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Pirate Bay Launches Free Speech Blog
Chris Blanc writes "In their ever continuing battle to 'free the Internet', The Pirate Bay has now launched an uncensored blogging service, called Baywords. The service is intended to be a safe haven for bloggers who want to be able to write whatever they want."
I'm going to post on there how pirating is actually stealing.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I thought that is what trolltalk is for.
You'd still at least have to comply to Swedish laws, an example of a notable one to Americans being that on the topic of hate speech.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Well I can post anything I want, on my own hosted website. And Piratebay is a thief's den. Want to see me write this on my blog? What are these guys thinking? Free speech my a##
The trouble with those laws is that they are enforced with a strong bias.
For example, is it apparently perfectly OK for religions to tell non-followers that they are evil and are deserve to be tortured for all eternity for the way they live their lives.
But if you try to tell a follower of a major religion that they are evil and deserve to be tortured for the way they lead their lives, those "hate speech" laws are going to come down like a hammer on you.
If Sweden was really serious about "hate speech", they'd have to outlaw Islam and Catholicism as they are currently being practiced, because those religions are intrinsically in conflict with hate speech laws.
Google cache of TFA: http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cache:Y2FtyYRKu2YJ:torrentfreak.com/baywords-pirate-bay-blog-080416/+baywords&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2, and the page in question http://www.baywords.com/.
Isn't all that is needed to just make a html embedded client for freenet ? Java applet perhaps...
Good luck censoring one of those.
Kinda like NearlyFreeSpeech.net -- except without true free speech. TPB's got to comply with Swedish (and EU) law -- so anything that can be construed as hate speech is illegal. Compare and contrast that to NearlyFreeSpeech.net, which has this "beliefs" page. They've been around since 2002, and as long as I've been using them, stayed completely true to those beliefs.
Disclaimer: I'm in no way associated with NearlyFreeSpeech.net -- I'm simply a happy customer of theirs who enjoys the free speech protections and FreeBSD cluster hosting they offer. They don't have any form of affiliate program, so I couldn't be monetarily compensated for this post even if I wanted to be.
Will I be able to copy/paste stuff copyrighted by the Church of Scientology there ? Last time I tried was on /. 7 years ago and it was censored :(
The fact you focus on software raises suspicion that you are just astroturfing for some interested party. Software is great and The Pirate Bay really helps, but I would imagine the majority of people use torrents to get music, films and television shows for free.
until they want to give a voice to pedophiles and to those who kindle national dissension. Some things have to be limited by force no matter how free we'd like to be.
Full Tilt
I've always felt there is a certain confusion when it comes to the difference between Free Speech and the freedom to say what you want. While I whole heartedly support the concept about being able to voice your opinions, whatever they might be, and the right to live your life in whatever way you see fit (that do not directly harm others*); I feel I have to disagree with the way certain (yes I generalize) people define it. In a free, open and public debate certain things should be censored; notably; Ad hominem attacks and foul language. The reason I think that is because they do nothing but distract and confuse. So call it censorship or call it moderation, but Ad hominem attacks in particular have nothing to do with Freedom of Speech; in fact they ruin any meaningful debate on the topic. * I consciously ignore the fact about how one society might live like a parasite on another; it is not relevant to the point I am trying to make here.
The Long Now Foundation
Your bring up an excellent point. There is no question at all that certain groups of people will use anonymity like a shield to attack other groups of people. This anonymity, when very strongly protected and unable to be removed by the actions of any judicial branch of government, does certainly deprive those groups of people of any ability to defend themselves.
However, I would propose another question to you. If you had to choose, as an absolute, between anonymity and complete transparency (all Internet posts being digitally signed), which one would you choose? Why?
I only say that since it is an absolute. With the Internet being as ubiquitous as it has become, anonymity provided to one is anonymity provided to all. Freenet is the best example. I fully expect Freenet to explode in the next 5-10 years and become as ubiquitous as email. The only way to truly stop Freenet, is to outlaw it completely. Possession of Freenet, must be declared a crime in of itself to be effective in dismantling its networks. That would only be effective in doing it within that country only too. Of course, that does not even account for civil disobediance, but when being in possession of technology that facilitates anonymous and private communications risks prison time, it would certainly provide the respective governments a very powerful tool to discourage it.
So keep that in mind when you consider the value of anonymity in a society and it's proper use. It may not be possible, and I certainly don't think so, to provide it to people a "drop" at a time. It's all or nothing.
I, for one, support completely free speech and this is why:
While speech such as harmful memes (religious extremism, racism, etc) is inherently harmful, people who are exposed to a sufficient number of such memes and use basic logic will develope an immunity. Meanwhile it is all too easy, once a precident of declaring some speech "bad" has been set, to change one's definition of Bad speech to whatever makes one uncomfortable. In the long term, uncensored speech is the only thing that can save humanity.
