Fact:
The Pirate Bay is not an illegal entity. Filtering such a site is
censorship, plain and simple. It is impossible to prove whether the site
is illegal or not because the activity on the site is user generated,
not generated by the site itself. It provides a link to a torrent -a form of decentralised data collection and an efficient way to
transfer files without relying on the heavy bandwith of a central server.
This allows any file to be distributed if enough users exist to allow it distributed. By its decentralised nature it is impossible to 'stop' a torrent once it has enough users 'seeding' a file. The Pirate Bay is one of the many torrent search engines which has decided to not actively weed out links to copyright material.
To a certain extent, this could apply to any sort of aggregate site- Google, Digg, Youtube etc. as they all blatently link to some forms of copyright material and all surf a legal grey area that doesn't look like it will change.
One wonders whether they targeted The Pirate Bay just because of their name. In fact, this 'illegal' site is at the forefront of information sharing online and should be celebrated for its achievements.
Maybe the guys at Sony, Paramount, EMI, IMRO and Eircom want this
to happen because they are panicking. They see that they have no way to
charge individuals with piracy charges. It's extremely costly and
difficult to find someone guilty of piracy and to charge them. It's
could also be embarrassing for them once they realise that the person
they've been tracking is an eleven year old girl who has downloaded too
many Britney Spears tracks. They need to curb illegal downloading in
one foul swoop- so for years they have been desperately banging on the
most popular torrent seach engine's doors- The Pirate Bay. They even
successfully convinced the Swedish government to confiscate their
servers. A decision which was rashly overturned days later and proven
to completely illegal. It also resulted in major support for the
website from proponents of freedom of information online and digital
rights.
Or maybe, like a lot of people, they just don't understand? For
Eircom, IMRO, CEO's of large entertainment networks, maybe the Internet
seems like something to be afraid of. A place where the same people who
run websites with the name 'Pirate Bay' fund terrorism and sex
trafficking. So, to be sure, I feel like I should turn to metaphors to
explain.
If the Internet, with it's networks, websites etc is thought of as
a city with a network of roads and buildings, The Pirate Bay and any
other torrent tracker like it (of which there a thousands, and it would
be impossible to ban them all) would be the rundown area full of
artists, hipsters, criminals and drug addicts with little civic support
and a lot of freedom. There are some copy written material but a lot of
it is free to share.
What Eircom are doing could be described as erecting a wall around
this area to make sure no Irish people go inside, because if they do
they aren't trusted to not do illegal things, such as buying heroin or
downloading movies like 'The Happening'.
Ok? Simple!
Yet because these institutions do not trust us to
not download copy written material they deny us the right to use these
sites to search for legal torrents such such as open source software
(Open Office, Ubuntu etc) which heavily rely on torrent technology to
unburden themselves of costly server transfer rates, which they can't
afford due to the not-for-profit nature of open source.
It's a preemptive strike on the user- or guilty before being proved innocent.
Banning
these sites from the Irish people is not only censorship, it shows a
clear lack of understanding by Eircom, IMRO and the courts and reveals
a disturbing amount of influence that the American mainstream
entertainment giants have on our governing system. The Pirate Bay, far
from being a shady piracy group, have proven themselves to be heroes of
anti-corporate bullying in their steadfastness and legal guile. They have taken a clear stance in the questions that torrents and media sharing have put forward.
Research also indicates that these sites may not only improve
cinema attendance, they might have actually been responsible for
cinema's outstanding performance over the past decade- an era which
predicted the demise of cinema in the DVD age.
Even more frightening is the suggestion that the "3 strikes and
you're out" law which may actually result in a ban of Internet use- I
should think this an extreme punishment. Since when did home taping
result in a ban of postal use? Or shopping? Or flying abroad? Even
prisoners can write letters. This draconian suggestion was recently
attempted in New Zealand and quickly delayed after an immense amount of
public pressure. The techniques used to identify the accused remain
shady and have been proven erroneous.
Barring the public from using torrent search engines is one foot on
a path which only leads to more filtering and censorship informed by an
industry in crisis, people accused of crimes they have not committed,
restricting the development of important technologies and punishments
that are extreme in relation to others. We must not allow this first
step.
Yes, the existence of sites such as the Pirate Bay may suggest the
unfortunate fact that the Internet could possibly end copyright law as
we know it today. By its very nature it is impossible to deny people
the right to share what they have with others and to try and change it
is to try and reverse one of the greatest technological achievements of
modern times. It is the essence of the Internet.
I
hope that once the bullying and time wasting has stopped another new
economy will emerge from ubiquitous file sharing technology- maybe a
new and uncharted era of culture without limits or borders. Maybe then
these people won't be scared into instigating laws which undermine our
human right for freedom of information.
I suggest you read up yourself on the issues:
http://www.digitalrights.ie/..2009/01/29/three-unproven-..allegations-and-youre-out/Bravo New Zealand for succeeding in delaying their government's equivalent:
http://computerworld.co.nz/..news.nsf/news/..86D681292534A2CCCC25756600143F..D1http://arstechnica.com/..telecom/news/2009/01/irish-..isp-agrees-to-disconnect-..repeat-p2p-users.arshttp://torrentfreak.com/..eircom-customers-wide-open-to-..erroneous-