That isn't an "of course" at all. The correlation might as well be the complete opposite of what you assert.

There are very good reasons for that name, the most obvious being that a party with the same platform by any other name had remained an unseen web page.

For more, check the article "Why the name Pirate Party?" here: http://falkvinge.net/2011/02/20/why-the-name-pirate-party/

Yeah.

OR, you could check the actual data from the election researchers where the Pirate Party has had successes, which shows a different picture.

Don't miss out on Member of European Parliament Christian Engström's suggestion for a religious version of the Beginning for this religion.

Short version:

1. There was chaos and soup.
2. Somebody in the soup learned to copy. Thus was Life.
3. Having learned to copy, they built magnificent things.
4. We honor the beginning by copying and building magnificent things.

Not bad, I think.

THIS should have been a day for mod points. Magnitudes of mod points.

Ignore. I'm stressed out and missed that the headline reversed the meaning... gah. Slashdot stress.

Gah. Point five is wrong. Should read: Any ISP may voluntarily limit what they choose to call "The Internet".

Hello, Slashdot. I had intended to update this article tomorrow with a more detailed analysis, but given that it's now Slashdot Top Story, I posted the followup immediately. For your convenience:

What this does is say that:

One, no court may impose an ISP with an order to filter, in particular not because of enforcement of copyright monopolies;

Two, such filtering is a reduction of fundamental rights, so

Three, if laws are written requiring an ISP filter or block the internet, such laws must conform to very strict criteria that are applied to laws limiting fundamental rights. They must be effective, they must be proportionate, and they must be defensible in a democratic society. While this sounds like political wishywashing, it has some very specific meanings. It is useful to compare to what laws have been written to prevent terrorism: these laws are held to that standard, which the copyright industry wants badly to supersede. The Attorney General also goes into detail how such laws must be transparent and predictable.

What this does not say is that:

Four, no censorship must ever take place.

Five, no ISP may choose to limit what they present as "The Internet".

In conclusion:

Six, it has been the modus operandi of the copyright industry to threaten ISPs with "block to our wishes or we'll take you to court". This has been their standard operating procedure for the past couple of years, in order to establish enough precendents to get them written into law. Today's verdict, or potential verdict, gives those ISPs the power to say "go play on the highway, parasites, we have an order from the highest possible court saying no court can force us to do that. We care more about our customers than about obsolete irrelevants".

Seven, this is the highest court in Europe, referring to the (equivalent of) Constitution of Europe. Thus, there are no courts and no laws that can supersede this. No EU Directive can change this (potential) verdict. The way forward for the copyright industry appears permanently blocked; I hold it as absolutely improbable that they'll get paragraphs in the referred European Charter of Human Rights that put the copyright monopoly before the sanctity of correspondence, of personal data, and freedom of information.

There. Do I get karma for posting from my own blog when it is TFA?

Oh, and yay - my server is holding. *celebrate*

If we had called ourselves any of those names, this story wouldn't have been here.

As an official in the Swedish Pirate Party, I can only wish our Canadian brothers and sisters a heartily welcome up onto the barricades, and the best of winds.

We are changing the world together.

The ninja parties are there. They just aren't visible in the polls.