The Swedish Pirate Party knows how to court media attention. A few weeks ago, the group of copyright reformers promised to host notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay in the Swedish Parliament if elected later this year, taking advantage of immunity from prosecution for acts occurring within Parliament.
Now, the party has declared that it's planning to launch its own ISP. Beta testing has begun for a broadband service called Pirate ISP that will offer anonymity to its customers and generate money for the party. The service is planned to operate on principles in line with Piratpartiet's ideals, maximising privacy.
Beta testing is taking place in the city of Lund, with 100 residents being hooked up to the web. The aim is to start slowly, so that quality service can be assured, before ramping up over time to the rest of the country. The initial target for the ISP is to gain around 5 percent marketshare.Pirate Party member and CEO of Pirate ISP, Gustav Nipe, told filesharing blog Torrentfreak that the service has been founded on a long-held hacker adage: "If you see something and you think it’s broken you built a patch and fix it. With that as a benchmark we are launching an ISP. This is one way of tackling the big brother society."
"The Pirate ISP is needed in different ways," said Nipe. "One is to compete with other ISPs, let them fight more for our internet. If they don’t behave there will always be someone else taking their share." As for government intervention, Nipe says that they're prepared: "It would be a pity to reveal all the tricks that we have, so we will save those for later. But we have ways to ensure that no customer should have to get a sad letter home from (Sweden's antipiracy chief) Henrik Pontén."
If all goes well, the expansion into the rest of Sweden will take place later this summer, shortly before the Pirate Bay founders' appeal begins in the Swedish courts.
