The most fascinating thing about that election wasn’t that it happened a mere seven years after the movement’s founding, but that it happened in another country than where it was founded.

They say that each generation must reconquer democracy. In practice, there seems to be a little more time between each major wave of new political values. Universal suffrage and liberalism gained ground about 120 years ago, the labor movement gained ground about 80 years ago, and the environmental movement gained ground about 40 years ago. But still.

These movements took decades from their inception to their first successful elections. Decades! In contrast, the Pirate Party’s first election success was in 2009, a mere three and a half years after the movement was founded. Today, there are Pirate parties in 70 countries – arguably in varying stages of development – and support is growing pretty much everywhere, slowly but measurably.

Some would say that the Pirate Party movement is “just a protest party”, as if that were something bad. Such parties are part of a functioning democracy. We call them “opposition”. If you’re not content with the way things are run, then by definition, you are dissenting against the incumbent administration.

All major movements have followed the same pattern. They started out as a protest against what they saw as unfair, solidified that protest into a narrow set of policy changes, and ran for office. Then, they deepened into an ideology that could be applied across all of society.

The labor movement protested exploitation of workers, solidified that into a narrow policy that would legalize and strengthen labor unions, and then deepened into an ideology of solidarity. The green movement protested pollution, crafted a narrow policy that would regulate industries, then deepened that into an ideology of sustainability.

The Pirate Party movement is in the middle of this deepening and broadening process. I find it fascinating that whenever I speak to self-identified pirates no matter where in the world, we seem to be in agreement on the most minute of policy details far outside the cores of sharing, transparency, and accountability, as well as how we arrived at that conclusion. It’s true that we started out protesting that some businesses’ neophobia (fear of the new) were allowed to supersede civil liberties online, but we’ve come a long way since.

It’s like the understanding of society spread by osmosis through the Internet. Perhaps the Pirate Parties really are the political arm of the Internet, as some have called the movement.

Anyway, with this election, the movement is officially out of the starter blocks.

The election of Pirate MPs on Iceland is an exciting beginning. My congratulations to Birgitta, Jon-Thor and Helgi on your new jobs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was only the start of his Republican career. A year later, Bainwol was appointed Chief of Staff to Mary Bono, who was one of the biggest supporters of the (Sonny Bono) Copyright Term Extension Act. Mary Bono later married the son of Connie Mack. Both are still are active Republicans, and received generous donations from Bainwol recently.

They were not the only ones Bainwol donated to. OpenSecrets reveals that he has also supported John McCain to the tune of $2300, the maximum amount he is allowed to donate. MPAA CEO Dan Glickman, on the other hand, has more sympathy for the Democrats, as he donated $5000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign.

While the RIAA CEO is supporting McCain, most people from P2P companies support the Democratic candidate, Barrrack Obama. As P2P-blog points out, Limewire, Joost and Pando employees donated generously to Obama, and so did BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen. This makes sense, as Obama seems to have the most reasonable ideas when it comes to copyright, privacy and net-neutrality.

Earlier this year the US Pirate Party endorsed Obama. Andrew Norton, a spokesperson for the US Pirate Party told TorrentFreak at the time: “We stand solidly behind Mr. Obama, as he is the only candidate that seems to realize that personal privacy is a right, not a privilege, and believes that copyright is, as the constitution defines, for progress, rather than profit.”

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

TorrentFreak – What topics are you focusing in on your campaign?

Christof Leng – With national data retention starting on January 1st, this is certainly a major topic not only for us, but for the opposition in general. Beyond that, the privacy infringements by government agencies are something to be discussed. Another big topic for young people are the new tuition fees, which lead to a drop in student numbers. We believe strongly in the knowledge society and stopping the concept of free education will hurt Germany’s future.

TorrentFreak – So more on the privacy than culture/copyright angles?

Christof Leng – Unfortunately, copyright is something that is not decided in Hesse or even in Germany, but mostly on the European level. Thus is plays a lesser role in this election. But we try to raise awareness and get support for the next European election in 2009.

TorrentFreak – How many people have you put up as candidates?

Christof Leng – Ok, I guess I should explain a little bit about the German election system first. We have (party) lists and direct candidates, and we don’t run for direct seats, only a party list. A direct win would be utopian, as it’s majority vote. Because we’re sane and realistic, we focus on the list, which in our case has seven pirates on it.

