Swedish Party Now Embraces File-Sharing for Personal Use

The Left Party's governing board approves a motion that would allow people to upload and share copyrighted material online so long as it is not for commercial purposes.

Sweden continues to be a bastion of tolerance in a continent otherwise slowly headed towards censorship and ISP-level content filtering.

For it was recently reported that the Left Party, a socialist and feminist political party founded there in 1917, decided at a recent party congress that it would begin embracing file-sharing for personal use. So long as people didn't upload or share copyrighted material with the intent of profiting from it - commercial purposes - it wouldn't try to stop a practice which some called unstoppable.

“We obviously want to be the cultural workers’ party in the future, but legislation which makes the majority of adult population criminals must be changed,” said Elise Norberg Pilhem of the party’s governing board.

There was far from a consensus on the issue however, which is ironic considering it is, after all, a self-confessed leftist and socialist party.

"It would be shameful if we worsen the ability of those working to produce culture to earn a living," said Ann Mari Engel from the Stockholm area.

Nonetheless, the party that got 317,228 votes(5.8%) in the September 2006 elections, down from 8.4% in 2002, may just find itself in a position to gain the votes of the untold thousands who find copyright laws - domestic and abroad - outdated and draconian.

With country's like Sweden wishing to effectively compete in an increasingly digital world, it must ensure that copyright holders don't have final say on technological advancements.