A large scale cyber attack which took down cable, telephone, cellular and satellite networks in Washington for around 15 minutes has been blamed on a female Russian hacker. According to the show Covert Affairs, she is a member of Piratbyrån, the founding group behind The Pirate Bay. The group are somewhat unsuccessfully trying to play down any real-life link to the supposedly fictional claims.
In 2003 a group of friends from Sweden decided to found Piratbyrån (the bureau of piracy), a lobbying organization to promote the sharing of information and culture. A few months later the group took a decision that would change the Internet – the launch of a BitTorrent tracker named ‘The Pirate Bay’. Today marks the end of an era with the announcement that Piratbyrån has disbanded.
Last year The Pirate Bay and the Bureau of Piracy bought themselves a bus, painted it up in suitable pirate-style livery and embarked on a European tour. Now, with the trial of The Pirate Bay just a few weeks away, the bus will be coming home to Sweden to serve as the official court case press center.
One thing that has emerged as a concept in the Swedish blogosphere over the last two years is the Bodström society. It obviously derives from the Swedish justice minister Thomas Bodström. The term relates to a society that is going in an Orwellian direction towards more and more monitoring of its citizens, often in a deceitful way.
Rasmus Fleischer form the Swedish pro-piracy organization PiratbyrÃ¥n gave a talk at the Reboot8 conference., he discussed copyright issues and PiratbyrÃ¥n thoughts and vision. The Reboot8 conference is “a journey into the interconnectedness of creation, participation, values, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities, connectedness and many more areas”. The Grey Commons Intro There has [...]
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Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
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