Arr mateys - the pirate party comes to Canada

After scoring a surprise electoral win in Sweden and getting high-profile support in Germany, The Pirate Party's next port of call may be Canada, where a so-far small band of buccaneers are hoping to send copyright restrictions to Davy Jones's locker.

Right now, they're a handful of loosely-organized individuals spread across the country. But they want to become an official federal political party within the next few years and get enough support to persuade Parliament to relax proposed copyright laws they say are heavy-handed and a violation of personal privacy.

... The Pirate Party was little-known anywhere in the world until earlier this year, when the four founders of The Pirate Bay, a Swedish torrent tracker site that helped people find and download movies, music and software, were fined millions of dollars and sentenced to jail.

The verdict created a public backlash and, almost overnight, membership in the Swedish Pirate Party more than doubled. In June's European Parliament elections, the party took 7.1 per cent of the vote in Sweden - enough for its first seat.

Excerpted from The Canadian Press