TorrentFreak

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party in Sweden, has earned a spot in Foreign Policy’s prestigious list of Top 100 Global Thinkers. Falkvinge is in good company, listed among many key figures in the Arab Spring and world leaders such as Barack Obama and Angela Merkel. Foreign Policy describes 2011 as the year where Falkvinge’s ideas about transparency, Internet privacy and copyright law are gaining in popularity.

The current fight between the old and the new — characterized by file sharing, the Arabian Spring, the Occupy swarm, the success of the Pirate Parties, etc — goes way beyond a few laws on the surface. It goes right down to the heart of our views on what kind of society we desire.

If we have learned anything from the wars over the copyright monopoly, it is that the high court and low court have returned. Being equal before the law is a key cornerstone of our society that people don’t even pretend is reality anymore.

Every time changes to the copyright monopoly are considered, the profits of major entertainment industry companies are at the center of the discussion. Even the people who fiercely defend the right to share information freely are going to extreme lengths to argue that this will not hurt the revenues of the copyright industry. But why are these profits even relevant? Why should we care about the profits of these companies?

I live in Stockholm, Sweden. A hundred years ago, one of the largest employers in the city was a company named Stockholm Ice. Their business was as straightforward as it was necessary: help keep perishable food edible for longer by distributing cold in a portable format.

I sometimes hear people claim that laws exist to be followed. These people are the most dangerous people who exist in a society. Tyranny is never upheld through law; it is upheld through thousands of bureaucrats that follow the letter of the law just because they believe in rules and law.

One of the primary demands of the Pirate Party has been that the same laws that apply offline should also apply online. I think it’s an entirely reasonable thing to demand; the Internet is not a special case, but part of reality. The problems appear when an obsolete but powerful industry realizes that this just and equal application of laws means they can’t enforce a distribution monopoly any longer.