23 de Enero: Huelga general en Internet

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012.
PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for
the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person
to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures
in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call
Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.
There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like
Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they
circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works,
without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the
studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being
able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create.
If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing
other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the
rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow
people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take
over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
It's all based on the fact that we're competition.
We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech.
We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws
should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the
USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this:
The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence.
They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the
rest of us obedient consumers.
The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that noone wants to be fed with
trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that
you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the
hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to
mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.
To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're
creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls
become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching
movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones
is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had
no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy
in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more
honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information
when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.

EU Politicians Send Letter To US Congress
Warning Of 'Extraterritorial Effects' Of SOPA And PIPA

Since SOPA and PIPA are US bills, the focus has naturally been on the US response to them – notably in the list of major sites that participated in the blackout, or who have otherwise protested against the proposed legislation. But it's important to remember that the whole rationale of these new laws is tackling copyright infringement outside the US.

A letter to the US Congress, written by a group of European Parliamentarians worried about the extraterritorial effects of SOPA and PIPA, offers a different perspective on the bills. For example, it leads with a reference to the EU-US Summit, held in Washington on 28 November 2011 - probably something ignored by most people at the time and since. Here's what the letter says:

The European Parliament, in its joint motion for a resolution on the EU-US Summit of 28 November 2011, objects the proposed legislation by stating:

Stresses the need to protect the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names

[/i]
The joint statement of that Summit had the following section about the Internet:

We share a commitment to a single, global Internet, and will resist unilateral efforts to weaken the security, reliability, or independence of its operations — recognizing that respect for fundamental freedoms online, and joint efforts to strengthen security, are mutually reinforcing.

SOPA and PIPA threaten to cut right across that commitment.

Most of the letter goes over the by-now fairly well-known deficits of the bills, but also points out a particular issue for Europe:

Companies wishing to offer online services will be forced to monitor all communication on their platforms and filter anything which could possibly be an infringement of IPR. The methods of monitoring would almost certainly challenge people's fundamental rights. Considering the world wide character of the internet, European companies will be forced to adhere to US standards to prevent DNS blocking. Article 15 of the European E-Commerce Directive prohibits obligations for the general monitoring of their services. The European Court of Justice has recently ruled in the Scarlet/SABAM case that monitoring and filtering of communication online is a breach of fundamental rights such as privacy, freedom of communication and freedom of information and should not be applied to halt infringements of IPR.

It's not clear how that clash between jurisdictions would be resolved: if online services in Europe monitor all communications, they will be breaching European law; if they don't, they may run foul of SOPA/PIPA. Inevitable legal incompatibilities between the two jurisdictions are also hinted at at the close of the letter:

Concluding, SOPA and PROTECT IP will create tensions across the Atlantic in a time where we need to work more closely together. We ask you to vote against SOPA and PROTECT IP and to work with us on effective laws, which enable a fair remuneration of artists and creators online, without violating fundamental rights or fragmenting the free and open internet as we know it. We also believe in close cooperation in promoting internet freedom world wide, in line with our foreign policy objectives.

It's true that the number of politicians signing the letter is small, so its impact is likely to be correspondingly weak, but it seems that Europe's top politicians are also starting to wake up to SOPA and PIPA, as this report on EurActiv indicates:

Ryan Heath, spokesperson for the EU's digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes, told EurActiv that the EU executive was closely monitoring the developments in the US.

"Today's protest clearly shows that digital issues are now mainstream political issues" Heath said.

"While we acknowledge the importance of combating illegal content online, the means to achieve this objective must be effective, proportionate and preserve the advantages of an open Internet. We expect the extra-territorial impacts of any US legislation would be minimised."[/i]

Good luck with that.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120118/12353017458/eu-politicians-send-letter-to-us-congress-warning-extraterritorial-effects-sopa-pipa.shtml