* Swedish Net War diary *

[TankGirl]

11.7.2006

Pirate parties to Germany and Austria

Swedish style Pirate Parties have now been founded also in Germany and Austria. To be precise, both parties are presently organizing their activities and websites in preparation for an official party status and further political work. But as both initiatives are clearly serious and backed up by knowledgable activists, it can be safely concluded that the political pirate movement has now spread to these two countries. You can have a peek at Austrian Pirate Party's propaganda material here.

[TankGirl]

27.7.2006

52 days to the election

There are only 52 days left to the Swedish parliamentary election. July is the traditional summer holiday month in Sweden (and in the rest of Scandinavia), and as the whole Europe has been sweating under a serious heat wave during July, the political activity has been naturally less intense than normally. But as the outdoor temperatures will gradually start to sink and the people return back home from their summer cottages, the political temperature is bound to rise again in Sweden.

The growth of the Swedish Pirate Party has settled down from the huge boost that followed the May 31 Pirate Bay raid but the party still keeps growing. The present membership is 7585, and the closest rival Green Party (Miljöpartiet) has 7862 members.

The present popularity of Pirate Party among voters is an enigma. Various polls have given so different figures that the popular support might theoretically be anything between 0 and 20 percent. With some 12.000 people already participated, demokrati.nu's online poll gives the party a promising 16.3% support, led only by the largest Swedish party Social Democrats (25.4%) and the country's second largest party Moderaterna (23.6%). The official membership suggests a popularity around 4.5 %, and this is also the estimate of the party leader Rick Falkvinge. The party will need 4 % of the votes in the September 17 election to get its representatives to the parliament.

[TankGirl]

27.7.2006

Helsingborgs Dagblad: "The law against filesharing toothless"

"The Swedes continue to share files online despite it being illegal already for a year now. The strike against Pirate Bay and a few sentences have not scared them", concludes newspaper Helsingborgs Dagblad in its recent story on filesharing. The only consolation for the copyright industry seems to be that after a lot of public debate more people now know that filesharing is illegal - not that they would care about it.

"My feeling is that the law has had no effect on Swedish public's views on filesharing", says Håkan Selg, a researcher from the Royal Technical University. His comment gets support from the representatives of both active parties in the Swedish filesharing debate that has run hot since the May 31 Pirate Bay raid.

"The law has had no effect. Stopping filesharing would require real hard measures. People can not be prevented taking part in the culture without establishing a truly brutal police state", says Christian Engström, the vice chairman from Pirate Party, a new political force aiming to get parliamentary seats in the autumn election. Ludvig Werner, a representative of IFPI, the roof organization for the record industry, admits that the law has had little practical effect. He notes though that since the new copyright law (in force from last July) the number of people buying music online or to their mobile telephones has grown.

According to the newspaper, the number of active filesharers in Sweden has stayed at around 700.000 since 2003 when research on filesharing started. A total of 1.2 million Swedes tell that they download music from Internet, according to Mediavision that has conducted the studies.

When asked whether the new law is totally toothless, Christian Engström from Pirate Party said: "Yes, it is. But at the same time it means that over a million people, mainly young, now risk jail time just because they listen to music." Ludvig Werner from IFPI is still happy with the law. Even if it has not changed the filesharing habits of the Swedes, the issue of filesharing has gained publicity. He is happy that many more people now know filesharing being illegal, and he is also pleased about the debate that the law has generated. "These are the two main things that the law has brought about."

[TankGirl]

27.7.2006

A minor episode from our series "The Amazingly Stretching Ethics of the Press"...

To: Customer Service, Svenska Dagbladet
From: Fredrik Moberg, subscriber
Subject: Your View on Ethics

I have today had the questionable pleasure to observe the following:

1. Svenska Dagbladet publishes an article "Unethical messages in Piratbyrån's shop" on both its paper and online editions. The writer of the article tries to establish a connection between the thinktank Piratbyrån and a number of clothing items with a "gross sexist message" that are on sale in webshop Peer99. The only real connection between Piratbyrån and Peer99 is that Peer99 also sells Piratbyrån's clothes. Any connection between Piratbyrån and clothing with a "gross sexist message" does not, however, exist.

