stargrave's blog

FSFE Fellowship Blogs weblog

Defendant Internet, get up!

The judicial proceeding is going in Stockholm above the Pirate Bay,
the biggest filesharing service in Internet.

It is not judging of Pirate Bay, it is judging of the whole Internet.
It does not suit the entertainment industry’s (EI) world, because Internet
is too wide, so is too independent. It does not fit in their tables of
debit and credit and also in a whole world’s picture existing in their
tight heads.

It is judging of modern advanced technology, above which EI can not get
on. Torrent-tracker provides ability of instant worldwide file sharing,
but EI is still in separated world of grannys and grandpas, where the
bottle of kerosene was locked in sched. Everyone who uses, for example,
Transmission or Azurerus know what a great abilities this programs
give. They can recieve huge quantity of files, they can share them
(moreover, this two processes is associated together, so you can not take
without returning back). Everything in this complex technological segment
is very harmful, from the EI’s view, as it does not provide profit for
them. They want to roll back the wheel of time, to find themselves in
happy 50s, where noone, like Internet, can not interrupt their routine
clicking of arithmometers, making money on music and movies selling.

Pirate Bay baffled them. They do not know what to do. 25 millions of
people share files, and EI dazedly look on it, embarrassedly murmur
in a court: because of Pirate Bay, we can not provide legal content
distribution using torrents for money, because of them doing this for
free. And what? Tomorrow I will go outside and begin to give everyone
my purchased books. So do I have to be in prison, because I am mining
bookselling? If there will appear a millionier with free benzine, so
does he has to be in prison too, because of mining others, that takes
triple price for it?

Two models of world meet face to face on that proceeding: paid and
free (gratis). Paid one judges free one, underdeveloped and advanced.
Cash desk judges double core processor with three levels of cache
memory. Guys in limos judges three young men with notebooks and brief
cases. Bookkeepers judges Internet, because it is not a trading counter.

Thus, what is happening in Stockholm is a proceeding between capitalism
and futurism, between masters of Earth and Internet’s community. It
is nothing for that masters that they ruined Earth, turning it to
dump on graveyard, that they created town’s industry of destroying the
nature. Now, they climbing to Internet to make a money making machine from
it. They carry an old junk, inheritance of Adam Smit: rate of profit,
income ratio, gross domestic income, tax and so on. Trade barbarians
crashes into thin world of digital communications with a club of
copyright, hoping to drive in naughty in trade ghetto.

No way! Internet is a gingerbread man, that escaped from granny of
capitalism and grandpa of totalitarism. Internet is not capitalism or
communism, it is not an american elective democracy or russian’s vertical
of power, it is totally something different. It is an environment,
where engine consists of free communication and tollfree sharing. Let
the poor EI tries to set up customs in the sky and to bottle oceans with
beautiful labels. Internet will survive this process, EI, and even the
state, that one pretty day, driven by progress, will move to virtual
world and disappear there.

Author:
Alexey Polikovsky (original is written in russian)
Translated by:
Sergey Matveev (aka stargrave)