Swedish Pirate Party Launches ISP

The torrent-dedicated website TorrentFreak has reported that the Swedish Pirate Party, who is the host of The Pirate Bay,  has launched their own “Pirate ISP”. To defend torrent users everywhere, the Swedish Pirate Party volunteered to provide bandwith to The Pirate Bay after legal issues in May.  Now the Party has decided to partner with other companies to provide consumer internet service.

The service began beta testing in the city of Lund yesterday with around 100 residents. Their initial aim is to gain 5% of Lund, and move on to other parts of Sweden. At the Hacknight conference in Malmo, Sweden, the CEO of Pirate ISP said that they will not allow the Swedish Government to monitor Pirate ISP users and will refuse to retain logs. He also said that any attempt to force the ISP to do so will result in a constitutional issue.

It was also clear on how Pirate ISP would respond to outside interference, in particular from the United States, saying “They can bring on whatever they have, we will refuse to follow there. 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.”

For most potential Pirate ISP customers who intend to use the service to file-share, the immediate threats will come from closer to home, primarily from the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. The Party said they are prepared to deal with this challenge.