Sweden's Pirate Party Gets a Seat at EU Parliament

STOCKHOLM — Sweden's Pirate Party has won a seat at the European Parliament, results showed on Sunday.

The Pirate Party, which will take up one of Sweden's 18 seats in the 785-seat parliament, wants more free content on the Internet,.

The adult entertainment industry as a whole has been adamant about piracy — it cuts into business and wants it eliminated.

The Pirate Party received 7.1 percent of votes in Sweden in the Europe-wide ballot, enough to give it a single seat. It wants to deregulate copyright, abolish the patent system and reduce surveillance on the Internet.

Despite similar names, the party and ThePirateBay.com are not associated.

Pirate Party founder and chairman Rickard Falkvinge said that his group's “advocacy of shortening the duration of copyright protection and allowing noncommercial file-sharing between individuals is catching on around Europe.”

Falkvinge's Pirate Party, founded in 2006, contested a Swedish general election that year but received less than one percent of the vote.

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