2. It is found that Svenska Dagbladet itself sells porn films on its own web shop.

3. The fact that Svenska Dagbladet sells porn films is being mentioned in the reader comments to the article.

4. The comments disappear without traces or explanations.

5. Steps 3-4 are being repeated several times during the day.

6. Category "Adult Films" disappears without trace or explanations from Svenska Dagbladet's web shop.

7. The original article remains available on the online edition of Svenska Dagbladet.

I would like to know which ethical principles Svenska Dagbladet is following when it:

1) Sells porn itself

2) In the next breath condemns the sexual messages printed on clothing that are on sale at Peer99 webshop as "unethical" or "grossly sexual"

3) Tries to indicate connections that do not exist

4) Censors comments that point out shortcomings in the newspaper's own conduct

5) Removes porn from its own web shop in secrecy, without explanations

6) Continues to keep the original article available on its website

Please publish this letter and your answer to it both in your paper and online editions to show that you take it seriously and that you welcome a debate on the topic of press ethics.

Kindly yours,
Fredrik Moberg
Your subscriber

[TankGirl]

28.7.2006

The Local: "Sweden’s snoop laws are worthy of Soviet Union"

"New laws proposed by Sweden’s government would require internet service providers to snoop on all of us", writes Pirate Party’s Björn Lindh in The Local, a Swedish online magazine for English-reading audiences. In his story he highlights the new threats to citizen privacy posed by the new EU-driven snooping legislation.

Swedish government minister Björn Rosengren once described Norway as "the last Soviet republic".

But new laws being introduced by Rosengren’s party colleagues in the Social Democrats, giving the state an unprecendented right to snoop on its citizens, mean that Sweden is now perhaps more deserving of this epithet.

The government wants to introduce a system which would require all internet service provides to record and save all e-mails you send and receive, all websites you visit and other such personal information. Even if you're not suspected of having committed any crime.

The government says that the police only will have access to this database after a court order has been issued. But what guarantees are given that a hacker could not abuse the system and get all sorts of information stored in it about you?

What guarantees are given that the system cannot not used by the Security Service? What guarantees are said something negative about Göran Persson while chatting online?

Justice minister Thomas Bodström says that the changes will make crime prevention easier – but how given that this is not simply a cover for some kind of indexing of people, like under the Nazis over 60 years ago? The answer is that there are no such guarantees; we are left in the dark.

It may sound far-fetched, but can we be sure that one day a police officer won’t come knocking on our doors asking if we have do they really prevent crime? If the police cannot use the register until after a crime has been committed, what good is the system for crime prevention? By the time the police start checking your personal data, you have already committed a crime and you are already a prime suspect. Global supervision is not the solution to organized crime.

I would rather see the money this system would cost to create and run being used to fund more police officers or to improve the quality of our schools and hospitals. I would rather see this money being used to do good, rather than create a Big Brother society.

[TankGirl]

30.7.2006

The Brussels Journal published at June 22 this good sum-up story of the Swedish situation. Since June 22 the membership of Pirate Party has grown to 7607 from the mentioned 7136. The membership of the closest rival The Green Party (Miljöpartiet) has stayed at the mentioned 7862.

Pirates Enter Politics:
Filesharing Swedes Attack Copyright Laws

Sweden appears to have a full-fledged pirate movement. In addition to The Pirate Bay it also has a Pirate Office and a Pirate Party. The latter are considering entering Swedish politics by taking part in this year’s elections for the Swedish Riksdag and may very well obtain a seat.

The pirate movement started in the summer of 2003 with the establishment of the Pirate Office (Piratbyrån). Its name refers to the Svenska Antipiratbyrån, the lobbying group which was set up by media companies to investigate breaches of copyright and take these to court. The Pirate Office believes that there should be no obstructions to the copying of information and culture, and wants to start a public debate on the issue. In November 2003 the group Bittorent-tracker established The Pirate Bay, which has continued independently since October 2004.

On 1 January 2006 Rickard Falkvinge opened a website announcing the intention to start a Pirate Party (Piratpartiet, pp) and a prototype of the party programme. On 15 February the party already had the 1,500 signatures needed for official registration as a political party. Today it has 7,136 members. Not bad compared with the 7,862 members of the green party Milieupartit (mp), one of the two leftwing parties, with 17 seats in the Riksdag supporting the social-democratic minority government of Göran Persson. The razzia on 31 May by the Swedish police against The Pirate Bay led to a 50% increase in its membership.

The Pirate Party’s programme can be summed up in three main points: personal integrity should be protected, culture should be free, patents and private monopolies are harmful to society. The party’s position is that in modern society individuals are monitored in all kinds of ways, especially in the digital world. It claims that current legislation is totally outdated and hampers creativity, hence all restrictions on copying information for private purposes should be lifted. This means that copying an MPG- or MP3-file for personal use or for a friend should be made legal, but does not comprise the total abolition of today’s copyright and patent laws. The party acknowledges that such legislation is reasonable and necessary for companies and commercial interests.

