Well they have been making headlines again, or at least bloglines! Seems that the Swedish government has had a fair bit of pressure put on them to shut down the Pirate guys.
Meanwhile the Pirates are flexing their muscles and....
The general elections are being held in the end of September, and the election campaigns are becoming hotter and hotter. The Pirate Party has decided that what they have now, ideas and ideology, strategy and policies, is what they’re going to run, no need to do any additions or changes now - all energy is put on the election campaign, and the work will be focused very strongly on this until after the election.
What happens after that will depend completely on how the election turns out, and here are many alternatives:
On one scenario, the Pirate Party gets their 4%, which few within the party doubt they will. In that case they will move to become influential in the forming of the government. In Sweden, the prime minister is elected by the parliament, which means that he or she must have a majority of the MPs behind him/her. No party ever gets that many seats, and so, a party that will form a government must seek support from another party, who then gets a situation where they can influence the government. This is a position that the Pirate Party seeks. Their parliamentary work will depend heavily on whether they succeed or not.
This is really interesting stuff. If this can work in Sweden - and bear in mind that at least part of the genesis of this is file sharing capability and practice - and in Sweden there is a totally difference copyright law in place than in the US and UK - much more in keeping with the sort of philosophies of Lessig, I would say.
If they can actually get enough seats to hold the balance of power, and create a stronger aspirational vector than the greens, what an example for the rest of the world. If we can't get charged up about saving the world from greenhouse gasses maybe we can all get motivated to share music and movies on line for free!
