Pirate Party gains ground
Founded only this year in Sweden, the youth-oriented Pirate Party supports free movies and music and opposes payments for downloading "cultural" products over the Internet. The Pirate Party focuses on a single area - intellectual property - and is anti-patent, anti-copyright and anti-trademark. Now the Pirate party has spread to
18 other countries including to Canada.
The Party catapaulted into fame especially after Swedish police raided a building housing about 200 internet sites, some of which hosted file-sharing. After the raid, membership soared. Demonstrations in several Swedish cities in support of the raided internet sites were organized by the Pirate Party. Inundated by the fervor of the Pirate Party messages, the Swedish Justice Minister capitulated, agreeing to negotiate a revision
to the law that outlawed unauthorized downloading of
copyrighted material.