I just read a list released by the IFPI, outlining what they claim as the “10 inconvenient truths” of Music Piracy. I have a lot of problems with it.

1. “Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment “free music” rhetoric.”
   Bullshit. The Pirate Bay requires a shitload of bandwidth. Along with other expenses incurred in the process of keeping their servers up and running, retaining lawyers and all the other things that may factor in, I highly doubt a profit, if anything, is being made.
2. “AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.”
   Well, yeah…it’s likely the fucking Russian mob that runs that site. Most people aren’t stupid to trust their credit information to them. But still, let’s compare…AllOfMP3.com “supposedly” is giving their money to a government agency, who is supposed to pass it on to the record companies and artists and for some reason, be it the site or the agency, it’s not happening. Now, let’s take SoundExchange, a former member of the RIAA who aggressively collects royalties, “holds” them and “seeks out” artists to pay them. How many of those artists have been paid? With a such a staggering huge list of unpaid musicians that they seemingly cannot find (including such <sarcasm>totally obscure</sarcasm> groups like Public Enemy, Siouxsie and the Bansees, Loverboy, several artists who are dead and strangely enough, the band I’m listening to as I write this), it doesn’t seem like they’re trying very hard either. Are they criminals too?

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I’m psyched to see that over the holiday weekend a US branch of the Pirate party was established, or at least got their website up and running.

I first read about the Pirate Party after it was first established in Sweden and made news in conjunction with thepiratebay.org’s trials, travails and public snubbing of US corporate bullying. My first thought was “Hell yes, but this party needs to be in the United States, the source of all unfair media restrictions, ridiculous copyright laws and all evils in between”. Thankfully and with hope, it has now arrived.

There’s not much going on yet and hopefully this won’t be one of those lame-ass, never off the ground, dead in the water, psuedo non-projects started mainly to garner attention. I find that really don’t care for the name, “Pirate Party”. While I understand the use and recent history concerning the term pirate in regards to digital media, it’s use is still to grey to me and given it’s historical connections with murder, theft and a whole mess of negative things, I question whether it’s appropriate for a party mainly concerned with copyright and usage reform. Sure it’s catchy, but in today’s buzzword-dependant media, amongst the non-7337, perhaps older and less media and tech savvy population, it sounds bad. Isn’t the whole purpose about freeing media, liberating ideas and fostering creativity? If so, why chose a word that denotes thievery?

Looking at the site, I was suprised to see that the pirate party also has branches in Belgium, Italy and France as well, which is great. I’d really like to see more countries join as well.