No, it was the payment service providers Visa, MasterCard and PayPal who took the decisions to block, not the Swedish banks.

As a Member of the European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate Party, I have just published a short book (108 pages) on copyright reform together with Rick Falkvinge, who is the founder of the first and Swedish Pirate party.

The studies mentioned here seem to paint exactly the same picture as a number of studies that we refer to in that book. File sharing is not hurting revenues for the cultural sector. When we look at statistics for the last decade, with rampant file sharing on the internet, we see that more money is going into film, music, books, games and other culture than ever before, and that a larger portion of it is going to the artists and other creative people involved (as opposed to middle men such as the big record companies).

Two weeks ago we had a book launch for "The Case for Copyright Reform" in the European Parliament, and I have distributed a paper copy of it to each of the 754 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament).

Now all that remains to be seen is how many of my colleagues in the parliament will actually read it, but that's another story. ;)

If you are interested in checking out the book, you can download "The Case for Copyright Reform" (for free, obviously) from http://www.copyrightreform.eu/ You can also order a paper copy at cost price via print-on-demand, if you prefer that.

It is time that we start looking at copyright legislation in a fact-based manner, as opposed to the IPR fundamentalist way that has been dominant in this policy area so far on both sides of the Atlantic.

There is a better way.

I took part in the vote as a Member of the JURI Committee in the European Parliament, and I can correct you on a few points. The amendments to a report can change its meaning completely, and the amendment that we lost was a rather important one. Therefore it is wrong to say that it was and "obscure" amendment, and imply that it was not important. The report is a legislative report that will turn into a binding directive and then national law once it is adopted, so it is not the question of a non-binding (or "own initiative") report this time.

Thank you for a very clear explanation of the opinion. I took the liberty of republishing it on my blog: http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/explanation-of-the-ecj-opinion-on-internet-blocking/

A MS Word version of (what I believe is) the same ACTA document can be found on my blog: Consolidated ACTA leak as Word document.

I don't really think that any parliamentary immunity will be necessary in connection with spreading this document, but as a Member of the European Parliament I can confirm that I have it, in case it turns out to be useful.

/Christian Engström
Member of the European Parliament
Piratpartiet (The Pirate Party), Sweden

The elections for the European Parliament are on June 7.

That's what we're focusing all our efforts on right now. It's an entirely realistic goal, and we're planning to make it.

/Christian Engstrom
Vice Chairman Piratpartiet
Candidate for the European Parliament

This is where we have located the servers of the Swedish Pirate Party.

Part of the reason is that the ISP Bahnhof has taken at stance on privacy issues that we are very happy with as pirates. But of course part of the reason is that it's a pretty cool looking data center. :)

You can find a couple of pictures from when we installed our servers in the data center here.

/Christian Engstrom
Vice Chairman, The Pirate Party, Sweden

Why was that modded troll?

If you look at the amount AT&T, Comcast, Verizon spend on marketing you'll find it comaparable to what they spend on upgrades.

Comcast spends millions on TV commercials to tell you how Comcastic they are.

These companies are government sanctioned monopolies that run humongous bureaucratic hierarchies. They have diminished incentive to be efficient because entry level into the market is so high as to preclude real competition.