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The Pirate Bay Is Making a "Spectrial" of It
IDOXLR8 writes "The Harvard Law students defending accused file-swapper Joel Tenenbaum are doing their best to turn his upcoming trial into a media event. But when it comes to pure spectacle, they have nothing on The Pirate Bay. TPB is referring to the event as a 'spectrial,' a cross between a spectacle and a trial. They have set up a site where you can track their current location, complete with journal entries. The trial begins next Monday and features a live audio feed and Twitter translations."
It might make media realise that we have separate countries for a reason, and that many of those reasons have an equal validity.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Why are they doing this?
(a) They are very confident of being acquitted, so they want to obtain as much media attention as possible to support their cause (in this case the cause not being to get them acquitted, but rather what they're fighting for)
or
(b) They are trying to get media attention to save their own skins
I doubt this "spectrial" business is to obtain martyrdom. In their current situation, with jail time being a possibility, I doubt their principles of free movies for example would really be worth fighting for.
If I was in their position, I would do whatever it took to be acquitted. They run the risk of pissing the court off with this show, so I don't think it can help. We only have one life after all - it's not worth fighting for pirated content!
Wow, thanks guys. I was rooting for you there for a while, just out of a sense of "hurray for the little guy." Way to make me remember that however theoretically just your cause, you're a bunch of random assholes profiting off the work of others!
The ongoing struggle to procure intelligent, reasonable intellectual property and fair use rights worldwide needs these guys as spokespeople like animal rights needs PETA and parents' groups need Jack Thompson. Like so many before them drunk on the heady mix of righteousness and attention, they've gone full tilt into being walking, talking straw men.
Hey, does anybody think that The Pirate Bay is so successful because it's actually doing what the media companies should be doing? That is, letting people watch a couple of shows almost in real time and not six months later, or listening to a CD before deciding whether to buy or not?
Media companies have spent all their energies in actually NOT giving to consumers what they want that consumers are fighting back and having things their own way.
This is good. This is democratic. Defending a company over their consumers is idiotic and short sighted.
My Stack Overflow user
You miss the target by focusing your anger against "Americans." Sweden's sovereignty isn't being tested against America -- it's being tested against the power of multinational corporations that owe no one nation any allegiance.
The average uneducated man in Saudi Arabia will tell you he hates America, because he's been taught so by his leaders. "America" makes a handy scapegoat. You could replace "America" with any other string, and the situation wouldn't change. The average uneducated American will tell you he hates Commies and Terrorists, but the situation is the same. They're just parroting what they've been taught.
You're caught in the same trap. You think that Disney, et al, care about and represent "America" because those corporations were born here.
They don't. They could care less about this country. They could care less about ANY country. Sony and NEC don't care about the average salaryman. Wipro doesn't care about the misery in India. Nokia couldn't care less about the average Finn. BMW doesn't think their primary responsibility lies with Mutti and Sauerkraut. IBM and Goodyear sold to both sides DURING the war.
The men who run these companies love money, and only that. They dump their children on hirelings to raise. They run through women like fashion accessories. They don't respect the past. They don't worry about any future beyond their own. Their one concern, their only interest, is the accumulation of wealth, even when they've gathered so much that an increase of it would pretty much only be a theoretical concern. They look at masterpieces and admire only the price tags. They see athletes set records and think only of the endorsement dollars. They have no appreciation for science whatsoever beyond patent royalties. They idolize Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They've never heard of Steve Wozniak and Paul Allen.
The threats against your sovereignty don't come from "America," though the US government might currently be the lever used against you. When the US is a ruined husk -- and we're well on our way, mind you -- the men who threaten you will move on to another place and threaten you from there. When you eliminate the "American" threat, they'll find another cat's paw in China, in India, in Europe -- anywhere politicians can be bought and sold like cattle, which is pretty much anywhere on the whole damn planet.
I'm not pretending I have a solution for this. Libraries around the world are filled with books screaming that unrestrained greed is killing us. It's a cancer that has ruined untold societies, be it Rome collapsing under its own weight or the Rapanui destroying their own agriculture. We never seem to learn.
Just don't kid yourself that it's just the Americans causing the problem. The world was wrecking itself well before 1776 and it'll still be wrecking itself long after we're gone, which at the rate we're going should be sometime early next week...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."