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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

So people voted on a party which wants to deal with copyright issues of the distributed music/video content (as its main goal)... A party that will now be able to have its say about national and European issues. It's a bit interesting that such an issue can be so high on people's priority list. Not that I'm opposed to what they want to do, but I'm not sure what to think of Sweden right now:

Is it the best country to live in? One where people don't come across bigger problems in their daily life?

Or is it that all standard political parties in Sweden crossed the line which many parties in any country are very close to - not doing anything, having every possible populist claim in their programme, getting old...

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I voted for them in Germany, but not because I want to pirate music and movies. The bigger issues are censorship (a huge attack is just going on in Germany, giving government the power to block any internet sites they want with no possibility for the victims to do anything about it), software patents (and other patents), privacy rights and so on.

I used to vote green and might do so again, but I have lost faith in "eco power" - I just think some things that are labeled eco these days don't deserve it, and I am not sure if the greens understand it.

Ultimately I figured I am working in the IT industry, and therefore the pirate party is closest to my interests.

My view of democracy has become a lot more cynical, too (not only because of the extreme wasting of tax money in the wake of the recent economic crisis). That reminds me: transparency is another huge, huge point I expect from the pirate party - I think they want to make politics more transparent (employing modern digital means), and that seems to me to be the best way to create a sane society and reduce tax payer exploitation.

I think democracy is just another "war" - it is not about finding a common goal for society, it is about members of society struggling to get the most out of society (that is, exploit society a ka the other members to the max). So why not vote to get "my share".

Not sure if you're in the US, but reading your comment, I can't help but linking to an explanation of how legislative seats are dealt out in Sweden (and many other countries). It's not a thing like we have in the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Sweden#Seat_alloca...

In such a system, it's not uncommon to see a few seats go to minor parties. In the US, we'd surely see some Libertarian and Greens in congress if we had such a system. However, the US system is more conducive to 2-party politics because of the way the rules are defined, which is why we see it here and not so much elsewhere.

So, its a surprising result if you're used to 2 parties, but not so unexpected when multiparty politics is the norm.

Yeah - I'm from Europe and used to multiparty government. Yet every small party I've seen, that actually targeted young people and specifically issues that people <30 care about, never gets to be popular. And they certainly don't get 2 seats in EU.

I was just wondering why it happened in Sweden of all countries... was The Pirate Bay court case really the trigger, or is it connected to how Swedish people act, or was it something else?

The Pirate Party has been around in Sweden for a few years already:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party

Interestingly, in my own district of Berlin, probably the most left-leaning in Germany, they also polled at 3.4%, whereas the chancellor's party (Christian Democrats) only polled at 9%.

This isn't so much about the Pirate Bay as something that's been brewing for a while already. This was, in some senses, just a tipping point for the group as they'll now have a voice outside of Sweden.

To my mind this is similar to the ascendency of the The Greens in the 80s as they landed in their first positions of real influence. The particularly interesting thing there is that the effect of real power was an increasing pragmatism at pushing the original core agenda; I wouldn't be surprised if we see something similar evolving in the Pirate Party in the coming years.

They've taken a talking point that is shared between liberals, libertarians, communists, anarchists and some socialists/social democrats and that directly affect peoples lives (a huge percentage of people share files etc. and don't see it as something wrong) at a time when big media are trying to tell people they're all criminals.

That's probably key to their success - they can take voters from across the spectrum who don't have a voice at all in large parties (the closest in Sweden perhaps being the socialist/communist Vensterpartiet - Left Party - which also wants to significantly limit copyright) but who have liberal tendencies.

This has been brewing for a while, and it'll likely spread outside of Sweden, limited by non-proportional voting in some countries. What is particular about Sweden is that Sweden had one of the most liberal policies on copyright in Europe to start with - non-commercial copying for "personal use" (including sharing with friends) was (is it still?) legal. This is a right that was ingrained. So when these rights are being taken away, it's natural you get a backlash.

They're campaigning on a much broader digital rights/anti-surveillance techno-libertarian platform. That's going to appeal to a certain class of (probably urban, young, middle-class) voter.

Young yes. exit polls show that The Pirate Party and Green Party gets more votes then any other party in the age group 18-30. Middle-class maybe. Hard to tell really at this point, but from personal experiences I would say it's really a mix. Urban not-so-much. The Pirate Party made a quite even election throughout Sweden's 21 different counties, ranging from 5.5% to 8.0% with a total result of 7.1%. Compared to the centre party ranging from 3.0% to 14.6% with a total result of 5.5%.

That's interesting. I doubt the Pirate Party would get much play in rural Britain; the Eurosceptics of UKIP (common-or-garden get-off-my-lawn types) are cleaning up there.

(And the bloody fascists have got at least one MEP. Probably two. sigh.)

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