This one’s going to blow your minds, folks.

BBC News reports that Sweden’s Pirate Party, campaigning on a platform of reforming copyright and patent laws, has won a seat in the European Union’s Parliament with 7.1% of the vote.

As we wrote in April, four men involved in the Pirate Bay file-sharing website were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay about $4.5 million in damages. Richard Falkvinge’s Pirate Party seized on the high profile suit to rally supporters to a victory in EU parliamentary elections. “Last night, we gained political credibility,” Falkvinge gloated as his bloc of one began negotiations with other EU parties for political support and credibility. “People were not taken in by the establishment and we got political trust from the citizens. ”

It’s hard to know what the citizens of Europe trust about the principles on which the Pirate Party bases its quest for power. “Many people just don’t see illegal file-sharing as a crime, however hard the media industries try to persuade the public that it’s just as bad as shoplifting,” writes BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. Falkvinge enunciated the piracy position succinctly: “The establishment is trying to prevent control of knowledge and culture slipping from their grasp.”

Well, now, in a development that will delight freemongers, the Pirate Party has joined the establishment. Read about it in Swedish pirates capture EU seat.

RC