The Russian Justice Ministry has turned down the Russian Pirate Party for registration because it says “piracy is an attack on sea of river craft, which is a criminal offense,” according to the Moscow Times. The Ministry also says that the name implies that members are all criminals serving prison sentences thus violating Federal law

While that accusation has been leveled before (by a UK member of the Commons, during the Digital Economy Bill debate), then it was only at Rick Falkvinge, then party chairman and now occasional TorrentFreak columnist, also the founder of the Pirate Party movement back in 2006.

Understandably, the Pirate Party is upset, and has filed a protest at Zamoskvoretsky court in Moscow. “Refusal to register a ‘Pirate Party of Russia’ offends 15,000 of the party members whom the Russian Ministry of Justice has called criminals. We are going to appeal the Justice Ministry’s decision in court,” says party chairman Paul Rassudov.

Lola Voronina, the Chief Administrative officer of PPI, and also a PP-Ru member told TorrentFreak: “The government doesn’t want any new parties to be registered – there isn’t much time left until the elections. So they are trying to find some reasons like this to decline registration.” When asked about the prospects of the challenge, Voronina told us: “We don’t know. But we definitely need to try!”

“The Russian Ministry of Justice made a curious mistake,” she continues. “The name, ‘Pirate Party of Russia’ reflects an ideology accepted worldwide. We are not a party of pirates attacking sea or river vessels for the appropriation of other people’s property. Could they regard two European deputies from Sweden’s Pirate Party and many other pirate parties across the globe as criminals?”

Of course, democracy in Russia is contentious. Back in October, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warned of problems in Russia’s democracy, accusing Prime Minister Putin of attempts to stay in power. Meanwhile the Democracy Index has them at 107, almost in the “Authoritarian regime” grouping.

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The party gained official recognition at the end of February, when its 50 supporters were verified by the state, allowing it to run candidates, and for voters to label themselves under the pirate name.

However, the party is not a member of the US pirate party, and takes a stance closer to that of the Swedish party rather than the less restrictive positions of many other parties.

The party is headed by James O’Keefe, who, like other successful pirate politicians (such as Christian Engstrom) has previously run for office with other parties. O’Keefe ran for State Treasurer in both 2002 and 2006 with the Green Party, coming in second in 2006 with 322,000 votes (16%).

Their Party’s website is at http://www.masspirates.org

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Soon after the raid several sources reported that the MPAA initiated the attack. Apparently they directly influencing Swedish authorities to intervene in this specific case, which is considered illegal in Sweden (the term is “minister rule”).

To make it even worse, it turned out that the US had threatened to put Sweden on WTO’s black list because they didn’t take the Pirate Bay down. This threat should have have made the Swedish government move even quicker. It is assumed that Swedish authorities hinted to the prosecutor to take action, and even though the prosecutor wrote a PM a before the raid in which he stated that it was impossible to convict the Pirate Bay, the letters from the MPAA probably changed his mind.

It later became public that John Malcolm, Executive Vice President of the MPAA wrote (PDF) to Sweden’s State Secretary in which he stated, “It is certainly not in Sweden’s best interests to earn a reputation among other nations and trading partners as a place where utter lawlessness with respect to intellectual property rights is tolerated.”

Following the raid the Swedish pirate party got thousands of new members in a matter of weeks. Suddenly, they were the largest party without parliament seats. This success has also led to pirate parties forming in a number of other countries: France, Italy, USA, Belgium, Austria, and very recently also Germany, Spain and Russian. There is also one forming in the UK. Together, they have founded PP-International, which is an international collaboration forum/group to exchange experiences, ideas and such, and Sweden has a very important role here.

In August 2006, three months after the raid the documentary “Steal This Film” was published. This excellent documentary gives some more insight in the events that took place May 31, 2006, In this documentary The Piratebay admins tell how the raid went down, what happened after the raid, how the MPAA was involved, how the US had threatened to put Sweden on WTO’s black list, the Pirate demonstration, and how they were harassed by police officers and more.

Up until now the servers of The Pirate Bay are still in custody, and prosecutor HÃ¥kan Roswall announced earlier this month that he will press charges against the Pirate Bay admins. However, The Pirate Bay said it’s not impressed by the announced prosecution, and according to a leak within the Swedish police, they don’t have much to be afraid of.

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The raid on the Pirate Bay, and the rise of the Pirate Party clearly left their mark on Sweden’s political climate. The extremely fast resurrection of the Pirate Bay was a slap in the face of the IIPA, MPAA, and other anti-piracy organizations. In the report we read:

Sweden also is the host country to ThePirateBay.org, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker and one of Sweden’s largest web sites. Operators of the site proudly flaunt their role in facilitating infringements, often taking pot shots at rights holders from whom they receive notices of infringing activity. ThePirateBay was raided in mid-2006 by the Swedish police, and although the site is back up and running, it is expected that its prosecution will take place in the middle of 2007

The IIPA can not yet see an end to the widespread piracy in Sweden. According to the organization, 490 000 movies were downloaded during the third quarter last year, an increase from 468 000 movies the year before, the report says, not specifying any source.

