On the NET

Sometimes there are things that go boom online.
Like, for instance, the thing I read just this morning: the swedish police stormed PRQ ISP's headquarters and took away servers that were hosting The Pirate Bay torrent tracker.
For those of you who still prefer DC++ peer2peer, The Pirate Bay is unquestionably the world's largest torrent database that runs anakata's hypercube tracker.
As any good torrent tracker, they make good fun out of copyright infrigement warning they get every day (the juiciest are posted on their site at http://www.thepiratebay.org) and giving the middle finger to the big MPAA (and others).
This bold move by Swedish authorities has sparked massive protests in the country mainly by IT groups who accuse the govt of collaborating with the US administration and hackers who took down several public administration sites. Also official protests have been filed by The Pirate Party (believe it or not, the digital pirates have their own party which, with 1500 signatures behind them have a good chance of getting parliament seats on next elections) as the legality of the measure by which the warrants were issued is questioned.
Now I'll cut the newscast to make several points.
1. The legal authorities are stupid. None of the dignitaries involved has any idea what torrents are. Most accusation targeting TPB state that they are infringing international copyright laws. Now that's pretty retarded since all TPB is doing is maintain a database of torrents which are nothing more than hashes describing links to people who do keep copyrighted material on their computers. If you are among those who don't get it, just picture a map to a video store or a phone book or an add paper. Of course in the phonebook there may be the number of a known assassin but I doubt you'll charge the book publisher for that, right? No sane person could imagine a phone book publisher could know all details about the people mentioned in the book. That's why torrents aren't illegal. Well, maybe in some countries but not in Sweeden. Why? Because Sweeden still has some sane laws that keep the country away from Orwell's 1984.

2. International laws are stupid. Why? They protect the fat distribution network and guarantees they get only richer and richer. There's this misconception that copyright laws are ment to protect the authors, keeps artists from dying in poverty, etc. Please! If a movie's release (DVD, cinema network, etc) would be calculated to cover the running costs of a studio and pay the cast and crew and give the studio a decent profit, prices in cinemas and DVD's would be less than a quarter of what they are. But alas, there's a big distribution network there ment to suck the blood from move and music lovers. Online piracy doesn't hit that much a producer. Premiere shows and initial releases get their money, until online pirate distribution begin to take publishes and distributors out of the circuit. Of these, the distributors lose most. Why? Because a distributor fills its stock from the publishers and pays in advance those stocks. If people don't buy due to piracy, they lose. The publisher got its money and from his point of view, he made a deal. The money travel to the studio, who gets paid and pays the stars in the movie and so on. They don't lose.
Now I come and say. Why doesn't a studio sidestep all the publisher/distributor fuss? Why not built an online distribution system with a DRM system and enable direct download from movie lovers? No more DVDs to burn, each could burn a movie after watching it if they like it. Promotion costs would be cut, production costs would be cut, leading to better and cheaper product that reaches the audience directly. I would pay $3 per movie and download it from a studio site. I know others who would. A digital signature within such file would work and free players who read said signature are easy to make. Sounds good, doesn't it? Of course that would hurt distributors and publishers. Ouch! But it cuts piracy and feeds the artists and gives the fans what they need. All legal and stuff.
Unfortunately big distribution companies feed the politicians who make the laws and it's natural for the laws to favor big contributors. After all democracy was built on bribes.

3. Law application infringes on privacy and cultural exchange. Do I need to say more? State institutions spy your net traffic, your IP address, peek at your email and finally invade your home to study your hard drives and private documents, etc. Hello people! The police-state is here, as in the aforementioned 1984. Right now the whole freedom and democracy thing goes down the toilet, welcome back communism and state-sposored terrorism. Of course we can't call a country's actions terrorism, since it's state-sponsored.
Nowadays cultural acts have become the priviledge of the rich, turning the world towards an involution aimed at the middle ages.
If you want to be up to date with a decent number of movies you have to pay around $25 per movie. So maybe you're not a die-hard fan like me who watches a movie a day, maybe you watch a movie every other day so you'd pay like $100 per week for movies? Hmmm ... since wages around here stand like $300 a month (and that's above average) what do we do?
The same goes for music, software, e-books and the like since most arts have a digital correspondent.
So where are we going from here? Limit the access to culture and knowledge for those who can't afford it? Thank God for the underground markets, otherwise I probably wouldn't be here.