Who was the head of Pirate Party (Sweden) from 2016 to 2017?
Pirate Party ( Sweden ) The Pirate Party ( ) is a political party in Sweden founded in 2006 . Its sudden popularity has given rise to parties with the same name and similar goals in Europe and worldwide , forming the International Pirate Party movement . The Pirate Party was initially formed to reform laws regarding copyright and patents . The party agenda includes support for strengthening the individuals right to privacy , both on the Internet and in everyday life , and the transparency of state administration . The Pirate Party has intentionally chosen to be bloc independent of the traditional left-right scale to pursue their political agenda with all mainstream parties . The party originally stayed neutral on other matters , but started broadening into other political areas in 2012 . The Pirate Party participated in the 2006 Riksdag elections and gained 0.63% of the votes , making them the third largest party outside parliament . In terms of membership , it passed the Green Party in December 2008 , the Left Party in February 2009 , the Liberal Peoples Party and the Christian Democrats in April 2009 , and the Centre Party in May 2009 , making it , for the time being , the third largest political party in Sweden by membership . The Pirate Partys associated youth organisation , Young Pirate ( ) , was , for a part of 2009 and 2010 , the largest political youth organisation in Sweden by membership count . The Pirate Party came 5th in the 2009 European Parliament elections with 7.13% of the vote and 1 MEP ( increasing to 2 after ratification of the Lisbon Treaty ) . Christian Engström became the first MEP for the party , and Amelia Andersdotter took the second seat on 1 December 2009 . Rick Falkvinge , founder of the party , stepped down on 1 January 2011 after five years as party leader , making vice leader Anna Troberg the party leader . On 1 December 2014 , Anna Troberg announced that she would not be available for re-election in 2015 after her term ended on 31 December 2014 . Declaration of principles . The party advocates a severe reduction of economic sole right of copyrighted works , which today exist for 70 years after the creators death . They also advocate releasing all non-commercial sharing of copyrighted material , which means that all films , phonograms and programs can be shared freely as long as the operation isnt run commercially . The party also has personal privacy as a core value , and is critical towards laws such as ACTA , IPRED , the Telecoms Package , and the change in legislation regulating the National Defence Radio Establishment ( FRA ) . The party advocates strengthened individual privacy , are against the Data Retention Directive , wants to elevate secrecy of correspondence to general secrecy of communication , and create a constitutional right to privacy . The party also seeks to modify the laws of intellectual property ( copyright and patent ) , but doesnt want to change the laws of trademarks or industrial design rights . The party views itself as a defender of the individuals civil rights especially with regards to surveillance , government accountability and political and business corruption . Before the Swedish general election of 2010 the party stayed neutral in all other political matters , and could be considered a single-issue party . After 2010 the party started opening up for a broader political agenda . A new declaration of principles was formed in 2011 , and at the spring member meeting of 2012 several new political standpoints were decided on areas such as school , research and health care . History . Founding . The website for the Pirate Party was launched on 1 January 2006 ( at 20.30 CEST ) , marking the foundation of the Party . Six phases were presented on the website , with phase one being the collection of at least 2,000 signatures ( 500 more than required ) to be handed over to the Swedish Election Authority before the 4th of February ( the deadline for registering being February 28 ) , so that the Party would be allowed to participate in the upcoming 17 September general election . In less than 24 hours after the opening of the website , the Party had collected over 2,000 signatures ( 2,268 at 16.05 CEST ) . By the morning of the 3rd of January , the Party closed the signature collection . In about 36 hours , they had gathered 4,725 signatures . As signatories are required by Swedish election law to identify themselves when giving support for a new party , international media reported this as a significant feat , given the nature of the Party . However , signatures presented to the election authorities are required to be handwritten . The goal of at least 1,500 handwritten signatures was reached February 10 and the final confirmation from the authorities was presented three days later . The Party claimed to have recruited 900 members within the first month , each member paying a membership fee of 5 Swedish kronor ( approx . US$0.69 , c.2006 ) , payable by SMS ( The Party has since changed to free member registration ) . Phases two to five included registering with the Election Authority , getting candidates for the Riksdag , raising money for printing ballots , and preparing an organization for the election , including local organizations in all municipalities of Sweden with a population in excess of 50,000 , which in 2005 meant 43 municipalities . During this phase fundraising was also started , with an initial goal of raising 1 million SEK ( $126,409 ) . The sixth and final phase was the election itself . The Party , which claims that there are between 800,000 and 1.1 million active file sharers in Sweden , hoped that at least 225,000 ( 4% of all the voters in Sweden ) of those would vote for the party , granting them membership in Parliament . Initial media attention . Media quickly picked up on the movement . On Monday 2 January 2006 , a large Swedish financial newspaper , Dagens Industri , produced a story on what was happening . By 3 pm , the media seemed irritated that no owner