Ink was downloaded more than 400,000 times last week and ended up in fourth place in our weekly chart of most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, where Zombieland occupied the top spot.

Zombieland co-writer Rhett Reese has been following our most pirated movies chart as well, and thus the online success of his film. “Zombieland currently the most pirated movie on bit torrent. Over one million downloads and counting,” he tweeted a few hours ago.

However, unlike the makers of Ink, Reese is not pleased with this achievement, claiming that this piracy disaster may very well prevent a Zombieland sequel from being shot. “Beyond depressing. This greatly affects the likelihood of a Zombieland 2,” he wrote.

Reese’s comments are the classic Hollywood response we wrote about yesterday. Piracy is causing billions of dollars in lost revenue and prevents new movies from being funded, is the doomsday scenario they often paint. But is there any truth in this hunch, or is it just another Hollywood performance? Facts seem to support the latter.

More piracy is not necessarily linked with a drop in box office grosses or DVD sales. ‘The Dark Knight’, which was the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent in 2008 sold millions of DVDs, and grossed a record breaking billion dollars in cinemas worldwide. But what about Zombieland?

The Hollywood Insider wrote that the movie is “alive and kicking” at the box office, putting its success down in part to “strong word-of-mouth”. The release also marks the most successful debut of Woody Harrelson’s career, hitting the No.1 spot and taking $9.4m on its first day and a worldwide $84m to date – all this on a production budget of less than $24m.

Zombieland grossed more than $60.8 million in 17 days, even surpassing the remake of the Dawn of the Dead to become the top-grossing zombie film in history. That does not really sound like something that will prevent a sequel to us.

On the contrary, if anything success on BitTorrent has a direct relation with success at the box office. Since unauthorized ripped versions of virtually all movies appear on the Internet nowadays, it would be a really bad sign if no pirate would want to download it.

But of course, Reese and others could still argue that they would have made even more money if there was no piracy. There are no hard facts to refute this, but with the box office revenue steadily increasing since P2P file-sharing became mainstream, it has to be doubted as well. The same can be said for the claim that less films receive funding.

As many independent filmmakers have already experienced, BitTorrent and the Internet in general can be a boon to the film industry. Instead of seeing it as a threat Hollywood might want to embrace it before it’s too late.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The court ordered Black Internet, supplier of bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, to disconnect the site from the Internet or face penalties of 500,000 kronor ($70,600). The ISP had little choice but to comply. The issue is a serious one and goes far beyond The Pirate Bay – it could be used to silence many other sites in the future unless action is taken.

Earlier this month several politicians objected to the court’s decision, including Camilla Lindberg who sits in parliament for the Liberal Party. She believes that threatening an ISP with damages is taking things too far;

“To silence an operator, I think this is outrageous. We need to review the law and we need a proper investigation,” she said. “Both the public and companies in the IT industry have been surprised and outraged by the Stockholm district court’s decision to issue the ban on Black Internet. The decision is considered by many to go against the legislative history behind the amendment of the Copyright Act in 2005.”

Lindberg went on to say that there is fear that in the future ISPs may be forced to examine the content of traffic that passes through their networks, in order to protect themselves from legal action.

Now, after taking a little while to consider its options, Black Internet has changed its mind about appealing the decision. Initially Black Internet CEO Victor Möller told the Swedish press his company would not appeal, citing a laborious and expensive legal process, but now there has been a change of heart.

“This is the first time in Sweden that an operator has been ordered to stop delivering Internet to someone. We want to know if it’s correct to do so,” said Möller

“The district court made a very controversial decision. The entire ISP business needs some clarity in this matter. A door has been opened and we don’t know what’s behind it. This is a very important question for all ISPs and we can’t just lay down,” he added.

Having previously cited cost as a barrier to an appeal, TorrentFreak learned that there are other groups who are very interested in Black Internet appealing the Stockholm court’s decision, so it appears some sort of collaboration could be on the cards to enable that.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, history has shown that BitTorrent users are an adaptive species that simply migrates to the next site when their home bases become uninhabitable.

While private trackers certainly have their place and will accommodate those lucky enough to get an invite, for this article we are interested in sites that are open to everyone, ranging from full Pirate Bay replacements to a do-it-yourself setup. If you’re looking for high speed downloads you could also consider to try Usenet instead (our Usenet guide).

Full Pirate Bay Alternatives

The only full Pirate Bay alternatives are sites that index torrent files, are open to everyone and also have a working tracker. Unfortunately, there are only a few sites out there that offer this full package -there are four of them below. We decided to include Demonoid here because it tracks many public torrents.

1. Torrentbox

2. 1337x

3. H33t

4. Demonoid (semi-private)

Torrent Indexers

Torrent indexers are sites that have a searchable directory of torrent files, but don’t host a (public) tracker of their own. Mininova has a tracker, but they only allow ‘featured’ torrents uploaded through their content distribution service. The most used torrent indexers are:

5. Mininova

6. isoHunt

7. Torrentreactor

8. BTjunkie

Torrent Meta-Seach Engines

BitTorrent meta-search engines are yet another brand of torrent sites. They don’t have a tracker and don’t host any torrent files on their servers. Instead they search for and link to torrents hosted on third party sites.

9. Torrentz

10. Nowtorrents

11. Qtorrents

12. Torrent-Finder

Private Trackers (open signup)

Most of the larger private trackers require an invite to join, but there are always a few that allow new members. Below are four of these (open) private trackers and more can be found on Btracs.

13. RTN

14. BiteMyTorrent

15. BitShock

16. TorrentIt

Standalone BitTorrent Trackers

Torrent indexers and meta-search engines can be used to find torrents, but none of them will be of much use without a stable BitTorrent tracker. Standalone BitTorrent trackers are much needed, they handle the communication between downloaders but don’t index any torrents themselves.

17. OpenBitTorrent

18. PublicBitTorrent

19. The Hidden Tracker

20. Denis.Stalker

DIY Pirate Bay Alternatives

The last category of Pirate Bay alternatives are the do-it-yourself projects. By using the three ingredients below The Pirate Bay can be easily rebuilt. It might take a few hours, but then the path to world domination is clear.

21. Pirate Bay Torrents Clone

22. Pirate Bay HTML Clone

23. Torrage: Torrent API

24. Tracker Software

Last but not Least

Google, the mother of all search engines has a filetype:torrent search command that allows you to find torrent files scattered across the Internet. Also, Google’s custom search allows everyone to create their own torrent search engine. Don’t tell the MPAA and RIAA.

25. Google

If you think we missed any good alternatives, please feel free to add your own in the comment section below, while clearly noting which category they fit into.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The country also has more than its fair share of copyright infringement problems. Even if you take her comments with the usual pinch of salt, last year US Department of Commerce Representative Karen Burress painted a fairly bleak picture of the situation. She claimed that Nigeria was the largest market in Africa for infringing goods, with around 80% of the available international music CDs in the country and around 40% of local music sold as pirate copies.

Now, after a conference at the Protea Hotel in Lagos last Wednesday, a group of Nigerian music groups and artists are saying “enough is enough,” and are planning some pretty drastic action to attract the attention of the country’s President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to their plight.

The Nigerian Music Industry Coalition – which includes the Performing Musicians Employers Association of Nigeria (PMAN), Association of Recording Industries (NARI), Performing & Mechanical Rights Society Ltd/Gte (PMRS), Association of Music Business Professionals (AM.B-Pro) and the Gramophone Records & Cassette Dealers (AGRECD) to name just a few – say that Nigerian artists are “all dying in silence” and something needs to be done about it.

The coalition claims that after several weeks of talks preceded by a lack of meaningful help from the government, they have no choice but to take drastic action.

“We are, therefore, forced to request Mr. President to declare a state of emergency with respect to the fight against the scourge of piracy and muster the necessary resources to eradicate this monster,” they said.

So how does the coalition plan to attract the attention of the president?

“If we do not see any change soon, we have resolved to call on all well meaning practitioners throughout the country to begin a mass hunger strike to make it clear to the world that the situation is not acceptable. Also, as a sign of our seriousness, we will soon announce a ‘warning strike’ that will request all broadcast platforms across the country to observe a 24-hour “no music day” as a demonstration of solidarity with the plight of our industry,” they said in a statement.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The next step was to write to the individuals and threaten them with legal action, unless an amount ranging from £450 to £700 was paid. Somewhere between 40 and 60% of recipients panicked and paid up, while the rest engaged in ‘letter tennis’ with Davenport, corresponding back and forth and getting nowhere – literally – those who stood their ground have not been taken to court.

Of course, due to the weakness in their system and poor evidence gathered against alleged file-sharers, it wasn’t long before Davenport accused the wrong people of file-sharing, including pensioners erroneously accused of downloading gay porn. One of Davenport’s clients, Atari, found it all too much, and withdrew from chasing file-sharers through the company. The mountain of bad publicity continued to grow culminating in the respected consumer magazine Which? reporting Davenport Lyons to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. Then everything went a little quiet. Until this week.

During the last few days more letters, almost identical to the ones sent out by Davenport Lyons, have been dropping onto doormats around the UK. The claims go through all the usual legal jargon but amount to the same – give us between £550 and £750 or we will take you to court.

The letters are sent out by a company called ACS Law, who can be found on the web via their website. According to the site, the partners at ACS Law are Andrew Crossley and Nicola Beale. Many specialties are listed for the pair, but copyright law is not one of them.

Some of the company’s clients are listed on the site – games publishers Reality Pump, Techland, Topware and German ‘porn-protectors’ Digiprotect – and all of them are previous (or maybe even existing) clients of Davenport Lyons. The titles being ‘protected’ by ACS Law on behalf of these companies are the exact same titles previously ‘protected’ by Davenport Lyons. One could be forgiven in thinking these companies are connected, particularly since much of ACS’s documentation sent to the public and listed on their website is ‘cut and pasted’ from Davenport Lyons documentation. They even have a Microsoft Word document entitled Notes on Evidence, which was created on a version of Word actually registered to Davenport Lyons.

