Swedish Pirate Party's Influence Beginning to Show...

[1]

Seven members of the Swedish Parliament have published an opinion piece [2] calling for the decriminalization of filesharing. Written in reaction to a government analyst's recommendation that file-sharers be punished by losing their Internet connections, the letter is practically a verbatim recitation of what the Swedish Pirate Party [1] has been saying for a long time now:

"...Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It's the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet. Politicians who play for the antipiracy team should be aware that they have allied themselves with a special interest that is never satisfied and that will always demand that we take additional steps toward the ultimate control state..."

When he visited the United States last summer, Rick Falkvinge [3], the Pirate Party's founder, pointed out that one of the Party's most important functions was educating other politicians. By competing for seats in Parliament, the Party forces other candidates to give more attention to copyright and patent issues, out of fear of losing votes to the Pirates. It looks like that's exactly what's happened here. If so, kudos to Rick and the Pirate Party: they've made a powerful argument for valuing civil liberties over obsolete business models, and it's clearly catching on when members of Parliament from the Moderate Party adopt a major plank from the Pirate Party platform.

[Update: Over at the P2P Consortium, there's a good new interview [4] with Rick Falkvinge up. Shameless confession: we're very pleased to see the references there to Falkvinge's speaking tour [3] here last summer, which QuestionCopyright.org arranged.]