The European elections are only two weeks away, and Pirate Party candidates vie for seats in different countries. We speak with some of them, starting with Andreas Popp, lead candidate for the German Piraten Partei.
Support for the Swedish Pirate Party surged following the Pirate Bay verdict and today it became the third largest political party in the country. When they are elected for the European Parliament next month, the party hopes to end the abuse of copyright by multi-billion dollar corporations.
StudiVZ is a Facebook-style operation and is Germany’s largest web-based social networking site. With the European Parliament elections in sight, the website recently opened up to established political parties for election campaigning. Not for all parties though, as they chose to ban the Pirate Party.
A poll carried out by a major Swedish newspaper predicts that the Pirate Party will grab around 5.1% of the votes in the upcoming European Union elections. This means that the movement, which has gathered huge momentum due to the Pirate Bay ‘guilty’ verdict, will get a seat in the EU Parliament.
The Pirate Bay verdict is being criticized by the Swedish public and protests are being planned. Opposition to the decision is widespread, indicated partly by the surge in new memberships to Sweden’s Pirate Party. It has seen its ranks grow by 20% in the handful of hours since the verdict and the number of members is increasing by the minute.
The Pirate Party has gathered a huge following in Sweden. More than half of all men under 30 are considering voting for the party in the upcoming European Parliament elections. However, being affiliated with the party is not without risks – even in a democracy.
In Europe, Pirate Parties have quite a following, especially in Sweden where a political scientist recently described them as a “classic civil right movement”. The U.S. Pirate Party hopes to replicate some of this success, and officially launched in California today, the home of the movie industry.
Ung Pirat, the youth organization of the Swedish Pirate Party received over 1.3 million Krona from the Swedish government yesterday. The money – government funding to political youth organizations – was heavily criticized by anti-piracy lobbyists.
Things are looking really good for the Swedish Pirate Party. Running up to the 2009 European Parliament elections more than half of all Swedish men under 30 are considering voting for them. Thanks to the Internet, its membership has grown 50% during the last quarter, surpassing that of the well established Green Party.
While the Pirate Party might be well known in Sweden, and heard of elsewhere around Europe, it’s not really taken off in the country that prides itself as being ‘the land of the free’. Unperturbed, the US Pirate Party has soldiered on and with the preliminary release of data from it’s first study, it’s hitting back at the media lobbyists.
In February a Danish court forced ISP Tele2 to block its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay, following a similar order late last year to block allofmp3.com. A new proposal before the Danish government would mean that such actions would be quick and easy to do, without the need for a single court hearing.