During our research some interesting things came up. Andrew Crossley, a partner at ACS Law (who recently defended the Dubai ‘sex on the beach‘ case), lists his email address on most issues unconnected to these anti-piracy cases as andrew.crossley@acs-law.co.uk – note the .co.uk part in the domain.

However, ACS-Law.co.uk as listed on the Law Society website is not the website address given to anti-piracy cases – that is ACS-Law.ORG.UK - and it was registered just weeks ago. Delving into the WHOIS information for the site reveals that the domain is not registered to ACS Law, but to one Terence Tsang. This same Mr Tsang is a known cyber-squatter who has previously locked horns and lost domain disputes with Morgan Stanley and others.

Of course, we sent Andrew Crossley at ACS Law an email (to both the .co.uk and .org.uk addresses) and gave him an opportunity to respond. We asked several questions (listed in summary below) but as yet we’ve received no response. When (if) ACS Law respond, we’ll publish their answers. In the meantime, recipients of letters should not worry and certainly shouldn’t feel hurried in responding to these allegations. Good starting advice can be found here along with a discussion thread here.

1. What is your connection with Davenport Lyons?
2. Why are you servicing so many (ex?) Davenport Lyons clients?
3. Why does ACS Law have two web presences – ACS-Law.co.uk and ACS-Law.org.uk?
4. Why is ACS-Law.org.uk owned by a known cyber-squatter and not your company?
5. How many of these cases against alleged file-sharers do you intend to pursue and who is on your client list?
6. These cases got hugely messy for Davenport Lyons and it’s only a matter of time
before ACS Law accuses a pensioner or child of downloading porn, or makes other errors. Are you concerned that you, your partner and/or your company will be bought into disrepute by taking these cases on?
7. If your client’s aim is to reduce copyright infringement (rather than simply generating revenue from it), why not give us a list of all the titles you ‘protect’ and we’ll publish them, to warn people away from downloading them?
8. Around the web, the specialties of the ACS Law partners can be found, but copyright law is not listed as one of them – why is that?
9. Considering your approach to these cases is almost (if not) identical to that of Davenport Lyons, do you anticipate contact from Which? and the Solicitors Regulatory Authority in the coming months? If not, why not?

Stay tuned for updates!

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Today’s verdict in the Pirate Bay case only strengthens support for the site. Many people have been blown away by the harsh sentences and will protest in the streets of Stockholm tomorrow.

The upside seems to be that people have realized that the current climate needs to change, indicated by the Swedish Pirate party gaining many new members. Over the past few hours over 3000 members applied, raising the member count from less than 15,000 up to more than 18,000.

“We’ve surpassed another party in parliament, making us the 5th largest in member count, and our youth section is about to take the number 1 position,” Swedish Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak in a comment.

Christian Engström, vice-chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party said in a comment that the verdict is their ticket into the European Parliament. For the upcoming European election, the Pirate Party requires 100,000 Swedish votes to get a seat, a goal that is within reach after today.

The Pirate Party is a strong supporter of reforming current copyright laws and party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak earlier that their aim is to “shake the political copyright world at its core.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The trial began roughly half an hour later. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall read out the charges that can be best summarized as “commercial copyright infringement”. The plaintiffs are Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal. Lundström’s lawyer pointed out that the prosecutor may have drawn up some charges incorrectly. Interestingly, Lundström is the only one of the defendants with two lawyers, one of which is a copyright expert.

Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter stated their defense. They all pleaded not guilty.

Roswall then went on to present the claims of the media outfits, and described how The Pirate Bay works, with a little bit of history. He went on till the lunch break, but meanwhile Rick Falkvinge of the Pirate Party couldn’t resist accessing The Pirate Bay site from his seat in the courtroom.

The prosecution said that TPB was aimed at Swedish users until late 2004, when Fredrik had contact with Carl Lundström. They say Lundström helped them develop the project by donating funds and resources to enable the growth of the site.

The prosecution suggested that The Pirate Bay was a commercial organization, with Carl Lundström as a shareholder and financier of the company.

They also said that The Pirate Bay investigated the possibility of moving to Argentina after concerns over changes in Swedish copyright law during 2005. The prosecution claimed there were plans with Carl Lundström to set up a company in British Virgin Islands.

Discussion ensued over the advertising on The Pirate Bay site, and the involvement of one Daniel Oded and companies Random Media and Transworld Advertising.

Following the lunch break, proceedings continued with prosecutor Håkan Roswall failing to start up his computer. For several minutes, listeners of the live audio could hear mouse-clicks as Roswall, who earlier claimed to be an expert on computer crimes, tried to get his PowerPoint presentation on the screen. He was eventually ordered by the judge to stick to his papers and continue.

Information was presented about various movie, music and game downloads co-ordinated by The Pirate Bay before the raid in 2006. Roswall further discussed the total number of seeds and peers on the tracker, all part of the evidence that was previously gathered by the plaintiffs.

During the afternoon, Peter Sunde sent a message: “How the hell did they think this was going to be something else than EPIC FAIL for the prosecution? We’re winning so hard.” Peter points out that the prosecutor is having difficulty working out the difference between megabits and megabytes.

The case was adjourned around 4pm, and will continue tomorrow morning.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The Pirate Bay team have been preparing for the media battle, in part by designating their tour bus as the site’s official media center. But already there are complaints about how accessible the trial will be to the public, with TiAMO and Brokep demanding changes to how it will be made available. In true Pirate Bay style, they want everyone to have access, one way or another.

According to Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij (aka TiAMO) the case will be heard in room 9 of Stockholm’s District Court. This room has space for maximum 35-40 people to view the case. At least 20 of these seats will be reserved for the press and, you can bet, these will be taken up by the mainstream press, many of which are unsympathetic to the site’s cause, a point not lost on Peter Sunde, aka Brokep.

“Traditional media is 90% owned by the opposition in this case and that is something that really must be taken into account,” he notes.

The court will provide another area which will have the trial’s audio fed in. “There will be a room where you can hear the sound from the trial,” says TiAMO, “this room can hold 20-25 people,” but the space allocated just isn’t enough.

“So this does not work,” says TiAMO. “I want a request for real premises immediately so they have time to fix the problem.” He’s very unhappy at the space allocated, noting that the case is one of the biggest political cases in recent times and since there are four people on trial, there isn’t even enough space for their family members to be present.

“I NEED a room for at least 150 people, 20 reserved for the family and 80 to 100 reserved for the press and public. It need not be in the same room, but we need several rooms REQUIRING video too, not just sound,” he demands.

Brokep says that in addition to the seats held back for the traditional press, he is set to demand that the court reserves seats for bloggers too.

As the discussions continue over the proposals do a live webcast of the court case of a Boston University student versus the RIAA, Brokep wants similar for the Pirate Bay. They want the case transmitted live on the web.

“We want to show how it works. Cards on the table, everything should be transparent!”

And why not?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In a recent poll, 21 percent of all Swedes indicated that they would consider voting for the Pirate Party in the upcoming European Parliament elections. Among men in the 18-29 age group, this number goes up to a massive 55% – an unprecedented statistic.

Aside from the support in this poll, more people have joined the party recently. During the last quarter the membership count increased by 50% – from 6000 to 9000 – which makes the party larger than the Green Party which currently holds 19 seats in the Swedish parliament.

Swedish Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that the Internet played a big part in the recent successes of the party. “We couldn’t have done this without the dialog infrastructure that the Net provides. Oldmedia has lost control of the discourse,” he said. With all the controversy surrounding the new anti-piracy and wiretapping legislation, the Pirate Party was often mentioned on blogs, since they are the most outspoken opponent.

For the upcoming European election, the Pirate Party requires 100,000 Swedish votes to get a seat, a goal that is within reach in the current political climate. Falkvinge is optimistic too, and said “We need to grow by another 50%, counting from the Swedish election two years ago, to get seats in the EU parliament and shake the political copyright world at its core. It’s hard, it’s supposed to be hard, but the numbers show we can do it. We can do this, and the charts are going stratospheric.”

The Internet will probably play a big role in this election for the Pirate Party, and recent history has shown that this is not only true for parties that carry “pirate” in their name. Elections to the European Parliament will be held in June 2009, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the Pirate Party fares.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The two, who just turned 30, have a long history of copyright infringement which started back in the ’80’s, with Peter cracking Amiga games and Fredrik copying Commodore64 software. At the time they had never heard of copyright infringement, they were just doing what everybody else did. To the amusement of the audience, Peter said he didn’t think piracy was ‘wrong’ when he was a kid, but now that he’s an adult, he knows it’s not.

Years later, in 2003, they got involved in founding Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy), a pro-piracy organization that was created in response to anti-Piratbyrån. The goal of Piratbyrån was to start a debate on copyright issues, and how they affect society. Until then, most press in Sweden would simply take everything anti-Piratbyrån said for granted.

In the years to come, Piratbyrån started several pro-piracy projects, and the most influential is without a doubt the founding of The Pirate Bay on November 21, 2003. “We needed to have a filesharing network in Sweden, because there was none,” Peter said. “At this time there was one big torrent site, which was called Suprnova, but they mainly had international content. We and Piratbyrån wanted more Swedish and Scandinavian content. So we started a big library, and that is The Pirate Bay.”

Fredrik, who ran one of the earlier versions of the tracker on his laptop, explained that when The Pirate Bay went live, it was hosted in South America. “The Pirate Bay originally started out in Mexico, on a Mexican server where Anakata, the third guy of The Pirate Bay was working at the time,” he said. Anakata hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for, but it was soon overloaded since the site grew so rapidly.

The Pirate Bay was initially available in Swedish language only. However, after a year they found out that, although their site was initially targeted at Scandinavians, over 80% of the users came from other parts of the world. In fact, one of the most popular torrents was a Swedish language course. Because of increasing worldwide popularity, The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages.

