"Prepare yourselves in The Hague! The Pirates are about to enter." This is the Twitter warning with which the Dutch Pirates Party presented itself. 'Captain' Salim Allioui hopes to win 14 seats in June. The phenomenon began in Sweden four years ago, where the Pirate Party has the third largest membership in the country.
 
The success of the Pirate Party is the result of a change in Swedish legislation obliging internet providers to hand over any information on illegal files. But digital freethinkers are popping up in more and more European countries.
 
Illegal
In France it is a reaction to the controversial 'HADOPI' act, which penalises the illegal sharing of films and music by shutting off people's internet connections after repeated warnings. Great Britain has similar legislation since the beginning of the month, the Digital Economy Act. A 'Pirate Party' has been set up there too.
 
Such draconic measures are a long way off in the Netherlands, says Ot van Daalen of the digital citizens' watchdog Bits of Freedom. Dutch copyright law helps as it allows copies for private use, but nowhere does it say that the source has to be legal.
 
Dutch tolerance
Nevertheless, this typical Dutch tolerance has waned in recent years. In 2008, a court ruled that internet users had broken the law by downloading protected material. When the coalition government fell last February, Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin was already working on a ban on downloading.
 
In addition, the Netherlands has a very poor record in the area of internet privacy, says Mr Van Daalen. "No country in the world keeps as much data as the Netherlands. It is a quite different matter to the one surrounding copyright. But in both cases, more and more information is collected and citizens are increasingly under closer surveillance."
 
Digital civil rights
Plenty of reasons therefore to put digital citizens' rights onto the election agenda following the fall of the cabinet. Bits of Freedom is lobbying all the political parties hoping to get the issue into their manifestos.
 
"You can see that parties are struggling with the issue and feel forced to take a position," says Mr Van Daalen. "Where two elections ago the Christian Democrats said: those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, the party now has a paragraph on privacy in its manifesto."
 
But otherwise, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's party is "hardly interested". The interest of the other large parties is also disappointing, in spite of European Parliament citizens' rights campaigner Jeanine Hennis and 'law-and-order' champion Fred Teeven being in the conservative VVD. Meanwhile the Labour Party is "schizophrenic" about the issue, says Mr Van Daalen.
 
Political debate
The smaller parties Democrats D66 and Green Left were more responsive. Green Left leader Femke Halsema wrote a piece in Dutch daily De Volkskrant  in which she proposed an overhaul of copyright laws. In response to her article, the copyright organisation BumaStemra decided to get involved the political debate.
 
BumaStemra accuses Green Left of legalising theft disguised as civil rights. An accusation which Ot van Daalen of Bits for Freedom takes offence at. "Of course it is not a facade. Digital civil rights are the line of defence between us and a world in which commerce and governments decide what you can do on the internet. And that is unacceptable to us."
 
That is why Bits of Freedom is please that there is a Dutch Pirate Party now. "One thing is certain," says Mr Van Daalen, "Politicians have finally realised that the internet is an election issue."