STOCKHOLM, Sweden—Tens of thousands of Swedes have expressed their dissatisfaction with the recent ruling against the four men behind the file-sharing website, the Pirate Bay. Those responsible for the site, the largest of its kind in the world, were sentenced to a year in prison and fined $3.6 million after being found guilty of copyright infringement. The Swedish media has reported heavily on the case and its controversies.
Within two days of the verdict more than 10,000 people registered to become members of the Pirate Party, a political party founded in January 2006 that deals mostly with issues of mass media, and who sympathize with the Pirate Bay. The party has now more than 24,000 members, making it one of the largest political parties in the country.
The public’s discontentment with the verdict, and also with a new law against file sharing that came into effect in Sweden on April 1, raises the possibility that representatives from the Pirate Party will get into the EU Parliament in the June elections.
On Saturday a demonstration was held in Medborgarplatsen Square, Stockholm, where the chairman of the Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge, said that the “Establishment” and its politicians “has declared war against our whole generation.”
Unne Drougge, a famous author, said during the rally that she supports the Pirate Bay and the Pirate Party. “We are writing history,” she said. Similar demonstrations were held in two other cities in Sweden.
A lot of readers took the opportunity to comment in Swedish newspapers, too. More than 1000 have written their comments on the verdict to the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, and several hundred bloggers have taken the debate further.
“The Pirate Bay is just a search engine,” said one comment in Svenska Dagbladet, also pointing to Google, Facebook, and others as potential copyright violators.
One blogger wrote that it was a political verdict. “They were sentenced for who they are, not for the ‘supposed’ crimes committed,” they wrote.
Many youth think the trial was old-fashioned, that legislation is not up to date with new technology; the verdict has been seen as a war against the Internet and the whole younger generation.
Critics say the Swedish court system has caved in to pressure from the music and film industry in the US.
The newspaper Dagens Nyheter ran a poll with the question: “Was it right to pronounce the sentence?” Of the 29,931 who participated, 83 percent said no, with 17 percent saying yes.
Peter Sunde, one of the sentenced, said they will appeal the verdict.