The popularity of the site didn’t go unnoticed in Hollywood. Like many other BitTorrent sites, The Pirate Bay also received several takedown notices. However, the way they responded to these was quite unique and some have become news stories in themselves. Threats from the entertainment industry didn’t stop at sending letters. In true Hollywood style, The Pirate Bay admins soon saw private investigators watching their every move.

“They’ve sent private investigators after us, which is really stupid if you do something online,” Peter said. “What are they going to find, that we are sitting behind our computers?” Fredrik added: “I guess the private investigator that went after me in Gothenburg got to see a lot of good bars, a lot of late nights, but probably not a lot of evidence gathering.” Peter then noted that someone from the IFPI was actually at the conference, “still trying to find out what we’re doing.”

Eventually The Pirate Bay got raided, following pressure from Hollywood and the USA. Fredrik recalls the day vividly: “I got a phone call like 10am in the morning, it was Anakata.” He told Fredrik that there were police officers at their office, and asked him to get down to the colocation facility and get rid of the ‘incriminating evidence’, although none of it, whatever it was, was related to The Pirate Bay.

As Fredrik was leaving, he suddenly realized that the problems might be linked to their tracker, so he initiated a full backup of the site. At the colocation facility there were 65 police, some in civilian clothing. Fredrik asked them: “Who are you? What are you doing here?” To which they responded, “Who are YOU? What are you doing here?” After questions back and forth, Fredrik eventually told them his name, and a police officer said, “Oh, we’ve been looking for you.”

During the subsequent questioning, the Pirate Bay trio gave up very little information. Anakata quickly confessed to his crime – of killing the Swedish prime minister when he was 2 years old, but that was all they got. It is up to the court to decide whether the Pirate Bay founders are operating illegally or not. Until then, The Pirate Bay is still up and running, stronger than ever.

As always, there are a lot of plans for the future, and Peter and Fredrik briefly discussed some. One of the most interesting plans is to encrypt tracker connections, so anti-piracy organizations can’t spy on their users. We will probably hear more about that in the future. The keynote speech by Peter and Fredrik was streamed from a mobile phone last night, and we embedded the recording below. The sound quality is far from optimal, but it’s watchable. The talk starts at 13m 00s

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Around two weeks ago, a message appeared on the site, written by Rachel Faith Anderson, “Owner, SysOp and Chief Admin of the Vortex Network”. In it were thanks to the ‘heroes’ who put the site together along with statements about Vortex Network becoming something unique and something different, a standard claim for a new BitTorrent site trying to get off the ground. “Welcome to the eye of the storm my friend” ends the notice from Rachel, which has turned out to be quite the prophetic greeting.

The Start of the Storm

A few days ago the first rumblings of dissatisfaction started to appear from within the userbase of Vortex Network. Although donations are an absolute requirement for most BitTorrent communities to stay afloat, there are many differing opinions on how this issue should be approached. It’s safe to say that some of the community were not happy with the site’s ‘donation’ page. While it’s not compulsory for users to pay to use Vortex Network, there is a page where users can pay cash to fix their share ratio, enabling them to opt-out of seeding and get ‘customer’ or ‘patron’ status.

Some other members who won’t (or can’t) seed have cautiously welcomed the scheme. However, it seems that most are not in favor of it, labeling Rachel Faith – a self-confessed BitTorrent newcomer – as greedy. For her part, Rachel denies that the site is accepting payments in this fashion, indicating that the code was already present in ‘Gazelle’.

The P2L debate will rage on here and elsewhere, but this is really just a distraction. Following this discussion came an announcement from Rachel Faith Anderson herself. It’s quite long but in order to present the entire picture, here it is in full. To fully appreciate the nuances, a detailed read is required:

A Discussion not a Debate

That is what I shall be doing. In a debate, sides present their case and then some other party gets to decide. In a discussion, both sides can present their case and then that is that. They are each understood. But there is not the presumption that persuasion will occur.

I know this “debate” has been around for longer than p2p. I know the roots run deep and no one post can persuade those whose minds are already made up. Thus, this is a discussion. Feel free to discuss for as long as you wish. Feel free to ‘debate’ if you wish. Know that I am not interested in debate.

With that being said, let me make the brief introduction and outline the points I hope to present. There are many issues, and not all of them are even related, so keeping this as a discussion not a debate, allows the latitude to include all the points being raised even if some are not germane.

The list of points:

P2L is bad, impure, and somehow against the spirit of something greater. It makes others (those who pay not seed) who are for this reason not as good as others (those who see seeding as the ultimate sign) equal.

Yeah, it does exactly that. It says, just because you seed and do not donate, you are not better than someone who donates and does not seed as much as you. If you are offended by the equality of the two different ways in which status can be obtained, that is your personal feeling. But a feeling is not a fact. Choose to act upon a feeling and not a fact, and you act irrationally. That is also a fact.

The fact is, we fully declare that there is no superiority between those who seed and those who donate. None. We are neutral, unbiased and blind to any such thought, rejecting totally and without repentance the notion that seeders are “better” than “donors”.

That this is a point of contention for those who would like to think they are better than someone else , because their way is pure , is a very old elitist mentality which we fully intend to eradicate. In short such thinking is beyond bullshit, and the mark of juvenile thinking and weak egos who cannot bear the thought that they are not superior to someone else.

This is why we do not have the titles as plain as other sites.

Take the word user, or power user. What is a user? Someone who uses something or someone. This too has been rejected. You will never see the word user in any of our rules or guides. You, the people are not users. You are not using us, using each other, or using the community. You are members, each equal under the rules and given the same opportunity to succeed or fail in your own right.

Now the other end. The VIPs. We do not have this term either. Rejected is the idea that someone is more important or very important beyond anyone else. All members are part of the same body. Any opinion from any member is received with the same hope, optimism and credibility as is any other. Each will be weighed on the merits of the idea, not on some favored status. You are all Very Important People. Words have meaning, and we have chosen the theme and the words for the titles with that care in mind.

What are the other problems? The red herring. Server costs. Let us be very clear. Vortex Network is not a tracker. It has a tracker. True enough. And we come to existence from the ashes of a tracker. Also true. But this is not who we are, where we are going and what is to be the future.

We are more than a tracker. We are more than 22,000 members. Not yet, not today, not this hour. But sooner than later. Sooner than many but a very small few who really understand what is going on, would dare to believe. So let us be clearer for all.

We are a legal and legitimate Tax Exempt Corporation. Any other site taking money of any kind for any reasons and not filing with the authorities needs to face the facts that p2p may not have ever put anyone in prison, but tax evasion has done so to the best of mice and men.

There are two schools of thought. One is old and is the conventional thinking. One is new and is the wisdom we present.

The first school of thought says this: Our technology is forbidden by most authorities, we must be small, quiet, hidden and meek. If we get caught we must lie and erase our activities. We, by these actions admit our guilt and we believe ourselves to be criminals. Nothing, will or can change and we must act in this belief.

We reject every element of that thought. We embrace a better future. We believe the statutes change. We believe public perception changes. We are students of the law, of history and we are agents of change.

Like those before us who stood for the right of men to be free of slavery, like those before us whose suffrage was to bring the right of women to vote, and like those before us who have stood even for their most basic of human rights under much worse oppression and tyranny, we stand to bring the necessary changes to the use of p2p technology and to the common sense rights for intellectual property as well.

We do not hide. We are not criminals. Our behavior will not be that of cowards, criminals or those who are ashamed to speak out truth in this, a darkened night.

Your donation is not for access to a tracker. That access is free. And as the seeder club has pointed out, a donation is not needed at all to seed or even to build a ratio, provided you are willing to wait long enough.

Your donation will fund this change. It will provide us the opportunity to build a community far beyond 22,000 members, beyond 220,000 members. It will change the whole misunderstanding about what p2p technology is, does and who and why we are doing what we do.

Our effort will be public, it will be open, it will be legal, and you will see exactly where your contributions are going. And we use the word contribution, because it is not just a donation of money, but of time and effort, which will be rewarded as well.

This is just a single small step into a new world vision. This is but the tiniest spark of hope in a hopeless future. We are asking you to be part of that spark. To be keen to lighting the brush fire which then can never be extinguished!

And to our dear friends who cannot. To those whom we still love and respect, we wish you the best in your efforts. We bear no ill will to those who, in their own belief cannot see, cannot hear and will not act. We ask only, that you let us do so. We ask this in friendship and sincerity.

We know these are real differences and they are real points of objection. We understand the thinking of fear. Do not think we are deaf to it or ignorant of it. We know you are uncomfortable with our choice, and you feel safer in your isolation. That is the freedom we all share. The choice we all make. You can go in peace or stay and be peaceful.

This is not a debate. This is a direction and a path. You are welcome to walk it with us, or stop and wait and watch, or run and hide as far as you may need to run. We will not hold it against you in any path you choose.

And should providence shine a blessing upon us, we will never ask “Where were you?” We will embrace it together, welcoming you to this future as brothers/sisters, family.

For those who understand, who see what could be and seek with us to pursue it, to embrace the future: You have reached the calm… the eye of the storm.

Rachel Faith Anderson

We are a Legal and Legitimate Tax Exempt Corporation

In this headline and statement from Rachel lies the real controversy. It appears that in order to supposedly protect Vortex Network from legal action, it (or a parent organization) has been incorporated in the US as a non-profit Subchapter “S” corporation, which was necessary to “open a bank account, purchase equipment and report revenue to the taxing authorities”. We can find no evidence to suggest that Rachel is worried about copyright laws, which is an interesting approach.

The mere thought of being registered or linked to some sort of tax-exempt charity/organization has sent shockwaves through the Vortex Network community. Add to this that she is suggesting that tracker admins should no longer hide in the shadows, but join her to face the world head on, has seen many of the staff deleting their accounts and leaving the site in disbelief.

Rachel Faith’s Plan for World BitTorrent Domination

Although previously we’ve spoken about non-profit organizations, Rachel actually wants prominent people and existing sites from the BitTorrent community to unite to join her in a new, “for-profit entity” which has already been registered in the US. Labeling herself as a “visionary” she proposes – either by creation, merger or acquisition – the establishment of a network of private trackers which will operate together, combining resources, members and staff.

