Authorities threaten Swedish Pirate Party

Our own British Pirate Party has been targeted by copyright lobbyists in the past, and it's happening again with the Swedish version. Copyright lobby group “Rights Alliance” is threatening to sue the political party if it doesn't cease its hosting of The Pirate Bay website.

The letter sent to the Swedish Pirate Party gives the group a week to comply and suggests that since the Supreme Court rejected the Pirate Bay case last year, that hosts can be held liable for the websites they allow to be based on their servers.

However the party doesn't plan to roll over to the copyright group's requests, with one spokesperson saying (via TorrentFreak): “The Pirate Party’s activity is legal and lawful activities should not be subjected to threats of this type. It is not illegal to provide the Pirate Bay with Internet access.” It was also pointed out that there is no list of websites that hosts are not allowed to provide access to.

As part of the move by the “Rights Alliance,” bandwidth provider Serious Tubes has also been targeted.

While TPB in-fact has many hosting options, most of them in “the cloud,” after a recent migration to improve security, it would still be a blow to lose such a strong supporter. Some have also suggested that because Pirate Party Sweden is a political group, forcing it to end its hosting is tantamount to political censorship.

KitGuru Says: I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here as you guys know the score, but this is just the wrong way to go about things. You don't stop downloads from happening by trying to cut off the supply, you have to redirect the demand – by offering a better or at least comparable service. Spotify is a great example, as is Netflix. Put money into pushing these services, not attacking political parties in the courts and tying up valuable resources.

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