Pirate News Top Three 28/02/2013

1. Pirate Bay Hosting Sails To Spain And Norway

 

As a result of pressure put onto the Swedish Pirate Party, the decision was made by both the Swedish Party and The Pirate Bay to move its web hosting services to the Pirate Parties of Spain and Norway. Although The Bay had already moved most of it's services "To The Cloud", the Swedish Party was still providing web hosting for the website. Now, bandwidth will be split between the Spanish and Norwegian Pirates, who will be providing The Bay with an "exit node". It is most likely both of these countries were chosen as a result of of their respective courts ruling in favour of defendants of filesharing cases.



Full Article At Wired UK: The Pirate Bay moves to safer shores, Norway and Spain

2.  64 Pirate Parties Worldwide

 

The number of Pirate Parties worldwide has now reached 64 in total, with 50 of those being active and/or registered in their respective countries, according to The Pirate Times. Australia, Norway and Poland are those most recently to have a Pirate Party registered with the governments of their countries. What's more, there are more 600,000 people are following a Pirate Party on Facebook or Twitter worldwide. Tunisia, Serbia and Isreal have more than one country claiming to be the official one. Maybe the Copyright movement should do a double take at those figures.

Full Article At The Pirate Times: The Pirate World 2013

3. Pirates Without Borders

 

European Pirate Parties of different countries sharing a common language have started to "twin" and share common knowledge between each other. Known as “grenzenlos Piraten-Partnerschaft” (or Borderless Pirate Partnership), parties in German-speaking parts of the Netherlands and Germany are meeting up to share/copy ideas, with those from Brussels and Liege likely to follow. Here's hoping this could be replicated between UK and Irish Pirates.

Full Article At The Pirate Times: Pilot project for International Pirate Partnerships Announced

Professors Hunted Down For Pro File-Sharing Opinion

Torrentfreak reports that Roger Wallis (a multimedia professor brought in to explain the positive aspects of file-sharing during trials against the Pirate Bay founders) had numerous attacks on his credibility during the trial after making the statement that piracy can actually boost sales in certain circumstances.

It isn't new for large corporations to use lawyers to attempt to discredit professors for disagreeing with their views (just look at anyone trying to portray anything negative about pharmaceutical companies), but it does represent an act of desperation on the part of the music/film industry that they have to resort to such personal attacks.

Full Article at Torrentfreak: "Pro File-Sharing Professors ‘Hunted Down’ by the Copyright Lobby"

Legally Download "TPB AFK": A Documentary on the Pirate Bay Trials (from The Pirate Bay; licensed for free distribution)

Antigua To Launch "Legal" Piracy Site

The World Health Organisation in the last few days has approved Antigua's request to suspend the enforcements of US Copyrights in their country (a decision that any country can make regarding copyright law, including the United States itself). Local authorities are now preparing a new media portal offering millions of films, TV shows, albums and software. It is unsure exactly how the site will work at present.

This comes after years of negotiations regarding the business practices of the United States which resulted in the shut down of the Antigua online gambling industry.

As the goods and services of the website will be available worldwide, it raises an interesting question as to whether the authorities of other countries will pursue those who buy their media from the site. It is most likely that the goods will still be considered "pirate" in the other countries that continue to enforce US copyrights.

I will be interesting to see what affect this will have on the local economy; will it truly drive away investment from multinational businesses and bring the country further down, or will it enable it to create its own jobs and its own economy again?

Source Article:  Antigua’s Legal “Pirate Site” Authorized by the World Trade Organization

Fighting the Copyright Cowboys and their Copyright Crusade (aka RIAA)

I'm going to start right off with something that could be quite unexpected: copyright is something we need, and continue to need for the foreseeable future. "Are you serious?" You may be thinking. Why, yes I am; without licenses such as the General Public License, it is unlikely projects like Android, Firefox, OpenOffice/Libreoffice would thrive quite in the way they have done. Copyright law has given these projects the right to determine how others can use their program and source code, whether or not others can profit from it, the right to have code attributed back to the original project and the right to grant anyone the ability to look at the original source code and learn from it. Without copyright law, we really would be in a Wild West of ideas stolen and profited from by Copyright Cowboys; or rather, corporations with lots of money that could (and would) take any of this free software and sell it as their own, with no repatriation or acknowledgement to those that wrote it.

