On June 7, 2009, Swedish voters elected a member of the PiratPartiet (Pirate Party) to the European Parliament.
The Pirates made the copyright and patent concerns of the free software community part of public discourse for the first time anywhere, and did so using social media techniques that caught their opponents completely unaware.

"The music and film industry continues to pursue its idea of a politically "corrected" Internet - one that they imagine could protect their old business models without requiring any extra costs on their part. This time, the fix is Internet-wide filtering..."

Presidential candidate Ron Paul's "donation feed" is reminiscent of the somewhat addictive "newsfeed" on social networking site Facebook, and it appears to have the effect of increasing donations. In a society where privacy is shrinking, it seems many embrace the idea of sharing more information, not less.