File Sharing

Clara [? Elstrom ?] is 22 and a Pirate Party activist. Like the other 18,000 Swedish Party members, she says that all file sharing should be made legal, a core demand by the Pirate Party and one that earned it more than 7% in the last European election, attracting more first-time voters than any other party in Europe. Some say file sharers steal other people's work, but that's not how Clara sees it.

I do you think that if you love your creation, you want others to experience it, you want others to give their input, and you want it to develop so [? it won't ?] die. And that is why I think that the copyright laws that are today are very limiting. They are not protecting anything. They are limiting your creation.

The Pirate Party has no offices and practically no overhead. Leadership meetings take place in cafes or online. But the party doesn't just see itself as a precursor of 21st century political style, but also at the heart of a 21st century political debate that goes well beyond copyright questions.

At our core, we're a civil liberties movement. We are fighting for things like the right to express yourself without being tracked, without being tagged and pegged by the government. People vote for us because the established politicians do not understand the digital environment. They do not understand the internet, they do not understand that civil liberties need to be safeguarded more than ever in the digital world.

After the EU's vote success, the Pirate Party needs 4% in September's Swedish general election to enter the national parliament. There they hope to shift the balance between the large Swedish conservative and socialist parties, becoming kingmaker.

It's not a one time thing, I think. I mean, those questions will continue to be politicized by the Pirate Party or by other parties, and obviously, this has also been a lesson for the other political parties in Sweden.

And elsewhere with nearly 30 system movements outside Sweden, the Pirate Party hopes to role back traditional politics across the globe.