This Is What A Criminal Looks Like
Feb1909:57 AM
Filed in: Music News
In case you haven't heard, the popular bit torrent site Pirate Bay is currently on trial in Sweden, with the plaintiffs being Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal.
In support of the founders of Pirate Bay currently on trial in Sweden, Norwegian political party Rødt (Red) has launched the "This Is What A Criminal Looks Like" campaign. The campaign's theme is that "file-sharing is good, allowing people to share music, movies and culture."
This Is What A Criminal Looks Like: http://www.filesharer.org
Rødt sees the Swedish court case as yet another attempt by the music and movie industries to stop "technological innovation and development by force". But it's not the people behind Pirate Bay who have shared files; it's the millions that use their site. So visitors to at filesharer.org are encouraged to upload a picture and show the music industry and world "what a criminal looks like".
It's a simple publicity stunt, but it does raise several good points. First of all, as everyone pretty much knows, shutting down The Pirate Bay won't make file sharing go away; the critical mass of people who are doing it is far too big. Plus, digital goods can be copied an infinite amount of times; trying to introduce artificial scarcity into a world of plenty just won't work.
It also challenges the notion that file sharing is a criminal activity per se. "File-sharing is good, allowing people to share music, movies and culture," they claim.
When are the large content owning entities going to realize that you can't fight technology without offering a viable alternative and solution to the consumer? Has the industry really learned nothing from the decade-old Napster fight?
Day by day summaries of the Pirate Bay trial can be read at Torrent Freak here: http://www.torrentfreak.com
Credit goes to Torrent Freak, Hypebot, and Mashable for some of the content in this post.