The party has no opinions on any other issue and has announced that its vote in the Riksdag will be available in exchange for the realisation of its programme. The party adopts a neutral position between the two large blocs in Swedish politics: the Alliance for Sweden which groups four parties of the right, and the bloc on the left comprising the governing social-democrats with the Greens (mp) and the Left (v). These blocs are on a par in the opinion polls, and the Pirate Party hopes that in the elections it may be in a position where it can shift the balance. Some polls indicate that there is a chance of it gaining a seat. The minimum number of votes required to gain a seat (4%) is 225.000, and the party is hoping to glean these from the 800,000 to 1.1 million Swedes who use file sharing.

Already, however, the Pirate Party’s influence is being felt in Swedish politics. The Greens, the Left and the Moderaten (m) have made adjustments to their programmes to prevent voters from switching to the Pirate Party. Thomas Bodström, the Swedish Justice Minister, clearly concerned by the advent of the Pirate Party, suggested altering the law to make filesharing legal in exchange for an extra tax on the use of broadband. The Pirate Party’s response to this was negative. They said this was not an acceptable solution but one which indicates that the traditional politicians have still not grasped the problem.

[TankGirl]

30.7.2006

The myths of filesharing

Norbottens-Kuriren runs a story on the myths of filesharing.

"The law against filesharing is a fact, the debate is in foll bloom, and everybody wants to have a solution. But what will eventually happen? How shall we consume music five years from now? On the other side is the industry, [justice minister] Bodström and the law enforcement. On the other side are the Pirates: both the Bureau and the Party. The pirates want to ditch the copyright law and legalize all filesharing. The industry is fighting with at any cost against free filesharing and refers to the legal download sites available. The situtation appears to be locked. But solutions have to be found - that is the only thing the two parties agree on."

With this introduction the newspaper the newspaper poses the question to Rogel Wallis, a professor from the Royal Technical University, who also happens to be the chairman in Skap, the organization of Swedish pop music composers, and a composer himself. How shall we average music consumers buy our music five years from now?

The question makes Wallis to take first a deep breath. "Five years is a long time. I don't think there is any possibility to stop filesharing." He compares the present situation to the moment in the beginning of the last century when public radio broadcasts started in the USA. At the time the music publishers wanted to prevent the playing of music in the radio. They argued that if music could flow freely and if people could hear what they wanted, their market of printed scores would collapse. The issue was solved with a license of a sort, and with it the American version of Stim (the Swedish royalty collection organization for musicians) got started.

"Now many are looking for a similar solution. A license fee targeting all broadband users, to compensate the copyright owners the losses from their presumably reduced sales. But it is not at all certain that copyright owners, record and movie companies are suffering any major economical damage due to filesharing", says Roger Wallis. "The myth that every downloaded song or film equals a lost CD sale or an unsold movie ticket has no truth whatsoever. This much we know from research." Instead Wallis thinks that Internet works today much like radio worked earlier: through Internet people hear music that they end up liking, and then they go to buy either the song or the album.

As for the future options, the two alternative extremes are either to liberate it all or to keep pursuing filesharers. Neither of these is particularly attractive to Roger Wallis. He characterizes the present situation as 'moral panic'. "Moral panic tends always to overshoot, and is later replaced by more pragmatic business solutions. But this panic has been exceptionally powerful. On this particular case there has been an unforeseen amount of lobbying, and there is a huge amount of money in the background. This battle will continue for a long time."

[TankGirl]

31.7.2006

Austrian Pirate Party goes official

The fast spreading of the political pirate movement from Sweden to whole Europe appeared initially to surprise even the Swedes themselves. They had been focusing so much on their own election campaign and domestic debates that it took a moment for them to realize what was actually happening. European sister parties started to pop up here and there, basically copying their agenda and signing to the same powerful pirate symbolism. As to be expected, these were merely small grassroot organizations of a few activists, with little more than a website and a discussion forum to begin with.

After the initial surprise the Swedish mother party quickly assumed a leading and consulting role, helping the newcomers in various organizational and political issues. And it seems that in this time, and for this movement, the grassroot can quickly grow into official. The Austrian Pirate Party - Piraten Partei Österreichs - will be the first party to follow Swedish Piratpartiet in becoming an official national party. The Austrian Pirates will be handing over their basic principles to the Austrian Ministery of Inner Affairs today and they have promised to provide further information about their plans in coming press releases.

