16 Years later

1992:


2008

16 Years later, two politicians fill the void Birgit Friggebo left us with. Ah, to see such success-stories in real time. It's a thriller! Because of course this is gonna be a huge success story.
Fast recap for non-swedes: The Government in Sweden gathers around a proposal where content owners - also known as 'record labels', or 'artists' - can proceed directly to court with a filesharers Ip-address asking for their home address wich the court then provides them with from the filesharers ISP. Thereafter the content owner simply bill the filesharer a proper amount. The whole process dismantles basic stuff like having to involve the police and protecting peoples integrity. Everyones a Vigilante now! What a fun place to live in! Just like the wild west in the good old days.

Anywaaaayyys, this is gonna be a success story, for sure! It is now only a matter of days, maybe hours!, until we are back in 1992 - the whole 90s ahead of us. Remember it? Oasis, Blur, CDs sold tonnage! Money was not an issue. Menswear! The group, that is. Oh, how sweet it will be.

This is so sweet. We have already started popping champagne bottles. Cristal of course, we took a couple of fast SMS-loans. Hey! We are a record label, the swedish government has fixed everythihg for us now. Soon EVERYTHING will be just peachy!

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU Beatrice Ask and Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth!



In another part of the world: tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are making and packing cheap clothes and copies of expensive clothes and other stuff in the ports in Italy, especially Naples. Mafia and cartels keep every dime and the paychecks are at a minimum, far below minimum actually. A real issue. Real piracy, in many ways.
In another part of the world: The IT-industry is the worst industry in regards to be prepared to respect human rights, according to Amnesty. 100% of the enterprises says it's no risk they will break human rights but only 20% has made an analysis. Desperate to mine the web in Russia and China. That is a real issue.
In another part of the world: Someone still is in jail for writing something on the www about what happened at Tiananmen square during a couple of hot days and nights 1989. It's still happening, thanks to large systems of surveillance.

All these things connect. The physical products produced in piracy manner with no respect for peoples lives, the IT-business and the race for the money, the surveillance of peoples thoughts. They all connect, and they connect all too well with the goal and purpose of the lobbyists working for the major labels: to make Internet a controlled system of information. A system where every word and file are located, logged and looked at. This is where it's going, and it's not going to do anyone any good. Only a few lobbyists will profit from it. And we will all loose focus from what really matters. Loose focus of what really is piracy, what evil looks like.

There are serious things at stake, but all focus is on one thing: how to keep the record and movie business in Status quo until they have 'sorted' things out. As if they ever played ball in the first time! Nothings gonna change for music/movie biz whatever laws are enforced!

This madness has to stop. All things regarding copyright needs to reform. The word itself is almost absurd set in the context of Internet. Perhaps the Internet wasn't made for copying, but it sure is used for it now. It would have been better if they just would have called the Internet for "Copyright" instead so people would have understood what it was. Like: Hello sir, here is your Right to copy - the Copyright. Read your mail, send your files. That's what you do here at your Copyright! And of course we wont spy on you, but no sir, that wouldn't be respectable sir. That's not how we do it here in the free world.

Ah, what a world it could have been.

Instead: Brave new world, Kallocain, Aniara Osv. etc. m m