thepirateblog.org?

Some of you might know The Pirate Bay. Or not. The name of this site has been allegedly linked with file-sharing activity.

I'm not sure if I can comment about the legality of the file-sharing activity, however, I'm sure that you, the reader, can look this sort of thing up and come to your own conclusions.

It is, however, interesting to note that the organisation that runs The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, is quite anti-copyright. I would hazard a guess that this sort of antipathy also extends to those other areas of intellectual property law, patents and trademarks.

Indeed, the contempt that The Pirate Bay has for this sort of thing is made manifest by the 'About' section of their website where, amongst other things, they have this to say:

Only torrent files are saved at the server. That means no copyrighted and/or illegal material are stored by us. It is therefore not possible to hold the people behind The Pirate Bay responsible for the material that is being spread using the tracker. Any complaints from copyright and/or lobby organizations will be ridiculed and published at the site.

The Pirate Bay was started by the swedish anti copyright organization Piratbyrån in the late 2003, but is since October 2004 separated and run by dedicated individuals. Using the site is free of charge, but since running it costs money, donations are very much appreciated.

I have mixed views myself on intellectual property laws. I think that the world would be a much simpler place if they were abolished, but I can respect the motivation of filthy lucre in the creative process, both artistically and industrially.

And having seen such disgraceful idiocy as what happened with Le Canard Noir's blog at Netcetera, I generally tend towards the "minimal" position, at least where censorship is concerned.

Lastly, where ‘freedom’ of speech or expression is concerned, I do support moves to ease or abolish as many restrictions on speech or expression as possible. A lot. Even if I think that you would be out of your mind to believe that 'freedom of speech or expression' in even its loosest interpretation is remotely possible in this or any other universe.

So it was with great interest that I noticed that The Pirate Bay has launched a blogging service, Baywords, powered by Wordpress. It doesn’t have the full set of features offered at Wordpress’ own site, however, and Baywords is very much up front about protecting bloggers’ rights to say whatever they like:

Many blogs are being shut down for uncomfortable thoughts and ideas. We will not do that. Our goal is to protect freedom of speech and your thoughts. As long as you don’t break any Swedish laws in your blog, we will defend it.

Now while this might sound noble and all, I admit that I have absolutely no idea of how strict Swedish laws actually are on what can or can’t be published. I suspect that they’re not all that strict.

On Wednesday nights, there’s this show on 3RRR called ‘Byte Into It’ which is an extremely well put together show for computer nerds everywhere. While I resist the tag ‘nerd’ myself, it just so happens that while this show is on every week, I happen to find myself in the car driving somewhere. And listening to it.

So while the news is a couple of weeks old, it was announced on Byte Into It that The Pirate Bay was venturing into censorship free blogging. Normally the guys on Byte Into It are very bullish on anything that assists with freer speech or expression, which was what I was expecting.

It therefore came as a complete shock to me when the news was greeted with outright cynicism and none of the usual jocularity that they normally exhibit. Comments were thrown about as to what content might be hosted, and there appeared to be consensus that you’d think twice about clicking on anything containing the ‘baywords.com’ domain name. Mainly because, in their opinion, there would be a fair to likely chance that the contents of such blogs would contain either:

• Child pornography/paedophilia;
• Neo-nazism/hate sites; or
• Other unsavoury stuff.

Is this cynicism unwarranted? Isn't this good for the internet that someone like Le Canard Noir can blog in peace without fear of reprisals?

On the other hand, is it feasible that Baywords may be a licence for all sorts of despicable trash to proliferate? Have they just provided a soap-box for nutbars everywhere to peddle their tripe?

Lastly, should we care?

The Ghost glides by, hitting everything in his path

We all have our heroes. And they will all inevitably let us down, some day.

Stephen Walker, otherwise known as The Ghost Who Talks was one of the reasons that I began listening to 3RRR, all those years ago.

His show, The Skull Cave which still broadcasts every Friday evening, is still one of the greatest trips through music that you can go on.

And if you know how to do it, I fully recommend that you somehow record his show when it's on next off the webcast and listen to it on your MP3 player. I must learn how to do this one of these days.

Anyway, Mr Walker now has a blog at The Age online. He writes well, normally. Just the other day, I was telling one of my mates about a great post where he was exposing roots music lovers for the reactionaries that they are.

