Rick Falkvinge founded the first Pirate Party on January 1, 2006 and then rallied the masses in Sweden six months later after the first police raid against The Pirate Bay.
In the 2009 European elections, Swedish pirates won more than 7% of the votes. Christian Engstrรถm became the first pirate member of the European Parliament, with Amelia Andersdotter taking the second seat in 2011.
When Felix Reda, from the German Pirate Party, was elected vice-president of the Greens/ALE group in the European Parliament in 2014 and was given the job of copyright reform speaker, that was a time for archives. It would not be the last.
Czech pirates and Czech piracy
A series of notable events in the Czech Republic, including the seizure of seats of three Pirate Party politicians in the European Parliament, culminated in 2021 when the Pirates won three ministerial posts in the country's coalition government.
Against a background of intense pirate politics and the movement's roots in file-sharing communities, the news that a 60-year-old man from the Czech Republic is facing up to two years in prison for file-sharing feels a little out of place. Of all the things that were never supposed to happen when the Pirates came to power, this was one of them.
Czech police say the man had a collection of almost 1,000 commercial music albums stored on a server, which is quite a lot. The server was not protected in any way, so passing Internet users could download whatever they wanted. Unfortunately, among those passing by were unidentified rights holders who filed a criminal copyright complaint with the police.
The authorities take the matter seriously
According to a statement issued by the police of the Moravian-Silesian region, criminal investigators from the city of Karvina responded to the complaint by launching "an extensive investigation of several months". After establishing that the albums had been available for download from October 2013 to November 2022, police charged the man with criminal offenses of copyright infringement.
โThe defendant claimed that he downloaded the music primarily for his own use, but also for other users to download,โ the statement read.
โHe testified that he was aware that by uploading works without the permission of the copyright holders, he was violating some legal standards, but he did everything mainly because he liked the music. It is his hobby of a lifetime โ.
When the man was informed that he had been making copyrighted content available to the public, he began deleting the files. Police say he has still been charged with copyright offenses under Article 270 of the Penal Code:
Whoever illegitimately infringes, to a not insignificant degree, the rights legally protected over an author's work, an artistic representation, a sound or audiovisual recording, a radio or television broadcast or a database, will be punished with a prison sentence of up to two years, prohibition of activity or confiscation of assets
A sentence of up to five years would have been available if the man had generated any profit. Fortunately, he didn't do anything at all, so he should play to his advantage. In fact, the record shows that not making a profit helped other local pirates avoid convictions.
Pirates acquitted of piracy offenses
The operators of various hacking sites in the Czech Republic were indicted in 2016 after they were deliberately linked to thousands of movies and TV shows. In 2017 they were cleaned after a court found they had made no money.
โOur goal is to change copyright monopoly law so people aren't fined millions for sharing culture with their friends. However, until we achieve that, we will fight in the courts for the interpretation and application of the law,โ the operators said at the time.
The operators of the movie download sites Tipnafilm.cz and Piratskefilmy.cz, and the television piracy site Sledujuserialy.cz, were the Czech Pirate Party. Unlike the man recently charged with music piracy offences, these sites only link to copyright-infringing material, rather than hosting it directly. For end users, these mechanics were mostly irrelevant.
That was then, this is now
Given the history detailed above, it is interesting that someone is facing prison in the Czech Republic for sharing files at a time when members of the Pirate Party are part of the government. In both cases, the semantics of links or direct links remain the basis for the non-commercial use of copyrighted content. Or in the jargon of the Pirate Party, โshare knowledgeโ.
Given the connections, the police statement sparked some immediate thoughts. Do Czech pirates still condone non-commercial piracy? As responsible politicians, do you now reject copyright infringement on any scale? Do they even have an opinion on the issue so far in government?
Since pirate parties built their reputations defending non-commercial pirates, we asked the Czech Pirate Party if that is still the case when one party is in power.
We also ask if the extremely capable and tech-focused ivan bartosleader of the Czech Pirate Party and current Deputy Prime Minister for Digitization and Minister for Regional Development, has an opinion on the case.
Finally, we ask if the suppression of non-commercial pirates is considered a priority for the Czech government. At the time of publication, we had not yet received a response.
Government realities meet ideology
Raising questions like these to members of a sitting government may seem trivial given the enormous challenges facing all countries in Europe today. But a general principle holds regardless of the subject.
Should a party taking a particular position keep those promises in the future, and if so, for how long? In this specific case, should someone who followed the example set by some of those now in power be held accountable in a way that they were not?
These are just some of the dilemmas facing all parties operating in a democracy, and especially those in a minority coalition. It's no one's fault, just the cold reality of come to powerstruggling to stay there, and the realization that there is always much bigger problems competing for a limited time.
As Rick Falvinge wrote here on TorrentFreak over 12 years ago, there really is Nothing new under the sun.