[TankGirl]

1.8.2006

Pirate Party now larger than Greens in Sweden

With its 7633 members Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) is now clearly larger than the Green Party (Miljöpartiet) with its 7249 members. Actually Pirate Party had reached the Greens already a few weeks ago but the earlier publicly announced member count of the Greens included people who had stopped paying their membership fees, and now these people have been cleaned away from the register.

This is by no means an insignificant political achievement. The Greens have 17 seats in the Swedish parliament and together with Social Democrats and Left Party they form the ruling coalition in Sweden. Without Greens the government would lose its majority in the parliament where seats are split to seven different parties. And this is precisely the sort of situation the Pirates are trying to achieve in the September 17 election: to get a balance of power position from where they can trade their support to any potential coalition that is willing to realize their agenda.

[TankGirl]

1.8.2006

What goes around comes around

Metro is Sweden's most popular morning paper with over a million daily readers. The newspaper is running an interesting story about what can happen in music business in the promised land of pirates. The story is about Wille Crafoord, a popular Swedish musician who in early 90s was founding one of the first hip-hop bands in Sweden, JustD. Later on he has released a number of solo albums with jazz, soul och pop influences, and since 2003 he has been a member in a two-man group Griniga Gamla Gubbar ('Whiny Old Men') which sings rap in Swedish.

Due to his popularity there have been some bootleg recordings made from his gigs, and unsurprisingly some of these bootlegs have found their way to Pirate Bay's generous music offerings. One of the bootlegged songs being distributed on Pirate Bay was 'Bögdisco' - a humorous little song that Wille liked to play on his gigs but never seriously intended to record. However, some Swedish individuals with producing and remixing skills found the song from Pirate Bay and liked it enough to make a good disco version of it. And as it happened, the artist himself liked the pirate version so much that he 'stole it back' from Pirate Bay and is releasing it officially. He also managed to contact the initially unknown contributors, and all parties are happy about the idea of an official release. Wille tells Metro that he found the guys so cool that he might even do more musical co-operation with them in the future.

When asked what Wille thinks about filesharing, he told Metro's reporter that he takes the idea of filesharing very positively, and to prove it, he even started to sing in the telephone a fresh song 'Share files, share files' that he was working on.

[TankGirl]

3.8.2006

Austrian Pirate Party gets wind into its sails

The Austrian Pirate Party (Piraten Partei Österreichs) that went official a few days ago has started to get plenty of local media coverage. The news about the new party started to break out in the media yesterday afternoon, and the party's website got almost 20.000 hits yesterday alone. TV channel Pro7Austria has been interviewing party members and will run the interview in its evening news today. The party has also been offered a chance to make a 2 hour radio show on its own conditions - an offer they are unlikely to refuse.

You can find links to the local media coverage (stories mostly in German) on this page.

[TankGirl]

4.8.2006

Pirates at Stockholm Pride

Piratpartiet, together with most Swedish political parties, has been present at the big annual Stockholm Pride festival. The festival is organized by the Swedish GLBT (gay-lesbian-bisexual-transsexual) communities in co-operation with hundred or so companies and other organizations. Its programme extends well beyond the sexual minority themes, and the numerous festival events attract a large number of domestic and international visitors. The main site, Pride Park, is packed with activities, music, restaurants, and its is also a place where organizations like parties and trade unions can present themselves to the audience. In other words, a great event to make political work, and that's precisely what the pirates have been doing there.

The reports from the pirates working at the festival have been very positive. Lots of campaign material has been handed over to interested people, and there have been numerous discussions on political themes with festival guests.

[TankGirl]

7.8.2006

MPAA: "Nordic pirate movement 'the big threat' to movie industry right now"

"Net pirates are organizing themselves in Europe", writes Göteborgs-Posten in its fresh story, published in newspaper's Economy & Politics section. "While filesharing debate is raging in North it is still fairly new elsewhere in Europe. But filesharing is advancing also there. Both the pirates and the industry are eager to share their best tips to their colleagues in other countries."

The newspaper goes on to describe how the political pirate movement has been spreading to ever new countries both in the form of Piratbyrån-style lobby organizations and as new sister parties to the Swedish Piratpartiet. Besides quoting various media company representatives from around Europe Göteborgs-Posten also interviews Tobias Andersson from Piratbyrån. "The idea is that we will inspire freshly started groups in the rest of the world. There is a need for an international lobby. We believe we have knowledge to share, and to some degree we can also give economical help", says Tobias.

