Pirate Party (Sweden)

The Pirate Party (Swedish: Piratpartiet) is a newly started political party in Sweden. The party strives to weaken the rights of intellectual property and immaterial rights, including copyright, patent and the protection of design. The agenda also includes support for a strengthening of the right to privacy (such as private property and private information), both on the Internet and in everyday life. The party does not have an agenda for any other subjects and therefore it is not possible to place the party anywhere on the left-right scale.

Initially, the party was against trademark rights, but did an about-turn in that question when the first party programme was accepted. It also contained changes to what the party thought about copyright and patent, amongst others. After around a month of existence, the party had gained 900 members, paying the membership fee of five Swedish kronor (approx. US$0.65, c.2006), payable by SMS. The current board of the party consists of Rickard Falkvinge (founder), Christian Engström, Fredrike Lantz, Balder Lingegård, Mika Sjöman, and Joakim Lundborg. Former board members include Mikael Viborg (known as the legal adviser of the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay).

History and founding

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 28), 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).

By the morning of January 3, the party closed the signature collection. In about 36 hours, they had gathered 4,725 signatures. Given that signatories are required by Swedish election law to identify themselves when giving support for a new party, international media reported this as a significant feat, given the nature of the party. However, signatures presented to the election authorities are required to be handwritten. The goal of at least 1,500 handwritten signatures was reached February 10 and the final confirmation from the authorities was presented three days later.

Phases two to five include 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. During this phase the fundraising was also started, at an initial goal of raising 1 million SEK ($126,409).

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.

Media attention the first week

Media quickly picked up on the movement. By 10 a.m. on January 2 (Monday), the first large Swedish newspaper, the Dagens Industri, broke the story. By 3 p.m., the media were getting irritated that no owner of the website was listed and was hard to track down; some reports listed the website as not serious and a PR stunt. However, the largest Swedish tabloid, Aftonbladet, managed to track party leader Rickard Falkvinge down at work, where he just had to end the call saying he couldn't talk about the initiative while at work.

On January 3 (Tuesday), all the major Swedish news outlets had broken the story as such, and IDG broke a longer top-of-page-one interview with Mr. Falkvinge in the afternoon. Notably, IDG also posted an online poll similar to the initial one, and scored comparable - but not identical - results. The party was also slashdotted.

The web server received a million hits on its first day of operation, two million the next.

On Wednesday, international media and radio stations picked up the story. The major Swedish radio station broadcast an interview with Mr. Falkvinge about the unexpected amount of attention this initiative had received, and more would follow on Thursday, including BBC World Service, the first global radio station to break the news of the Pirate Party initiative.

At the end of the first week, the Pirate Party had been covered in over 500 English-speaking media and over 600 Spanish-speaking media.

Current status

They have successfully raised the funds to purchase the desired 3 million ballots, and are in the pre-campaign phase, building the last parts of the nationwide campaign organization. As of May 26, 2006, the membership count has risen to 2162, with about ten new members registered every day.

See also

• Politics of Sweden
• Elections in Sweden
• Piratbyrån
• The Pirate Bay

External links

• Pirate Party official site in English
• Interview with founder in LinuxP2P
• Interview with founder in The Local by Agence France-Presse
• Coverage on Slashdot
• More Coverage on Slashdot
• Template:De icon German Article in Netzeitung
• The Technocrat Article
• Article in The Inquirer