Over 22,000 new party members have joined the Pirate Party since a panel of judges sentenced a financier and three administrators of the torrent-tracking site to a year in prison. The explosion of support has swelled the party's membership from 15,000 on Friday morning to more than 37,000 on Wednesday, according to party officials.
Although the verdict is an ideological blow for the party, it's also without a doubt the best campaign starter imaginable ahead of June's election.
“It looks promising," says Pirate Party vice president Christian Engstrm. “I think the verdict was just the final straw for a lot of people. We saw the same phenomenon after the raid against The Pirate Bay in 2006, when our member count increased from 2,000 to 6,000. And it seems like the people who have become members in the last few days are a little older compared to our previous members."
The pirates will need an estimated 100,000 votes to get a member elected to the European Parliament. In the Swedish national election in September 2006, the Pirate Party won only 35,000 votes. The party stands for radical reform of copyright legislation, abolition of the patent system and guaranteed online-privacy rights.
A protest in Stockholm the day after the Pirate Bay verdict drew about a thousand people to support the file sharing site.
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