The Pirate Bay up again - bandwidth provided by Swedish Pirate Party

This is of course a political move. The Swedish general election is in four months and the Pirate Party's greatest threat is not getting enough attention. As the other political parties in Sweden doesn't really understand technology and won't actively engage in these issues. In the EP election last year, two unpopular laws had gone into effect the same year and also the Pirate Bay trial had just been held months before the election.<p>This time around technology related legislature seem to have been postponed and the continuation of the Pirate Bay trial has conveniently been placed just weeks <i>after</i> the election. If the Pirate Party's ISP now decides or get forced to cut off the Pirate Bay from the Internet, they will also censor the Pirate Party, which (of course) is a political party. Sparking a lot of outrage and controversy, which previously has shown very effective for the party.

Notice the easter egg in bold letters, when put together it says "assclowns ov teh riaa."

I was searching for some legitimate software the other day and a link to the pirate bay came up on google. I was shocked.<p>As a producer of software and content including movies and pics, I am also shocked that websites like this find so much support from this community. I believe producers of content should be able to reap rewards for that production.<p>It takes time, energy, passion, dedication, and practice to create something of value. These products are of value if someone is downloading them and filling up hard drives.<p>The people supporting the copyright violations the pirate bay support, don't also support piracy off the coast of Somalia or theft of hard drives to store those songs. The argument is that bits aren't property.<p>But those bits are the mechanism that supports the creators of the content that has improved their lives throughout the years. If you don't believe that -- take all your lines of code, databases and photos and delete them. How much will it cost you to replace them?<p>I know I am in the minority around here, but I am not a supporter of the pirate bay. I acquire the content I consume legally and legitimately and in a manner consistent with how the producers have agreed that content should be consumed. Anything less would violate the golden rule. I don't want people using the software I create without helping <i>me</i> pay the bills.

When I was younger I was a pirate for one reason and one reason alone. Lack of funds. Now that I am older I take pride in supporting the developers and content creators. However, without the internet and pirate downloads I never would have gotten interested in graphic/website design or discovered so many great genres of music and film - which then translated into sales later in my life. I guess art and education tools should only be for the rich?

Where does it say that the Swedish Pirate Party are providing the bandwidth? I can't find anything about that, maybe my Lolcat isn't what it should be.

Hmm. What does "assclowns ov teh riaa" mean? Is "ov" Swedish for "of"? I know "teh" is just leetspeak for "the".

When a country has enough people that think getting music and movies without paying for them is the most important political issue (ahead of foreign policy, the environment, poverty, world hunger, and so on), that's a country that needs a war to knock some sense of perspective into people's heads.

Has it ever gone down? I remember people talking it was closed and stuff, but I'd go there to test and it'd always be online. Did that just apply to some servers or what?

As someone whose content is on The Pirate Bay, I must protest these unneeded downtimes preventing people from downloading my movie (The BBS Documentary).

When will the suits get it? Even China can't censor the 'net. If people want it, they will get it. Simple.

Why can't the TPB folks actually write in proper English ? It might make other folks take them seriously.