The Pirate Party () is a political party in Sweden founded in 2006. Its sudden popularity has given rise to parties with the same name and similar goals across Europe and worldwide, forming the International Pirate Party movement.
The Pirate Party was initially formed to reform laws regarding copyright and patents. The party agenda includes support for strengthening the individual's right to privacy, both on the Internet and in everyday life, and the transparency of state administration. The Pirate Party has intentionally chosen to be bloc independent of the traditional left-right scale"Vågmästarställning" from piratpartiet.se, accessed on August 28, 2006 to pursue their political agenda with all mainstream parties. The party originally stayed neutral on other matters, but started broadening into other political areas in 2012.
The Pirate Party participated in the 2006 Riksdag elections and gained 0.63% of the votes, making them the third largest party outside parliament. In terms of membership, it passed the Green Party in December 2008, the Left Party in February 2009, the Liberal People's Party and the Christian Democrats in April 2009,Result of Verdict, for the Pirate Party . Blog Pirate. April 17, 2009. and the Centre Party in May 2009, making it the third largest political party in Sweden by membership.Comparisons of membership numbers may not be considered fair by some, as the Pirate Party does not charge a membership fee, which is commonplace for other parties The Pirate Party's associated youth organisation, Young Pirate (), was, for a part of 2009 and 2010, the largest political youth organisation in Sweden by membership count.
The Pirate Party came fifth in the 2009 European Parliament elections with 7.13% of the vote and one MEP (increasing to two after ratification of the Lisbon Treaty). Christian Engström became the first MEP for the party, and Amelia Andersdotter took the second seat on 1 December 2009.
Rick Falkvinge, founder of the party, stepped down on 1 January 2011 after five years as party leader, making vice leader Anna Troberg the party leader.
On 1 December 2014, Anna Troberg announced that she would not be available for re-election in 2015 after her term ended on 31 December 2014.
During the autumn meeting in 2024 Mikael Enmalm was elected party leader and Kevin Stenberg was elected secretary general of the party.
Declaration of principles
The party advocates a severe reduction of economic sole right of copyrighted works, which today exist for 70 years after the creator's death. They also advocate releasing all non-commercial sharing of copyrighted material, which means that all films, phonograms and programs can be shared freely as long as the operation isn't run commercially.
The party also has personal privacy as a core value, and is critical towards laws such as ACTA, IPRED, the Telecoms Package, and the change in legislation regulating the National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA).
The party advocates strengthened individual privacy, are against the Data Retention Directive, wants to elevate secrecy of correspondence to general secrecy of communication, and create a constitutional right to privacy. The party also seeks to modify the laws of intellectual property (copyright and patent), but doesn't want to change the laws of trademarks or industrial design rights. The party views itself as a defender of the individual's civil rights especially with regards to surveillance, government accountability and political and business corruption.
Before the Swedish general election of 2010, the party stayed neutral in all other political matters, and could be considered a single-issue party. After 2010 the party started opening up for a broader political agenda. A new declaration of principles was formed in 2011; at the spring member meeting in 2012, several new political standpoints were decided on areas such as school, research and health care.
The party has stated that it supports decriminalising the consumption of all currently illegal substances. It also supports legalising cannabis in Sweden through a regulated market by using state monopolies or licenses in a similar way to how alcohol and tobacco is regulated in the country. It says this would "deprive criminal organisations of income from drug sales and free up police resources that instead could be used to fight crimes with human victims."
History Founding
The website for the Pirate Party was launched on 1 January 2006 (at 20.30 CEST), marking the foundation of the Party. Six phases were presented on the website, with phase one being the collection of at least 2,000 signatures (500 more than required) to be handed over to the Swedish Election Authority before 4 February (the deadline for registering being February 28), so that the Party would be allowed to participate in the upcoming 17 September general election. In less than 24 hours after the opening of the website, the Party had collected over 2,000 signatures (2,268 at 16.05 CEST).
By the morning of 3 January, the Party closed the signature collection. In about 36 hours, they had gathered 4,725 signatures. As 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. The Party claimed to have recruited 900 members within the first month, each member paying a membership fee of 5 Swedish kronor (approx. US$0.69, c.2006), payable by SMS (The Party has since changed to free member registration).
Phases two to five included registering with the Election Authority, getting candidates for the Riksdag, raising money for printing ballots, and preparing an organization for the election, including local organizations in all municipalities of Sweden with a population in excess of 50,000, which in 2005 meant 43 municipalities. During this phase fundraising was also started, with an initial goal of raising 1 million SEK ($126,409).
The sixth and final phase was the election itself. The Party, which claims that there are between 800,000 and 1.1 million active file sharers in Sweden, hoped that at least 225,000 (4% of all the voters in Sweden) of those would vote for the party, granting them membership in Parliament.
