Socialist Gamer Review

Pirate Bay, Bittorrent and the Copyright Battle

By Ravenhawk | February 1, 2008

Recently the owners of Pirate Bay, one of the internet’s most popular bittorrent sites were charged with “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws.” In a brilliant strategic move, plotted to prevent their website from being shut down, the men handed off their servers to trusted friends who took them off to various countries, renting space and setting them back up there. The genius of the plan lies in the fact that, not only do the men not know where their servers are, those holding them apparently do not know what they’re hosting. This quite effectively protects the website itself from being shut down by the Swedish authorities.

While the worst the men are going to be getting personally is a fine, theirs in a story which is just one brilliant military manuever in the fight over copyright laws and bittorrent. Bittorrent has been soaring in popularity as one of the most popular ways of sharing files, due to the difficulty involved in tracking those who use it, and the grey legal standards surrounding whether hosts of tracker files can be charged, because they technically hold no control over what their users host.

I personally am a large fan of torrents. They allow me to download things in a relatively easy fashion, usually at pretty good speed, although that all depends on what other people are connected. I’m also not a large fan of copyright laws. I’m not saying that one should be able to frolic about, taking things that other people made willy-nilly, but the way they’re implemented and enforced is often flawed. In this case it’s utterly rediculous. Yes, it’s true that the Pirate Bay is used by a lot of people for the sharing of various illegal copies of games, videos, whatever. But to be charged with “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws.”?

All they did is to allow people to connect, communicate, and share files with eachother. Any time you allow people to share information between eachother, there will be information that someone doesn’t want passed. This doesn’t mean that you can take down anything that enables people to communicate data purely on the grounds that it enables them to share data. While I hate to summon forth the stereotype “1984″ sign, that’s basically what it leads to.

The sharing of information should not be infringed unless it is a matter of extreme security. You don’t need every schmuck on the street knowing how to make a nuclear bomb from things they can buy at the grocery store, but downloading a musician’s discography? Problem? I think not.

Source Article: Pirate Bay Says It Can’t Be Sunk, Servers Scattered Worldwide