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by toyg 5244 days ago
What has the Pirate Bay done of value over the last decade?

I don't know, maybe stuff like founding the only political party that really cares about policies for the internet age? Promoting the free exchange of art, content and ideas on the internet? Sponsoring cultural events across Europe?

Oh, but they must be in it for the money, of course. Because risking jail and having very powerful people come after you, while you're developing a free search engine built on a highly redundant architecture designed to bypass censorship attempts, is such an easy way to rake in the millions. I wonder why Zuckerberg didn't think about that.

They might not have started a revolution in Tunisia, but they've still done more to change the world of ideas than 95% of the tech companies out there (yeah, my 95% is as bad as your 95%, lol).

I won't waste time challenging your half-assed assertions that "there is little doubt that TPB is costing content owners real money by helping people access torrents". That's what the copyright mafia says, whereas an increasingly large amount of research says this is quite a dubious claim at best, and at worst exactly the opposite of what's really happening. If companies like Adobe and Microsoft really hated piracy as much as they say, they'd have stopped long ago to distribute "demo" and "trial" versions which could be easily cracked.

Quiet people sit at the back of the bus, while progress is made by unreasonable people; but considering your attitude towards people who "enjoy the attention", I don't doubt that you'll struggle to understand where I'm coming from.