Pirate party elected in the Berlin Parliament

In the state elections in Berlin last Sunday, the Pirate Party got no less than 9% of the votes. This means that the party will have 15 seats in the Berlin Parliament. Berlin is one of the 16 states in the federation of Germany and has 3.45 million citizens. The parliament will soon proceed to elect a government and a Prime Minister (effectively the mayor of the city of Berlin).

By reaching 9% of the votes, the Pirate Party has easily met the election threshold of 5%. The Pirate Party won 15 of the 141 seats (11%) in the Berlin Parliament.

The German Pirate Party was founded in 2006. The party’s goals include reforms in the area of copyright. Also, the party wants to strengthen the online privacy of citizens.

The majority of support came from young voters. Polls showed that 15% of voters under 30 years voted for the Pirate Party. Among voters above 60 years, only 4% voted for the Party.

With 15 of the 141 seats it will be interesting to see whether the Pirate Party actually has influence in the Berlin Parliament. At least their presence in state politics is likely to stir up the discussion on the reform of copyright. Whether the Pirate Party wants to abolish copyright law completely or significantly change it is unclear.

The party’s main goal is to ensure free access to information on the internet. In the months to come, we will find out how the party envisages putting this ambition into practice. Generally, the criticism towards pirate parties is that should all information, including copyrighted works be freely exchanged without any form of compensation, this would make life very difficult for the creative sector. It is questionable whether the Berlin Pirate Party has realistic proposals on how absolute freedom of information on the internet can be combined with opportunity for developers of copyrighted content to generate revenue from their work in the online environment.

Read more about Pirate Party’s on FutureofCopyright.com:

• Board Dutch Pirate Party pressured to leave by member council
• Dutch Pirate Party presents list of candidates

References: ISpam, AmericaBlog.com en Piratenpartei Berlin

By: Karen Groen