Yarrr! Sweden's Pirate Party Rises to Power on Free File Sharing Platform

Ludovic Leforestier

A typical non-Swedish, non-Somali, yet non-threatening pirate

Pirates come in all shapes and sizes. There are the ones with hooks for hands, the Somali ones who rob ships, the ones Dave Eggers likes, and, apparently, the ones who want to make file swapping easy and legal.

The latter breed hails from Sweden, where the Pirate Party gained a seat on European Parliament in a recent election. According to CBC News, the Pirates gained popularity on a platform of "reduc[ing] government surveillance, deregulat[ing] copyright and abolish[ing] the patent system." The CBC also reports that the party gained support after the founders of the unaffiliated Pirate Bay  were convicted in April of helping spread copyrighted material. It's the first I've heard of a political party based on the reformation of patent and copyright ideas. (For a good read on those general subjects, check out local author Lawrence Lessig's Remix).