Her theory is that the unified resources of these sites will prove a more difficult target for the authorities to take down. By making the sites “99% community and 1% tracker”, Rachel feels legal issues surrounding the tracker can be mitigated. She also hopes that by combining the sites – hopefully hundreds – the whole operation will become more secure and “profitable”. Those enjoying a small club-like feel to their favorite tracker better get used to becoming a small cog in a huge wheel – if Rachel gets her way, that is.

Additionally, she views large and overly vocal public trackers as a menace and proposes that steps should be taken to put “embarrassing” sites (such as The Pirate Bay) “out of business”.

Rachel and her ever decreasing team believe that the way regular trackers operate is doomed to failure and so they intend to embark on a mission to change the public’s perception of BitTorrent in order to encourage legal change to allow their plan to grow. They aim to do this in 12 months, while at the same time amassing a minimum of 250,000 members as a base to work from.

Whatever this new plan for BitTorrent is, it’s not calming nerves and there is growing opposition to this plan, before it even gets off the ground. Rachel may want to take on the world in a blaze of glory, but most seem to want a quiet life.

We are students of the law, of history and we are agents of change.

According to sources close to the situation, Rachel Faith (possibly Rachel Faith Anderson, possibly something else) has a background in banking and is a lawyer (or at least a law student) using her real name. Using real names consistently on the Internet has its problems. As does hosting your avatar on your AOL page, which in turn reveals your AOL account name. Unless, of course, this is all some elaborate case of misdirection. But there again, Rachel said she isn’t hiding but it seems crazy to believe someone would be as open as this.

In any event, it’s clear that the majority of staff and members who have expressed a preference are not happy to be treated as “guinea pigs” in Rachel’s worldwide BitTorrent laboratory, especially when they now view the “BrokenStones replacement” line as a simple “bait and switch” tactic to get a solid base for her plans for domination.

Time will tell what will come of these plans, but in the meantime the opinions of others in the community are plain to see, especially if one visits any of the #crazybitch channels that have appeared on IRC, or the many outraged posters on the Vortex forums.

Or maybe Rachel Faith Anderson is sane and everyone else is crazy? Stranger things have happened…

…or if you read ‘Scene’ notices…..

RachelFaith.Registers.VortexNetwork.org.As.Business.To.Make.Money.Off.Scene
.Releases.DDOS.Immediately

Update: TorrentFreak managed to catch up with Rachel Faith Anderson but with other ‘real-life’ commitments (hey, we all have them), she didn’t really have much time for much other than a very brief chat. We’ve offered her a full right of reply and even delayed this article for her to do so, but we have heard nothing further.

However, she has finally responded to the ex-BrokenStones community and staff. Here is a small part of it which seems to have hit a raw nerve:

But there was existing, trained, competent staff from BS looking for a new home and so we tried to make it fit and tried to make it work. But from the very beginning, I could tell that it would not. The end was not unexpected, though it was untimely and unplanned. And this is the sadness I share with many. It is a loss and it came at a terrible time. Such is the nature of life.

So long ex-BrokenStones staff who worked hard to put the new site together, seems the Vortex Network doesn’t want you anymore…..

You can read Rachel’s full announcement here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

We encourage the acceleration of negotiations to establish a new international legal framework, ACTA, and seek to complete the negotiation by the end of this year.

This date is consistent (surprise, surprise) with that which the US Trade Representative has set as its own timetable for ACTA. Together with some insider information that was obtained by TorrentFreak, this doesn’t sound promising.

How will ACTA affect P2P users?

So what does this mean for P2P users? The honest answer is that it’s hard to be sure. The degree of secrecy surrounding the ACTA negotiations is astonishing, blocking attempts at a variety of levels to develop a counter-strategy. The process is deliberately avoiding both the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), which now have enough member countries suspicious of the “anti-piracy maximalist” agenda to make ACTA’s progress impossible.

At a recent EU meeting following the June ACTA negotiations in Geneva, a packed room of “stakeholders” — that is, industry representatives — were desperately trying to get information on what had made it into the June draft of ACTA while revealing as little as possible, publicly, about what they themselves wanted in it. The Commission — on first-name terms with these industry reps, showing only too well how well regarded they are in this policy-forming process — has basically indicated that no-one will see the text of ACTA until it’s ready to sign.

Also at this EU meeting, it was made absolutely explicit that ACTA is in large part about updating legal frameworks to take account of P2P and developments on the Internet. The previous regime to deal with IP and piracy, TRIPS was 12 years old, officials said, and the Internet had ‘not existed in the same way’ when TRIPS was drafted. In this respect, the hints we have about what might make it into ACTA from a list of suggestions the RIAA obtained by Knowledge Ecology International (which has been double checked for veracity) are very important. More than any other lobby, of course, the RIAA is dealing with issues specifically related to the Net. This gives some pointers of where ACTA could go if the anti-piracy and IP lobbies get their way.

Getting your iPod though customs…

RIAA’s proposals for ACTA go well beyond U.S. law on the enforcement of copyrights online. As earlier reported, they want ‘competent authorities’ to be able to take action at borders over pirated copies without the need for a complaint from a rights holder. An official at the EU meeting ridiculed the ‘iPod search’ stories about ACTA, pointing to the EU’s own border measures — but given U.S. border agents are already retaining and searching large amounts of laptops at borders, this is another burden for travelers who are already harassed by ridiculous “security” measures in the Homeland and beyond. Those dismissing such ideas as ‘merely’ the wish list of the rabid anti-piracy lobbies take note: although there has only been one draft of ACTA made so far (and no one outside the secretive gang involved has been able to see it), reliable sources say there is text relating to the border measures provisions. So at least one of the RIAA’s wishes seems, in some form, to have already made it in.

The RIAA’s wish list for online enforcement of its ‘rights’ is also of great concern, not least because it implies that they would get access to private data from ISPs in order to be able to see what we’ve been sharing. As the year goes on, it’s becoming clear that the P2P / IP debate is merging with the surveillance and privacy debate in ways that I think many people hadn’t forseen. We need to understand fast that enforcement of copyright is one of the main levers being used to drive a wedge into our data privacy at the international level.

RIAA and MPAA want to police the Internet

In general, what the RIAA want is ‘harmonization’ (read: extension of US law over the whole world) of the tricky Grokster ‘inducement’ provisions that make providers of software liable if they can be seen as inducing infringing behavior in users. As I know personally from discussions with the RIAA about projects like VODO, interpretations of what constitutes contributory liability are very broad in the States. What the industry wants to do is chill the rapid innovation that led to products like Napster and BitTorrent by rendering entrepreneurs uncertain about the legal status of their activities. The fact that BitTorrent is the most efficient media reproduction and distribution system in history, used by hundreds of thousands of producers to distribute their own work outside the clutches of the corporate media cabals is, of course, not part of the picture here. This is precisely about media conglomerates’ desire to hang on to the tatters of their empire.

The RIAA’s ACTA would also continue the trend towards ISPs and search engines to weed out infringing users. RIAA expects ISPs to filter infringing materials and police offending P2Pers, cutting off their access if necessary. Again this points to mass surveillance of internet use that, in the light of the wiretapping controversy alread raging in the States, is utterly unacceptable in Europe or anywhere else.

How We Can Slam On The Brakes

So what can be done, and what hope do we have over ACTA? Well, firstly, there are internal contradictions in the process that might make its progress less than smooth. The inclusion of the ‘3 strikes’ rule for kicking P2P users from their ISP contract is a case in point — the European Parliament is actually very suspicious of the 3 strikes rule and the UK government is reportedly desperately looking for alternatives to this political hot potato, which only months ago was portrayed as a fait accompli. This raises the possibility of a showdown between ACTA and the European Parliament.

Secondly, the European Commission has no mandate to implement criminal sanctions on copyright matters – this is down to the individual member states who will be very wary about antagonizing their electorates. Since these criminal sanctions are seen by players like the RIAA as a key ‘virtue’ of ACTA – without which it would be a ‘dodo’ – the shakiness of the legal base for inclusion of criminal sanctions is a big issue.

Thirdly and relatedly, the secrecy around ACTA is a potential pitfall. A mandate should have been obtained from the Commission to negotiate the Treaty, but if it exists it has been declared too secret, or at least ‘confidential’ to bring out. Since this document would very likely have to include a rationale for allowing the Commission to negotiate beyond its power on criminal sanctions, it may be rather suspect. European TorrentFreak readers should immediately write to your MEP in your Member State and ask them to request a copy of the mandate, so that we can get a copy of it online and look at how the EU justifies negotiating an ACTA that includes criminal measures. Since the US wants ACTA to be signed before Bush leaves office, a derailing tactic like this has a good chance of working.

ACT against ACTA before it’s too late…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“It is with a heavy heart that I write this, Merrin the founder of MVGroup.org passed away suddenly on Monday 5th May. He had been ill for sometime but the extent of his illness was not known to the staff , his family or his personal friends. His passing will leave an enormous void at MVGroup.

I was asked to write something here about Merrin, but to be honest I just can’t face it, the thought of doing so is just too painful. So I’ll simply add an abridged version of a post Merrin made at MVGroup some time long, long ago, it will give you a much better insight into who he was and what he was all about than anything I could have written.”

How did MVGroup start and what are our aims, hmm, perhaps a potted history is in order.

Summer 2001 was when I did my first rip, it wasn’t MVGroup back then it was just under my tag. Went well, was released onto the edonkey network with some success. It happened to be Walking With Beasts. I had been given the DVD’s as a present. I always made a point of watching what I could on BBC on tv, but realised after the reaction I got to my first release that there was very little of this kind of thing floating around on the net back then. Don’t get me wrong, I love ST or 24 as much as the next person but I knew that I wanted to give something back to the community that I had taken from for so long. The best way to do this seemed to be to me to release the things that I enjoyed, but couldn’t find, working on the principle that if I liked them there had to be more people out there that did too.

