Anonymous ISP launched by Sweden’s Pirate Party

Sweden’s political Pirate Party has launched their own internet service provider, Pirate ISP. The new broadband service is promising to provide anonymity, privacy, and protection to its customers by keeping no logs of user’s personal data.

The Pirate Party was founded in 2006 with the goal of reforming copyright and patent laws while supporting privacy rights. They recently made headlines with a plan to host The Pirate Bay on their own servers. Pirate ISP is the party’s latest attempt at supporting file-sharers in Sweden.

The service will actually be operated by ViaEuropa, the company that hosts anonymous VPN service iPredator for The Pirate Bay. A two-week beta test of approximately 100 users is currently taking place, with a planned expansion to 5% of the broadband market in the city of Lund. A roll-out to the rest of Sweden is expected to happen in the next few months.

When confronted about possible backlash from record companies and anti-piracy agencies, CEO Gustav Nime responded by saying “They can bring on whatever they have, we will refuse to follow there. We don’t agree with what they are saying and we don’t agree with the laws they are making so if they have an issue with us, then we will have an issue – but that’s it.”

The big question is how Pirate ISP plans to address concern over serious criminal activity that is bound to occur with a truly anonymous service.  Sweden’s anti-piracy bureau has indicated that, in the event of an investigation, the ISP would have to hand over user information. If logs are truly not being kept, there would be nothing to hand over.

It will be interesting to see how this story evolves over the coming months as Pirate ISP’s claims of complete user anonymity, and the legality of such a service, are put to the test.