Rights

Sweden’s Pirate Party has won a seat in the European Parliament. The group — which campaigned on reformation of copyright and patent law — secured 7.1% of the Swedish vote. The result puts the Pirate Party in fifth place, behind the Social Democrats, Greens, Liberals and the Moderate Party

The Pirate Party has won a huge victory in the Swedish elections and is marching on to Brussels. After months of campaigning against well established parties, the Pirate Party has gathered enough votes to be guaranteed a seat in the European Parliament

Chinese censors blocked access to Twitter and other popular online services today, two days before the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. The move came amid increasing pressure on dissidents, in a reflection of the authorities’ anxiety ahead of the sensitive date. Hundreds died as the army forced its way through Beijing to clear away demonstrators from the capital’s political heart in June 1989, but the issue is taboo on the mainland. The photo-sharing site Flickr, email service Hotmail and other services were also unavailable this evening

The Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory internet filtering plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code. Senator Conroy’s statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content. Responding to questions from shadow communications minister Nick Minchin on how the government may go about imposing the internet filtering scheme, Senator Conroy said that legislation may not be required and ISPs may adopt an industry consensus to block restricted content on a voluntary basis

The controversial French HADOPI anti-piracy law was passed by the National Assembly today, one step closer to being signed into action. The new law introduces draconian measures to combat piracy including a three strikes regime for persistent offenders