MVGroup was formed in about October of 2002. I talked DarkRain (Vittorio in those days, hence MVGroup, MVGroup also being a tag we had affected once or twice on game rips we had done) into helping me out with rips and supplying DVD’s, we were initially nothing more than a loose association releasing rips on FileNexus.

We then started to generate a bit of interest and we were given (alright I nagged the FN admins) our own section to call home on the FN forums.

Myself and DarkRain had drifted further apart both in real-life and online and MVGroup was looking like it was about to die from lack of time, interest, and releases. It was at this point that I, for want of something better to do, decided that maybe I would put some of our old releases out using the Bitttorrent protocol rather than ed2k. I quickly put a few releases out that way and generated some interest from the BT community. My interest re-piqued I realised that there was no way of releasing on BT using our sections on either FN or FTi that we had by now. The answer was our own webpage.

I got to work on a simple HTML based site on my ISP webspace, that was enough to relight DarkRain’s interest in MVG too and we started cranking releases out again on both BT and ed2k. Funnily enough it didn’t take long before my ISP were getting unhappy with a p2p site on their space. It was then that this current site started to evolve. I decided I better learn how to use proper website tools like php and sql db backends etc. The whole site was put together to a first usable state in about 24 hours straight by just myself lol, that was a day and a no mistake..

Then we started recruiting like-minded individuals that would help us to release and spread the material that we were now known for.

So, what are we trying to achieve, well it isn’t notoriety, it isn’t fame, it isn’t anything other than a sincere desire to make sure that as many people as possible have their horizons broadened by the quality material that we release.

After all we do have a tagline ‘An education in p2p’

….and it ain’t just there because it’s snappy.

So what of the future of the MVGroup tracker? m06166, a close friend of Merrin, explains: “There will be no closing down and no major changes are intended. We will not change the policy of MVGroup of sharing knowledge with the world without ratios for free. Ever.”

The final word from Eazbak: “Our mission now is to make sure that Merrin’s legacy continues, not just this year or the next but for as long as we can possibly do so, the staff is united, we have DVDs ready to rip, files ready to seed, watch out for an MVGroup tagged file on a tracker near you soon!”

Anyone wishing to pay their respects may do so here (registration needed, tracker signups open)

In memory of Merrin – 1976-2008

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

So imagine if you will, the amazing contrast between Mr Fish’s predicament and that of Tony Krvaric, chairman of the San Diego Republican Party. At first glance, they seem very different – but look closer.

To better appreciate the gap, here is some background on Tony Krvaric, courtesy of a Raw Story report and the Republican Party website:

Born and raised in Sweden, Tony Krvaric was inspired by President Ronald Reagan to come to America. Though only a youth, he vowed to one day become an American and pursue his American Dream. The first step was to start his own business, and in 1992 when the opportunity presented itself, he moved to San Diego.

After becoming a naturalized citizen in June of 2003, he decided to become politically involved. Having seen, first hand, the devastating effects of socialism in Sweden and the rest of Europe, he was determined to stand up for the traditional, conservative values that helped make America great.

So what does a politician have to do with warez? Well, the strange truth is that Tony Krvaric is none other than a co-founder of notorious warez group, Fairlight. Krvaric -who started his cracking career at the “West Coast Crackers”- was in fact one of the most well-known individuals in the Warez scene at the time. Fairlight remained active after Krvaric left in 1993, and several members of the group were eventually arrested by the FBI in 2004.

During Fairlight’s earlier days and their involvement in the Commodore 64 cracking and demo scene, although cautious, the members couldn’t have imagined the punishments that are given out today. Although Krvaric isn’t shy in letting the world know some of his history and present-day situation on the C-64 Scene Database;

Presently works as a full-service financial consultant for individuals and families who share his values – helping them grow, preserve and distribute their wealth. He lives in San Diego with his wife and four children. Is a member of the Republican Party.

The excellent article goes on to list other alleged infringements by Krvaric over the years, and although he appeared to leave Fairlight in 1992, there are suggestions that he was still in charge of the group as late as 2004. It’s not possible to say if this is true or not, but according to sources, the group appeared to be operational in late 2007.

Apparently, Krvaric has now sent an email out to fellow Republicans, trying to calm the waters:

Apparently there’s a hit piece floating around on me, “exposing” my wild high school, teenage years where I was in a computer club where we swapped Commodore 64 games (similar to how kids swap mp3 music files these days). This was in the 80’s, on a computer that’s long since defunct!

[In] 1990 I graduated high school, grew up and started my own business, and then in 1992 I came to this country, continuing the same business (selling computer and video game chips and accessories as well as some nonperishable foodstuffs, taking over my father’s business for a while after he died in 1994) until I left that field when the profit margins became too thin to make any money , around 1997 or so. That’s when I became a financial consultant, which I remain to this day.

I’m sure glad they didn’t look in to my elementary school years, as there’s some really embarrassing stuff that I did in 4th grade. BTW, I also heard a rumor that another fellow committee member (who shall remain unnamed) once made a tape copy of his friend’s favorite vinyl record.

I don’t know who is spreading this but just wanted to let you know what’s going on out there. Likely it’s someone who wants us to take our eye off the ball in 2008, be it the democrats, labor or someone else. Either way, we’re not going to let them get away with it. Thanks for your leadership.

I wonder which way the newly-convicted copyright infringer David Fish would vote – if he was allowed to? Speaking of voting, Krvaric – running for reelection in 2008 – registered his email address with the Registrar of Voters. No-one can accuse him of trying to hide anything, that’s for sure:

tkrvaric@fairlight.com

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In 1933 the phonographic industry held a congress in Rome, Italy, to form an international federation. The fact that Italy had been a fascist dictatorship for eleven years under Benito Mussolini, wasn’t something that bothered them.

On the contrary, the IFPI returned to fascist Italy for the next congress, held in the northern tourist resort of Stresa in 1934. Specially invited was CISAC, the France-based International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies. They had heavily opposed the IFPI’s goal in giving the phonographic producers rights of their own within the framework of the Berne convention, since they feared this would lessen the composers’ rights. At the meeting in Stresa, the IFPI convinced CISAC to support an alternative line, where the record companies’ rights would be guaranteed in a special convention.

However, CISAC emphasized that this protection were not to be constructed so that the artists’ rights are diminished. The Italian government also showed interest for such a solution of the issue and had a special commission put forward a convention draft on the subject.

Memo from Swedish Department of Justice, 1953

This quote shows it wasn’t just the Mediterranean climate that made the IFPI organize its first activities in fascist Italy. The regime provided especially good support for their lobbying cause.

After the preparations had been made through detailed debates within the jurisprudence, the Rome active International Institute for Unification of Private Rights made the initiative in 1939 to gather an expert committee that would put forward concrete proposals on the subject.

Memo from Swedish Department of Justice, 1953

The committee was headed by Dr.Ostertag and quickly proposed a draft. For a change – or maybe because Mussolini’s Italy at the time was on the verge of World War – the committee’s first meeting was held in Samedan in neutral Switzerland. The committee members were probably less than neutral. Since the committee members had been appointed by the judicial institute in Rome, we can safely assume they were loyal to the fascist regime.

The conclusion from the committee was a proposal to combine the rights of the phonographic industry and the rights of the ‘performers’ (i.e. musicians and actors) in one convention. This had a large impact on the continuing legislation that to this day in 2008, regulate the music economy.

The continued work on the Samaden proposals was postponed because of WW2. After the end of the war, the work was restarted within the permanent committee of the Bern union. This was first assembled in 1949 in Neuchâtel and it was decided to refer the Samaden proposals back to Bern union member states and other states for consideration. The following meeting was held in October 1950 in Lisbon and is essential to the continued development.

Lisbon? Why did the IFPI, five years after WW2, chose fascist dictatorship Portugal as the site to continue the work that had started in fascist dictatorship Italy?

It might have been a coincidence, but the convention texts that were put together with great efficiency during these meetings were far from obvious. On the contrary, they competed with parallel attempts to reach an international convention that would extend something resembling copyright to musicians, who were organized by ILO in close cooperation with the musicians’ labor unions. They cared less for the wishes of the phonographic industry. Rather, they strove to protect jobs for live musicians, who seemed threatened by the ‘mechanization’.

These intentions took time and were discussed in detail, but if they had been quicker it is very possible that the international copyright would’ve taken another direction, where musicians – not record companies – were seen as legitimate rights holders of the music that is played in radio and public speakers.

Now, this never happened. The expert commissions, assisted by the fascist regime in Italy, had been quicker – to the great joy of the phonographic industry. The Samaden proposal led to the ‘Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations’, finally signed in 1961 and today a deeply integrated part of Swedish copyright law. It is thanks to this that record companies can claim outlandish damages against The Pirate Bay.

As opposed to music publishers, record companies don’t have copyright in the right meaning, but thanks to the Rome convention they have something called ‘neighboring rights’, that over time have come to be just as important.

In addition, we note how George H.C. Bodenhausen – one of the lawyers that during the 1950s developed the Rome convention – referred to fascist Italian laws on the subject (legislated during the war in 1941) as a model, “the most up-to-date legislation”.

This does not mean the Rome convention is ‘fascist’. However, it’s hard to disregard its strong characteristics of corporatism, which have made a strong impression on the copyright bureaucracy. It’s also important to remember that the musicians’ labor unions suggested an entirely different solution, which didn’t have the same institutionalized feeding of the record companies. Without suggesting that the IFPI as an organization had fascist sympathies, they strategically used the fascist regime’s anti-union stance and corporative policies during the 1930s. The outcome of this tug-of-war still characterizes how copyright policies are formed.

That the IFPI was founded in fascist Italy in 1933, is little know today. The information has previously been posted on Wikipedia:

It was formed /…/ during 1933 in Rome, Italy, under the fascist government of Benito Mussolini by companies mainly owned or controlled by General Electric in the United States of America

In April 2005, someone removed the mention of fascism but left the fact about where and when the IFPI was founded – until August 25th 2006. On that date, the Wikipedia page was edited by someone with IP address 195.40.39.2 who deleted all information about the IFPI having a history at all. That is how it’s remained on Wikipedia’s IFPI page until now.

