Cav's Place

Sweden certainly doesn’t seem to live up to its name of flag bearer of freedom anymore. After apparently losing the right to choose who to invite to your party, its residents will also lose the right to communicate privately, as well as the presumption of innocence it seems…
This fight against terrorism certainly seems to be a good excuse for anything, doesn’t it? Don’t let the fact that any terrorists with the brains to mastermind a devastating attack would also be smart enough to code their communications properly fool you… Keep people scared and you’ll be able to do anything you want. Not that the people approve of something like this, but if you manage to implant that doubt in the minds of some then the protests won’t be quite as vehement and you just might be able to get away with it.
What makes it even worse is that it’s Sweden! When something like this happens in a country that’s so well known for actually being free (as opposed to just claiming to be free, like the United States), it has a greater impact. That could very well be the actual idea, make others wonder what chance do they have to stop it from happening in their own countries if it already happened in Sweden. Just a conspiracy theory you say? Time shall tell, but I’m starting to wonder if these theories even go far enough…

In other news, YouTube will have to give all user histories to Viacom! It’s a “piracy” issue again, of course, and it seems very similar to the Swedish law in a way. It seems to be one more move aimed towards demoralizing people, because a big media company won even against a giant like Google.
Google might not actually be that innocent when it comes to copyright issues. I’m not talking about current laws, I’m talking about what laws should state if they’d be fair, namely that commercial use of another’s copyrighted material is illegal, but non-commercial use is not a problem. I don’t know how YouTube earns money for Google, but if they earn anything when people watch or upload content it means they use that material commercially, even if they don’t upload it themselves. If they do earn money that way then it’s something that could be argued, but the debate should end there!
I look at this and don’t get what does all that private data have to do with what type of content is more popular. Couldn’t they just ask for the number of times each video has been played, or perhaps at most the number of unique visitors for each? Not to mention that in a fair world the only request from Viacom’s list which should have even been considered would have been the one about the advertising schema, for the reason I mentioned above, but that was denied and this was approved! The only explanation I can find is, I say again, that it’s a show of strength, proving that they can do it in hopes of scaring everyone else into submission.
People are already a bit bothered by Google for taking down videos whenever the copyright holders request it, so their attitude when it comes to this ruling is going to tip the scales. Complying with something like this means betraying their users, as simple as that! On the other hand, if they decide to fight it at all costs, especially if they do that by lashing out against distributors in general, they’ll have millions of people backing them in every way that they can. With such a strong company in the front lines, good things might actually happen…

The bottom line is that we need to put aside our differences, leave our comfort zones and fight as one against the common enemies, because otherwise we’ll all end up treated like criminals and lose our rights and freedoms faster than we’d have thought possible until recently. A single ant is powerless against a large animal and even dozens of them might be squashed at once, but when an entire colony is determined to take down said large animal it eventually will. I think we have a lot to learn from that.