The Pirate Bay's Struggle for Democracy

The Pirate Bay aka TPB is a website that hosts a huge repository of .torrent files, which are text-files with the equivalent of the following quote: "Hello! I have a file to share!" with references to the originator and his/her file that s/he wants to share. According to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) it is ILLEGAL to reference files which the originator does not have the copyright to. There are several problems with this: 1) DMCA is not a law in a country, but an American lobbying group representing rights-holders (and not, as they claim, artists); 2) The link-depth is apparently 1, so if I link to TPB myself I am not doing something "illegal" but if I link to said .torrent file on TPB I AM doing something "illegal"; 3) DMCA somehow thinks their lobby group’s copyright initiative magically applies to other democracies where no democratic process has been conducted to this effect; and lastly 4) TPB obviosly was not responsible for sharing a file the file-sharer did not have copyright to, nor are they responsible for the uploading of said file to their servers. In the course of events, TPB even changed the link-depth, so they are now just hosting .magnet files that refers to .torrent files on other servers that refer to the file in question. Members of TPB are imprisoned or wanted by police. TPB is releasing a documentary on February 8th about their struggle for democratic freedom:

I have linked to .torrent files directly in the past. Am I a criminal?

2 thoughts on “The Pirate Bay's Struggle for Democracy

  1. At first I found your comment ambivalent. You’re a girl, so the contents of ‘they should all suck a dick’ would be different than if I wrote it.

    Of course, you go on to verify that it can be fun.

    Then you make the ‘go eat shit’ comment. I’m left at an impasse here.

    :D

    I mean, some people like being strangled ffs. Let’s just agree that legislation should be sane and borders be respected (as ignoring them is a direct attack on the dignity of the people being attacked, and whose democratically elected govt is overrun)..

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