The person who deleted the information about IFPI’s founding did it from IFPI’s headquarters in London. The IP address points there.

Why is the IFPI so scared of its own history that it tries to keep it a secret that 2008 is its 75th anniversary?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In mid 2002, a lone programmer by the name of Micheal Stokes released the first version of a Gnutella client he had written, dubbed “Shareaza”. Over the next two years Micheal added to his client and coded in support for the eDonkey 2000 network, BitTorrent and a rewritten Gnutella-based protocol which he named Gnutella2. Shareaza gradually became more and more popular and Mike started to receive several job offers based on the strength of his work on Shareaza. He eventually decided that continuing to work on a p2p application in an increasingly hostile legal climate was too risky, but he did the honorable thing and released the Shareaza source code under the GNU GPLv2 on June 1, 2004 (which coincided with the release of Shareaza V 2.0).

Mike stopped working on Shareaza and went on to develop a new p2p-based streaming radio project named Mercora. As part of distancing himself from Shareaza, he transfered the shareaza.com domain to one of his old alpha testers named Jon Nilson, who continued to administer the domain until late 2007.

The French (RIAA) Connection

In late 2007 the Shareaza website went down for several weeks, but eventually came back online. Not long after that, the Shareaza.com domain began pointing to a different website which several sharp-eyed community members recognized as identical to shareazaweb.com, a known scam site purporting to offer users “legal p2p downloads”. It emerged that Jon Nilson had been forced to relinquish control of the domain as part of a settlement with La Societe Des Producteurs De Phonogrammes En France (the French version of the RIAA). Jon’s name was the only one connected with Shareaza that the SPPF could find and due to Shareaza’s popularity in France he had been named in a lawsuit along with Azureus and Morpheus. See here for more.

A Dump for Ill-Gotten Gains

Members of the Shareaza community managed to track the new “owners” of the Shareaza.com domain to MusicLab LLC, based in New York. MusicLab now distribute the “new and legal” iMesh p2p client after the original Gnutella-based iMesh developers were sued by the RIAA, and forced to settle for $4.1 million with a promise to turn their app into a paid download service. A similar legal fate befell another popular Gnutella application called Bearshare which was then rolled into the RIAA-approved iMesh. Nobody has managed to ascertain whether the original iMesh developers are still involved, but the merging of Bearshare seems to indicate that MusicLab is a vehicle used by the recording industry to dump assets acquired through lawsuits into.

It would seem that since Shareaza is developed by anonymous group of individuals and organized via “ad-hocracy”, there was no company to sue, so stealth tactics were employed against the weakest link in the chain: Jon Nilson. iMesh, Bearshare and the fake Shareaza being distributed from Shareaza.com are all the same application with appropriate re-branding.

Threats of C&D

As you can imagine, the members of the Shareaza community were rather upset about all of this and set up a new website with user forums. After two users made some offhand remarks about a distributed denial of service attack against the servers in Israel where the hijacked Shareaza.com site is located, our forum administrator received an email from one Jeffrey A. Kimmel of Meister Seelig & Fein, in his capacity as a representative of Discordia Ltd, the new new “owners” of Shareaza.

Mr Kimmel stated that DDoS attacks are illegal and any further talk by “users [who] begin to promote the destruction of a legitimate business” would result in Discordia Ltd “tak[ing] all necessary action to vigorously and relentlessly protect its rights.” He went on to state that “if this action is not immediately taken and, as result, our client’s business is harmed, we will not only pursue, locate and hold fully responsible each and every one of those who have implemented this, or any similar DoS, but also those responsible for maintaining your site and the forums.”

The posts in question had actually been taken down by forum moderators already (as per forum rules on objectionable content), however this email was cause for great concern: not only were the domain hijackers starting to create a series of shell companies to avoid being identified, but they had engaged lawyers to monitor our forums and threaten anyone making disparaging statements about them.

(Full text here)

A Tangled Web

More research by community members revealed that Discordia Ltd is registered in Cyprus, possibly owned by MusicLab but at arm’s length to avoid as much fallout as possible. Meister Seelig & Fein’s Kimmel also appears to have a long history of dealings with the recording industry, notably in the participation of the iMesh and Bearshare lawsuits and an interesting Amicus Curiae brief in the MGM vs Grokster which details how the new iMesh software has all the answers to stopping piracy and creating a wonderful legal download service.

Making The Takeover Official

In what is possibly the most audacious step so far, Discordia Ltd filed for a trademark on “Shareaza” with the USPTO on January 10, 2008. (Link)

If granted, our use of the Shareaza name will immediately infringe upon Discordia Ltd’s official trademark and we will doubtless be subject to legal action until we stop any infringing action i.e. we rename the project, remove all references to “Shareaza” and forget about the whole thing.

The Danger Posed To Open Source Software

Unless we are able to prevent the trademark being granted and regain control of the domain, our project will die. It really is as simple as that. Seven-odd years worth of brand recognition as “Open Source, Spyware, Malware and Advertising Free” will disappear and although we can (and have) dealt with “clones” who take our OS code base, add some spyware and release a “new” client as their own (breaking the GPLv2 in the process by not releasing the source) there is no possible way that we can survive having our identity stolen like this. Unlike a run-of-the-mill copyright violation, we are going to be permanently deprived of something. Our code is open to whoever wants to see it, we charge no money for the use of the program; the only thing of value that we have is the name and recognition that goes with it. The worst of it all is that this “software identity theft” could signal the beginning of hostile corporate takeovers of common property – the fact that we are in this predicament proves it to some extent.

What we need to know is if the people who stood up for an open culture by hacking copyright law will help protect that culture where it comes to trademarks and halting the advancement of encroaching corporate interests. If “common law” trademarks can’t be protected there is a very real danger that what happened to us will happen again and again and again. Many of us who work on the Shareaza project can foresee things becoming so that people will stop bothering to work on OS projects: open source software is, by it’s nature, more useful that closed source software and the more useful something is, the more popular it becomes…and then someone with expensive lawyers will come along and take it all away from the people who actually created it.

We recently asked for donations from our users for a legal defense fund and (very) quickly raised $2000. In our public thank you letter we wrote the following:

“There is one fundamental right that should never be in dispute: the right to be recognized as a creator. This moral right transcends arguments on whether copyright should last for 50 years or a hundred, whether software should be patentable or not, or even what a fair price price for an MP3 file is. Being able to say to the world “I made this” and be acknowledged for it is, for many people, the only reward they receive for their work. To deny that right is an insult to the creative forces flowing through every writer, performer, musician, actor and programmer who brings their work to the world.”

We have a section dedicated to this whole situation on our new forums which includes full details of all the events that have taken place so far.

Any help you are able to provide would be very, very gratefully accepted. Any advice, introductions or referrals to others who may be able to help us will be a great help.

Kind regards,

Shareaza Community

Just in case you missed the earlier link, you can donate to the Shareaza fighting fund here

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Back in July, we took a look at a beta version of the xbtit tracker package, which aimed to make owning and running a BitTorrent tracker a much easier, simplified experience. Created by BtiTeam, xbtit enables potential site administrators to quickly and easily set up their own BitTorrent tracker, something that was only previously accomplished by people with some coding skills. TorrentFreak decided to get to know a little more about this tracker and the people behind it.

xbtit Development Leader, Lupin

I have been in the BitTorrent scene since 2003 when I used TorrentTrader. In September 2004 the BtiTracker story began when Sqrtboy took the TorrentTrader development and transformed it. Many hacks became “premium” which meant paying for them. The other popular system was Tbdev (ex TorrentBits) which did not have a great look and lacked many features. I decided to give the opportunity to all tracker owners to have a good, complete, and easy system with which to manage their torrents. For 3 years I put many hours in the development while other developers came and went.

xbtit Project Leader, Locutius

LokiTorrent and Suprnova going down at the end of 2004 was shocking, there were big sites collapsing almost monthly. It was uncertain if filesharing was gonna survive, the sites I was frequenting were dead men walking. They knew it too. The USA would be clean of trackers within 6 months. That is the background in which I decided to open my own tracker. I found Lupin at btiteam.org was releasing an easy code base to install and manage with a feature set to rival the more complex systems.

TF: So what exactly is xbtit? Can you give us a little history?

Lupin: Early in 2006 we decided to create a new system which can handle many peers based on xbtt (by Olaf van der Spek). We wanted a great look and features that no other tracker system had. We really put in a lot of work, in this case we got the help of some very generous developers in our team.

Locutius: You already know how difficult it is to set up and run a tracker. You have to be a linux guru, fluent in PHP, a db admin, a security expert, and all that before you start to performance tune your httpd and iptables. I wanted an easy to set up and run system the size of LokiTorrent. Then I had an idea. What if everyone could have an easy system the size of Loki?

TF: Where does the name/acronym xbtit originate?

Locutius: The name for the project comes from the bringing together of xbtt and btit. The merger of the strongest backend with the strongest frontend, to make xbtit.

TF: So what would you say are xbtit’s main features? What does it offer which other trackers don’t?

Locutius: There is a design focus by Lupin and the dev team to make the system smart and capable. The template system allows single click installation of hacks, modifications, and styles. There are two tracker systems, the PHP tracker for platforms without access to system root, and xbtt capable of running millions of peers at very low overhead. There are two forum systems, an internal forum and Simple Machines Forum (SMF). There is an install script and an upgrade script from previous version. Lupin has included a phpmailer script so you can run your tracker from a Windows desktop at home!

TF: In the past your team has talked of how easy it is to install, setup and operate xbtit. How does xbtit compare to other trackers?

