Pirate invades Euro parliament

Sweden, the home of notorious file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, has voted in a pro-piracy representative in the European elections.

The Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament after basing its campaign on a call to overhaul copyright laws.

The Swedish government recently introduced a law called IPRED - based on the EU's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive - in the wake of a court case which saw the four men behind The Pirate Bay jailed.

But The Pirate Party won 7.1 per cent of the vote in Sweden, making it the fifth largest party in the country in terms of European Parliament representation.

"All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File-sharing and P2P networking should be encouraged rather than criminalised," the party states on its website.

"Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The internet could become the greatest public library ever created," the statement continues.

The Pirate Party also has a UK branch.