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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....
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!
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/.
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.
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.
Full Tilt
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.
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?
"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.
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..
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.