Copyright Law

The Pirate Bay Urges EU Users to Get Out and Vote

By DrewWilson

In some parts of the world, like Canada, it’s very difficult to motivate a younger audience (like, around 30 years or younger) to actually go to the polls and vote. Meanwhile, in Sweden, the election that was once touted as the “forgotten” election, that is, the EU Election, and turned it into a surprisingly popular election. Whether or not The Pirate Bay helped influence this movement is not totally clear, but it couldn’t have hurt the popularity of the election.

Between the laws being passed to the trial of The Pirate Bay, it’s pretty clear, judging by the polls, that a movement is afoot that could easily increase the popularity of the once forgotten EU election. Recently, The Pirate Bay had made a post on their blog which, when put through the Google translator, one can get this:

I read this article just now: http://www.svd.se/opinion/brannpunkt/artikel_3000369.svd My first impression was, why has it taken so long for someone to put it so perfectly! I highly recommend everyone to read it.

Then, I also urge everyone to vote in European elections! Show us what you think! If I currently live in Bangkok and is widely known to be notoriously slow and tough, able to take me to the embassy to vote, so should anyone do it, I think!

If I, as our spokesman Peter (MP) here on TPB to go out and show the political color so it will be purple (PP). Then I think all the established parties turn coat after the wind a bit MKT. Everyone will remember what Reinfeldt said before the last election, “The police will not hunt an entire youth generation, but apparently it is good that private interests do it! And this, he is extraordinary when members who wanted to vote against IPRED called in to the call and received a reprimand on the party line. So for me was Piratpartiet the obvious choice. FRA, IPRED, the ACTA and the telecom package, it is becoming a little too much, it’s time to take a position now as an ordinary citizen, before our elected representatives just listening to the lobby and it is too late to do anything about the crazy decisions they take.

While it may seem quite straight forward that The Pirate Bay co-founders would support the Pirate Party, earlier on, this wasn’t so clear. A report on p2p-blog showed a video stream of Brokep saying that he is supporting the Green Party. While party support may be divided amongst the co-founders, it’s pretty obvious that they are urging all Europeans to get out and vote in the EU election. Already, the Open Rights Group posted about which MPs in Britain support digital rights, helping Europeans in general decide who is best suited to defending online rights.

Given so many factors, the European election could be seen as critical for a number of reason and digital rights could very easily be one of them.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on June 05, 2009 (boomark / email).