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Digital Communities
Industry Members
Digital Pirates
December 29, 2009 By Ulf Wolf
(First in a series)
A new Swedish website was launched on January 1, 2006, heralding the first purely digital political party in the world:Piratpartiet (The Pirate Party).
Its aims were clearly stated and included:
Main Goal: To promote global legislation to facilitate the emerging information society.
Regarding Copyright: Claiming that today's copyright system is unbalanced, the party's position is that file sharing (e.g. music) should be decriminalized.
Regarding Patent Laws: Holding that privatized monopolies are one of society's worst enemies, the party's position is that patents are obsolete and should be gradually done away with. Regarding patents on pharmaceuticals, the Pirate Party proposes increasing government support for R&D to make up for loss of private R&D if there were no patent protection for innovation.
Regarding Personal Privacy: Holding that all attempts to curtail these rights (e.g. privacy) must be questioned and met with powerful opposition, the party's position is that anti-terror laws nullify due process and run the risk of being used as repressive tools.
Six Phases
At launch, the movement mapped out six phases of activity, announcing the first as the collection of at least 2,000 signatures (500 more than required to participate in the upcoming September 17 general election). In less than 24 hours the Party had collected over 2,000 signatures (2,268), evidencing a wide interest among the Swedish Internet savvy.
A day later, the Party closed the signature collection phase with a total of 4,725 signatures.
As such signatories, by Swedish election law, are required to identify themselves when giving support for a new party; this feat caught the international media's attention and was widely reported at the time.
However, signatures presented to the Swedish election authorities must be handwritten, which initiated a follow-up phase. This was accomplished by February 10, when over 1,500 handwritten signatures had been acquired and presented to the election authorities. Three days later, the authorities presented the Pirate Party final confirmation as eligible to partake in the upcoming Swedish general elections.
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 as of 2005 this meant 43 municipalities. During this phase fundraising was also started, with an initial goal of raising 1 million Swedish Krowns (roughly $125,000).
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.
While this threshold was not reached in the 2007 election, the picture may look differently after the 2010 general elections, considering that the Pirate Party received 7.13% of the total Swedish votes in the 2009 European Parliament elections, which was originally to result in one seat in the European parliament, but became two when the Lisbon Treaty was ratified.
Christian Engström became the first MEP for the party, and Amelia Andersdotter took the second seat after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty on December 1, 2009.
Today, the Pirate Party (according to their site) has a total active membership of 48,544, making it the second larges political party in Sweden.
Considering, too, that the Pirate Party has become a model for similar political parties springing up in Europe, it is a movement well worth following since it may become the model base for the digital citizen.
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