I saw the movie “AFK” last weekend. I say movie although it tries to be a documentary. But 99% of the film is following the 3 people on trial for running the Pirate Bay and allowing them to talk freely without any opposition and very limited fact check.
But still .. some things in that entire thing is very disturbing. As is the latest twist Peter Sunde is blogging about. In short … if you’re up for digital copyright violation charges in Sweden you are in for a very very tough uphill battle. Not only is the prosecutor very “Hollywood”-friendly, so is the judge, the jury, the police and the court of appeals and as it turns out the European court as well. It’s pretty scary!
But what strikes me as the most upsetting thing in the entire story is that no one with judicial or political power is taking them seriously. There have been some serious integrity breaches and legal procedures never followed and bias that you’d think that some politician with real power would say “this entire thing was handled wrong!”. But no one is even listening to them. It’s like they hear “pirate bay” and just turn on ignore mode. Which is really sad and makes me embarrassed to be Swedish to be honest.
I can’t argue much for their innocence since they are guilty as shit of “assisting copyright violations”, but even so, a fair trial is the least they deserve.
And here we are, 3 years later and what has happened on that front? Well we have Netflix and HBO has just started in Scandinavia (albeit with very limited selection) but other than that we’re still pretty much screwed. If I wanna see a movie in HD the legal way I either have to go to the cinema, which is an entire project now that I have a kid. Or I can buy the bluray for $30 (which either involves taking a trip into Stockholm or order on te web and wait 3-4 days) and sit through commercials and advertisements and disclaimers and copyright warnings and a menu that takes forever to load because it connects to the internet and then I can finally press play. Compare that to the illegal way of “what movie do I wanna see? this one, ok, download, go make popcorn and poor up drinks, unpack, go to the bathroom, and the press play. They really should offer more legal ways of doing it because I’d pay for it! Valve realized a long long time ago that the best way to fight piracy is offering a convenient alternative and every game I’ve played for the past 8 years I’ve actually purchased.
stoff
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