Pirate Party Iceland gains parliamentary seat

Following on from the announcement that the Pirate Bay would now be hosted on the small island nation of Iceland, the local Pirate Party there has now managed to surpass the five per cent of the vote needed in a general election, in order to garner a seat in parliament, making it the first Pirate Party to do so.

The Icelandic's parliament is divided proportionally in to 63 seats, which means that along with the leader of the Icelandic Pirate Party, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, PPI has two other seats too. This makes it one of the smallest parties there, but it's still a huge step for international Pirate Party operations.

No sailing off in to the sunset for this Pirate Party, it's got work to do

As Wired reports, this puts Iceland's Pirate Party ahead of even renowned pirate politicos in Sweden, where the Pirate Party has two MEPs in European Parliament.

The promotion of these individuals in Iceland, gives the party a bigger stage to operate from and should help in 2014, when the European elections will see a big push from Pirate Parties all over Europe as they attempt to improve influence in order to affect the future of civil rights, promote direct democracy and participation, reform of copyright and patent law and improve the free sharing of knowledge and information.

KitGuru Says: Good to see the influence of a Pirate Party increasing. In the past year our very own PPUK has taken a bit of a beating at the hands of the BPI. 

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