The situation is further complicated, according to the organization, by the fact that Swedes are tolerant towards piracy, something that according to the report is evident in media and in public opinion. The politicians are not thought of as having understood the extent of the file sharing problem. The organization however claims to be looking forward to cooperating with the new government in finding new ways in the struggle against piracy.

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

HA: Aye. It’s taking some getting used to, being the chairman of an organization with so much potential. It’s a common factor among us in the pirate movement that most of us have never been involved in politics at any high ranks. Although there are a few downsides to that, it seems to work in our favour. We are able to do things differently because we don’t know any better, but it turns out that we tend to to things more efficiently than other organizations and
parties.

TorrentFreak: When was Young Pirates formed?

HA: Just this weekend actually. That’s when the first and founding board meeting was held. The farthest distance between board members is well over 1500 km, so we held it online, inside a collaborative text editor. That way the protocol was more or less ready for publishing when we were done. We just passed the 1000 member limit by the way, securing government grants.

TorrentFreak: What’s your answer to all those who might claim that Young Pirates is established only to bring government funds to the Pirate Party?

HA: It’s a healthy distrust! It’s not a secret that we and the Pirate Party work towards a common goal, and that we will closely coordinate our efforts. The Pirate Party used up the little resources they had and more (members chipped in with considerable funding for material) in the election. As much as we’d want to help them out, we can’t just push money their way. We will receive government funding for our activities, and we must openly show where our money goes. To just give them money would not be acceptable.

They will however provide us with bandwidth and a system to manage our bookkeeping and memberships – in fact, they currently do all of that for us, and we will pay them for that. It will be considerably less than we would pay a commercial company, so we are really pulling the longer straw in this agreement.

TorrentFreak: The Pirate Party and the surrounding movement has been a very grassroots initiative. Work is almost exclusively done out of idealism, without monetary incitements (the members doesn’t get paid). Does that influence the kind of things you can do, i.e. can you use a more aggressive or provocative approach than other, more established organisations, as you have no political careers to protect?

HA: Actually, in a certain way it rather makes us less aggressive than other political parties. We have always had the agenda that the goal is to get these points of view and argument taken into account when decisions are made. We strongly feel that a root cause behind today’s intellectual property laws, is that the politicians don’t fully understand the dismay that their agenda is causing. We want them to understand this, that’s primary. To get into parliament, is secondary.

That’s why part of our work will be to talk to other parties, to present our arguments and influence them incorporate our ideology into their agenda. I can’t really think of another party that would do that.

TorrentFreak: How have you been able to do things more effeciently than other organisations and parties? Can you use your relative inexperience as an excuse to solve problems in a non-conventional manner?

HA: Absolutely! We do it all the time. The founding board meeting was held with a combination of Google Docs and a group chat. The order of our candidates when the Pirate Party ran for election in September was decided by an online direct-democracy election in which all members where allowed to participate. The membership to the party requires no physical paperwork, and is handled through an online registration and payment through SMS. We are able to register members in real time, and member can change their own personal information by logging in to our system. That saves us a lot of work.

The pirate movement works much like an open source project, and has more or less the same pros and cons. During the election, the agenda was; if you have an idea for a campaign – just do it! As long as at least three party members thought that something was a good idea, it was a “go”. This is how the Young Pirates federation will function as well. On the other hand, nobody likes the boring stuff – like bookkeeping and filing. One of our first priorities, if we get
funding, will be to hire someone to do that for us.

TorrentFreak: What is the main purpose of Young Pirates, and what will their activities be?

HA: Of course, we will be promoting free information, abolished patents and a protected private life. Bringing these points of argument into the public debate and into parliament in Sweden, Europe and Worldwide is the main purpose of Young Pirates. But exactly what will be done is up to the members.

The Young Pirates federation is a sort of umbrella organization for many local Young Pirate organizations around the country. They do the real footwork. The federation board will look over the budget, act as a central node, set out guidelines for the organization and coordinate bigger efforts. A few early stage ideas are concerts featuring pirate-friendly artists, campaigns promoting open-source for government institutions, educating the public about file-sharing techniques and setting up pirate organizations at schools and universities. Being a youth movement, we can be more provocative and
edgier than the Pirate Party.

TorrentFreak: How is Young Pirates organised regionally?

HA: In local, semi-autonomous organizations with separate budgets. In rough terms you can say that the members belong to the local organizations, and the local organizations belong to the federation

TorrentFreak: What are its formal ties and relations with the Swedish Pirate Party?

HA: There are close ties between the two. All members so far have been recruited there, and many local organizations require their members to also be members of the Pirate Party. Actually, everyone that becomes a member of Young Pirates is offered a years paid membership in the Pirate Party. Without the Pirate Party, there would be no Young Pirates.

TorrentFreak: And finally, what is in store for Young Pirates in the near future? What are the immediate plans, and when do you think the Swedish public will start noticing your presense?

HA: The board is on a short hiatus until after christmas. After that we will start to build the organization from scratch. We will form work groups to deal with the most basic areas; building a website, defining standpoints and establishing a presence in schools and universities. There is a lot to be done! The first annual annual Young Pirates federation congress will be held in March or April. Before that we will have to have a sturdy organization up and running. How soon until we start making noise will be up to the members, but judging by the previous pirate achievements, I’ll bet it won’t be long.

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