Greetings all... or one, as the case may be.

This is the start of a new initiative to blog at least once a week by Friday, honestly haven't really been looking forward to blogging, not for lack of things to rant about but rather the incredulous number of irritating/stupid/intriguing events around the world and under the door mat. So it was pretty hard to keep focused and decide on any one thing to rant about, fortunately recent events have provided the necessary combination of anger/amusement/stupidity/(I love slashes). Therefore I present the latest rant regarding:

Internet Piracy, and the jolly fellows at the RIAA

Firstly, I should confess to being an internet pirate - movies, music, books, programs, they all have a special place on my hard drive. Whether or not I'm pure evil because of that is a topic for another rant, today I'm just going to take a look at recent events in the file sharing community. Recently a cornerstone of the bittorrent community The Pirate bay (TPB) was raided by Swedish police, who proceeded to seize servers and computers although according to the people at TPB the police weren't really sure if there was a crime or not - one of those pre-emptive strike dealies I suppose.

To give a bit of a back story, the pirate bay is a site that archives torrent files, it isn't the real file but it allows users to download various files through a third party program like bitcomet, Azerus, bittornado ect. They are kind of like a blueprint of a file, the site also served as a 'tracker' which following the previous analogy tells one where to get the parts for the blueprint by directing traffic to people who already have parts that others need. So the actual copyrighted material is on peoples hard drives, torrents sites just provide the maps on how to get them. That's where the Swedish copyright law (and North American law for that matter) is a bit vague, so the fellows at TPB could operate with relative impunity... though not without friction from the Recording Industry Artists of America(RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) who sent a few cease and desist letters of varying threat levels. In response TPB replied with insulting, sarcastic and hilarious letters which where even posted on their site. The arrogance showed by TPB probably incensed the RIAA which has a history of using scare tactics to combat internet piracy.

After shutting down the grand daddy of file sharing Napster, the RIAA went after Kazaa by targeting users of the service (Kazaa itself is another interesting story, but no time for that now). The highly publicised lawsuits against a wide variety of people for storing copyrighted music was interesting not so much that a company decided to sue people but that they were able to get access to private information without a warrant. They tried the same thing in Canada but by law the service providers contacted the people who were targeted first before they gave any information to the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) so of course the scare tactic failed and got little if any media coverage (though that may be just because it was in Canada).

The RIAA/MPAA's current tactic to stop piracy is to instill a fear of lawsuits (not necessarily the law) into as many people as possible. For example, the RIAA may claim victory in shutting down other torrent sites such as suprnova, but it wasn't because of legal superiority - they just harassed the site creators until they got fed up and quit (a bit of an oversimplification, but essentially how it 'went down').
The fear of lawsuits has become more important than the actual laws themselves, especially when companies have teams of lawyers that can easily confuse and intimidate the average person.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) the scare tactics are aimed at people who really don't know much about computers and the internet, so if a group such as TPB were to flagrantly flaunt their piracy it really doesn't look too good. So of course the RIAA and MPAA (in a press release no less)claimed victory (.pdf file) with the police raid, though already TPB site has a message promising to be back up in a one or two days.

*sigh*

So that's basically how it stands, though it should be noted that TPB is also a political group called the Piratbyrån which may have been as much of a reason for the raid. Overall I found the whole thing more funny than anything, as a file sharing pirate the seemingly temporary 'sinking' of TPB doesn't really mean too much. There are tons of other torrent sites, and other methods of file sharing, the only thing that the RIAA is doing seems to be weeding out the computer illiterates, or forcing people to learn more about computers/internet to get files.
Either way their current tactics are not only ineffective but creating a lot of animosity towards them, the RIAA is acting exactly the way they should try to avoid - like an evil money grubbing corporation. It honestly seems like this whole argument is being carried on by a bunch of junior high kids (the most sarcastic and evil children of them all). While TPB was a bit too antagonistic in it's response to the RIAA, the defenders of copyrighted material seem to have the heads well up their asses as well. The mistake they continue to make is seriously underestimating file sharers and the power of the internet, as well as trying to attack privacy and freedom of speech in their attempts and curbing piracy.
I don't mean to say that piracy is protected by freedom of speech and information, but that the only way to ensure internet piracy is elimated is to have complete and totalitarian control of it, and I don't think any organization should have the power to limit, censure and capitalize the information on the net.
That's about it for today, in conclusion the RIAA is within it's rights to fight piracy... just as long as they don't step on the rights of others.