Slashdot reports that Pirate Bay, the widely celebrated file sharing website, is planning to buy Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea in order to get round international copyright laws (
link here). It previously established server sites in Holland and Belgium as well as its original home in Sweden. Sealand claims to be outside British jurisdiction by proclaiming itself a “micronation.”
For Pirate Bay's full history (two years), see (wikepedia). It argues it does not violate copyright because it only tells people where they can download the copyrighted material. Courts in many countries have ruled against the use of BitTorrent for this purpose, making Pirate Bay an accessory to crime in those jurisdictions.
Naturally Pirate Bay has infuriated software, motion picture, and recording companies which managed to take it down last spring but it was soon up again. It remains a perhaps forlorn hope of creating more sanity in our intellectual property law. But a lot of us are on its side on pure economic welfare grounds.
Hi, I started a pledge at pledgebank.com
http://www.pledgebank.com/buysealand
the idea is that you promise to donate 10$ to to buysealand.com if othe 1000 people will do it with you. Are you interested? If you are please sign the pledge asap because pledges with less than 25 subscribers are not even shown on the website!
I wonder if the new owners, whoever they turn out to be, will honor the titles currently granted by Sealand. Personally, I have been debating purchasing a
Baronhood.
