Today, three men formerly involved in the operations of the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay were presented with prison sentences and multi-million-dollar fines by a Swedish Appeals Court. Despite shorter prison sentences than originally assigned, the damages are considerably higher, and will be awarded to music industry organizations for alleged harm caused.

This ruling hints at a dangerous prevailing legal sentiment in the international community, that one person can be held accountable for the wrongdoing of another. No copyright infringement is alleged on the part of the defendents, but rather the users of their site. If the site’s users break the law, any legal penalties should be incumbent on them alone.

As this sentiment grows within the old business model, it expands to ever more implausable lengths. First web hosts and applications were held liable, then peer-to-peer systems such as BitTorrent where no copyrighted material is stored on a server, and now search engines, indexers, and internet service providers have begun to be affected by increasingly-strict and unreasonable laws and enforcement.

Furthermore, the Pirate Party of Canada rejects the notion that the entertainment industry should be entitled to exorbitant damages for “facilitating” copyright infringement. Capitulating to these demands again and again serves only to encourage further predatory lawsuits against parties unable to defend themselves.

While it does not condone illegal activity, the Pirate Party stands firm in its belief that present copyright law is skewed in favour of big businesses scrambling to prop up their obsolete and unsustainable business models at the expense of consumers and content creators who would be better served by a more lenient law that enables collaboration and derivative works to flourish.

Founded in 2009 and registered in 2010, the Pirate Party of Canada was established to protect the rights of consumers of information and culture against increasingly-draconian laws enacted in response to the demands of corporate interests. Specifically, the Party is committed to reform Canadian copyright laws, encourage innovation through patent reform, protect all Canadian citizens with strengthened privacy laws, and affirm their right to monitor their own government by promoting the ideals of open government. It is currently running the first Pirate Party candidate outside of Europe in the Winnipeg North by-election to be held on November 29, 2010.