EVE General Discussion

In my country pirate bay has been banned since more than a month. Proxies ftw.
A courthouse can't beat the internet.

The internet is not a law-free place. Piratebay lost in a european legal court, they are confirmed acting with criminal intentions. Hence this does not fall under the principle of Freedom of Speech. It's simply crime, therefore banned for good reason.

Look up ACTA or read a little here: https://www.eff.org/issues/acta or watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=citzRjwk-sQ

If this actually goes ahead across all of the EU or the world then it isnt just freedom on the interwebz that it will compromise, it will also mean sales of generic drugs could be banned so you only have the option of the expensive named brands, it could mean patented seed types will be tightly controlled, forcing poorer countries to have to but these expensive ones or starve.

Basically ACTA is a system of control, to decide what you can have, what you can see and force you to have to buy specific stuff. Overall it is yet another loss of freedom, clothed in the guise of pretecting copyrighted material.

Spread the word people of New Eden, say NO to ACTA...

It may seem that way, but remember for evil to prevail, the good men need only do nothing...

But those leaders are democratically elected!

Are you a anti-democracy terrorist?

Please stay where you are, assistance will be with you shortly.

Saying that banning one pirating website will lead to 1984-ish type censorship is exactly the same as the hyperbolic argument that legalizing gay marriage will end with legalized bestiality and paedophilia. Anything COULD happen but if you're going to worry this much about things that are incredibly unlikely you might as well have a bomb shelter built too. Gotta hide from those Russians! ;D

Also while banning the website does not completely stop people from accessing it other ways, it shows that the law is at least trying to stop these illegal sites :D Better than nothing IMO!

how cute !

Exactly. Any regular internet site that revolves solely around illegal activities, be it child porn, selling drugs (they exist too) or whatever should be treated as just that, illegal. Just because a site distributes links to something illegal doesn't make it any more legal than providing the actual downloads unless it is being moderated so that the illegal stuff gets removed, even if only after reporting it.

A message board like this is pretty much the perfect example. The owners of the board provide means to post things here and as such in the end they are responsible that the boards don't have anything illegal in them. You can bet that if someone were to post child porn here, or perhaps real life death threats, that they would be removed VERY quickly.

Personally I've moderated numerous internet discussion boards ranging from 100 users to a million users, from unofficial small time boards to official boards of internationally succesfull bands/artists. Removing illegal actions has always been a part of that job and it has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

That said, I live in Finland myself and couldn't care less if illegal torrent sites like that were blocked.

I am doing something about it. I'm ignoring it, like all copywrite legislation.

When these IP companies meet me half way by not automatically doubling the price of everything that enters Australian territory, I'll start considering playing ball with them. Until then, we can play a little game of "I don't give a flying **** what you say".