My point of view is that hating $group should be completely legal, as should encouraging hatred. Free speech and reason will, in time, drown out the less reasonable voices.
Even encouraging violence should be permitted. When someone listens to the speech and commits a violent act will you indemnify them because they are not responsible, having been given a harmful meme? of course not! And since responsibility lies on the shoulders of the actor, the person who encouraged such behavior is not responsible.
I believe in people. If everyone gets to hear all sought opinions, everyone will be better off because most people are more good than evil.
As for my sig, it means distribution of child porn, not any act required for its creation.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Kind of unnecessary now that we have Tor (using LiveJournal, Blogspot, etc) and Freenet available to pretty much anyone.
Hate speech is a symptom of free speech, and therefore in a perverse way we should welcome it.
Free speech and anonymous speech are basically the same thing. Free speech is the right to say what you like without consequences, and anonymous speech is the way you avoid consequences.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
If I'm interpreting Wikipedia's definition of Sweden's hate speech laws, does that mean we're not allowed to complain about/insult religion? That's quite a limit.
"In normal times, evil would be fought by good. But in times like these, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil." The Chronicles of Riddick
Anymore, pirates are a hell of a lot more trustworthy than ANY given government or corporation. If I had something serious to leak, or had some crazy theories on even a half way controversial topic - I would trust those flagrant, authority mooning thugs to resist big brother more so than anyone else. The reason? Everyone has there breaking point, regardless of how bad ass you are - you still have one. It's just a matter of who has the higher breaking point as to who I would trust - not to necessarily do something for me, but more to NOT DO SOMETHING.
Nevertheless, no matter if he is astroturfing or not, what matters is if he has a point, rather than what his motives are.
1. The thing is, going on about uncensored speech is good and fine, if they were to make that in China. The west is actually pretty easy going about what you can say, as long as it it doesn't break the laws. Which, at least in continental Europe, tend to be there for a reason, namely that the people actually liked that idea. Politicians over here tend to have to be very covert about bribes and serving some corporate masters, because it's a _very_ unpopular thing and it can cost one the elections. Populism is a much easier way to power, so it's more the norm than the exception that they'd actually do the stuff that the population wants or can be convinced to want.
In a nutshell, there is no oppressive thought police that they have to fight or circumvent. It's not like anyone will come after you because you wrote "Bush sucks" or "Angela Merkel sucks" or "law X sucks and it should be changed." Note that even the Pirate Bay, well, there was no secret police coming to their homes and taking them to Siberia because they're vocally anti-copyright.
Even hate-speech has to be rather extreme to actually get you censored. You can still jolly well be against immigrants (Nicolas Sarkozy actually got elected in France on not much more as a platform), or Muslims (you'll notice that it was various Islamic groups that produced threats in the recent anti-Islam movie, not the government, and a pretty offensive movie it was too), or pretty much whatever group of your choice. Depending on the country, you won't be very popular as a bigotted racist, but you have to take it pretty damn far before the government gets into the act.
They might, however, have a problem if you're using the net for libel. Cyber-bullying is pretty-much a fact of life by now, for example, and there seems to be a whole class of people whose claim to glory is, pretty much, "yeah, well, I bet I can make you miserable."
So I'm genuinely wondering how many people will use such a service because of some genuine need to effect a political change in their country. You know, the kind of free speech that's actually productive and useful for society. And how many will take it as just an opportunity to spread libel about their ex-GF, teacher, unpopular neighbour, etc? How many will try to intimidate said ex-GF, teacher, etc, via some anonymous site?
Now I'm not proposing to censor them a priori, but I genuinely wonder anyway.
2. I have to wonder exactly how can they make a promise to, essentially, break the law. If a court order comes and says, basically, "you are hereby ordered to tell us who Moraelin is", how _can_ they guarantee that they'll disobey the law? Being a rebellious anarchist is good and fine in some situations, but try it before a judge, and it tends to count as holding the court in contempt. So I wouldn't exactly bet that, if it comes to that, their whole attitude will last more than 5 minutes before their lawyer explains exactly what the prison sentences are for refusing to comply.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Will I be allowed to post source code for an OOXML implementation to Linux?
torrentfreak.com seems to have been slashdotted. I can't believe that /.ers are more powerful than p2p-ers
Apparently we have convicted one guy for spreading hate against Homosexuals. Though he ws acquitted in the supreme court on very shaky grounds.
I know only of Nazis being convicted of hate speech[1] in Sweden. But even though they have been convicted they get away with a lot. I would say that the swedish police is more worried about the miltant groups that oppose nazis than the nazis themself.
[1] That article is hate proganda. Not sure why I give it google credit..
It's kinda funny that the people who hate anonymity most almost always use pseudonyms.
