Riding out the storm?
I feel that the end is surely coming for The Pirate Bay now. The recent outage, although only 3 hours long, brought about the action of a Swedish court order against TPB’s upstream ISP, will probably turn out so be one of the first of an increasing number of cuts. Still, I like their Churchillian parody response though:
“We have, ourselves, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our Internets, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
Even though large parts of Internets and many old and famous trackers have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Ifpi and all the odious apparatus of MPAA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the ef-nets and darknets, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Internets, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the baywords.org, we shall fight on the /. and on the digg, we shall fight in the courts; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, the Internets or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the Anon Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in Cerf’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
Although this is not their strongest, some of the sound bites their ex Head of PR, Peter Sunde has produced have been works of genius.
It certainly feels like the concept of an online “free” netspace is crumbling before our eyes.
Good to see that Mandelson’s Corfu lunch with an AMERICAN media mogul has led him to throw out the ISP recommendations from Digital Britain. Quite why our own national interest is also the same as that of an American film studio I have no idea. Very depressing.
Indeed. I feel a letter to my MP coming on about The Dark Lord’s lunch meeting.
I have to say that crossed my mind too – you could link it to the ubiquitous sense of corruption that appears to sit in and around elected British MPs. Expenses, Tony Blair summering at Cliff Richard’s, a little lunch with an American movie mogul et voila. I now see why Lessig has moved from CC to addressing issue of corruption.
the pirate bay… still lives! :-)
http://thepiratebay.org/
…and I like this!
I don’t support piracy… in general. but in this case, I am against the closing of this site… for a number of reasons:)