Intellectual Property Law

Cartel Thinks Child Porn "is Great"

By Posted by Alan Wexelblat

No, really. I can't make this stuff up. Back in June of last year Sweden elected an MEP (Member of the European Parliament) from the Pirate Party. The party's platform included a focus on protecting copyrights from over-regulation and abuse.

The MEP, Christian Engström, now has published on his blog site comments from the Danish anti-piracy group lawyer Johan Schlüter at a Stockholm meeting a couple years ago. According to this blog post, Schlüter thinks ?Child pornography is great" because authorities can be talked into blocking Web sites that host child porn, and therefore will be more amenable to blocking file-sharing sites. Never mind that the one thing has nothing to do with the other. This is what the Cartel thinks is clever strategy.

I'm reminded of Bruce Sterling's 2002 remark about the "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse." Child pornography is a universally reviled evil; no one can be in favor of it. Therefore, you just need to link the thing you think is bad (file sharing) somehow to child porn and presto you taint that thing with the same scourge. Assuming, of course, that your audience is gullible. Or morons. Or both, which is apparently what the Cartel thinks of its audience.

Full post as published by Copyfight - The Politics of IP on April 29, 2010 (boomark / email).