A particularly interesting quote in the story comes from Geraldine Maloney who works for the MPAA in its European office. She considers the Nordic pirate movement as 'the big threat' against movie industry right now: "The problem with Sweden is that it is a very rational country. This makes the organized pirates both rational and effective."

[Mazer]

The MPAA made the Pirate Party into a mainstream movement, now they better compromise on their hardline policies or face extinction.

[TankGirl]

12.8.2006

First verdicts in a large Finnish filesharing case

A trial against two young Finnish filesharers in Lahti, a city of 100.000 inhabitants, started a long chain of trials stemming from the late 2004 raid of Finreactor, a popular Finnish torrent site with 10.000 registered members at the time of the raid. The site including a tracker was running on a rented server in Holland. The server was confiscated and delivered to the Finnish police who thus got access to the user information and could further identify the users. By studying the transfer logs from the ratio based tracker the prosecutors picked 60 people to be charged, including the site administrators and a selection of most active sharers.

The court in Lahti concluded that copyright infringement had taken place but decided not to punish the defendants due to their young age. However, the two boys were ordered to pay compensations to the copyright owners, 2.300 euros (2.830 USD) and 1.150 euros (1.415 USD) respectively. The applied criterion for the compensations was 10 % of the retail price of the shared items. The demand of the plaintiffs was 60.000 euros (74.000 USD) . The defendants announced in the court that they fail to see anything criminal in what they did.

Similar trials will continue in various Finnish cities throughout the autumn until all 60 defendants have got their verdicts. The total compensation demands of the copyright holders - including software, movie and music companies - from the 60 defendants are 3.5 million euros (4.3 million USD). The news from these Finreactor trials will contrast sharply the public filesharing debate going on in the neighbouring Sweden. There the political pressure to legalize private filesharing just keeps growing, and the Swedish Pirate Party is ready to take the fight for legal filesharing into the Swedish Parliament.

[TankGirl]

16.8.2006

Wanna bet?

NordicBet, the Scandinavian branch of betting company Betpoint Ltd, has Pirate Party's election result as one of its five political betting targets. The bet is on whether the Pirates will reach the 4 % vote thresold and make it to the Parliament. Yesterday the odds were 40:1 against Pirate Party making it, with wins limited to 100.000 crowns (13.800 USD) per bet. Seemingly there were quite a few gamblers willing to bet for the pirates with those odds, as today the odds had dropped to 25:1. Still a good chance to make big money with a fairly small bet in case the Pirates make it...

[TankGirl]

16.8.2006

Hardline Justice Minister softening up

TV4.se reports how hardline Justice Minister Thomas Bodström - the main government proponent for stricter copyright laws and for the active harassment of filesharers - seems to be softening up. He has admitted what everybody already knows: that the new stricter copyright law has proven totally ineffective if not irrelevant to the Swedish filesharers. They keep sharing files whatever the law says.

Following Pirate Party -promoted launching of Relakks, a p2p-friendly anonymous proxy service, Bodström has come out with a press release where he calls for an evaluation of the new law. He also wants to hurry up the development of consumer-friendly legal alternatives to the highly popular pirate sources. Cecilia Renfors, the Director of the Swedish Broadcasting Commission, has been called as a 'neutral' party to study how the new law should be changed and how the 'legal alternatives' could be developed more rapidly. She has been given time to next May to come up with propositions.

Bodström thinks that there has been a positive development regarding the 'legal availability' of music and movies on Internet but things should move forward faster. "Both copyright owners and consumers should benefit from more and better legal alternatives becoming available", writes Bodström in his press release.

[TankGirl]

17.8.2006

Pirates back in the media

With only a month to the Swedish parliamentary election, the Pirate Party is again very much in the headlines. Following the party-sponsored launching of the anonymizing service Relakks the visitor counts on party's website have skyrocketed, and the membership has started to grow rapidly again. With its 8168 members the party is clearly larger than the Greens (7249 members) and may well catch Moderata ungdomsförbundet (8503 members), the youth section of Moderaterna, the second largest party in Sweden.

