http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing-recognized-as-official-religion-in-sweden-120104/



That's it! I'm moving to Sweden! LOL!

does that mean you can no longer be prosecuted for file sharing since that would be repression of beliefs ?

Are there any news organizations independently corroborating this other than online pirate 'zines and their affiliates and fans? The source that broke the story that everyone else is citing is some element of the torrent community itself. It's like me quoting myself as a source and then picked up by everyone else.

The legal stigma? No, I'm afraid not. What it does do is add currency to the spoiled brat stigma these people have in addition to the loads of steaming pile red herring arguments these people have in order to justify stealing.

It all boils down to "I want it, I don't want to have to pay for it," no matter how much they try and act as though they are trying to foster innovation by threatening everyone's IP rights and open them up for the public domain. Even going so far as saying the consumer is impacted the most, as if the consumer is entitled for goods and services the consumer didn't intend to pay for, so by definition, that's not a consumer, that's a free loader or a parasite.

You'd almost understand pre-teens and high school age kids who haven't invested much into anything yet to not have perspective on much to think that way, but when adults are involved, that's where it really gets pathetic.

How many of these adults grew up in this warped mind set? And unless their work as adults is directly impacted by piracy, why should they mature in the least?

I'll bet that most of these adult torrent goofballs don't apply this philosophy in any other respect. For example, most wouldn't dream about stealing a car or even a candy bar, yet remain clueless or divorced from the idea that steeling someone's intellectual property and distributing it in principle is the same behavior. It's easier to do with some degree or sense of being removed from physically taking, that's what probably gives them the mindset that it's ok. If you physically had to break a lock and tress pass somewhere to get it, that might give the whole thing some perspective. But when you have the chance to be idolized in that culture, I guess that's another draw to why this is going on as a social component just as an added factor to it. Your basic blue collar, low rent thief everyone looks down on. In that community, you can become sort of famous among a bunch of 14 year olds.

I'm not in favor of bootlegging and theft, but I also don't believe it's in the long term interest of humanity to place property rights on ideas. Or an entire plant species, such as monsanto claims with all soybeans. Cuts both ways.

That's how it used to be- there wasn't always the notion of copyright or owning ideas, knowledge until fairly recently was 'community property.' If you look at ancient writers, they don't cite or attribute quotations to people like you might have learned in school to footnote your sources, in fact, that's all they did was borrow and 'rip off' each others' ideas (or were inspired by them). I always found it ironic and inaccurate to attribute an idea or quote to some ancient writer who himself was paraphrasing or borrowing from someone else.

There is a difference now however in the way someone invests lots of time and money into his product that they didn't do in the past. Knowledge might be defended if an enemy could derive an advantage from it, but it wasn't like the means to earn a living in and of itself. So, Plato, a member of the aristocracy who had his own academy never would have developed software or invested millions of dollars in something trying to recoup his investment through sales or somefink didn't have to worry about such things.

It may have been done differently in the past, but that doesn't mean it should still be done that way. Different circumstances.

Makes more sense than all of the other religions out there. Sign me up!

You know these people are full of crap when they are interested in distributing other people's content rather than developing their own and giving it away. Nor do they ever seem all that interested in helping other people develop or defend their content from other claims. It's all about their own use without paying the price of admission. They even self-apply the word pirate and wear it as a badge of honor. For some reason though they expect to do it with impunity. Pirates always knew the consequences, now it's like these ones think there shouldn't be any.