First they helped prolong the existence of The Pirate Bay by donating bandwidth to its servers, and now Sweden’s Pirate Party – a political group focused on copyright and patent reform – has announced it has created a safe haven for Swedes seeking privacy online. The party isn’t just going to host The Pirate Bay’s bandwidth on government servers with Parliamentary immunity; it has launched a private, no-questions-asked internet service provider (ISP) for the pirate community.
“We don’t agree with what they are saying and we don’t agree with the laws they are making so if they have an issue with us, then we will have an issue – but that’s it.”
– Gustav Nipe
Known as
, the service seeks to provide anonymity and privacy free of government monitoring to Internet users. PirateISP CEO Gustav Nipe told the website
today that the company has already run some beta tests of the service in the Swedish city of Lund. Pirate ISP plans to build a 5% share in the city before opening up shop in other locations at the end of the summer.
PirateISP intends to keep its users’ identities completely private and will even refuse to keep data logs. When asked how the ISP would respond to threats or inquiries from agencies both foreign and domestic, Nipe’s response can be summed up as exuding a “bring it on” mentality.
“We don’t agree with what they are saying and we don’t agree with the laws they are making so if they have an issue with us, then we will have an issue – but that’s it,” says Nipe. “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 [the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau’s] Henrik Pontén.”
It would seem that Scandinavia is at the forefront of radical Internet ideology. At the beginning of July, Finland – a country with very high broadband penetration – announced that access to at least a 1Mbps broadband connection is an inherent right of its citizens.
Across the Gulf of Bothnia in Sweden, the Pirate Party is gaining momentum toward its reform wishes concerning free use of the Internet. PirateISP makes no effort to hide the fact that many of its customers will likely use the service to file share, but the company is confident it can defend itself from being shut down. The Swedish government isn’t so sure, and thus it seems an interesting standoff is in store.
