Pirate Party Of Iceland Wins Three Seats In Parliament

The Pirate Party of Iceland has won three seats in parliament after securing 5.1 percent of the national vote.

Píratar’s performance is being hailed as the best ever by any national Pirate Party. (And no, that’s not one of the representatives above; in fact, they all look like thoroughly respectable young people.)

Iceland’s parliament, which has just 63 members to represent the country’s 320,000 people, is now almost five percent pirate.

Píratar’s parliamentarians are not the first of a piratical persuasion to be elected to a parliament. The Czech Republic has one Pirate Party parliamentarian, notes ArsTechnica, while Germany has 45 state-level Pirate lawmakers. Furthermore, Sweden has had two representatives of its Pirate Party in the European Parliament since 2009.

The three new Icelandic lawmakers include business administration student Jón Þór Ólafsson, computer programmer Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a well-known WikiLeaks volunteer.

Also of note: Jónsdóttir is one of three activists involved in a WikiLeaks investigation that is ongoing in the United States. She told state broadcaster RÚV: “We are really very grateful for the [electorate’s] trust.”

The original Pirate Party was founded in Sweden in 2006, and focused on Internet freedom and censorship. Pirate parties have sprung up in many other countries since, often pushing for the reform of IP law and copyright and/or patent regulations.

And, yes, the United States has its own version. The United States Pirate Party is even more marginally represented than in other countries and is highly unlikely to get elected to either the House of Representatives or the Senate.

[Image via Shutterstock.com]