If you read his blog (in swedish), you will know that he knows the fight isn't yet over, and that the compromise isn't the best possible solution.

But compare with what the Council of Ministers wanted before the compromise: They wanted to be able to cut off people from the net without any evidence of illegal activity, only accusations. Without any judicial intervention, and presuming that people are guilty until they prove their innocence (if possible).

This is the first major international political victory of the Pirate Party.

Now it is required that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. It is required that a juridical entity rules on the matter before people are punished by cutting them off the net.

We pirates may still be on the defence, but our defence works great.

You have a good point when you say that allowing all non-commercial use of copyrighted works is almost the same as abandoning copyright for the masses. And this is what the Pirate Party wants.

If we do not allow non-commercial use, somebody has to check all private communication to check if copyrighted works are infringed. Would you like some government entity to eavesdrop your private communication with your local journalist, lawyer, doctor, priest, or secret lover? We pirates think that a society where private communication is impossible cannot stay democratic in the long run.

The alternative - no monitoring of private communication - is almost as bad. This way people can break the law with no risk. Many people have a strong incentive to break the law here: Free access to cultural content. But if a majority of the citizens regularly break the law, they also loose respect for the law. Lack of respect for the law is extremely dangerous for our society, as it is based on people respecting the law.

In many countries there are equivalents to "fair use", allowing non-commercial use of copyrighted works. But these exceptions in copyright law are under attack and almost every adjustment of copyright law these days seem to remove some of the rights to non-commercial use we citizens have.

For example: In my country before 1995 I could legally mail a copyrighted mp3 to a journalist. Today this is illegal. I do not want our government (or anybody else for that matter) to monitor my private communication with journalists. If such communication is monitored, the principle of source confidentiality of journalists would be broken, and nobody would dare to tip journalists about for example government abuse.

This is the reason we pirates need to win in the European Union.

But getting representation in the EU-Parliament is not enough. Currently the EU-Parliament has too little power in the EU, and the Lissabon-treaty outright states that the EU-Parliament must not get more power than the Council of Ministers.

This is why we also need representation in local parliaments. If the EU governments know they can get political trouble at home if they do not behave in the Council, they are a lot less likely to vote against our politics.

The Pirate Party has been founded in a lot of countries, and is currently being founded in a lot more countries.

A slightly outdated list can be found here: http://www.pp-international.net/

If such a party would be established here in the Netherlands, it might make a better chance of getting at least a few representatives in the parlement because we do not have a district system and each vote has the same weight.

The Pirate Party was founded in the Netherlands years ago: http://piratenpartij.nl/news.php

And come on - do you really think by giving them your vote you would risk a sudden abolishment of copyright?!

Hardly, since the Pirate Party does not want copyright abolished, but reformed.

We want patents abolished, though.

This new legislation may also be declared unconstitutional.

This time they try with a special court consisting of one judge to decide cases. The judge may not hear the parties involved, but is only allowed to give his decision solely based on a report from the new state antipiracy office. He is supposed to work expediently and not use more than 45 minutes per case.

Also language has been changed in the new law text possibly making it legal to eavesdrop private communications like email for antipiracy purposes.

The law text passed the senate wednesday, and is expected to pass the national assembly soon.

Links in french: Numerama Le Monde

That is... if it breaks the news. Consider the journalist with this story contacting the major for a comment, and getting this message: "Publish this and we will publish the video of your wife going to the abortion clinic."

We cannot know if he did it himself to discredit the pirates.

But he did break this story just days before the election where the Pirate Party according to the polls at that time was going to win two seats (they ended up with only one seat). And he used the media time he got because of this to blame the Pirate Party for a lot of alledged harrasment, including death threats. Some of the harrasment he blamed the Pirate Party for dates back to long before the Pirate Party was even founded.

He is currently head of the swedish anti-piracy outfit Antipiratbyrån, who has a history of doing wrong and attempting to blame others for it. One example is the Bahnhof case. This was a big raid against an ISP, initiated by Antipiratbyrån. Servers were confiscated, as a lot of illegal copies were found on them. Later it was revealed that Antipiratbyrån had hired a person to get an employment at this ISP, and that all the illegal copies found on the servers were placed there by this person.

And they are also very strong on the protection of personal integrity, in particular civil rights like the right to free speech, privacy and a fair trial.

After having followed the swedish election campaign closely, it looks to me like the protection of personal integrity got them their victory.

The preliminary results say that the german Pirate Party got more votes (229117) than the swedish Pirate Party (214313). Of course Germany is larger than Sweden, so the swedish percentage is higher.

But as Hurricane78 points out, it is only a matter of time. Sweden is far ahead in the development into a networked society, and 10 or 100 mbps connections to every household in cities is the norm here. As the world develops further into the information society, the Pirate Parties will become stronger and stronger.

But he forgets the long tail. There are currently 1.741.982 torrents on TPB. The numbers of downloads int the top-100 is nothing compared to the number of downloads in the rest of these torrents.

There is even a web page in english, where people can report what they give. Near the bottom of the page is a list of articles from around the world about this. There has even been written a tribute song to him after his testimony, which Wired covered here.

And this court case has really helped the Pirate Party of Sweden. During the last week they have gotten over 1000 new members, which makes them the second-largest opposition party (in member count) in Sweden. Their youth organisation has also grown to become the second-largest political youth organization in Sewden.

Yes, corruption in Sweden is low, and the tolerance for corruption is low, so it is not unusual for an investigation to be opened if there is just a slight chance there could be corruption.

This started with critical journalism at Sveriges Radio (in swedish). Because of the articles, the public prosecutor is now investigating.

Some of the articles are about the etical problems with Honeywell sponsoring. This is not illegal, and I do not think this is being investigated.

The trips to China are being investigated, but I think this will end with the travelers being freed of all accusations.

More problematic is the role of Astra Zeneca. They are also sponsors. And Bo Angelin, who is in the committee that awarded the price in medicine to Harald zur Hausen is also on the board of Astra Zeneca. Harald zur Hausen got the price for research that has been patented by Astra Zeneca.

The new approach will be more expedient, and less costly, since their victims don't get any due process rights.

Due process is becoming more and more a problem for the RIAA. They can avoid the problem of "due process" by making the ISPs agree to cut off subscribers without due process.

A central element in countries (like France and the UK) where the music business is doing this is to ensure that the customer contracts with the ISPs allow the ISP to cut off the customer without due process.

This will happen in the US too. And there will likely be heavy lobbying to ensure that ISPs should be required to have a clause in their customer contracts saying that the customer can be cut off the net without due process. In France the law already says so.

Do you want to be cut off the net without any possibility of due process?