The Pirate Party of Finland (Piraattipuolue), with its focus on protecting civil rights and expanding freedom of information, has now been added to the official party registry. Piraattipuolue began collecting the 5000 supporter signatures required by Finnish law in last September, and delivered them to the Ministry of Justice in early June.

The party can now participate in the Finnish parliamentary and municipal as well as European parliamentary elections. Its current primary objective is to get representatives in the Finnish parliament in the 2011 election. Piraattipuolue is the 8th officially registered pirate party internationally.

The party seeks to strengthen the protection of privacy and freedom of speech, to reform the current copyright legislation by legalizing non-commercial file-sharing and drastically cutting the duration of copyright, and to abolish pharmaceutical and software patents.

“Piraattipuolue has a steady support and our membership figures are climbing steadily. Pirates are an important part of our society”, says the chairman Pasi Palmulehto. The party currently has about 2,370 members, with the national population being 5.3 million.