign site.

How many members does the German Pirate Party have right now, and has there been any boost from the Pirate Bay trial, as the Swedish party has seen?

Nationally, we just had our 1000th member. Yes, we have had a great boost during the last few weeks, but I cannot tell you if it is because of the Pirate Bay trial or because of the new censorship law.

Are you seeing the ‘older generations’ supporting the party in significant numbers, or is it mainly 18-30 year-olds?

Of course the generation of the “Digital Natives” are the main supporting group for the Pirate Party. But there are also a lot of people who are already out of their thirties and are supporting our activities. Even if you look at our list of candidates there are only three people who have not passed thirty yet. So I would say yes, there is a significant number of ‘older’ people supporting the pirates. I think the only difference is the medium we use to communicate. You can get in touch with the younger ones mostly through the net. The older ones are more likely to come and talk to you when you are standing on the street.

What is the method of election in Germany for the European Parliament?

It is basically the same as in our national elections. Each party nominates a list of candidates for the election and the citizens can put their cross next to one of the party. Germany has 99 seats in the EU parliament. These seats are divided proportionally among all parties with more than 5% of the total votes.

5% would be roughly how many votes?

There are about 60 million voters, but Germans are not really interested in EU elections so only about 50% of them are going to vote. So that might be round about 1.5 million votes to break the 5%-line. 50% is rather low compared to national or local elections, but the turnout is falling. People here get kind of annoyed with politics. The 60 million figure is about 10 years old, but there is a small difference to the national elections because citizens of other EU countries can register for voting in the EU elections in Germany too. It is a fair number to base things on though.

Some say you have little chance of making that 5% barrier, so why should people vote for you?

One of the most important chances in the EU elections is to get enough votes (0.5%) to qualify for public party funding. That is one of the things I like to tell all the people out there who do not want to vote for us, because they think we cannot make the 5% threshold. Even if we do not, qualifying for public funding would be a big step. One of the parties who gets public funding and is about the same size as we are, got around 80,000 Euro (about $108,000) last year – that would mean more than tripling our funds – and making it it possible to hire people for the administrative tasks, giving us more time for politics.

How much of an issue is funding in German elections?

It is a big issue. As a small party we do not get any public funding yet, so we have to get along with the money we get from our membership fees and donations. All of us are working unsalaried right now. Considering the organizational stuff that has to be done, we are limited in activity. If people want to make a donation, they can do so either to the national party, or directly to their state party. And if they cannot afford to donate money, voluntary helpers to do local work are always a big help.

The European elections take place in early June. The Germany party has a campaign website, www.piratenpartei.net

Source: German Pirate Party Sets Course For European Parliament

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/german-pirate-party-sets-course-for-european-parliament-090522/feed/ 46 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-3rd-largest-political-party-in-sweden-090506/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-3rd-largest-political-party-in-sweden-090506/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 12:13:46 +0000 Ernesto http://torrentfreak.com/?p=12501 Source: Pirate Party 3rd Largest Political Party in Sweden
]]> The explosive growth rate displayed after the Pirate Bay verdict has skyrocketed the Pirate Party’s member count and today they’ve surpassed that of the Center Party. Of all the established parties only the Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party have more members.

The Pirate Party has tripled its ranks in only three weeks up to 44,000 members, and it’s on course to become the second largest political part in the country. TorrentFreak caught up with party leader Rick Falkvinge to congratulate him on this unprecedented achievement, and we used the opportunity to find out more about his future plans. First off, we asked him if the recent surge in members can be solely attributed to the outcome of the Pirate Bay trial.

“The Pirate Bay verdict was not a single event, but the final straw in a long series of events,” Falkvinge replied. “We tripled our member count in a week, and have kept growing at an accelerated pace. With just one month till the European elections, the timing of these horrible events arguably work as a catalyst for change.”

Falkvinge is looking forward to the upcoming European Parliament elections on June 6 this year. “I’m extremely optimistic,” he told TorrentFreak. “It’s not a question of ‘a’ seat any more. If everybody who is angry with the Pirate Bay verdict goes to vote, we will get at least one seat, and probably more.” Although things are looking good, the road to Brussels is not guaranteed yet. There are two hurdles left.

