Slovaks, Czechs forming their own pirate parties

Jun 11, 2009, 14:47 GMT

Bratislava/Prague - Czech and Slovak supporters of free internet downloads and file-sharing plan to establish their own pirate parties, drawing inspiration from Swedish counterparts who won a seat in the Sunday's European Parliament election.

'We decided on the basis of the Swedish Pirate Party's success in the European election and when we saw that Czechs are also doing something similar,' a co-founder of the planned Slovak Pirate Party told the German Press Agency dpa in a telephone interview on condition of anonymity.

He said the party is being formed by a group of five entrepreneurs from the central Slovak town of Brezno, who earned backing for their plan from the Swedish Pirate Party.

The quintet anonymously presented their intention on a social- networking website Facebook and their page has so far drawn over 700 members. 'We are shocked to see how many people are on it,' the co- founder said.

The Slovak backers of what film and music industries view as copyright theft plan to introduce the party's preparatory committee and programme on June 19 and run in the 2010 parliamentary election. The upstart's website should be fully up by Monday.

In the Czech Republic, supporters of online bootlegging decided to form their own party in April after a Swedish court convicted four operators of a free file-sharing website, the Pirate Bay, of a copyright law breach, sentencing them to one year in prison.

'When we started out we did not know whether they would win,' the Czech party's co-founder Kamil Horky told dpa, referring to the Swedish Pirate Party's victory in the European polls. 'We welcome their success. It will help us.'

The Czech Pirate Party applied for registration in May and plans to run in the country's early general election in mid-October, Horky said.