Jordan Willms is a trend and tech blogger and a technology consultant. Find more articles like this at sumolabs.com
Jan 17th, 2007 -
Bittorrent Tracker ThePirateBay, has recently declared that it will be looking for a new country to operate out of. However, the news here is that ThePirateBay has elected to buy their own country instead of finding one with relaxed copyright laws.
They found SeaLand, a micro-nation who's sovereignty is in dispute, and launched the website BuySealand.com in order to try to raise funds to purchase it to the tune of 8 digits or more (10 million or more). However, the implication of such an action are clear: "We are the Pirate Bay, and we know what we are doing is illegal, so we are buying our own country to define our own laws". This is a far cry from their traditional defense of "We are not doing anything illegal".
The legality debate aside, the fund raising should be an interesting one to watch, with powerful social and ethical consequences if it succeeds.
Consider the implications of ThePirateBay being organically supported by a huge number of Internet users who would rather their money go to the for-profit PirateBay rather than into the hands of the original copyright owners of the video, music, books and software they are ultimately downloading through the PirateBay's service. The irony is that the same wired folks who are donating money, are the first to blow whistles when it comes to any copyright infringement against apple, web developers, and designers. Ethically, it seems Internet users have severe double standards.
My argument here is simple: We are seeing a trend to where intellectual property rights are decreasing in value, and becoming harder to enforce. This is party due to the widespread prevalence of piracy, but also because of the potential ability of services like the PirateBay to thwart governments and define their own laws.
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