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Pirate Bay Shifts Connections From Sweden To Ease Heat on Pirate Party
An anonymous reader writes with this news (excerpted from IT World) that follows up on the report of pressure put on Sweden's Pirate Party for its connection to The Pirate Bay: "The Pirate Bay has opened two new gateways to its internal network in order to shield its current Internet provider, the Swedish Pirate Party, which had been threatened with legal action if it did not stop providing Internet access to the torrent search site by Tuesday. The Swedish Pirate Party had provided bandwidth to The Pirate Bay for about three years because it was hard for the site to find anyone else who would do so. But last Tuesday the Rights Alliance, an organization that represents the film industry, gave it an ultimatum: The Pirate Party had to cut off Internet access to the torrent search site or face legal action. The Pirate Bay's administrators said in a post on Facebook that, because of the legal threat and the potential cost of fighting it, 'We've taken the decision to move on to Norway and Spain.'"
The Pirate Bay through its unfortunate but iconic name will always be a target. If they'd named it "Generic Torrents," we wouldn't see this.
However, as someone who uses TPB to distribute legal content, I don't want it to go away. It is the most high-profile torrent tracker in the world and that makes it useful for spreading information.
I don't know how much of its content is legal, but I think the roles here are reversed. If someone uploads a torrent of illegal information (child porn, piracy, state secrets, etc) and other someones download it, then those are the people who should be prosecuted.
The recording industry is attacking TPB instead of attacking the someones who are doing the illegal acts, because those someones are mostly the children and college students of middle America. It would be politically unpopular to attack those.
Moral of the story? Just the threat of a lawsuit motivates people to do things against their will.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Have some intel on how far their legal teams are getting to filing, and then right before they file.... move. Now, they have to start over in the new country. Watch them, wait for them get ready to file.... move. Eventually they'll realize they're spending millions on legal teams and not getting anywhere. Eventually, you start over, but since time has progressed (as I'm sure technology will for distribution in some way) they'll have to re-review or start over.
Just another case where the courts are being used to threaten/bully someone into conforming to the will of our corporate masters. Sad to see.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Is it only called blackmail if you are not a registered corporation?
Keep your priorities straight. This isn't just democracy we're talking about. Its the Film Industry.
Have gnu, will travel.
except copyrighted material is by definition not an open market but a (formerly) limited-time monopoly, so Smith-style supply-and-demand doesn't apply.
The Rights Alliance is in effect threatening a political party to a government. Any obligations Sweden has to that organizations hosting country, could become null and void as a result.
The Rights Alliance (Rättighetsalliansen) is a Swedish organization, with sister organizations in other countries (e.g. RettighedsAlliancen in Denmark).
You must realize that Sweden's obligations to the USA trumps Sweden's obligations to its own population.
There are multiple angles to this issue. The Swedish Pirate Party is part of an international movement (with sister parties in ~60 countries) and we're represented in the European Parliament. Thus we are already well on our way to through political means change society to be more Internet friendly.
While providing Internet connection to The Pirate Bay is a political statement, it won't help our overall goal to have the party economy, as well as that of our leaders and administrators, in ruin. It makes for a less effective election period next year, when we have both EU and national elections during the span of a few months.
Luckily, we didn't have to make that choice. The Pirate Bay choose themselves to switch to other ISPs making the result of our internal debate moot.
it's in my head