Swashbuckling Swedes surprise EU

In what was oddly reminiscent of last year’s YUSU elections, over 200,000 Swedish people voted for the Piratpartiet – the Pirate Party.

Admittedly, it sounds like a bad joke, but behind the gimmick lies a surprisingly dedicated political party founded on a policy of internet freedoms and the reformation of copyright law. The party now holds a seat in the European Parliament, and is the third biggest political party in Sweden. Clearly, it is time to start taking them seriously.

Representatives of the music industry the IFPI claimed in January that around 95% of all music downloads are illegal

Piracy itself is the source of their popularity. Particularly popular amongst the Swedish youth, support for the Pirate Party increased dramatically after four men behind download website The Pirate Bay were sentenced to a year in prison and fined over £2m for flouting copyright laws back in April. The trial made headlines worldwide, and its role in brokering support for the Piratpartiet indicates that internet rights are an increasingly important part of the world’s political stage.

The effective elimination of international borders through the internet makes this a particularly tricky issue to navigate. Illegal downloading in particular is a problem in every country that has access to the internet, but with every country choosing to address the issue differently it will be some time before any sort of resolution is achieved. While the prevalence of internet piracy – representatives of the music industry the IFPI claimed in January that around 95% of all music downloads are illegal – is inescapable, a solution remains far more elusive.

France, for example, was praised by the film and music industries for legislation passed in May that allowed internet users three strikes before permanently removing their internet access. Yet already this has proven ineffective, with French courts designating access to the internet a basic human right.

The UK government has yet to make a concerted effort to eliminate internet piracy, although independent internet providers are taking measures to reduce the problem. The government published its Digital Britain report this week which outlined a new "robust legal and regulatory framework to combat Digital Piracy"; what this will entail remains to be seen.

A fast internet connection is now seen by most of the public as an essential service, as indispensable as electricity, gas and water
Gordon Brown in The Times this week.

What does seem certain is that in order to crack down on copyright violations, the government will need definitive proof of where people are going on the internet. This has naturally has raised questions about rights to privacy; would an end to internet piracy also therefore lead to an end in internet freedoms?

It seems that we are faced with either Orwellian restrictions to our internet activities, or a chaotic free-for-all that might well destroy both the film and music industries. Hopefully neither, but with international cooperation highly implausible and illegal downloads becoming an increasingly lucrative business – if for the wrong people – it seems that the issue of internet piracy, and indeed the internet in general, will only gain in importance.

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