Sweden is a strange place. What can you say about an electorate that has given seven percent of its vote in the European Parliament to a bunch of download pirates?

The European Parliament (EP) elections were held last week. Sweden's Pirate Party ran with the sole aim of reducing copyright law so most illegal downloads of music, software and films becomes legal. The party was formed after a Swedish court in April this year sentenced the four founders of Pirate Bay, a hugely popular file-sharing website, to one year in jail and $4.5 million in damages for violating copyright law by facilitating illegal downloading.

The issue of illegal file downloading has troubled governments keen on protecting the validity of their copyright and patent laws, a battle that has so far been a losing one due to the huge numbers of downloaders.

France, the UK, Sweden, Australia, the US and other countries are battling the breaking of copyright law through prosecutions. Governments are also trying to pass some sort of law that would cut off the Internet tap for those who persistently continue to share and download copyright files. In the end no one really knows what will work, and many politicians are quite rightly worried about placing bans on access to the Internet.

The newly formed Swedish party received 7.1 percent of the Swedish vote, placing them in fifth place among the parties that gained seats. While the Pirate Party will only have one sitting member in the EP, they can tip the balance by forming alliances with other parties.

Here is their aim as stated on their website: "The Pirate Party wants to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected. With this agenda, and only this, we are making a bid for representation in the European and Swedish parliaments."

The party proposes to change copyright law by limiting its validity to a maximum of five years. After five years, music and other works of art would lose their copyright. During the five year period all non-commercial copying would be legal and free. Such proposals do not have a hope in hell of getting passed, nor would they work. Also, the party does not seem to address the issue of software, such as Photoshop, which go through various upgrades and versions. But they are a start to a compromise somewhere down the line, one that is workable.

Governments, including the European Parliament, have lately taken the strategy of attempting to deal with the situation through legislation. Recently the French government's attempt to cut off the flow to repeat offenders failed. The UK is about to propose a similar copyright cyber law. Surprisingly, a proposal to implement a law that would ban people from Internet access after they were caught three times is reportedly now off the proposal list.

A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport told the BBC that the proposal had been nixed as government considers that net access is as valuable as other utilities such as water and electricity. The original "three strikes" proposal was initially made by industry.

Illegal downloading has been compared to shoplifting by ordinary people who would not normally break laws. But the acceptance of the practice by a wide cross section of people should be met not with suits, threats and legislation, but by changing industry practice to propose a different economic model on the Internet.

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The issue of privacy rights on sites where users place personal content recently came to the fore when Facebook attempted to claim such content as its own for unspecified future use. After a huge outcry from the community, Facebook was forced to quickly reverse itself from essentially stealing content people have always considered as their own.

To help prevent any other sites from changing the terms of their agreements with users, a new website is now tracking their policies and any changes through a common portal. TOSBack.org was created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It can track terms of service modifications hours after updates are made. Users can then compare old and new policies side by side with the highlighted changes. Currently TOSBack tracks 44 sites, with more being added as the site finds its audience.

I was surprised at the number of changes being made.

Over the last 30 days, the site recorded changes at GoDaddy, Facebook (changed its Privacy Policy on June 2), YouTube, and E-Bay, for example. This is a useful service, thanks to the EFF, who is watching your back on the Internet.

Send any comments or suggestions to elamin.ahmed@gmail.com