Since 2006, some things seem to have changed; in Sweden, at least. In 2009, while wearing a Pirate Party T-shirt might still label you slightly strange, anti-establishment or ‘too cheap to pay for stuff’, the ‘AFK politicians’ — that is, the ‘old’ political parties — have begun to realise that the Pirate Party do exist, are growing at an impressive rate and are far from joking. On the other side of the North Sea, the Pirate Bay trial has brought the issues of The State vs. Technology ever so slightly closer to the spotlight than before. Here, however, The State have not dithered in passing their verdict: The IPRED was passed in 2006, BitTorrent users already live rather dangerously (note that BitTorrent is not and cannot be illegal in itself — we could just as well criminalise hyperlinks), and in Ireland, ISPs are ‘recommended’ to block users from accessing The Pirate Bay, a regrettable infringement on users’ freedom to access information, since TPB is not an illegal site — whereas it is still possible to browse sites on violent pornography or how to create a bomb, for example, on most networks. Meanwhile, the French government is effectively blacking out the Internet in an attempt to beat “file sharers”. If only I was joking.
Read the full post under The State vs. Technology in Erika Nilsson’s thoughtbook (Google-översättning).
