And not to their benefit. Thee RIAA’s ill-conceived attempt to destroy the Swedish-based “The Pirate Bay” in order to stimy filesharing has been a disaster from day one. Not only did they receive massive amounts of bad press, but The Pirate Bay was back online and bigger than ever within days of the raid, and the newly formed Swedish political party PiratbyrÃ¥n received a huge jumpstart when their servers were caught up in the undertow and seized as well. now it’s looking more likely thaan ever that PiratbyrÃ¥n has a shot at gaining legitimate political representation in the Swedish government, which could only lead to even bigger headaches for the RIAA and MPAA.
Piratbyrån, which is a Swedish pro-piracy think tank, had their server seized at the same time and it was in police custody until just the other day. Between the legal efforts to get their equipment back and other other lobbying, Piratbyrån managed to gather similar and supporting groups around Scandinavia to launch an international lobby organization, which was given the name Pro Piracy Lobby. Right now, PPL is in contact with groups in a dozen countries that is interested in joining.
Secondly, the Pirate Party had already existed for about half a year, but all this attention also gave wings in their sails, and they had thousands of new members in a matter of weeks. Suddenly, they had transformed into the largest party without parliament seats. In Sweden, you get seats in the parliament if you get four percent of the votes. As we speak, the Pirate Party has almost as many members as the Green Party, which is a party that supports the current government, and without them, the current government can’t maintain their majority This leads the Pirate Party to believe that if they get into the parliament they can fill such a vital role, and thereby make a big difference. Worth noting is that some unofficial gallups from various sources indicate that the Pirate Party is the most likely party for a Swedish first-time voter to choose on election day.
