Pirate Party Doubles after Pirate Bay Verdict

siker — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:27:13 +0000

Trade organizations RIAA and MPAA are used to getting what they want politically. In Sweden they have had good success too, most recently getting the right judge for the job at the Pirate Bay trial. But is their political maneuvering backfiring in Sweden? The raid on the Pirate Bay lead to public demonstrations by upset Swedes. And now it appears the Pirate Bay trial has fed the opposition: the Swedish Pirate Party has doubled in size in less than a week.

Using this member count history tool at the Pirate Party’s homepage I sampled the member count at 18:00 for each day for the last month.

Pirate Party Growth between 2009-03-23 and 2009-04-24.

The day before the guilty verdict for The Pirate Bay the party grew by only 68 members. Then on the day, the 17th of April, 2824 new members joined up. At the time of this writing the party has grown by 150%, now eclipsing several smaller Swedish parties in member count, as seen in the following chart from the Pirate Party’s website:

Pirate Party Member Count Compared to other Swedish Parties

We’ll see soon if these members are bringing real votes with them. First up is the election for EU parliament on the 7th of June. RIAA and MPAA may find they won a pyrrhus victory if awareness of their heavy handed behavior has started to spread.

Raw CSV data

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Pirate Party Doubles after Pirate Bay Verdict