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Kerstin Sjoden reports.

Membership in the Swedish Pirate Party has more than doubled in the wake of last Friday's verdict against The Pirate Bay, dramatically increasing the copyright-reform party's chances of winning a seat in the European Parliament.

Over 22,000 new party members have joined the Pirate Party since a panel of judges sentenced a financier and three administrators of the torrent-tracking site to a year in prison. The explosion of support has swelled the party's membership from 15,000 on Friday morning to more than 37,000 on Wednesday, according to party officials.

Although the verdict is an ideological blow for the party, it's also without a doubt the best campaign starter imaginable ahead of June's election.

"It looks promising," says Pirate Party vice president Christian Engström. "I think the verdict was just the final straw for a lot of people. We saw the same phenomenon after the raid against The Pirate Bay in 2006, when our member count increased from 2,000 to 6,000. And it seems like the people who have become members in the last few days are a little older compared to our previous members."

The pirates will need an estimated 100,000 votes to get a member elected to the European Parliament. In the Swedish national election in September 2006, the Pirate Party won only 35,000 votes. The party stands for radical reform of copyright legislation, abolition of the patent system and guaranteed online-privacy rights.

A protest in Stockholm the day after the Pirate Bay verdict drew about a thousand people to support the file sharing site.

The key questions for the Pirate Party's future are whether it will be able to mount an effective campaign to convince supporters to go to the polls, notes Ulf Bjereld, professor of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, in a blog post [Swedish].

Even then, Bjereld notes, it's unclear that file-sharers care enough about the issue to let it determine what party they vote for.

Bjereld told Wired.com last month that he thinks the Pirate Party must reach outside its own group to mobilize voters, if it's going to have a shot at the parliament.

But Christian Engström isn't worried.

"I will be out campaigning ... talking to people right up until the election in June. Also, much of the election campaign will be held on the internet, for example on my blog. But to reach people it's also important to get noticed in traditional media, and we definitely can't complain about the media coverage these last couple of days."

Elections in the EU's 27 member states will be held between June 4 and June 7. The European Parliament is the only directly elected body of the European Union and plays an active role in drafting legislation from its headquarters in Brussels.

Image: Protesters in Stockholm support The Pirate Bay. CC photo courtesy Axbom