But like I was saying, sooner or later, all heroes fall on their arses in one way or another, eventually.

The offending post was this one from last week, where Walker let fly at the ARIA awards night for the fact that it was crap.

Yeah. Award nights are rubbish. We knew that.

But rather than offering something new, Walker unleashed tired and derivative observations about the night that were uninspiring in their insipidness.

I'm going to take the lead from one of his commenters, Evil Roger, who picked up on the unoriginal theme and ran with it.

Firstly, Walker chose to make the observation that, "Music award shows are so formulaic aren't they?"

Wow. Talk about leaving yourself wide open. Roger let him have it with one barrel, but kept the other primed for the big stuff.

He next criticised the compere, Rove McManus, for being an "entertainer (not a musician)". Interesting. Last I looked, entertainers' jobs were to do this sort of stuff. His point about not having a musician in charge of proceedings was baffling, in light of a later observation that he makes.

However, we will continue. Walker then proceeds to criticise the "moshpit" down the front, right down to the "Moshpit Coordinator" who appeared in the closing credits. Walker has a point about this, but conversely, I'm going to give the organisers points for this. I so wish that the next Oscars night has one of these.

In other words, Walker was right. It's so very, very, hide-under-the-bed-and-cringe lame. But it's a thousand times better than all those music awards nights where people just sit in an auditorium waiting for their name to be read out and then feigning complete crystal meth breakdown while their one hit rings out across the gathered throng.

So what else does Walker poke fun at?

"...A succession of awards calculated somehow or other by someone or other..." Bloody hell, Ghost. What did you think you were watching? Terminator 2?

"...A bunch of relatively inarticulate winners who snigger and mumble their way through a list of "thankyous" that are generally meaningless or indecipherable to the average viewer." And you thought that a musician presenting the awards would be a good idea? What were you smoking, Ghost? And where can I get some?

"...Oh and a couple of actual musical performances scattered through the evening." Just in case you though that he fell asleep.

Honestly, this review just blows. Walker somehow manages to combine the intellectual snobbery of the 'über-cool' inner-city music goer with the charming naïveté of someone who believes that award nights actually award excellence, or maybe that Spïnal Tap weren't a colossal joke.

Check out all those umlauts! ROCK!!!!

You could just pick and choose the clichés that Walker uses here.

And, if it wasn't enough to come across as the most pretentious review of a music awards night ever, Walker saves his worst for last with some of the most disgraceful cheerleading for "an intimidating" Nick Cave that you ever saw.

Granted, Cave was a worthy inductee into the ARIA Hall of Fame. I can't believe that I just said that. But as far as Walker's concerned, his surly and arrogant demeanour added some much needed 'tude into what was, to Walker, a wasted evening.

John Butler being "co-opted into a KFC advertisement"? Gimme a break. Any wanker who gets this sanctimonious about veganism while smoking the insane amount of weed that he does deserves to be taken down a peg or two.

Incidentally, didn't Channel Ten get exactly what they were after with their subliminal advertising? The controversy in the media named the companies involved so many times, I just had to laugh.

I normally quite like Walker's blog. And there is no army on the planet that can stop me listening to Walker's radio show.

But this post was an embarrassment for the Ghost. His only shining lights came late in the piece where he finally wrote something of merit about Gotye's, Butler's and Keith Urban's musical slots. He really should have watched that excellent doco on SBS instead.

Half a star.

RRR Radiothon 2007

Once again folks, it's time for you all to pledge your allegiance to the RRRs.

Triple R has to be one of the coolest radio stations in the world. Not only do they sound like that expression that pirates make but they have an incredibly interesting schedule to boot.

In addition to that, 3RRR is not funded by advertising.

That's right. There's none of this rubbish where announcers are carpeted for saying something that disagrees with a sponsor's message, or where an advertiser gets light treatment from the news desk just because they pay for advertising frequently.

No that's right. 3RRR is owned and paid for by its listeners. And there are arguments that suggest that it might possibly be the most successful public radio station in the world, however we'll never know, given that 3RRR doesn't subscribe to any ratings monitors.

Anyway, don't take my word for it, listen in here.

You can subscribe here.

And if 3RRR is not your cup of tea, we're fortunate in my town of Melbourne to have a veritable cornucopia of public radio stations to choose from. Here are but some:

• Triple R
• PBS
• 3CR
• MBS

Enjoy.