Although I never got around to doing the follow-up post on the political-symbolic aspects of the Pirate Bay case (for which you can all blame my baby daughter), one of the consequences of the guilty verdict I considered has come to pass: the Swedish Piratpartiet has won a seat in the European parliament, gaining more than 7% of the vote in Sweden.
How much change they can make in that bureaucratic behemoth is another matter but their election as a Streisand effect-like result of the Pirate Bay verdict which gave them an immense boost in public profile, shows that this is a political issue with teeth.
L
And all so immensely pointless, Lew. Every time they take down a pirate bay server, another appears within six hours, usually in an entirely different country.
Once again, the recording industry and the government of Sweden reveal their ignorance of how the internet works.
MD,
Yeah. but for me, the breathtaking thing is the political aspect: how long do politicians believe they can continue to legislate against and suppress the chosen behaviour of a huge (and growing) proportion of their electorate without suffering some sort of backlash. It’s a simple numbers game, really; the writing is on the wall.
L