Rick Falkvinge

Rick Falkvinge (born Dick Greger Augustsson, 21 January 1972) is a Swedish politician who founded the Pirate Party, serving as its leader until 2011.

Early life and career

Falkvinge grew up in Ruddalen, Gothenburg, and studied Natural Sciences at Göteborgs Högre Samskola. During his high school years, he was active in ''Moderat Skolungdom'' and ''Moderata Ungdomsförbundet'', the youth wings of the Moderate Party in Sweden. He showed an interest in technology from an early age.

He created his first company, Infoteknik, in 1988 at the age of 16. From 1994 to 1998, he was active as an entrepreneur with five employees in software development in Gothenburg, Kalmar and Strömsund.

In 2004, he changed his name from Dick Augustsson to Richard "Rick" Falkvinge (English: ''Falconwing'').

The Pirate Party

In the fall of 2005, Falkvinge considered creating a political party focused on the issues of file sharing, copyright, and patents. The dominating Swedish organization in the copyright debate at this time was Piratbyrån, which was not affiliated with any party. On 16 December 2005, Falkvinge registered the domain name piratpartiet.se (''The Pirate Party''), and on 1 January 2006, the party's website was launched through a message on a Direct Connect hub, signaling the start of the petition to register a new political party in Sweden.

According to the party, the site was viewed over three million times in the first two days, and on the morning of 2 January 2006, the newspaper '' Dagens industri'' published a notice about the initiative, followed by a longer article in the evening newspaper ''Aftonbladet''. Following the publicity, Falkvinge took out a large bank loan, quit his job at Cypak, and started working for the Pirate Party full-time.

Raid against The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is a Sweden-based online search index founded in 2003, known for facilitating peer-to-peer file sharing, including copyrighted material such as movies and video games. Falkvinge has been a long time supporter of the project, emphasizing his support in multiple statements. However, over concerns of copyright infringement, that would later lead to the Pirate Bay trial, the site's hosts would be raided by police on 31 May 2006. Following the raid, protests across Europe erupted on 3 June, during which Falkvinge held his first widely translated speech titled "Nothing New Under the Sun".

In the week that followed the raid, Falkvinge appeared on Swedish TV news daily, condemning the arrests of The Pirate Bay co-founders Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Gottfrid Svartholm. Soon after this, the Pirate Party membership tripled from 2,200 to 6,600.

General elections in 2006

In the Swedish general elections of 2006, the Pirate Party received 0.63% of the vote.

Falkvinge chaired the Pirate Party while living off of donations and charity from supporters for 18 months until he was elected to the European Parliament in 2009.

European Parliament election

The Pirate Party received 7.13% of the vote in the 2009 European Parliament election. The Pirate Party became the most popular party for voters under 30, with 25% of the demographic voting in support.

Following the European Elections, media predicted that the Pirate Party would also be elected to the Swedish Parliament; however, it was only supported by 3.9% of the voters in the polls. The threshold for entry was 4.0%. This support did not materialize in the 2010 parliamentary elections.

Controversies

In the launch of the party's election manifesto in 2010, Falkvinge stated that freedom of speech and freedom of the press should take precedence over the current ban on possession of drawings potentially depicting Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM), and that the party intended to repeal current legislation on the topic. This statement followed a Swedish court case where a manga researcher and translator was indicted for the possession of a handful of drawings depicting minors illicitly. The Swedish Union of Journalists proclaimed their support for Falkvinge's stance. Despite this, the stance created internal controversy in the Pirate Party, leading Falkvinge to initially back away from his position before reiterating it in 2012.

Stepping down as party leader

On 1 January 2011, five years after the party's foundation, Falkvinge announced that he was stepping down as party leader, and that deputy party leader Anna Troberg would step into the role as his immediate successor. This announcement was made on a live broadcast.

In February 2016, it was announced that Falkvinge had accepted a full-time role as head of privacy for Private Internet Access, a US-based personal VPN service.

Personal life

Falkvinge lives in Sollentuna, a suburb north of Stockholm.

Awards and recognition

Falkvinge was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in Sweden by ''Fokus'' magazine in 2009. He was awarded the Swedish ''Guldmusen'' award as ''IT person of the year'' in 2010.

In 2011, ''Foreign Policy'' magazine named Falkvinge as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2012, ''TIME Magazine'' listed Falkvinge as one of the world's most influential people. And in 2013, ''The Guardian'' listed Falkvinge as one of the world's Top 20 Internet Freedom Fighters.

Published works

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Version1.1. Published under a Creative Commons CCBYNC3.0 license.

A review of Swarmwise.

References

External links

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Rickard Falkvinge
on TorrentFreak

{{DEFAULTSORT:Falkvinge, Rickard
1972 births
Living people
People from Gothenburg
Pirate Party (Sweden) politicians
Swedish computer programmers
Swedish businesspeople
Swedish male bloggers
Intellectual property activism
Copyright activists
Pirate Party (Sweden)