Yesterday, the German Pirate Party (Piratenpartei) gathered over 8% of the Berlin State Election cast ballots, pushing the 5% required margin and cornering more prominent parties, such as the anti-European radicals and the nationalists.

The first pirate party was founded in January 2006 in Sweden (the famous Piratpartiet), in the wake of the Pirate Bay series of trials. Following in the footsteps of the Piratbyran (the Priacy Bureau), the then-small party advocated liberalization and reform of European copyright & intellectual property laws, stronger measures against private monopolies, better protection of privacy laws in the information era and overall better legislation with respect to the current information society.

The Pirate parties have come a long way since then:

• The Swedish Pirate Party has 2 MPs in the European Parliament
• The German Pirate Party has 155 municipal councilors and 15 seats in the parliament
• There are 21 world registered Pirate Parties, of which 5 (Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Germany and Czech Republic) are represented in the lawmaking bodies.
• The Hungarian Pirate Party remains an activist organization working with the New Politics movement which has 16 MPs in the Hungarian Parliament
• There are 11 Pirate Parties currently unregistered but recognized in the PPI (Pirate Parties International), among which stand Romania, Portugal, Brazil or Ireland. Of them, only the Russian Pirate Party is currently undergoing official registration procedures.
• South Korea, China and Venezuela are currently probing local legislation for the purpose of joining PPI.
• Croatia has a registered Pirate Party, but is not a member of the PPI.
• The Pirate Parties don’t use (unfortunately) the Jolly Roger as a logo.