That dude in question is from the netherlands. I wonder if the same liberties are afforded in other countries.
No, we're nothing than a bunch of lawless barbarians here in Europe.
Geez...
The rest is crap too. The PB guys were - for MANY years - deliberately taunting authorities and copyright owners and they had way more chance than they deserved, thanks to our generally weak laws and current stupid tolerant rosy views of the world and some of its Internet inhabitants that crawl from under rocks.
They should have been put away in Siberia many years ago in fact. ;-)
Good stuff that "if things don't work out we need stricter laws altogether" method.
Making up new laws because they weren't guilty of anything they were originally charged with? (The original charges of breach of copyright were dropped entirely). That was one of those instances where it didn't matter if the law didn't exist that they were guilty of, they were going to be found guilty. And it didn't resolve or help a damned thing except lining some lawyers' pockets even more thickly with other peoples' cash.
Damn right.
The Piratebay trial is nothing but a demonstration of power, just like the draconical penalties being put on random people who are caught downloading music.
The trail is the music industry's V-2. Revolutionary and shocking but not changing the fact that the side using it is a dying dinosaur who is either trying to wreak as much havoc as it can before it will perish in the sands of time or hoping that their "Wunderwaffe" is going to change their fortune.
Until every country deals with the internet as a worldwide issue and doesn't try and legislate purely for itself, there's no way in an unfrozen hell that you can deal with the problems it has and faces.
I've said this before: All the bad sites of the internet are the price paid for unlimited, global electronical information exchange. You may be in information heaven, but you will *always* have a hydra lurking in the shadows. Always.
What you can do is choping off a head or two once in a while but in the long run, well...you're fighting a hydra.
Most people see the internet as an escapist "happy place" medium to get away from the fraked up real world not realizing that the stuff happening on their screen is nothing but a electronic copy of the everything happening outside based on text, images and videos.
If you want so solve all the internet's problems, shut it down permanently.
The question is, would you really want China - or even Germany, given some of their laws covering historical fact - controlling everything that can and cannot happen or be seen online?
As long as - at least - this country is a democracry, this is not going to happen.
The government recently wanted to block sites containing child pornography and log every access. A morally nice thing on the one hand, but a massive cut into the freedom of excange of information on the other. The people appealed and now the law is being revised.
A few days ago, some politicians planned banning painball because it apparently has close connections to amok runs.
Anyways, the people appealed again and now the plan is discussed yet again.
Bottom line: As long as people *can* stay involved in legislative matters, a dystopian state will remain a fairy tale.