I also assert my right to have my writing here attributed to myself, and the right that only I may profit from it. It isn't so much about my going on a copyright crusade in order to protect my work, and it certainly isn't about me advocating a limiting of our internet freedoms just so you can buy a single, DRM protected right to read this article on only the devices I decide. It is simply me saying I put a decent 30 minutes in writing this, so don't fob it off as your own. Other than that, you are free to do as you please; my work is licensed under a Creative Commons license, so within those bounds you can be my guest.

But anyway. What absolutely angers me are these shadowy figures, in the UK and beyond, that (despite between £millions to £billions profits) claim piracy is "destroying jobs, income and livelihoods", and that because of this media companies and the police should have unprecedented powers to collect and snoop on ANYONE's data. While they are at it, they may as well be given the right to install cameras in our homes just to be doubly sure exactly WHO in a household is taking part in this crime which is certainly not victimless!

The attacks on our freedom of privacy, expression, and civil liberties is bad enough. But what offends me as well is this claim that it is all done in order to enforce the rights of content creators. Is that so? Does that mean, as an independent content creator, I have access to the same amount of police support/snooping in order to "protect" my intellectual property? I didn't think so. All these laws amount to are a protection racket perpetrated by the wealthy and vested interests of popular media. They are the mobs with easy access to guns and muscle. The reality is it is nothing to do with enforcing copyright laws; just enforcing it for those that can afford.

Fighting the Copyright Cowboys and their Copyright Crusade (aka RIAA)

I'm going to start right off with something that could be quite unexpected: copyright is something we need, and continue to need for the foreseeable future. "Are you serious?" You may be thinking. Why, yes I am; without licenses such as the General Public License, it is unlikely projects like Android, Firefox, OpenOffice/Libreoffice would thrive quite in the way they have done. Copyright law has given these projects the right to determine how others can use their program and source code, whether or not others can profit from it, the right to have code attributed back to the original project and the right to grant anyone the ability to look at the original source code and learn from it. Without copyright law, we really would be in a Wild West of ideas stolen and profited from by Copyright Cowboys; or rather, corporations with lots of money that could (and would) take any of this free software and sell it as their own, with no repatriation or acknowledgement to those that wrote it.

I also assert my right to have my writing here attributed to myself, and the right that only I may profit from it. It isn't so much about my going on a copyright crusade in order to protect my work, and it certainly isn't about me advocating a limiting of our internet freedoms just so you can buy a single, DRM protected right to read this article on only the devices I decide. It is simply me saying I put a decent 30 minutes in writing this, so don't fob it off as your own. Other than that, you are free to do as you please; my work is licensed under a Creative Commons license, so within those bounds you can be my guest.

But anyway. What absolutely angers me are these shadowy figures, in the UK and beyond, that (despite between £millions to £billions profits) claim piracy is "destroying jobs, income and livelihoods", and that because of this media companies and the police should have unprecedented powers to collect and snoop on ANYONE's data. While they are at it, they may as well be given the right to install cameras in our homes just to be doubly sure exactly WHO in a household is taking part in this crime which is certainly not victimless!

The attacks on our freedom of privacy, expression, and civil liberties is bad enough. But what offends me as well is this claim that it is all done in order to enforce the rights of content creators. Is that so? Does that mean, as an independent content creator, I have access to the same amount of police support/snooping in order to "protect" my intellectual property? I didn't think so. All these laws amount to are a protection racket perpetrated by the wealthy and vested interests of popular media. They are the mobs with easy access to guns and muscle. The reality is it is nothing to do with enforcing copyright laws; just enforcing it for those that can afford.