Pirate Party (Sweden)
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Template:Infobox Swedish Political Party
The Pirate Party (Swedish: Piratpartiet) is a newly started political party in Sweden. The party strives to abolish the rights of intellectual property and immaterial rights, including copyright, patent, trademark and the protection of design. The agenda also includes support for a strengthening of the right to privacy, both on the Internet and in everyday life. The party does not have an agenda for any other subjects and it is not possible to place the party anywhere on the left-right scale.
History and Founding
The website for the Pirate Party was opened January 1, 2006 (at 20.30 local time), stating the foundation of the party. Six phases were presented, with phase one being the collection of at least 2,000 signatures (500 more than needed) to be handed over to the Swedish Election Authority before February 4 (while the absolutely last date would be February 29), so that the party would be allowed to participate in the Sweden general election of 2006. Less than 24 hours after the opening of the website, the party had collected over 2,000 signatures (2,268 at 16.05 local time).
By the morning of January 3, the party closed the signature collection. In about 36 hours, they had gathered 4,725 signatures. Given that 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.
Phases two to five include registering at the election authority, getting candidates for the Riksdag, getting voting papers, and preparing an organization for the election, including local organizations in all Municipalities of Sweden with a population in excess of 50,000. As of 2005 this means 43 municipalities from Malmö in the south to Luleå in the north.
The sixth and final phase is the election itself. The party, which claims that there are between 800,000 and 1.1 million active file sharers in Sweden hope that at least 225,000 of those are voting for the party, which would mean a 4 percent support and thus membership of Parliament which would then allow the party to hold the balance of power.
Media Attention: The First Week
Media quickly picked up on the movement. By 10 a.m. on January 2 (Monday), the first large Swedish newspaper, the Dagens Industri, broke the story. By 3 p.m., the media were getting irritated that no owner of the website was listed and was hard to track down; some reports listed the website as not serious and a PR stunt. However, the largest Swedish tabloid, Aftonbladet, managed to track party leader Rickard Falkvinge down at work, where he just had to end the call saying he couldn't talk about the initiative while at work.
Later that same day, the tabloid later published a longer interview with Mr. Falkvinge, and gave their readers an online poll for approval ratings. To the shock of the media establishment, the poll data showed that the just-founded Pirate Party held a 62% approval rating - higher than any of the established parties, and generally thought impossible for a single-issue party.
That tabloid article resulted in a million hits on the web server on the first day of operation.
On January 3 (Tuesday), all the major Swedish news outlets had broken the story as such, and IDG broke a longer top-of-page-one interview with Mr. Falkvinge in the afternoon. That resulted in two million hits on the second day of operation. Notably, IDG also posted an online poll similar to the initial one, and scored comparable - but not identical - results.
On Wednesday, international media and radio stations picked up the story. The major Swedish radio station broadcast an interview with Mr. Falkvinge about the unexpected amount of attention this initiative had received, and more would follow on Thursday, including BBC World Service, the first global radio station to break the news of the Pirate Party initiative.
At the end of the first week, the Pirate Party had been covered in over 500 English-speaking media and over 600 Spanish-speaking media.