Lupin: I don’t like to compare myself with other work, but the users will, and with no doubt will choose xbtit because:

- easiest to manage (almost all tasks can be done via web admin interface)
- easy to hack, one click and you’re ready to go with hacks and new features
- modules system which will allow to extend the power and the features
- xbtt support, usually only done by hacking to allow the use of xbtt as backend, in our work it’s already done, so also no problem to upgrade an hacked version
- SMF support, if you like a “real forum” then no problem, you can use SMF
- internal forum with subforum support, the internal forum has been rewritten from scratch and is optimized

TF: Your site offers different ‘flavors’ of xbtit. What do these ‘flavors’ mean to the end user?

Locutius:The home of the code is btiteam.org, an open source support and development forum. The open source flavor is free.

Then we have the professionally supported flavors, xbtit PREMIUM and xbtit PRO. The difference is PRO includes VPS hosting for the code with the new tracker admin receiving the password to a fully installed site on his own private server. It doesn’t get easier to own a tracker than that.

www.xbtit.com is the showcase for the xbtit live demo and the home to the xbtit private members forum where it all happens. Buying xbtit PREMIUM or PRO gives you 10 support tickets and access to the private members forum where you can exchange the tickets for btiteam hacks, modifications, and styles (everything is nominally priced, hacks cost no more than 2 or 3 euros). Members of xbtit can also request private hacks and coding for their site. Eventually, all the hacks and styles on xbtit.com will be released into the open source community on btiteam.org.

The difference between btiteam.org and xbtit.com is the same difference as between Fedora and REDHAT. xbtit at biteam.org is like Fedora, it is exciting, it is free. xbtit at xbtit.com is like REDHAT, it is supported and you have privileged access to the dev team and first hit on the hacks. xbtit.com funds the free open source support and development at btiteam.org.

TF: You are also offering hosting with xbtit and this could have copyright implications. What’s your view on this?

Locutius: BitTorrent is strongly associated with filesharing and there is an issue there with the improper application of the technology by copyright pirates. But there are greater more important economic uses for the technology. Our enemies are Luddites but technology has never been criminalized and there is no issue with hosting torrent trackers if the owners keep 3 simple rules: adhere to the DMCA, only supply your own content, do not profit from another’s copyright.

Some of the content traversing the BitTorrent networks may come with a legacy copyright issue but that is to be expected when the global media industry is operating a monopoly.

TF: Perhaps as a backlash to this monopolistic control, Indie content is starting to explode on the internet. You see your team as having a part in this?

Locutius: Significantly, our technology is making it easier for independent publishing and distribution of privately created digital content, movies and music and software. By removing the traditional barriers to tracker ownership our technology can land in the creative hands of artists in a form they can adopt. I want to see a swarm of private trackers seeding creativity the world over.

TF: Thanks, and good luck in achieving that.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The survey – carried out online and financed and operated by a trio of industry organizations, similar to their well-known US counterparts – RIAJ (music), the Japanese MPAA and ACC (software) – concluded that the number of internet users sharing authorized media climbed from 3.5 per cent in June 2006, to 9.6 per cent by September 2007, a near 180% increase.

The numbers of files downloaded increased by a large amount too. June 2006 saw an average of 194 files downloaded per user which increased to 481 by September this year. Audio files topped the download charts with 211 per user with video coming in next with 183. People downloaded an average of 43 images, 33 documents and 14 pieces of software.

The survey found that the favorite P2P sharing application in Japan is still Winny with 27 percent. LimeWire, which is very popular in the West took 18.8 per cent of the vote with WinMX sitting at 15 per cent.

BitTorrent, which is incredibly popular all over the world with tens of millions of users, ranked just 6th with 7.4 per cent.

Japan hit the file-sharing news headlines earlier this year when a bizarre virus on the Winny network attacked files and displayed strange messages.

TorrentFreak looks forward to being able to report a dramatic growth in Japanese BitTorrent users next year.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Avramov was accused of using uTorrent to illegally distribute a piece of expensive business software called 1C which is apparently an application allowing the automation of day-to-day business operations. It’s entirely possible that Avramov upset the wrong businessman in targeting this unusual software.

Now, some Russian self-described ‘anti-copyright activists’ are seeking others to join them, to demonstrate against Avramov’s sentence. A .torrent file for the actual 1C software has appeared on The Pirate Bay, with this included in the description:

“We, the group of anticopyright activists from Russia, ask you for help.

The point is that 04.12.07 there was the first time in Russia when a man was sentenced for filesharing. Sergey Avramov created a torrent for a software of the russian company “1C”.

We think its just the first step, after that will follow new repressions towards filesharing supporters. In our view, the only appropriate way to put pressure on the company is to create a new torrent on an independent server outside Russia and the forthcoming promotion of the link.

This step will show the uselessness of repressive actions towards users of filesharing networks.

We ask you to create a torrent seed for the software ‘1c_enterprise’.”

An .nfo relating to the 1C software carries a message which may well be seen more often in the future as BitTorrent seeders are being encouraged to include it in their own releases. Apart from the regular information it says:

Dear Filesharer,

We hope you enjoy your download.

Did you know that filesharing could soon be a thing of the past?

All across the world, media corporations are lobbying and pressuring national governments to change legislation to allow them to persecute filesharers more efficiently.

We disagree with their idea that piracy is theft. We feel theft involves depriving the owner of something. When a copy is made, the original remains.

The changes of legislation suggested would involve drastic changes of laws protecting personal privacy. We feel that the legislation changes suggested in the EU and the USA are out of proportion.

We believe in changing copyright laws.

If any of this interests you, please visit:

—links—

There are several political parties fighting for your rights. If you would like to vote for one of them in your next national election, please visit:

http://www2.piratpartiet.se/international/
Upcoming election for the Swedish parliament on 17th Sep 2006!
http://www.pp-international.net/forum/
International network of Pirate Parties.

If you’re not interested, please accept our apology for using your bandwidth to spread the word.

Thank you for your attention!

If you believe in our cause, please include this file in your next seed! There are enough of us to make a difference!

It’s not clear how many .nfo’s it will take to help turn around anti-torrent big business, but spreading the word to the masses via this powerful medium will certainly help get the word out to millions of file-sharers worldwide.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

After The raid on the popular BitTorrent tracker “The Piratebay“, the Pirate Party has transformed into the largest party without parliament seats. In Sweden, you get seats in the parliament if you get four percent of the votes. The Pirate Party has arount the same member count as the Green Party, which is a party that supports the current government, and without them, the current government can’t maintain their majority This leads the Pirate Party to believe that if they get into the parliament they can fill such a vital role, and thereby make a big difference. Worth noting is that some unofficial gallups from various sources indicate that the Pirate Party is the most likely party for a Swedish first-time voter to choose on election day.

Here is a translation of the introduction. If you happen to read Swedish, the manifesto can be retrieved in PDF here.

The Pirate Party Election Manifesto 2006

Preface
The election program of the Pirate Party consists of various nautical charts, describing what we want to do in each of the areas within the Pirate Party policies. These charts are divided in sections based on deadline and what is to be done on a Swedish and on a European level.

As an introduction to these charts, we describe our ideology and our main policies.

Protected integrity in an open society
The development of technology has made sure Sweden and Europe stand before a fork in the road. The new technology offers fantastic possibilities to spread culture and knowledge all over the world with almost no costs. But it also makes way for the building of a society monitored at a level unheard of up until now.

In no time, the monitoring state has advanced its positions strongly in Sweden. This development threatens equality and safety before the law, and nothing indicates that it even adds to security. The Pirate Party believes this is the wrong way to go.

The right to privacy is a corner stone in an open and democratic society. Each and everyone has the right to respect for one’s own private and family life, one’s home and one’s correspondence. If the constitutional freedom of information is to be more than empty words on a paper, we much defend the right for protected private communication.

The arguments for every individual step towards a monitoring society may sound very convincing, but we only have to look at the recent history of Europe to see where that road leads. It is less than twenty years since the fall of the Berlin wall, and there are numerous other terrible examples. To claim that it’s only those with something to hide that has anything to fear is simply lacking knowledge of history, and lacking courage.

We have no problem with police monitoring and spying on suspected criminals. That is exactly what the police is suppose to be doing. But routinely monitoring ordinary citizens hoping for something suspicious to turn up is not only a gross violation of the privacy of honest people. It is also a waste of valuable police resources.

We have to pull the emergency break on the train running towards a society we don’t want. Terrorists can attack our open society, but only governments can disband it. The Pirate Party wants to ensure that this doesn’t happen.

Private communication and file sharing
A driving force behind the current monitoring hysteria is the entertainment business, which wants to prevent people from file sharing copyrighted material. But to achieve this all private communication must be monitored. To know what ones and zeros make up a movie, the ones and zeros has to be analyzed. It is the same sort of ones and zeros that is sent, regardless of if it makes up a piece of music, or a letter to a doctor or a lawyer.

Therefore society ha to choose: do we want a possibility to trustingly communicate over the Internet to exist?

If your answer is yes, it means that also those that shares copyrighted material can use these possibilities.

If you answer is no, it means that you abolish the right of information, the right to mail secrecy and the right to a private life.

There are no other answers.

It is not possible to claim that society should allow mail secrecy for certain purposes, but not for others, since it is impossible to separate the different cases without breeching the secrecy. It is the same types of ones and zeros being used, and only by opening the message, it is possible to see what it contains.

The current copyright legislation can not be combined with freedom of information and protected private communication. Since the fundamental principles of the open, democratic society is more important than conserving old business models within the business of entertainment at all costs, copyright has to fold.

But this is not negative. A reformed copyright legislation, expressing a balance between different interests in society instead of being an order form from the large media companies, has its own benefits. It is a possibility for Sweden and Europe, not a threat.

The spreading of culture and knowledge is a positive thing
Thanks to the Internet it is today possible for everyone with a computer to take part of a fantastic treasure of culture and knowledge.

Instead of being limited to a cultural canon decided from above, the youths of today has access to the music, theater and pictures of an entire world. This is something we should embrace, not something we should try to forbid. File sharing is good for society and its people.

All non-commercial acquiring, using, bettering and spread of culture should be actively encouraged. The Internet is filling the same function today as popular education did a hundred years ago. It is something positive and good for the development of society.

