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Pirate Bay raided: fuels Swedish "Pirate Party"

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Those familiar with the world of torrents may be disappointed today to hear that Pirate Bay has been raided by some 50 Swedish police. While it's certainly not unusual for torrent sites hosting links to copyrighted-data to get this treatment, I am a bit surprised that it would happen in Sweden, especially on this draconian of a scale. At any rate, though, apparently the news isn't totally bleak -- the Swedish Pirate Party is using the event to spur support for its movement to decrease the scope and reach of international copyright law.

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This entry is (C) Copyright by its author, 2004-2008. Unless a different license is specified in the entry's body, the following license applies: "Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved and appropriate attribution information (author, original site, original URL) is included".

Biography

Matt Barton: Matt Barton is an English professor at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. He is an advocate of free software, wikis, and the Creative Commons. He also studies and writes about videogames and computing history. Matt also has blogs at Armchair Arcade, Gameology, and Kairosnews.

Terry Hancock's picture

Actually, copyright enforcement is good...

Submitted by Terry Hancock on Sun, 2006-06-04 16:17.

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Business has long relied on a certain amount of laxity in law-enforcement. A great deal of what goes on as an essential component of business (and innovation in general) is technically illegal.

That laxity allows stricter laws to be enforced, and selective enforcement, combined with the high cost of justice, means that most individuals (and therefore most potential new enterprises, as well) don't get to play by the same rules as the rest of the commercial world. It creates a double standard.

If copyrights and patents were ever to be STRICTLY enforced, business would probably grind to a halt in a matter of hours.

Then, maybe we'd be seriously considering changing the laws to something like sanity. And then, a lot more people would appreciate what the freedom of a free-licensed piece of software is all about.


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