of the website was listed or easy to track down ; some reports listed the website as not serious and a PR stunt . However , the largest Swedish tabloid , Aftonbladet , managed to track down the Party leader Rickard Falkvinge at work . Falkvinge , however , was unable to explain the Partys positions while at work , bringing this information gathering effort to an abrupt end . On 3 January 2006 , all the major Swedish news outlets had produced stories on the Party . Aftonbladet posted an online poll indicating that its readers gave the Party a 61% approval rating , and IDG produced a longer front page interview with Falkvinge in the afternoon . IDG also posted an online poll similar to the first , with similar results . The Party website was also slashdotted . The Pirate Partys web server received one million hits on its first day of operation , two million the next . On 4 January , international media and radio stations picked up the story . A major Swedish radio station broadcast an interview with Falkvinge about the unexpected amount of attention the initiative received . More attention followed on Thursday , including coverage by the BBC World Service , the first global radio station to produce a story on the Pirate Party initiative . At the end of the first week , the Pirate Party platform had been covered by over 500 English-language and over 600 Swedish-language media outlets . The Pirate Bay trial . On 31 May 2006 , Swedish police raided a facility hosting The Pirate Bay ( and Piratbyrån , along with over 200 other independent site owners , hosted at the same facility ) , leading to a breakthrough for the Pirate Party in the public eye . Before the raid , the Party was steadily growing with some ten new members every day , but the raid caused a surge of 500 new members by the end of the day , with a membership count of 2,680 . The next day another 930 people had registered membership , giving a total of 3,611 members , more than doubling their original number . During parts of 2006 Mikael Viborg , who is also known as the legal advisor of the popular BitTorrent tracker , The Pirate Bay was a board member of the Pirate Party . On 3 June 2006 , the Party performed a pirate demonstration in Stockholm and Gothenburg . The demonstration was in collaboration with the youth sections of some other political parties ( the Young Liberals , Young Greens and Young Left ) . Within a few days the file sharing issue had become the focus of national debate , followed by national as well as international media . Along with criticizing the approach to restricting Pirate Bays file sharing by the Minister for Justice Thomas Bodström , the right to free information and rule of law became the Partys main standpoints . The Pirate Party had over 50,189 members – more members than 5 of the 7 parties in the Swedish Parliament – and was the third largest political party in Sweden by member count . Pirate Partys youth organisation , Young Pirate , had more than 21,800 members , making it the largest political youth organisation in Sweden . Since 17 April 2009 , the party had more than tripled in size . Large increases in membership were associated with the controversial legislative change regulating signals intelligence , the IPRED law regarding copyright holder access to ISP subscriber information and the trial against The Pirate Bay . On 17 April 2009 the court reached a guilty verdict in the Pirate Bay trial and on the same day the Pirate Party gained 3,000 new members within 7 hours , making it larger in terms of members than 3 of the 7 parties in the Parliament of Sweden . A total of over 9,000 new members joined the party on that day and the day after . One week later it reached 40,000 members , compared to 15,000 members before the verdict . On 30 April 2009 , a newspaper election poll reported the Pirate Party vote to be 5.1% for the upcoming European Parliament election . Another more recent poll conducted by polling organization Demoskop for newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning gave the party 7.9% . The party eventually received 7.1% of the vote in the 7th June election , and won a seat in the European Parliament . 2010s decade . On 18 May 2010 , The Pirate Bay started hosting its site through bandwidth delivered from the Pirate Party . On 17 August 2010 , it was announced that the Pirate Party will be hosting and managing many of WikiLeaks new servers . The party donates servers and bandwidth to WikiLeaks without charge . Technicians of the party will make sure that the servers are maintained and working . On 19 September 2010 , the party won 0.7% of the votes in the 2010 general election , slightly increasing its performance in comparison to the 2006 general election . On 1 January 2011 , the party celebrated its five-year anniversary with a Bambuser live broadcast with party leader Rick Falkvinge and vice party leader Anna Troberg . Live in the video , Falkvinge sent a tweet saying he stepped down as party leader , and he announced that his successor would be Troberg . Falkvinge now works as an evangelist , spreading the politics of the Pirate Party in and out of Europe . In December 2011 , the party launched Free & Social , a social networking/microblogging service . In the 2014 general election and the 2014 European Parliament election the party won 0.4% respectively 2.2% of the votes and consequently lost their seats in the European Parliament . In the 2018 general election and the 2019 European Parliament election the party won 0.1% respectively 0.6% of the votes . After peaking at about 50,000 in late 2009 the membership numbers did steadily decline to about 2,500 party members in early 2020 . Political impact . National . Less than a week before the 2006 elections , the Green Party shifted their stance on copyright reform . Additionally , both the Moderate Party and the Left Party changed their stances on internet downloads , and both prime ministerial candidates stated publicly that it shouldnt be illegal for young people to share files . Several influential analysts have