“If the Pirates Party was participating in the Greek European Parliament elections, I wouldn’t have went to the beach but voted,” says 34 year old Mihalis. He tells the fantastic story of the Swedish Pirates Party, which managed to send one parliament member, who will represent the interests of the party for free distribution of files over the internet in the Europarliament, or in other words – he will insist on the end of the “trademarks.”

Based on data by the Sixth annual report for software piracy, which was published few days ago, the illegal software download in Greece has reached 57%. Every six out of 10 programs – games, applications, etc, which are distributed on the market are illegal. The average value for the EU is 35%, which means that Greece, together with Bulgaria (68%) and Romania (66%) are at the far bottom of the EU. Those percentages are translated into money losses of about ?171 million. The lowest piracy levels are recorded in Luxemburg (21%) and Austria (24%).

In order to try and lower the piracy levels, the parliament members voted on a low, which will impose fines of ?1000 for all, in whose computers illegal software is found. For the moment it is clear that this measure is not enough, in order to limit this phenomenon. International anti-piracy organizations have calculated that if the piracy level in Greece is lowered with 10% until 2012, then automatically 1 035 job positions will be opened, which will bring ?261 million to the state treasury.

In Greece, downloading music and distributing illegal CDs exceeds 50%, which places the country in the top ten together with China, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Indonesia. Due to the fact that consumers buy CDs from the streets and download music online, sound recording companies in Greece have lost at least $260 million and music stores - ?450 million.

Except for music, Greeks download films as well and it is recorded that the movie, which took many Oscars this year, Slumdog Millionaire, is downloaded to tens and thousands of computers in Greece. Almost every three of ten movies, which are distributed in Greece are pirated copies and since last November until now, more than 850 out of 2 500 video stores in the country have closed.