Wikileaks, Bahnhof, Switch

Seemingly Bahnhof as yet has received no threats of legal action - a bit of a surprise given Sweden's efforts to "get" Julian Assange of Wikileaks over previously dismissed sex offence accusations and Sweden's equivalent of the MPAA's former efforts to "sting" Bahnhof over file-sharing (see previous posts).

The Swiss Internet company Switch is also resisting pressure ...

From the Guardian:

"WikiLeaks site's Swiss registrar dismisses pressure to take it offline

Swiss registrar Switch says there is 'no reason' why WikiLeaks should be forced off internet, despite French and US demands

WikiLeaks has been fighting to stay online since releasing a cache of sensitive diplomatic cables to five international media organisations.

WikiLeaks received a boost tonight when Switzerland rejected growing international calls to force the site off the internet.

The whistleblowers site, which has been publishing leaked US embassy cables, was forced to switch domain names to WikiLeaks.ch yesterday after the US host of its main website, WikiLeaks.org, pulled the plug following mounting political pressure.

The site's new Swiss registrar, Switch, today said there was "no reason" why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.

The reassurances come just hours after eBay-owned PayPal, the primary donation channel to WikiLeaks, terminated its links with the site, citing "illegal activity". France yesterday added to US calls for all companies and organisations to terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks following the release of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.

The Swiss Pirate Party, which registered the WikiLeaks.ch domain name earlier this year on behalf of the site, said Switch had reassured the party that it would not block the site.

An email sent by Denis Simonet, president of the Swiss Pirate Party, to international members of the liberal political group said: "Some minutes ago I got good news: Switch, the registrar for .ch domains, told us that there is no reason to block wikileaks.ch."

Laurence Kaye, leader of the UK-based Pirate Party, tonight told the Guardian: "International Pirate Parties now have an integral role in allowing access to WikiLeaks. I wish some of our other politicians had the same guts.

"We support the WikiLeaks project as access to information is the prerequisite for an informed and engaged democracy."

A Digital Defeat

Win one, lose one.

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is a political party in Sweden that is fielding 20 candidataes for the forthcoming Euro-Parliament elections. Its principal, perhaps only, platform is the reform of copyright and patent law to allow us punters, open source developers, the scientific community etc open-access to information.

Although what catches media attention are music, TV and film downloads that infringe copyright legislation, over the last three years I have found it frustrating to have restricted access to scientific research in medical journals concerning Kezia's leukaemia. To download a paper will often cost c. USD 40 a time which I just cannot afford.

Last week a Swedish court, presided over by a judge with affiliations to the Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (so not without interests) convicted four members of Pirate Bay for copyright infringement imprisoning them for a year and imposing a USD 4.5 million fine on behalf of the international music/film industry.

Pirate Bay does not host copyrighted material on its servers. It points users to client users to BitTorrent users who make coprighted material available. So Pirate Bay is not hosting copyrighted material - just providing links.

BitTorrent has not been prosecuted - it is an innocent file transfer protocol over the Internet. How users use it is up to them. Pirate Bay points users to other users who are hosting copyrighted material - it is not responsible for the material being transferred.

On the basis of the Swedish judge's decision, by providing my readers with instructions on how to use Tor with Privoxy/FoxProxy to view BBC television content via their iPlayer internet application which restricts internet TV viewing to UK residents I also could be on arrival at Heathrow and prosecuted . The owners of UK Tor exitnodes could also be prosecuted.

But the BBC, Voice of America, etc rely on such technologies, and the "volunteers" who run their computers as Tor exitnodes, to allow Internet users in countries that filter access to Internet content, to permit access to their websites.

Tor was originally developed by the US Department of Defense. That Tor, proxies and file transfer technologies are being used for purposes that go against the purposes of governments and big business is only their own fault as they have their own reasons for developing these technologies.

You cannot have your cake and eat it.