Stefan Mileschin

Music industry group the BPI believes it has the power to shut down a political party in the UK.

According to TorrentFreak, the BPI is planning to sue the UK Pirate Party into a coma after it refused to take its Pirate Bay proxy offline.

The BPI asked the Pirates to shut down the website, but quickly turned to threats whenit didn't get its way.

Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye said the party will stand behind its principles, or rather its lawyers, and that could mean an expensive legal battle.

After the High Court ordered several UK ISPs to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay earlier this year, millions of users started using the UK Pirate Party's proxy service. In fact it is one of the most popular sites in the UK.

The problem is that any legal action could turn into a financial disaster for the political party. However, it says that it will do everything in its power to keep the proxy online. The Party points out that it is by no means clear that allowing access to The Pirate Bay is against the law.

The party is becoming increasingly concerned about how the BPI has been given too much power to decide on which websites should be blocked. Until last week the Pirates had not been contacted by anyone to take its proxy down.

Copyright holders have taken the proxy site of the Dutch Pirate Party offline. The court forbade the Pirates from hosting or even linking to Pirate Bay proxies. The Dutch Pirate Party announced that it would appeal the verdict, but is saving up its pennies so that it can hold an appeal.

The general feeling among the Pirate Party members is that Big Content is using its legal muscle to get them to fold. If it manages this, it will be the first time that corporate interests have killed off a UK political party.

http://news.techeye.net/internet/con...olitical-party