“One is to get our ballot papers out — contender parties are not served by the Election Authority, but have to distribute their ballot papers to all 7,000 polling stations by hand. That’s a logistical nightmare, but with 13,000 activists, we should be able to fix that. We had 1,600 activists in the last election, and covered 93%. The other hurdle is getting our folks to actually vote, but I believe they’re still angry enough.”

A question that has been under reported is what the party actually plans to achieve when they arrive in Brussels. One of the questions we asked is how torrent sites and trackers such as the Pirate Bay should be handled. “The Pirate Bay is infrastructure,” Falkvinge told us. “The messenger immunity, that the messenger is never responsible for the contents of a message, is crucial to how our society works. The Lobby is trying to gut that immunity, along with boneheaded politicians who see a chance to look tough on crime.”

“First of all, copyright needs to be reduced to cover commercial activities only. That would get copyright out of ordinary honest peoples’ bedrooms, which is badly needed. That would also make everything that happens over The Pirate Bay legal overnight, and so, there would be no copyright infringement that TPB could potentially facilitate. At that point, since they can’t be facilitating, aiding or abetting anything illegal [anymore] in any interpretation, this would also mean that they can be as commercial as they like.”

Falkvinge further told us that he’s toying with the idea of writing “Nothing that happens at The Pirate Bay violates copyright law” directly into Sweden’s copyright law. In 2010 the Pirate Party hopes to enter the Swedish parliament, and they want to make it absolutely clear that The Pirate Bay four will be acquitted on appeal.

“But that’s not enough,” Falkvinge told TorrentFreak. “The issues at stake are more important than that. The Lobby is constantly nagging on the gray area, making inroads, establishing new precedents, and acting very aggressively. They can do this without any risk at all, and that needs to stop. The Lobby is damaging the open society and our economy at a level that I think should be criminal, especially since they’re doing it as a commercial operation.”

So, the Pirate Party wants to reduce the abuse of power and copyright by the entertainment industry, and make that illegal instead. With the current level of support and indications by recent polls there is no doubt that they will get a seat in the European Parliament, and we hope they will be able to be heard there. Avast mateys!

Source: Pirate Party 3rd Largest Political Party in Sweden

]]> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-3rd-largest-political-party-in-sweden-090506/feed/ 129 http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-banned-from-social-networking-site-090501/ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-banned-from-social-networking-site-090501/#comments Fri, 01 May 2009 12:24:50 +0000 enigmax http://torrentfreak.com/?p=12698 Source: Pirate Party Banned from Social Networking Site
]]> Just a few days ago it was announced that German political parties would be allowed to campaign and engage the public via the social networking site StudiVZ. Not all parties will be allowed to participate though, since the German Pirate Party has been undemocratically banned from StudiVZ.

The other political parties were allowed to have a special account to show they are an organization and not an individual. The Pirate Party, however, was not allowed to have one and instead operated on a standard user account registered by an individual.

StudiVZ noticed that the Pirate Party account was not a “real person” and despite it having a thriving network with hundreds of followers, it was summarily deleted. This means that it is impossible for the Pirate Party to have a presence at all on the largest social networking site in Germany.

The person who created the profile on the site said the action taken by StudiVZ had backfired, noting, “Many young and first-time voters only really became aware of us because they erased our profile.”

The Pirate Party said it condemned the anti-democratic behavior of StudiVZ’s operators and called for the “opening up of the platform for all recognized parties in Germany.” For the Pirate Party in particular, social networking sites are an essential tool in their election campaign.

Andreas Popp, lead candidate for the upcoming European Parliament elections characterizes the censorship as undemocratic. “Just think about it: The Pirate Party needs to put up with a ‘cheap spot’ in a Web 2.0 community, only to get kicked off again. It’s a huge scandal that the smaller parties are being discriminated against in their opportunities to advertise on StudiVZ. That’s not how a democracy works.”

To make it even more absurd, the ideals and plans of the party may be of use to StudiVZ in the future as Facebook will take the German site to court for pirating their concept. We doubt that the German Facebook knockoff can count on support from The Pirate Party in this case.

Source: Pirate Party Banned from Social Networking Site

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