Initial media attention
Media quickly picked up on the movement. On Monday 2 January 2006, a large Swedish financial newspaper, Dagens Industri, produced a story on what was happening. By 3 pm, the media seemed irritated that no owner of the website was listed or easy to track down; some reports listed the website as not serious and a PR stunt. However, the largest Swedish tabloid, Aftonbladet, managed to track down the Party leader Rickard Falkvinge at work. Falkvinge, however, was unable to explain the Party's positions while at work, bringing this information gathering effort to an abrupt end.
On 3 January 2006, all the major Swedish news outlets had produced stories on the Party. Aftonbladet posted an online poll indicating that its readers gave the Party a 61% approval rating,"Would you consider voting for the Pirate Party?" , poll by Aftonbladet, at 61% yes in early January of 2006 with 50,000 responding; at 57% on 30 July 2006 with 99,000 responding and IDG produced a longer front page interview with Falkvinge in the afternoon. IDG also posted an online poll similar to the first, with similar results."Would you consider voting for a pirate party?", poll by IDG, active January 3–9, 2006. Retrieved July 30, 2006. The Party website was also slashdotted."Swedish Filesharers Start 'The Piracy Party'" from slashdot.org, accessed on July 14, 2009
The Pirate Party's web server received one million hits on its first day of operation, two million the next.
On 4 January, international media and radio stations picked up the story. A major Swedish radio station broadcast an interview with Falkvinge about the unexpected amount of attention the initiative received. More attention followed on Thursday, including coverage by the BBC World Service, the first global radio station to produce a story on the Pirate Party initiative.
At the end of the first week, the Pirate Party platform had been covered by over 500 English-language and over 600 Swedish-language media outlets.
The Pirate Bay trial
On 31 May 2006, Swedish police raided a facility hosting The Pirate Bay (and Piratbyrån, along with over 200 other independent site owners, hosted at the same facility), leading to a breakthrough for the Pirate Party in the public eye. Before the raid, the Party was steadily growing with some ten new members every day, but the raid caused a surge of 500 new members by the end of the day, with a membership count of 2,680. The next day another 930 people had registered membership, giving a total of 3,611 members, more than doubling their original number. During parts of 2006 Mikael Viborg, who is also known as the legal advisor of the popular BitTorrent tracker, The Pirate Bay was a board member of the Pirate Party.
On 3 June 2006, the Party performed a "pirate demonstration""Pictures from the piracy demonstration" , by Ulf Sjöström, Pirate Watch, June 3, 2006, accessed on June 5, 2006 in Stockholm and Gothenburg. The demonstration was in collaboration with the youth sections of some other political parties (the Young Liberals, Young Greens and Young Left). Within a few days the file sharing issue had become the focus of national debate, followed by national as well as international media. Along with criticizing the approach to restricting Pirate Bay's file sharing by the Minister for Justice Thomas Bodström, the right to free information and rule of law became the Party's main standpoints.
The Pirate Party had over 50,189 members – more members than 5 of the 7 parties in the Swedish Parliament – and was the third largest political party in Sweden by member count. Pirate Party's youth organisation, Young Pirate, had more than 21,800 members, making it the largest political youth organisation in Sweden."Medlemsantal" from piratpartiet.se, accessed on May 28, 2009 Since 17 April 2009, the party had more than tripled in size. Large increases in membership were associated with the controversial legislative change regulating signals intelligence, the IPRED law regarding copyright holder access to Internet service provider (ISP) subscriber information and the trial against The Pirate Bay. On 17 April 2009 the court reached a guilty verdict in the Pirate Bay trial and on the same day the Pirate Party gained 3,000 new members within 7 hours, making it larger in terms of members than 3 of the 7 parties in the Parliament of Sweden. A total of over 9,000 new members joined the party on that day and the day after. One week later it reached 40,000 members, compared to 15,000 members before the verdict.
On 30 April 2009, a newspaper election poll reported the Pirate Party vote to be 5.1% for the upcoming European Parliament election. Another more recent poll conducted by polling organization Demoskop for newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning gave the party 7.9%."M tappar opinionsstöd " from unt.se (Swedish), accessed on May 25, 2009 The party eventually received 7.1% of the vote in the 7 June election, and won a seat in the European Parliament.
2010s decade
On 18 May 2010, The Pirate Bay started hosting its site through bandwidth delivered from the Pirate Party.
On 17 August 2010, it was announced that the Pirate Party will be hosting and managing many of WikiLeaks' new servers. The party donates servers and bandwidth to WikiLeaks without charge. Technicians of the party will make sure that the servers are maintained and working.