A concept long lost on the internet is the idea that hosting providers aren't responsible for their content and it's the end users that are responsible.
In much the same way that Sweden is still sensible enough to accept legally that linking to content isn't copyright infringement I'd like to believe it's also sensible enough to realise that hosting providers shouldn't have to police content.
I don't know if this is the case but if it is then they should be in the clear for people to say what they want, if the Swedish authorities have a problem they would in theory have to go after the end user. Many many years ago things used to be this way before governments started fighting for control and corporations started corrupting it's very existence in every way possible.
What happened to invisiblog? :(
It does not seem to work anymore...
Even if Freenet was illegal, you could probably get around that by running Freenet over Tor. Sure, it'd be slower than ever, but it should still work as long as you don't set up your node as a server.
Since everything is encrypted (right down to the datastore) and there is no plaintext info to send, it's actually a good application of Tor. I run an exit node for Tor, and I do look at the traffic occasionally. Very little of it has to do with free speech; most of it looks like people watching porn who are apparently afraid of their prudish wives sniffing the router or something.
I'll keep running my Tor relay, and when I move to Arizona in a month or so hopefully I'll be able to get a better connection and run Tor and Freenet at the same time. I'll also need a better computer to handle all that, since Freenet is a bit heavy. If you've got the resources, there's really no reason not to. Also, I'm pretty sure that Freenet would perform almost as well as Tor if it was as popular. I certainly believe Freenet to be about the most important technology in development, as far as freedom is concerned.
The reason the Pirate Bay can flagrantly post riffs on the legal threats they get is because in Sweden, what they do is legal, mainly because TPB does not actually hold any torrents, just the locations of them.
I'd be interested in someone more well versed in the law telling us what would happen if say, Joe Blow decides a local merchant ripped him off. He makes an angry blog detailing his quest for justice. Said local business decides to sue for libel. Would the Swedish government act on an American subpoena?
That's what interests me.
If not, the old combo of blogger and Foxtor will prevail yet again.
A global blog forum open to any subject is an appealing idea, but it is only as good as its search engine. Say you want to enlighten the world about your boss or company. There are a hundred million other people who are interested in doing the same thing. So how do you tell the world about your idiot boss John Smith and differenciate him from all the other idiot John Smiths (my apologies to all readers named John Smith, but you must run into this situation all the time).
And how do you change the blog when the situation has changed? And what do you do about the douchebag (an American term meaning a person whose obsession with a particular topic has made them insufferable, not a French term for a camping solar-shower) who attempts to post 10000000 full copies of the Qu'ran or the ancient scrolls of BaBeezoo-Bub and take up a teraByte of Pirate Bay blog space?
And who oversees this new global medium: who becomes the Pirate Bay's Rupert Murdoch? And how do we get rid of the Pirate Bay's new gossip site's overlord when he or she becomes hopelessly corrupt? When it becomes obvious that their personal tastes are affecting their editing decisions?
And why don't Slashdot posters address the real issues that arise from each topic? The ratio of horseshit to insightful commentary is extremely high for such a smart group of readers.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"he said this to a local newspaper reporter"
The "local newspaper reporter" is the very communist who made this up.
Your equation of free speech with anonymous speech leaves out many examples where free speech actually has consequences. There's the whole fire in a crowded theatre thing, libel and probably others I'm forgetting.
Are you actually saying free speech needs to be an absolute? What about when an anonymous poster online puts up your credit card #, address, phone, etc... everything and ruins your life, what then?
I agree to your first part that free speech naturally leads to hate speech, but I'm curious where you feel the line needs to be drawn.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I used to have a home page at GeoCities in the mid-90s. I could never understand what was considered offensive material.
;)
I used my home page to publish my crappy art and poetry. Everytime I posted a picture containing nudity, I was afraid of being kicked out from GeoCities. In Sweden nudity by it self is not offensive, nudity that degrades people are offensive (and sometimes illegal). I don't have any trouble distinguish between those cases. What kind of nudity GeoCities considered offensive, I could never understand. But there where people that lost their home pages because they published beautiful and respectful pictures.
Fortunatly my poetry was in Swedish
As far as I see it, every exception to free speech has a potential to be abused because it requires some public body to dictate what does and does not fall under such exceptions, and such a public body would be a target for corruption by every megalomaniac out there.
Do you know where the phrase 'yelling fire in a crowded theatre' comes from? Its from the trial of a group of socialists distributing pacifist literature during WW1. In that context, the government decided that protesting the war whilst they were trying to recruit was inciting panic in the population.
It is not the speakers responsibility to refrain from yelling 'fire', it is the theatregoers responsibility to not trample other citizens to death at the first unconfirmed sign of danger.
