2009/4/1 Yvonne Martinsson <[email protected]>: > In fact, I'm very disappointed. Not about the trial, but about Pirate Bay. > As it turns out, the guy who has supported Pirate Bay financially, is a > millionaire and a (former) member of the organization Keep Sweden Swedish, a > neo-Nazi organization here.
What's his name? I'd be interested to look further into it. There's always a strange correlation between file sharers, free speech advocates and fascists. > The others have had no income for years, have > high tax debts and are in general of the opinion that you don't have to > contribute to society. Hard to believe that they've had no income with lots > of advertising and loads of visitors. Ah, actually, if you add up the people that actually click the ads (which in case of the TPB, I can see how it wouldn't be so many as there's generally more technically advanced people in there who might have adblockers installed), I can't imagine that you're getting that much money out of it. If you add server costs (TPB is 'the world's largest BitTorrent tracker' or so they say), I can definitely see how they wouldn't have a huge income at all. > They're, in my view, nothing but > neo-liberal profit-seeking egos. Nothing else. No activism as far as I can > see. It makes me wonder about file-sharing and activism. Does it go without > saying that a site like Pirate Bay is 'good'? In any case, nothing is black > and white. TPB isn't directly about activism, never was - they specifically split from the group that deal with activism (Piratbyrån) and always held a more rough "waving middle fingers in the air" approach to the whole copyright issue. They are certainly part of a trend, but as far as I heard from interviews and conversations with people that surround the project, not as profit oriented as for example the Dutch Mininova (which according to Wikipedia have a revenue of €1 million). I could be wrong though and they're even more anti-establishment than is already visible :) The better groups to look for activism are definitely Piratbyrån and the Piratpartiet. The Piratbyrån actually sees itself as more of an art project - I wish I had a recording of the brilliant performance they gave in Vienna last year to elaborate on what that could mean, but I'll have to ask a few friends where the material is first. I'll post the recording on here if it's uploaded anytime soon, or if I happen to remember :) Michael -- http://niij.org/ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
