Supporting Piracy !!!

 

The convictions and prison sentences handed down to the defendants in The Pirate Bay case have prompted Sweden's youth to action. The Pirate Party reports booming support as demonstrators turn out in force on Saturday.

The Pirate Party organized demonstrations against the convictions at several cities across Sweden on Saturday. More than 1,000 people turned out in Stockholm to show support for The Pirate Bay defendents and the practice of file sharing.
"We young people have a whole platform on the internet, where we have all our social contacts - it is there that we live. The state is trying to control the internet and, by extension, our private lives," said Malin Littorin-Ferm of the party's Ung Pirat youth league to the assembled crowd in Stockholm on Saturday. Since the Stockholm district court passed judgment on April 17th the Pirate Party confirmed on Saturday afternoon that its membership has swelled to 21,000. The party's youth league is now, with its 10,000 members, larger than all of the parliamentary party youth organizations.
To claim seats in the European parliament, to which elections will be held on June 7th in Sweden, the party must gain at least four percent of the vote and the support of Sweden's younger voters will be crucial to achieving this.
In the last European parliamentary elections the Swedish voter turnout was a mere 27 percent.
The debate around file sharing and the future of the internet has piqued the interest of many young people and could increase the voter turnout among the unusually large number of first time voters, concluded Henrik Oscarsson, a political scientist at Gothenburg University.
"If they can mobilize their passive support to the voting booth on June 7th then voter turnout could increase among this group. It is a long way to the four percent threshold," he pointed out.
The Pirate Party's leader Rickard Falkvinge is confident of the attraction of the party's platform.
"These citizens have never previously had a significant issue with which to become involved. It is not that politics does not interest young people - it is that the former generation's problems and political solutions do not interest the youth," he said.

Just a day before this demonstration … Internet service providers refuse to cooperate with an entertainment industry group's demand to shut down The Pirate Bay. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is demanding that Pirate Bay website be shut down.
But Internet service providers (ISPs) refuse to cooperate, reports the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
Neither has the judgement slowed down file sharing. Several minutes after the Stockholm District Court delivered the verdict, almost ten billion files were being downloaded.
The ISPs maintain that the ruling doesn't apply to them.
"In part, this is not a legally binding decision, but above all, this is a judgement against Pirate Bay and nothing that effects any service provider. We will not take any action (to block) the contents if we are not compelled to do so," Patrik Hiselius, a lawyer at Telia Sonera, told Svenska Dagbladet. Bredbandsbolaget and Com Hem had the same reply. Jon Karlung, managing director of Bahnhofs, said the judgement does not change anything.
"We will not censor sites for our customers; that is not our job. I am against anything that contradicts the principle of a free and open Internet."

By reading all these news , it seems that these pirate guys will not be convicted … or even if they will be , then they will not be charged notably … which will be not good , because it will encourage more piracy all around the world !!!

 

from theLocal ….

Njoy …