Not sure that I'm a Pirate...

... but this guy certainly is... or at least claims to be. I don't see an eyepatch, so it's hard to say.

The leader of the Swedish 'Pirate Party' recently gave a small speech in protest of the recent police raid of over 100 servers, all run by the popular bittorrent aggregator Pirate Bay. Interesting read. I more or less agree with the central thesis of the article, which basically says that the way information is disseminated today is like something we've never seen before, let alone anticipated, and that certain parties (shadow people? boogeymen?) would like to put tighter regulations on this party favor that we call the WorldWideWeb. Information flows from one end of the earth to the other almost instantaneously-- there is no 'central control' over where it's all going (not yet), it's just going. A few clicks and we're suddenly viewing a webpage that sits on a server in Cairo, or Tokyo, or Melbourne -- click! snap! just like that. So much has changed in the last 20 years-- suddenly we find ourselves in wide open spaces, connected, wired, defying our ingrained conceptions of space and time. It's a free-for-all of sorts, a worldwide social, an immense circus, and people from various stretches of the earth are 'discussing' things like no other time in history. Nevermind the fact that we rarely see each other's faces, what matters is that the Pandora's Box of overlapping and unisolated communication has been opened, and the ways in which we percieve our place on this floating rock in space are undergoing drastic change. Yes things have always been changing, but never before have large pockets of humanity been able to send and receive bits of information, bits of experience at the rate, or on any comparable scale, than like we see today. It'll be interesting to see the kind of infrastructure that is built around the web and all its counterparts (indeed one that is already being built).

I've yet to work out some well-developed thoughts/opinions on the issue of sharing copyrighted media, but as far as sharing information in general goes, let us say Viva La Revolucion! We can read a Swedish newspaper from our computer in friggin' Tightwad, Missouri if we like! My Grandmother who is vacationing in Iceland can send me electronic images and virtual mail! Instantly! (BTW, 'Tightwad' is an actual city in MO- look it up if you don't believe me).

Interesting times we live in. And I'm sure that most of us have a hard time even grasping the surface of it all - I know I do.