In October we published an article which gave Internet users the opportunity to contact Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm during his detention in Sweden. Support has been overwhelming and from all corners of the world. In a guest post today by Gottfrid's mother Kristina Svartholm, we look at the content of some of those letters and ask why The Pirate Bay's contribution to the distribution of culture is so often overlooked.

As many readers of TorrentFreak already know, I have received hundreds and hundreds of e-mails from people all around the world who wanted to send their greetings to my son Gottfrid, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay. The support and encouragement they express is overwhelming.

Many of these e-mails provide a different picture than the common one of what The Pirate Bay’s operations can mean. They come from all kinds of people. Here is one example, a quote from a mail sent by a man in Canada:

“I’m a musician. I work hard to create my music and while I´m certainly not wealthy or famous, it´s made me very happy to have my music shared with other people. Stories, songs, books, and films are meant to be shared.”

There are many people, especially older women, who have explained how The Pirate Bay has helped them out of their solitude by offering them entertainment that they could not otherwise afford. Others tell of how The Pirate Bay helps them to discover new artists that they would otherwise not have known of, like the American who adds:

“… I seek their licensed material and purchase it as often as I can.”

Many e-mails focus on access to culture in a broader sense. Young people in Saudi Arabia, for example, write that cinemas, concerts or theaters are not available to them in their own country, but that they have now received access thanks to The Pirate Bay.

From other countries, people write about how they can take part in things they would never be able to afford because of their restricted living conditions. Someone wrote that The Pirate Bay has blurred the line between the rich and the poor as to the opportunities to cultural participation.

Another example is an e-mail from Romania in which a person expresses his gratitude for the future that The Pirate Bay has opened for the younger generation in his country. It is now possible for everyone to take part of Western culture and knowledge, which the country was excluded from for such a long time:

“….If you hadn’t existed we would have been 20 years back in time from where we are now, because we would never have had the money to buy all that culture. Now, thanks to you we have great musicians, great architects, advertising companies winning prizes all over the world, great engineers working all over the world, film makers and most important, normal young people with a greater view over history and the world, thus enabling them to have a better and dignified life.”

Students in poor countries like Ghana and Colombia write about how they have gained access to educational materials, which they would never have had otherwise.

A student in Argentina tells about how she could continue her studies thanks to The Pirate Bay. A mother in the United States says that she was able to arrange home schooling for her children.

A teacher in Georgia tells about how he was able to produce English teaching materials for his students, which would otherwise have been impossible.

A father in an African country expresses gratefulness for the opportunities that The Pirate Bay has opened for his son to further studies. And so on.

This list of e-mails of this kind could be made much, much longer.

Last but not least I would like to mention e-mails that come from countries like Egypt, Iran and Iraq. Many people, young and old, are thankful for the fight for a free Internet, the struggle that is so closely associated with The Pirate Bay and what it represents.

I think it is about time that this perspective on The Pirate Bay gets highlighted. One must keep in mind that there is much to obtain from the site also for those who do not want to violate any copyright rules. If creators and other people representing cultural institutions want to suppress access to culture and knowledge and to free speech without considering this perspective, I think all of us are in trouble.

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This text is a revised version of a text published in Swedish on Christian Engström’s blog. Christian is a Member of the European Parliament for Piratpartiet, the Swedish Pirate Party. I wish to thank him for giving me the opportunity to make the text public – just as I wish to thank TorrentFreak.