Spectrial

The trial of The Pirate Bay has started in Sweden.

Apparently, the prosecutor wrote a memo in 2005 saying a trial couldn't be argued over evidence (source: Torrentfreak) indicating what we all thought: This trial is purely political. It is a political attack on The Pirate Bay and it's creator's.

Several media outlet's have been banned from all of the Pirate Bay's conferences for making it all personal. They have been making the trial about the creators and their political views, not about the issue at hand and The Pirate Bay itself, which I think we can all agree is wrong.

Well, here's my two cents (or whatever denomination you choose.)

The Pirate Bay is no different from Google or your ISP. They are all carriers of information, and it is up to the users to decide what to do with the information.

Google is a very good finder for torrents, or any direct methods of illegal downloading.

P2P technology is a very good idea and, to be totally honest, the reason why it's mainly used for illegal downloading (other than because it's more anonymous) is that no company has started to use it for legal filesharing, despite to costing companies less, easy enough to control, and very efficient.

When Microsoft failed to release Windows 7 Beta on time, everyone blamed it on the fact that they didn't use P2P. There are ways of controlling who gets it (there have been small uses of P2P for legal things, all of which MUST have been suggested to Microsoft) and it decreases load on the original servers exponentially once some people start seeding it other than the original server.

Anyway, back to the point: You wouldn't blame Google for being able to find websites with people offering illegal downloads.
Nor would you blame your ISP for allowing you to access Google, even though, as we just pointed out, Google has lots illegal content. if you blame The Pirate Bay for allowing you to see any torrents people put up, legal or illegal, then you need to blame Google and your ISP too, plan and simple.

Now, assuming you blame the carriers (something you can't do in any medium other than the internet: would you blame the postal service for delivering a mixtape?) then every ISP on the internet is breaking the law and owes millions or even billions of pounds/dollars/etc. to the various companies (IFPI, RIAA, MPAA, etc.) who "own" the material. (With about 5p in every pound going to the indvidual recording companies, and about half a penny or something ridiculous going to the artists.)

Now, the only way ISPs could continue to deliver the internet would be to have limited access to specific sites to ensure you never see any illegal content. Think about the ramifications of this: You could see this site, but not my site (Mehall.co.cc) because I couldn't afford to pay the fee they would inevitably charge to check my site had no illegal content (or any content speaking in any negative way about the ISP, filtering, circumventing the filter, the current, past or future governments, laws, etc etc etc.)

The same would apply for hundreds upon thousands upon millions of sites all over the internet. The internet could have been kept closed, with Tim Berners Lee (who invented the internet at CERN in the early 1990's) able to make millions of pounds. Instead, he used his vision and made it free for everyone to use, to allow a global community to be created, with no one person having a greater sway over any site than any other.

Now, I agree, some filtering of content has to be done, but I only think this should be done in cases such as paedophilic content and hindering the progress of terrorist activity, with the latter verging on allowing more, than denying more. Our freedom's in real life should also apply to our freedom's on the internet, and they should not be curtailed for any reason.


I look forward to the whole of "Spectrial" (the name of The Pirate Bay trial which, it has been said by Pirate Bay owners, will eventually be a soap opera) and I look forward to see the outcome.