Total Recut Blog - Permalink

After scoring a surprise electoral win in Sweden and getting high-profile support in Germany, The Pirate Party's next port of call may be Canada, where a so-far small band of buccaneers are hoping to send copyright restrictions to Davy Jones's locker. Right now, they're a handful of loosely-organized individuals spread across the country. But they want to become an official federal political party within the next few years and get enough support to persuade Parliament to relax proposed copyright laws they say are heavy-handed and a violation of personal privacy. "I think one of the roles a party like The Pirate Party can play is to more or less stiffen up the spines of people who might be in the NDP or the Liberals who want to get this stuff done," said Rob Sutherland, a freelance computer programmer in Regina who is one of the organizers of the Canadian group. The Pirate Party was little-known anywhere in the world until earlier this year, when the four founders of The Pirate Bay, a Swedish torrent tracker site that helped people find and download movies, music and software, were fined millions of dollars and sentenced to jail. The verdict created a public backlash and, almost overnight, membership in the Swedish Pirate Party more than doubled. In June's European Parliament elections, the party took 7.1 per cent of the vote in Sweden - enough for its first seat. There has been a similar surge of support in Germany, where lawmaker Joerg Tauss recently quit the Social Democrats, one of the country's governing parties, and offered to join the fledgling Pirate Party of Germany. The party's goals are fairly simple. It says people should have the right to share and copy music, movies and virtually any material, as long as it is for personal use, not for profit. (Canadian Press) UPDATE