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+--- Thread: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament (/Thread-Pirate-Bay-Founder-Gets-Ready-to-Run-for-European-Parliament)
Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - Ernesto - Mar 21, 2014
![[Image: peter-sunde2.jpg]](https://torrentfreak.com/images/peter-sunde2.jpg)
Despite a pending prison term for his involvement with The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde is determined to join the European Parliament in Brussels.
The former Pirate Bay spokesperson announced his plans last year, but with the European Parliament elections coming closer this idea has now become reality. Sunde is currently listed as one of the 19 candidates who will be on the voting ballot of the Finnish branch of the Pirate Party.
Unlike in other countries, the Finnish candidate lists are not in order, which means that there is no lead candidate. However, due to his involvement with The Pirate Bay, Sunde is without a doubt the most recognized name on the ballot.
As if the candidacy for the European Parliament isn’t enough, today the European Pirate Party also elected the Pirate Bay founder as their pick for the European Commission presidency, together with Amelia Andersdotter.
TF reached out to Sunde who is happy to hear the good news. “If elected, I’ll go and bug fix the EU. We need to reboot the thing called democracy and make it work.” he told us.
In addition, Sunde told us that he’s ready for the Finnish election campaign which will kick off during the coming weeks. As can be expected of the Pirate Bay founder, he has strong opinions on the topic of file-sharing and freedom of information.
Sunde believes that the Pirate Party can make a huge difference in the European Parliament, as the two current members – Christian Engström and Amelia Andersdotter – have already shown. If Sunde is elected, he hopes to revamp current copyright law and legalize casual file-sharing.
“Non-commercial file sharing should of course become legal and protected, and we must re-think copyright all together. Copyright is not the thing that makes ARTISTS money, it’s only for their brokers and distributors,” Sunde told us previously.
Peter’s previous appearance at the European Parliament
![[Image: sunde-parliament.jpg]](https://torrentfreak.com/images/sunde-parliament.jpg)
Copying is baked into people’s genes according to Sunde, quite literally. “People learn by copying others. All the knowledge we have today, and all success is based on this simple fact – we are copies,” Sunde notes in his bio.
Amusingly, Sunde told TF that he also reached out to Finnish-born Kim Dotcom to join the race. However, the Megaupload founder decided to focus his political aspirations on New Zealand instead, where he founded the Internet Party.
Aside from politics, Sunde himself is still involved in several other projects that are dear to his heart. This includes the micro-donation service Flattr and the encrypted messaging app Heml.is which is expected to be released later this year. The latter may come in handy in Brussels, as the NSA is known to spy on political figures.
Photo credit
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.
Originally Published: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 12:10:17 +0000
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RE: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - hireshi - Mar 22, 2014
Didn't he kinda give up on the pirate bay?
Unlike Gottfrid who's still fighting for it
RE: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - NIK - Mar 22, 2014
Peter didn't give up on TPB.
And Gottfrid isn't exactly "still fighting for it". He is in jail, almost certainly as a consequence of his early involvement with TPB, but it is for alleged hacking. The term he was [unjustifiably] given for his involvement with TPB has been served already.
None of the founders are still actively involved with the site. But it has been running for over ten years and much water has passed under the bridge since it began, so that wouldn't be surprising even without the incredible amounts of pressure they were all put under.
Peter is intelligent, articulate, up-to-date and his integrity is undeniable. Forget about just pirates, the entire citizenry of the EU would benefit from his presence in Parliament. I for one wish him well.
RE: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - hireshi - Mar 23, 2014
TPB's current top are still Swedes or did it move on from that direction.
and I didn't think they were still actively involved. Although admittedly I had a feeling at least one of them were pulling the strings
RE: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - readyman - Mar 24, 2014
Nice to hear this. I love reading stuff like this. TPB has been on top for a very long time, and it was people like Peter and Gottfrid that made it happen and who shaped the file sharing world as we know it (cough, remember Napster..I mean, talk about an overall fail). Having Sunde on the EU Parliament is a great way to get the opinions of pirates out there to the world. To let people know that thievery and stealing from the hard works of others are not the reasons of online sharing and 'piracy', but the freedom of sharing information is. And the whole Anti Piracy subject is being highly over exaggerated and too much media attention is on something that never should have exploded in such a way, but did...
Great work Sunde, hope it works for him!
//RMan
RE: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - extremezone - Mar 24, 2014
great news i wish there will be more like Peter, we need to be represented by rational and good-willing persons
RE: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - sammyboblammy - Mar 25, 2014
if only the states were able to adopt a system closer to the EU. i don't think we will ever be allowed to have a "pirate party" that actually has any political power.
RE: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - thingy_worshipper - Mar 27, 2014
We need more like him in this world
RE: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - pirateware - Mar 28, 2014
“If elected, I’ll go and bug fix the EU. We need to reboot the thing called democracy and make it work.”
do you people realise how many polititians careers began with that sort of promises and where
they ended up ? they all ended up being corrupted and dirty politicians
nice book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_King's_Men
RE: Pirate Bay Founder Gets Ready to Run for European Parliament - lomtickbite - Mar 30, 2014
I wish him luck, but maybe better than trying to find the re-boot button, he might do us all a favor and find the "power-off" switch!