The Pirate Party won enough votes in Swedish elections to give them two seats in the European Parliament. They managed to get over 7% of votes cast in Sweden.
Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge declared “We’ve felt the wind blow in our sails.”
In a similar election in Germany, the Pirate Party received 1% of the vote, not enough to get any seats, but more than the 0.5% that was their goal.
The Pirate Party, despite not being taken seriously by the media or other politicians, is proving to be popular, especially with younger voters. The Pirate Party was formed to make file sharing for personal use legal, and to fight oppressive copyright laws.
Recently, Swedish authorities won a conviction of the people behind The Pirate Bay, a popular BitTorrent tracking site. Even though The Pirate Bay and the Pirate Party are not related, the case helped publicize the issues around file sharing and copyright.
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I can’t help but chuckle.
Okay, so where’s the Somali and/or Pittsburgh joke?
Who?
Ya know, Pittsburgh Pirates?
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The Pirates Arrrrrrr Victorious!…
I’m gonna blatantly steal a clever headline from Political Irony (we’ve linked there plenty, so I hope the writer doesn’t mind) regarding this story out of Sweden, the Land of the Beautiful People: The Pirate Party won enough votes in……