take a deep breath.

Sit back, and read it again.

As the pirate party (piratpartiet) of sweden steams ahead towards the european union election, their live site which basically brings together blogs and newsitems concerning the party and its issues is steadily picking up speed. More and more bloggers of different creeds are blogging about the party and its politics.

Scorn and ridicule is usually levelled at those who, when faced with internet and its trapdoors, bluster naively through every door, falling helplessly for scams and misinformation. Generally this has so far been reserved for the opposition, publishers and creators beeing fooled by dastardly sites which claim all sorts of unsubstanciated things. Factchecking, above all else is something that needs to be done before one launches into a tirade on a medium which never, ever, forgets a word that you have chosen to put out there.

So again i reiterate: Sit back, and read it again.

Lately, I've seen blogs advocating the pirate party falling for the same dumb shit that has previously been the forte of the netnoobish copyright lobby. Sit back, read it again and even if the site does turn out to be real, and not some onion-like spoof site designed to rile up people who launch into frothing comments and the drop of a hat, realise that every percieved slight against your particular ideas is not automatically a conspiracy.

One recent example is the news item of a man who started beating on a fourteen year old kid when he refused to use a filesharing protocol to download a movie for him. Some pirates went rabid with indignation that the media were so opportunistic as to print this news, even though I have yet to see an article referenced claiming that filesharing was to blame for this incident. Media is not wrong for reporting this incident of abuse, nor are they wrong to print why this cocksucker went ballistic and accosted a poor kid. They would be wrong if they blamed filesharing for the incident, they are not wrong to report the fact that a man beat up a kid because he went off his rocker after the child refused to help him use bittorrent.

In the spoof departement, this hilarious site has managed to draw in its fair share of people who pull the trigger on their blogs before carefully examining the material they're railing against.

For those who are confused, thats a bunch of people making with the funny. so is this, this and this.

Perhaps we go all Johnny Storm on even the most imaginary of windmill-like monsters in some fear of beeing beaten to the punch by some other, equally vitriolic blogger. I propose we take a step back and actually strive to be the first though-through and informed responders to a given situation, simply because it denies the opposition an opportunity to paint us as triggerhappy fools. Fire is useful, mindless flames are less so.