SOBs
Much to my dismay I learned this morning that the Pirate Bay, the Sweden based torrent tracker service was raided by police brandishing breach of copyright warrant(s). The Los Angeles Times reports
The website was known to enable illegal copying. The U.S. movie industry praises the action.
According to Wired News the recent crack down on Pirate Bay is the culmination of six years of cooperation between the Motion Picture Association of America & the US government pressuring the Swedes. Apparently the Bay has been number 1 on the MPAA hit list for years along with torrentSpy. As entertainment scoundrels scramble to swindle consumers through every avenue of business, cyber-pirates have managed to turn the table on industry by swarming virtually $6.1 billion in booty. Actually the case against The Bay appears to pose a great challenge to Swedish courts in light of the nation’s lax copyright laws and technical details behind the BitTorrent system. The system was originally conceived by academics interested in modeling Economic models. Ironically it is now used by the people for the people to irritate greedy entertainers, agents, and suits who perpetually infest and feed of the Economy.
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.
—Victor Hugo
As long as infantile or biased ideas about democracy hang around and evolve, a free Internet will be the status quo and till that time ends file sharing is here to stay.
The fact of the matter is that very few, if any, pop artists or persons involved with pop culture are starving or homeless. God nor dreams has anything to do with artists being recognized for their work, recieving Grammys or Oscars. We the people do, and they know it. We work too long and too God damn hard to come home at the end of the day to learn that the Douglas's recieved $275,000 for a picture of the couple with baby outside the home, or People Magazine gave Britney Spears a rediculous sum for an intimate look into her dysfunctional marriage, or PDiddy putting a diamond crusted chalice next to his high school diploma on the mantle in his too-fucking big mansion. Alright, the PDiddy scenario is diversion, but the case of the dulst Rap star 50 cent is not. I've always wondered whether some of these uneducated Hustlers & Pimps realize that the diamonds they floss with comes from criminal activities that make digital piracy look like childs play.
For the masses of hopeless consumers who cannot muster the conscious effort to make a choice without input from a style guru, lifestyle expert, player, or pimp; for the silent majority, loud minority and everyone in between the philosophy is very simple: if you got the know-how get hour hands on it, if you like it buy it. Once the people who make a living off of telling you what to buy, eat, shit, and drink realize your will to make a consicous choice they will have to change their behaviors. Believe me Paris Hilton is rich enough from her inheritance, she doesn't deserve any more from your salary!