credited the Pirate Party and its rising popularity for this shift in the political climate ; these include a panel of senior editors at International Data Group and political analysts at the largest morning newspaper , Dagens Nyheter . Additionally , the then Swedish Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström , announced on 9 June that he was willing to negotiate a possible revision of the law introduced in 2005 that made unauthorised downloading of copyrighted material illegal , introducing a new tax on broadband Internet access , but he later denied having changed his stance on the issue . After the 2006 elections , the issue faded from the public debate . In January 2008 , seven Swedish members of parliament from the conservative Moderate Party , senior member of the governing Alliance coalition , authored a piece in a Swedish tabloid calling for the complete decriminalisation of filesharing . The Swedish members of parliament wrote that Decriminalising all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution . Its the only solution , unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet . International . Outside Sweden , pirate parties have been started in some 33 countries , inspired by the Swedish initiative . They cooperate through Pirate Parties International ( PPI ) . The Pirate Party of Germany gained seats in the city council of Münster and Aachen in August 2009 , and in the federal election a month later they received 2.0% of the party list votes , becoming the biggest party outside the Bundestag . In the election to the Abgeordnetenhaus in Berlin in September 2011 , the Pirate Party received 9% of the votes and , for the first time in Germany , gained seats in a state parliament . Free software . Richard Stallman has expressed concern that the Pirate Partys goal of reducing copyright term to 5 years could harm the free software movement . Many free software licenses , mainly the GPL , are based on long-term copyrights . Stallman argues that if copyright terms are reduced to 5 years , proprietary software vendors would be able to take free software and use it in proprietary software once the copyright expires . But proprietary software is restricted by EULAs in addition to copyright , and the source code is not available , rendering the proprietary software unusable for free software developers even after its copyright expires . Stallman suggests that under this new copyright law , proprietary software developers should put their code in escrow when the softwares binaries are released and then release their software into the public domain immediately after their copyright expires . Election results , voter base . 2006 Swedish general election . The Pirate Party attracted 34,918 votes in the Swedish general election of 2006 , their first participation at an election for parliament since the founding of the party less than 9 months prior . With 0.63% of the overall votes , it became the 10th biggest party of more than 40 participating . However , a voting result of less than 4% of the total votes does not qualify the party for seats in the Swedish Parliament . Getting more than 1% of the vote would have granted the party financial assistance from the state for printing ballots which is costly in Sweden , while at least 2.5% would grant them state funds for campaigning in the next election . Despite the setbacks , Falkvinge began planning for the Swedish general election in 2010 . 2009 European Parliament election . In the first pre-election poll before the 2009 European Parliament election , the Pirate Party registered at 5.1% , which would be enough to get a seat in the parliament . The support for the party was concentrated among younger voters , especially those of ages 18–29 ( where it was the second largest party ) and 30–44 ( where it was the fourth largest ) . By 22 May 2009 , a Demoskop poll showed a 7.9% support amongst Swedish voters , making the Pirate Party the third largest party . A week later this had grown to 8.2% and a projected two seats in Parliament , with 21.8% support amongst people aged 18–29 . The partys top two candidates were Christian Engström and Amelia Andersdotter . A model-based prediction for the 2009 European Parliament election by political scientists estimated on 4 June 2009 that the Pirate Party could be the third largest party from Sweden , gaining 2 seats . The Pirate Party got enough votes for at least one seat of the 18 available seats Sweden then had at the European Parliament , getting 7.1% of the Swedish votes . Following the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon , a second seat was given to Amelia Andersdotter on December 1 , 2009 . The Pirate Party joined The Greens-European Free Alliance group . The Pirate Party of Germany also participated in the European Parliament elections , which was their first participation in a nationwide election , and achieved 0.9% in Germany , getting 230,000 votes . They missed the 5% level by a wide margin but qualified for public funding . 2010 election . In the 2010 general election , the Pirate Party increased their percentage of the vote by 0.02% , bringing it to a total of 0.65% , remaining under the required amount to gain a seat , but becoming the biggest party outside of Parliament . Relations to other Swedish pirate organizations . There are three major pirate organisations in Sweden : the political Pirate Party , the now-defunct NGO Piratbyrån ( Pirate Bureau ) , and the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay . Of these three , Piratbyrån and The Pirate Bay share a common history but are now separate , whereas the Pirate Party developed on a completely separate and parallel track , founded by Falkvinge , and was initially unrelated to the other two . This was until 18 May 2010 , when the Pirate Party became The Pirate Bays ISP in response to an injunction that temporarily shut down access to The Pirate Bay , with the Pirate Party stating that It is time to take the bull by the horns and stand up for what we believe is a legitimate activity .