The copyright legislation must be changes so that it is made perfectly clear that it only regulate use and copying of works done for commercial purposes. To share copies, or in any other way spread or use someone else’s work, should never be forbidden as long as it is done on an idealistic basis without the purposes of commercial gain.

Unfortunately, the legislation has developed in quite the opposite direction. On July 1, 2005, a million ordinary Swedes were suddenly turned into criminals over night, simply because they download movies and music. This doesn’t only hurt our possibilities to take part of culture. In the long run it undermines the trust of our entire judicial apparatus. This development has to end.

In a similar fashion, patents are used to inhibit the spread and use of knowledge, which hurts society as a whole.

Medical patents make people in poor countries die for no reason. It twists the priorities in research and makes the costs for medications a problem in every health care budget.

Software patents inhibit technical development within the info tech area and presents a serious threat against small as well as mid-sized businesses and individual developers. They run the risk of putting the power over the Internet completely in the hands of a small number of multi national businesses.

We want to release knowledge, and have specific suggestion on how to avoid the negative consequences that the patent system means.

Sweden and Europe has everything to gain from choosing the path of openness.

No other issues
The Pirate Party does not have any policies on issues that traditionally concerns the left-right scale, or any other issues outside of our program of policiies.

We particularly does not concern ourselves with the division of wealth. We are not after dividing money between different groups in society. None of our propositions costs any money for the state, and several of them may potentially save money in the budget. Because of this, we can place ourselves outside of the struggle concerning the budget, with good faith, and leave it to the old parties.

We are ready to support a social democratic as well as a non-socialist government, we claim that both Göran Persson as well as Fredrik Reinfeldt are well capable of taking the role as the head of government in a satisfactory manner. We do not believe that the differences between them are that big, in reality, and every one of us are ready to live with any of them as our prime minister.

The only thing that concerns us, is the protection of our open society and democracy, that the march towards a controlled society is cancelled, and that culture and knowledge are set free.

Our goal is to reach the parliament and being in a position where we can tip the scale. If we succeed in this we will talk to both Göran Persson and Fredrik Reinfeldt alike. We will explain what we want, and point out that our policies in no way differs from either traditional social democratic policy or traditional liberal/non-socialist policy.

After that, we will support the person aspiring to form a government, who is ready to make the best deal with us on our policies. On any matter outside of our policy statement, we will support and vote for the current government, no matter what we believe individually on different matters.

Due to the fact that we do not have a view on everything on this earth, but concentrate completely on the issues where we have formed a policy, we can promise a result if we make it to the house of parliament in a scale-tipping position. That makes us unique in Swedish political history.

We are the only party that will never deal away our free and open society for the benifit of any other issue or interest.

More on the Pirate Party tipping the scale
The Pirate Party does not take a stand in issues generally associated with the right or left, or any other issues that are not part of our declaration of principles. We are ready to support a socialdemocratic as well as a non-socialist government. The only thing that concerns us is that the march towards a controlled society is cancelled, and that culture and knowledge in society are set free,

On of the factions within Swedish politics has really anything to lose in reality by satisfying more or less all of our demands. Neither Persson nor Reinfeldt have any personal interest in keeping the absurdity that is current copyright legislation. The fact that things look like they do, is primarily due to lack of interest in the area, and that they have therefore allowed the ‘experts’ (i.e. the lobbyists of the entertainment industry) have their way.

In a situation where they can gain position of forming a government by striking a deal with us in an issue that they, themselves, believe to be less important, there is every reason to believe that they will be eager to find a solution.

But in either case, there are three possible scenarios:

1) One of the factions agree to our demands, and the other does not. Then we will choose the faction that agree with us. Whether this is the red faction of the blue faction is of no concern for us. As long as we see that they are doing their best to seriously run our issues, we will support the government in all other issues as well, without questioning.

2) Both the factions agree to our demands. If there are differences of nuances making one faction looking slightly better than the other, we will choose this faction. If both are exactly as good, we will support the faction with the more votes. This way we won’t influence the balance between the factions in Swedish politics. As long as the government is running our issues, we will support them in all decicions, just as in the first scenario.

3) Both the factions refuse to meet our demands. This is the more complicated case, but we can handle this one too. Initially we will support one faction, and make a government possible. Most likely this will be the ones with the less votes, so that the others, the ‘victors’, will feel that they have lost power they were entitled to. They can, however, not do much about it, since we will support the government without questioning in anything that does not involve our principles.

When the “victors” are safely placed in the penalty box of opposition, we start our businesslike, low-voiced conversations with them, until they realize that our proposals are not, in fact, that dangerous, and that they can only win from working with us. When they have seen our arguments in the glow of the miraging governmental position for a while, there are good reasons to believe they will agree with us. This is when we will call for a vote of non-confidence and change the government. After that, the Pirate Party with support the new government without questioning, in all issues, as long as the government runs our issues forcefully, just as in scenario 1 and 2.

This is our entire strategy. This way we can guarantee that our policies will have a break-through.

Questions and answers about our scale-tipping strategy
- How do we handle parliamentary votes that do not include any issues that the Pirate Party runs?

We will support the government in office, no matter what our personal opinions might be.

- Will the party try to make deals with other parties (”if you vote for us on issue “X” and “Y” we will help you with “Z”)?

No, we will talk to the party in office. As long as they do as we want in our issues, we will support them in all other matters. We do not wish to try shopping a la carte from different parties (if we do, we will only be shoved aside). If the government stops this manner of cooperation, we will change the government, but as long as we tolerate a government, we are completely loyal to them in all other issues, those not in our program.

- …or not vote?

If the government needs our support in the parliament it can count on it. We will not cancel our votes if this would affect the turnout against the government.

- …or let the individual MPs decide for themselves?

Under no circumstances. The day we start voting after personal preference, we have nothing more to offer the other parties in a negotiation. If this happens, we can no longer benefit from our position, and have no longer any means to influence the policies that is the closest to our hearts.

- But in the third scenario (that is if none of the factions wants to offer anything at all, even though we are tipping the scale), why would we want to support the government? We should obviously be able to offer them to vote, from their perspective, in an unseemly manner? It seems a bit awkward to give them what they want first (by support) and then trying to negotiate.

The idea in the third scenario is that we help a government form, that we ourselves aren’t happy with, but who we choose to support indefinitely anyway. Principally only to tease the opposition, in other words. When the opposition has spent a few months being grumpy because they can’t form a government even though they think they won the election, they have two alternatives to choose from. They can either stay grumpy for the next four years, or they can start talking to us to find out if they can “talk sense in to us” and have our support.

The big prize is the government, both for the left and the right, and they have nothing to lose from having a dialogue with us. With that, we’ve managed to initialize a discussion with the opposition concerning these issues. Since our proposals does not, in any way, clash with the basic values of neither the left wing nor the right wing block, and since they are good proposals, objectively, for Sweden, there is no reason to believe that they would prefer to stay grumpy for the next four years instead of making a deal with us.

But until they have done so, we will consistently vote with their opponents (i.e. the government that we support even if we think they are no good). That way the opposition will have an even bigger reason to strike a deal with us, even more so than if we voted without a clear direction. The more votes the opposition loses concerning health care / education / taxes / disbanding of military units, the more eager they will become to have a change of government.

The government that is in power even though we think they’re no good will perhaps feel happy to be able to carry through whatever they want without giving us anything in return. But they will know that all it takes for them to lose office is one word from the opposition. So the joy they’re feeling will hardly be very deep or long lasting.

The point of helping a government to form even if none of the players gives us what we want is that we want to add to stablity and let things calm down a bit. One can’t postpone negotiations about the government more than a couple of weeks after the election. If we can’t have a government that we want because it promises to see our points and work for them, it’s still better to help a government we don’t like. The country needs a government.

Parliamentarism is such an ingenious system because the parliament can throw out the government in office whenever a majority of its members wish. The leader of the opposition will know this, no matter if his name is Persson or Reinfeldt. So why would he not talk to us to see if he can create a majority for a vote of no confidence? And why would he not meet our demands when he has had time to think about them, and realize that they do not oppose his own ideology or any core party issues in any way?

If we make it to the parliament, but can not tip the scale
Even if we would not reach a position where we can tip the scale, we can still do a lot of good in the standing committees. Much of the malfunctioning legislation that is voted through is often voted through because the established parties do not understand the Internet and all the new technology. They have not thought through the consequences of building a controlled society to conserve the old instead of embracing the possibilities we have in our time.

They often blindly trust what lobbyists and civil servants at the departments tell them to think. They do not see these issues as important enough to put down time getting an informed opinion.

We can hopefully change this, simply by being part of the committees, pressing the fact that these are important issues. Neither social democrats nor moderates really want to make it illegal for small businesses to develop new software, after all, or put all Swedish youths in prison. The fact that they still make or argue for laws that has these consequences is mostly due to lack of knowledge. We can supply the standing committees with a well needed competence and a valuable perspective.

- If we can’t tip the scale, will we try to negotiate about individual issues?

In this scenario, negotiations will hardly be our most important tool, simply because we wouldn’t have much of a negotiation position. If they can create a majority without us, they won’t need to negotiate with us at all.

But this does not mean that all would be lost. We could still add a lot, simply by being constructive in our committee work. Much of the worst legislation is due to the fact that the established parties lack knowledge and interest in our issues.

- …or will we simply cancel our votes?

In a situation where there is a parliamentary majority without us, it wouldn’t matter how we voted, and then it doesn’t make a difference. The simplest thing would be to simply not vote.

- …or do we present bills that are promptly turned down?

We might want to present bills as part of our work to clarify the choices our society has, but the purpose then would only be to raise these issues. We would probably have to spend more time discussing the pros and cons of the bills that are about to be clubbed.

- …or should we simply stay home with our kids?

Participating in the committees in a constructive manner aside, there will be much work to be done on the European level. Some of the decisions we want carried through can only be made in Brussels. Therefore we have all reason to do what we can to support our sister parties in other countries, and help them get started. So there might not be much time for vacation, even if we don’t get to support a government.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.