Piratpartiet, i.e. Pirate Party, is the newest political party in Sweden. Conceived by its founders only a few days ago, around New Year's time, the party has been received enthusiastically in this Scandinavian country with one of the world's most active filesharing populations (about 1 million of the 9 million Swedes are active filesharers).
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Wikipedia:
The party strives to abolish the rights of intellectual property and immaterial rights, including copyright, patent, trademark and the protection of design. The agenda also includes support for a strengthening of the personal integrity, both on the Internet and in everyday life. The party does not have an agenda for any other subjects and it is not possible to place the party anywhere on the left-right scale.
The website for the Pirate Party was opened January 1, 2006 (at 20.30 local time), stating the foundation of the party. Six phases were presented, with phase one being the collection of at least 2,000 signatures (500 more than needed) to be handed over to the Swedish Election Authority before February 4 (while the absolutely last date would be February 29), so that the party would be allowed to participate in the Sweden general election of 2006. Less than 24 hours after the opening of the website, the party had collected over 2,000 signatures (2,268 at 16.05 local time).
Phase two to five includes registering at the election authority, getting candidates for the Riksdag, getting voting papers, and preparing an organization for the election, including local organizations in all Municipalities of Sweden with a population in excess of 50,000. As of 2005 this means 43 municipalities from Malmö in the south to Luleå in the north.
The sixth and final phase is the election itself. The party, which claims that there are between 800,000 and 1.1 million active file sharers in Sweden hope that at least 225,000 of those are voting for the party, which would mean a 4 percent support and thus membership of Parliament which would then allow the party to hold the balance of power.
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Filesharing issues have got a lot of media attention in Sweden during the last couple of years, mainly due to
Pirate Bay, the world's biggest BitTorrent tracker and link site, and the p2p activists behind it. The new party has already been noticed by the Swedish mainstream media. For example Svenska Dagbladet, one of the main Swedish newspapers, published an
interview with a Pirate Party representative in its web edition today.
- tg
