Swedish party favours piracy

Sweden, one of the first countries in the world to implement a welfare state, could make another first if it legalises internet piracy.

The Left Party of Sweden, or Vänsterpartiet, passed a motion on sharing copyrighted material over the internet, otherwise known as piracy, at its annual congress last weekend.

Although the Left Party is not in government, by voting in favour of the motion to upload and download copyrighted material for non-commercial purposes it shows that some Swedes are prepared to think differently than lawmakers elsewhere.

In a statement released after the motion was passed, the Left Party said: "To many of us in the Left Party, file-sharing is something positive in the same obvious way that public libraries are."

Sweden is home to the infamous The Pirate Bay website, a peer-to-peer (P2P) network which facilitates the uploading and downloading of material. It is also the bane of record labels all over the world. The Pirate Bay recently entered the top 100 of most visited websites in the world.

www.piratebay.org
www.vansterpartiet.se