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.

A natural conclusion.

In their continued Sisyphean fight against the nature of the digital age, ifpi have apparently started to cast a wider net, looking to prove that isp's are complicit in the crime of illegal filesharing. This comes as no suprise to those of us who followed the TPB-trial, where the prosecution likened TPB to a man holding the coat of someone who was beating up some poor bastard on the sidewalk.

For those of you trying to wrap your head around that simily, I feel I have to wonder if a more apt comparison might be that TPB is like the rather spaced-out guy who is often tending the coat room in a club, where a fight inevitably breaks out on the dancefloor. The guy is barely organised enough to remember who put what in there, which is why there's a notice on the wall saying "we take no responsibility for any valuables lost".

If anyone is looking for the definition of Ad Hominem and cant be arsed to go to wikipedia, this might be a good place to lift several examples from. Also, lets get one thing clear, we are not like somali pirates.

For one thing, we wear proper eyepatches as soon as we think we can get away with it in mixed company. Somali pirates have so far shown an abysmal lack of proper attire. There is not one captains hat, eyepatch or parrot to be found among them. Frankly, it's an insult to a community who revel in talk like a pirate day once a year to be associated with such a sad bunch of posers.

the issues, LOTR style.

Ok, so the isp's are slowly but surely forced to show colours in this battle. After years of broadband internet beeing used mainly for filesharing, some providers suddently seem reluctant to protect the people who have been lining their pockets for the past decade.

My current isp seemed confused by the issue when first approached, and later specified their position on keeeping logs as "irrelevant" since i had a static ip adress. Way to inspire confidence, i'll be checking out of your service as quickly as I can.

I thought the whole situation warranted a bit of high fantasy, but omitted likening the piratebay defendants to hobbits, mostly because I couldnt figure out which one Carl Lundström was supposed to be.


The spiffy Serenity poster in the last frame was found here.

dicks or pythons?

Ok, so this really is more about the marvellous people of monty python than it is about Dick, but every story needs an antagonist, and it gives me the dubious pleasure of wordplay involving "seeders" in the first frame, so there you go...

As mentioned, Python has proven that even when the material has been available for free over a long period of time, tossing your hat in with the new technology produces positive results as long as you have a quality product.



Other people who have tried and succeeded with the same approach include NIN and Neil Gaiman, proving conclusively that some of my favourite artists are not Dicks.

So, oneswarm is debated in sweden, and the anti-piracy spokesman is putting on a brave face. He would probably like if someone called him Agent Ponten too...

So, the swedish author Carina Rydberg has thrown herself into the tpb debate, showing off an illiteracy in the relevant technology which would be kind of endearing in a twoyearold but becomes embarassing in someone writing an op'ed piece for one of swedens biggest evening papers.

The info that she is pals with one of the prosecutors in the tpb case is just delicious irony.

With friends lke these...