As for credit cards, it is the responsibility of the credit card issuer to ensure that all vendors adequately check the identity of anyone trying to use the card. In real life, they do largely take this responsibility and the people I've known who have been subject to fraud have been reimbursed by the card issuer.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Free speech isn't the right to avoid consequences. Its the right to say what you like without government interference or punishment. Everyone else is free to ridicule you, avoid you, stop buying your products, etc.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Probably a move to soften he impact of the current court case against them. Everyone on the web knows that the pirate bay is full of copyrighted music, network tv shows and hollywood movies. The reason it exists is to make phat advertising revenu on the backs of giving away stuff other people make and own. /. try to put as a gloss over copyright infringement. I'm a one man company, the definition of the small indie underdog, and TPB are more than happy to pirate my work and to make advertising money from it.
Bue, hey if they can somehow pretend they are champions of free speech, it makes the more gullible people out there think they are somehow the good guys.
I hate this *sticking it to the man* bullshit facade that TPB, Torrentfreak, and now
It amazes me how many people are suckered in by the gloss those guys try to put on a site that exists purely to make advertising revenue. If this isn't true, let them incorporate as a registered company, publish their accounts, and donate the entire profits to charity.
I won't hold my breath.
So basically you're saying the problem is the ease of abusing confidential information and in theory your CC info should be able to leak and nobody profit from it. I'll give that in that particular instance and even in the "yelling fire" situation that it's really the actions of others that make the speech supposedly illegal.
I can see you're for a transparent society, I don't really want to go into the whole "think of the children" bit... perhaps leaking army or police strategy information that gets others killed, or whatever scenario I can come up. Or heck people publicly outing that someone cheated on their spouse. Basically any information or speech with the goal of causing injury to others is what I mean. Let's say someone posts that you peed on the koran and L. Ron Hubbard's grave while burning a flag holding a cross. Then posts your address and an army of whackos burns your house down and kills you. Obviously the whackos are responsible for their own actions, but you can't clear the earth of them and the potential for abuse as well as a hundred other stupid situations still exist.
Now I understand your concern about who gets to define the limits, and given that there's no perfect solution the idea of limits is tasteless. The grounds that any legislative body can be corrupted can as easily be used to say there should be no laws at all. How do we then govern ourselves if every law can be abused? We have to try don't we?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Here's my issue... what if someone desires anonymity, to guard against false libel claims?
I have two separate ideas for a blog. One would be a really simple idea: entertainment for intellectuals. A sort of slashdot style site, but with a broader array of topics. Several story ideas deal with my involvement with local politicians and businessmen. As we've seen with wikileaks, posting truth can cause a lot of trouble.
The other is that I am working on an extremely disruptive software project. My idea is is lead up to the release with a blog posting articles and links that the type of person who'd like my software would find interesting, then one day announcing my software.
In both scenarios, I would want anonymity.
Now the Pirate Bay, due to Sweden's copyright climate, can avoid pulling blogs that share media. But what about a general muckraking site? Would the owners of TPB be willing to stand up for them as well? Would it matter, or would the Swedish Courts work with the Americans if given a subpoena?
That's right! My blog has been taken down by TPB! I guess criticising TPB is against Swedish law, eh? Or maybe, they're just plain hypocrites, like I knew they were.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
and its called 4chan...
sig sig sig siggy sig
I fully agree with you that the technical hurdles to stopping Freenet are almost insurmountable. My point was more from a legal point of view in removing anonymity. The technology itself prevents any single Freenet user from being able to reveal the identity of anyone. That is not the point however. When you make it illegal and a crime to be running Freenet, you indirectly solve your problem of anonymous communications by making other people responsible for knowing the identity of all communications passing through them.
I guess what I am trying to say is that in order to eliminate anonymity and privacy in communications you need to outright make it a crime to possess, disseminate, or otherwise facilitate any technology related to it, such as encryption. Now THAT is a major hurdle for any government.
Of course, if this was done, I would still be pushing those technologies with a considerable amount of civil disobediance. I suspect you would too.....
Guess the mods are mainly in the USA today? Don't like hearing the truth, huh?
What he said is absolutely fucking true and downmodding might make you feel better but doesn't fix anything.
The plain fact is the USA does not have free speech superior to or even equal to most other first world countries, despite USAsians' conditioning to believe otherwise. Sure, there are some things you can say in the US you can't say in europe, but there's plenty the other way as well.
The fact is, there is no country on earth with the free speech protection we slashdotters would consider acceptable (most of us, anyway). There's nowhere I can go to post my blog entries about how viewing this child porn image (attached) makes me want to kill the president - but I MIGHT reconsider if there's a big enough riot. Pretending the USA somehow fits the Free Speech bill is counterproductive, deceitful, and downright pathetic.
Sorry if this post reads badly, I am drunk. hehehe