Opinion polls give mixed messages about party's prospects in the election. On all online polls the pirates have been doing very well while more traditional polls based on phone calls to voters give almost insignificant support figures for them. One reason for this discrepancy may be the fact that the phone polls are still targeting only people with old fashion landline phone connections while virtually all younger and more modern Swedes have long ago switched to using cellular phones only. Should the pirates turn out to be succesful in the election, the polling institutes will seriously have to consider updaing their old fashioned sampling practices to avoid systematic errors. On September 17 we will know.

The NordicBet betting odds for the Pirate Party are 1:20 at the moment.

[TankGirl]

19.8.2006

Jonas Birgersson, the man behind Relakks, talks

Jonas Birgersson, the managing director of stock-listed company Labs2, is the man behind the new pirate service Relakks that makes possible anonymous filesharing. The service got world famous practically in a day with the special promotional help from the Swedish Pirates.

"As I see it, it is not filesharing that is important", says Birgersson in an interview to di.se, "but rather the access to the entire Internet without limitations on the information being accessed or software being used, and without fear of retaliation."

Jonas Birgersson sees three reasons why Relakks is needed.

First reason is that in countries like Iran and China the access to Internet is censored. With services like Relakks people can get access to all information on Internet.

Second reason is that in many countries, e.g. in USA, service providers block access to certain services on the net for commercial reasons. For example they may prevent their customers from using other IP-telephone operators.

Third reason are the cases of compromised privacy like AOL's recent misjudged releasing of log files that revealed surfing habits of individual customers. "Relakks opens the possibility to give a better service to Americans, with high security and the house in order", says Birgersson.

But is it not enough for service providers in China, Iran and USA just to block all traffic to Relakks servers and thereby prevent their customers from using the service? "We have checked this from the earlier providers of similar services, even if they offered only narrowband services, and we concluded that it is not so difficult to stay a step ahead of the censors."

There is already a lot of speculation on the net whether Relakks will evolve into a safe haven for serious criminals, terrorists and pedophiles. "Relakks nor any other Swedish Internet service is a free zone for serious criminality. Any crime punishable with minimum two years of jail gives the police access to traffic data from Relakks as from any other Swedish operator." Birgersson also wants to point out that there is already a block list in use in Sweden for child porn sites. All Swedish operators obey this list, and so does also Relakks.

As the service is prepaid, just like a prepaid phone card, Relakks is not allowed to collect any other information than what the customer has given. If the police requests for information about a specific customer, Relakks has nothing else to give but the information given by the customer herself.

When asked whether this is a calculated approach, so that there would be as little information to give as possible, Birgersson says: "No. When we started figuring out Relakks service, we opted for prepayment mainly to minimize credit risks. We also understand that there are users who are nervous to give out their social security numbers. And as we have customers from the entire world, there would be no way to control such numbers anyway."

And why the co-operation with Pirate Party?

"It is in our plans to create a partner program where we would reward anybody finding us new customers with a few crowns. Pirate Party was simply the first and the fastest partner to do that, but later on we will have also other partners from other directions."

[TankGirl]

29.8.2006

First votes to be cast tomorrow

There are only 19 days left to the Swedish parliamentary election, but the first votes will be cast already tomorrow as the advance voting starts in some Swedish electoral districts. The Pirate Party members and sympathizers have been increasingly engaged in various practical aspects of the election work. They have been out to the streets to erect poster stands, to hand out flyers to bypassers and to set up their own 'valstugor' (little wooden cabins where voters can chat with party representatives) into the centrums of the larger cities. One of the most urgent tasks for the party has been to organize the distribution of ballot papers. As they are a newly established party, they get no help from the Swedish state in the task, so they have had to print hundreds of thousands of ballot papers at their own cost and to find volunteers to take them to each and every voting place around the country - a considerable challenge for a new party in a large country like Sweden.

The Green Party has started to raise its own profile in filesharing matters. It is organizing a press hearing in the Swedish Parliament about filesharing - unfortunately no other political parties have been invited so it will not be a real political debate. The threat of dropping under the 4 % vote thresold remains very real for the Greens, and they need badly the support of young voters - who would seem to be much more interested in the Pirates than in the Greens. For example demokrati.nu shows presently 3.7% support for the Green Party while Pirate Party has 16.5 % support there. Hardly anyone in the Pirate Party believes they could get even 10% of the votes in the actual election but getting that crucial 4% seems possible although by no means sure. NordicBet gives still only 1:15 odds for the Pirates to make it, and the 'official' opinion polls show virtually no support for the Pirates. On the other hand they do well in all online polls, and their membership keeps growing steadily, being already clearly larger than that of the Greens.