Pirate Bay verdict appealed, party mobilized
As BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay continues legal battles, the Pirate Party battles telecom regulations.
The District Court of Stockholm's judgment against the Pirate Bay has been appealed, say reports. The keepers of the Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracking site were each sentenced to a year in prison and a combined 30 million kronor for violating copyright law and enabling others to do the same.
Legal representatives for the Pirate Bay's Carl Lundström are contesting the validity of the District Court's ruling. Their argument is based upon the notion that Lundström was charged as an accessory to copyright infringement without proof that he was aware of crimes being committed.
Representatives for the other three Pirate Bay defendants are expected to file similar appeals in the coming weeks. In the meantime, the PirateBay.org Torrent tracker remains in place, but has been turned into a tool for political mobilization, calling for emergency action against amendment 138 of the European Telecoms Package.
As a result of the media frenzy surrounding the Pirate Bay's trial, the Swedish Pirate Party gained 19,636 new members, according to leader Rick Falkvinge. The challenge now, Falkvinge says, is not to win in the polls, but to get people active in the field of telecommunications reform.
"The establishment dictates who is good and evil," the party head said in his blog, "but none are made to be as evil as those who challenge that very establishment's power."
Could Pirate Bay Verdict Affect EU Elections?
Experts say low European Parliament election turnout (27%), coupled with rising anger over the BitTorrent tracker site’s loss in court, could mean the Pirate Party might achieve the 4% threshold necessary to get a Swedish seat in the assembly.
The Pirate Bay’s trial may be over, but the fallout continues, and it’s anything but music to the entertainment industry’s ears.
Yesterday I mentioned how the BitTorrent tracker site asked European users to vote in the EU parliament election in June. Why? Aside from the obvious reasons of civic participation, it may just be that the Pirate Party(Piratpartiet), an advocate of copyright law reform, may capture the 4% vote necessary for a Swedish seat in the assembly.
With last EU parliamentary election turnout at 27%, and increasing numbers of youth angered that The Pirate Bay founders were convicted and sentenced to a year in prison, some experts predict it’s possible for Sweden’s Pirate Party to produce a record turnout among Swedish youth.
For since the trial ended Pirate Party membership has surged to record numbers, doubling in just three days to some 30,562. The Pirate Party is now the fourth largest party in Sweden, and its youth league is now the biggest of all Swedish political parties´ youth organizations.
This has all the makings of a political storm that could reform Swedish copyright laws to favor consumers rather than foreign entertainment conglomerates like the RIAA and MPAA.
“If they can mobilize their passive support to the voting booth on June 7th then voter turnout could increase among this group,” noted Henrik Oscarsson, a political scientist at Gothenburg University. “It is a long way to the 4% threshold.”
The Pirate Party already organized and carried out demonstration across Sweden this past Saturday, with more than 1,000 turning out in Stockholm alone to protest The Pirate Bay’s guilty verdict.
“We young people have a whole platform on the internet, where we have all our social contacts - it is there that we live,” said Malin Littorin-Ferm of the party’s Ung Pirat youth league to the crowd in Stockholm. “The state is trying to control the internet and, by extension, our private lives.”
Ulf Bjereld of the University of Gothenburg even compares file-sharing to other grassroots issues like the environment was in the 1980’s, and it may become an attractive issue for parties to take a position on in order to attract young voters.
“These citizens have never previously had a significant issue with which to become involved,” said Rickard Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate party. “It is not that politics does not interest young people - it is that the former generation’s problems and political solutions do not interest the youth.”
With technology being such an important part of most young people’s lives, the impact of the verdict is sure to cause many to get involved in politics for the first time.
Either way, the news is sure to make the entertainment industry nervous.
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