TorrentFreak – And the minimum requirement on the party list is 5%?

Christof Leng – To get into the regional parliament of Hesse, yes, but to my best knowledge, no new party ever achieved this on this first election in an existing federal state.

TorrentFreak – Are you, however, hopeful?

Christof Leng – There are other things to aim at. If you get 1% at a regional election, you get public funding.

TorrentFreak – Is that an attainable goal?

Christof Leng – As we are a brand new party it’s really hard to predict. The Hessian division of the party was founded in February with only a few pirates. Less than a year later we already have a efficient organization and were able to collect those 1000 signatures. And the growth has not slowed down by any means. It might be not as mind-blowing as in Sweden, but we are really happy with the development. Now we want to show that we are in fact serious party and can do campaigns and participate in elections. Furthermore, while we are already well-known in the interested public, we are still mostly unknown to the general public. Everything we currently do helps us to get more and more attention.

TorrentFreak – How has your party been viewed by the mainstream media?

Christof Leng – I have no real overview of that, sorry. I’m aware that a lot of newspaper articles have mentioned us as an example of the smaller parties in the upcoming election (I guess it’s because of the catchy name), but we have been ignored mostly so far. But the election campaigns just started to heat up, there’s not much news about the election in general. We have been covered by media interested in youth, Internet/computer, and/or civil rights. We are regularly covered by Heise Online, the most important German computer/Internet news site. A lot of journalists support us, because they feel the pressure of surveillance hits them hard and hits them first. Freedom of press is endangered and they are aware of it. There have been several scandals of government agencies investigating journalists and infringing privacy laws while doing that. You also read more about the US election 11 months away in *German* press than about the Hessian one 2 months away…

TorrentFreak – It must drive you mad.

Christof Leng – On the contrary. The heat of the election in Sweden really did hurt the Swedish pirates. If it is close and it seems important, many people are afraid of trying something new. We are new, we still need to build up our reputation. That’s much easier now than in an election where people will go for the safe bet anyway. We’d not be able to compete with the major parties mainstream media coverage. With them not being covered by the media either it’s not that much of an uphill battle, but it is still uphill, of course. It’s an optimal setting for us in Germany right now (as a party, not as a citizen). The two biggest parties form a national coalition. That boosts smaller parties naturally. Imagine the US president being a republican and the vice president a democrat…

TorrentFreak – Clearly you don’t have the financial support that the major parties have, how has that altered your strategies from the traditional methods used in a political campaign?

Christof Leng – We claim that we are experts of knowledge society, online cooperation, and sharing. That is also our strong point in the campaign. We use the Internet a lot, not only to reach voters, but to coordinate our campaign. Also, most of the population in Hesse is concentrated in the Rhein-Main area (Frankfurt is the biggest city). This makes it easy for us to reach a good part of the voters. Especially the voters that are interested in our topics (students, IT workers, journalists), and they use the internet.

TorrentFreak – with about 38Million of Germany’s roughly 82M citizens as net users, that’s clearly a core demographic.

Christof Leng – Exactly .

TorrentFreak – Is there much negative campaigning in Germany?

Christof Leng – yes, but only bashing the big parties. We are mostly ignored as a party. But… they start adopting our positions. the SPD tries to look like a civil rights party in comparison with the CDU, even though they work together on data retention in the national government. the Green party made a big fuss on their last convention about how bad data retention is. The Left party tout the topic too. Point is, none of the parties takes the topic seriously.

TorrentFreak – Why is that?

Christof Leng – the SPD and Green Party prepared much of what is going on now back when they were in government. The SPD and Left party form a coalition in Berlin and just issued new laws for public surveillance. each of the established parties plays the white knight for civil rights only as long as they are in opposition. they are brainwashed as soon as they are in government. That’s why we need the Pirate Party.

Jan Huwald, Political secretary of the Piratenpartei Deutschland was similarly upbeat about the election. “Most motivating in the upcoming election campaign is it’s constant relation to grassroot political movement. Beside the visible activity the word is spreading about the pirates. Citizens are aware of our new party much more than traditional media’s coverage might suggest. In fact while collecting signatures many people actively searched for our signing stand to help out”

The question still remains, however, if the Hesse party will do any better than Rick Falkvinge, and the Swedes did in 2006.

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