A different kind of pirate
Noble — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 01:36
In the midst of news about clashes with Somali pirates, the music and film industry finally got to sink their teeth into the folks from the Pirate Bay file sharing site, to the tune of 3.6 million US dollars and four 1-year jail sentences, using new (I believe) Swedish anti-piracy laws.
The music and film industry has been waging this battle for a while, which has included unsuccessful litigation attempts and police raids. Half the charges were dropped on the second day of the trial due to the prosecution's lack of understanding of how file sharing works.
The future of the file sharing site, the most popular on the internet with as many users as the incredibly popular World of Warcraft game, is uncertain. The future of the BitTorrent file sharing protocol is on shaky ground as well, unless you count Linux distributions, or the fact that the aforementioned World of Warcraft uses the protocol to distribute patches and updates. Of course, before Pirate Bay, there was Kazaa, which got shut down. Before Kazaa, there was Napster, which got shut down. Notice the pattern? There will be another, and it will be harder to shut down and more efficient at sharing files.
This doesn't impact me because I gave the finger to the music and film industry a while ago, and am no longer interested in their products, for free or for $$$.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. … We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. … In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons … who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
This is definitely an
Leon (not verified) — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 20:05