2012-12-20



Infopolicy: The sad defeat of yesterday was that the UK Pirate Party had succumbed to legal threats and taken down its long-used proxy for The Pirate Bay, after the copyright industry shamefully had threatened to ruin the Pirate Party’s executive personally. As a result, the Luxemburgish and Argentinian Pirate Parties have both decided to put up their own proxies in solidarity and action.

The copyright industry in the UK decided to go after the UK Pirate Party members personally over the organization’s proxy to The Pirate Bay, threatening financial ruin for them and their families in a lawsuit. This is unprecedented, unethical, and cancerous to society – in essence, a special interest putting its financial resources behind trying to destroy a political party as such because they disagree with the political direction. As a result, the PPUK decided to close the proxy and come back to fight another day. This is despicably shameful behavior on part of the copyright industry, and nothing short of corporate bullying of the “might makes right” type.

As a result of the shameful bullying from the copyright industry in the UK, we now see more proxies bloom across the world, refusing to let sharing, culture, and knowledge go silenced by corporate bullies. The Pirate Parties strike back by refusing to be silenced.

The Argentinian Pirate Party has a new proxy up to The Pirate Bay as of today at tpb.partidopirata.com.ar.

The Luxemburg Pirate Party has a new proxy up to The Pirate Bay as of today at tpb.piraten.lu.

“The Pirate Bay is only a search engine, like Google”, says Sven Clement, president of the Pirate Party in Luxemburg. “Due to the pressure from lobbyists, politicians all over Europe are seduced to expand the censorship infrastructure to prevent freedom of expression, the right to information and the free exchange of culture. With our proxy, we help circumventing the internet censorship of European countries!”

The Argentinian Pirate Party writes, “We wish the UK Pirate Party best of luck in their continued fight for free access to culture and knowledge, and have put up our own proxy to The Pirate Bay which you can access from anywhere in the world – including from the UK and other places where it has been censored.”

In particular, the Luxemburgish proxy can be expected to remain just as online as The Pirate Bay itself. The LU cabinet has been adamant that it’s not buying into the propaganda of the special interests in the copyright industry, and Minister of Economy Schneider has gone on record saying that “In Luxembourg, even illegal downloads are legal”.

In the meantime, the Swedish Pirate Party remains the Internet Service Provider of The Pirate Bay. We stand united against censorship and special interests.

(As a final note, if I were the copyright industry in the UK, I’d be a lot more careful in crossing that particular line – going after people personally, as well as their families – against an organization with representatives who are legally immune to any and all prosecution through their election mandate. If the copyright industry wants to play legal hardball, crossing that exact line against such an organization could well have been one of the worst decisions made in the history of humankind. But that’s just me being logical; the copyright industry isn’t exactly known for applying logic to their decision-making process. In this case, maybe they just got lucky that we’re quite nice and peaceful chaps at the end of the day.)

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