Pirates are those who wish to enjoy the pleasures of this or that film - but are too selfish and stupid to recognise that, unless they pay for it, the industry will cease to be able to produce these films in the future. It is the equivalent of someone walking into a shop, seeing a DVD (or chocolate bar or whatever else) and just pocketing it without paying - i.e. theft, pure and simple.

Thus the metaphor implies that the pirate/thief also had the option to purchase the product - and that in such a situation the price would have been reasonable.

But there's rather a lot of interesting evidence that completely invalidates this crude logic for many cases of what is technically considered internet piracy. Check for example this article in the Guardian, which cites a report from the Open Rights Group and Consumer Focus, which found that very often various titles are simply not available as a legal online download, and even if they are, these options are often much more expensive than DVD equivalents. Here's the relevant extract:

'Though close to 100% of titles in ORG's sample were available as DVDs, more than half of the top 50 UK films of all time were not available as downloads. The numbers are only slightly better for Bafta winners: just 58% of Bafta best film winners since 1960 can be bought or rented as digital downloads (the bulk of these are through iTunes – take away the iTunes marketplace, which isn't available unless you use Mac or Windows, and only 27% of the Bafta winners can be had legally).

And while recent blockbusters fare better, it's still a patchwork, requiring the public to open accounts with several services to access the whole catalogue (which still has many important omissions). But even in those marketplaces, movies are a bad deal – movie prices are about 30% to 50% higher when downloaded over the internet versus buying the same movies on DVDs.'

All this doesn't really take into account another even more extreme but very common situation: the fact that very often less high-profile titles are not only unavailable as digital downloads - they are also often not even available as a DVD release. In other words, even if I wanted to pay for a certain film it often isn't possible. It's a downloaded torrent or nothing. (This may seem implausible for film fans who mainly watch modern blockbuster Hollywood output, but venture slightly beyond that and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about).

So really that simplistic metaphor for piracy should look more like this:

Imagine you go to a shop and there's a DVD that you want - you pay for it and take it home to enjoy. However, next time you go they don't have the title you want. You search everywhere but the only place you can find it is in the trading bag of the pirated DVD seller in your local pub. You decide that, no, you simply detest piracy so much that you'll never stoop so low as that - you'd rather never see the film than... Sorry this is starting to sound highly implausible.

Let's try again: You decide that actually, while supporting the industry is all well and good - your main goal is to see the film and, if there's only one way to do it (i.e. a pirated unpaid-for version), then most people would probably do that.

Anyway, please excuse the long-winded examples. The point is pretty simple: there's lots of different types of piracy and not all of them arise because consumers are too short-sighted and selfish to recognise that nothing is free in this world. Instead we should also remember that sometimes either:

a) a film simply isn't available either on DVD or as legal download (especially for older titles, foreign cinema, less high-profile productions etc), or
b) sometimes people like to watch a film right here-and-now (i.e. the way all media is increasingly going) and feel stupid paying extra for the consuming a film on a cheaper format just because of discrepancies in pricing - i.e. why pay $12 for a legal download, when the DVD (which is after all a tangible object) costs only $8?

The bottom line is that the market for legal film watching and downloading online remains massively incomplete and sometimes inadequate. This is OK for now - it'll take some time but one day this will no longer be the case. In the meantime however, it's ridiculous to demonise anybody who downloads a film without paying for it, just assuming that a whole range of other tidy more-honest options were also available at the time. Furthermore, such exaggerated images have no place in any well-informed and hopefully productive future debate about how to re-shape copyright laws for the digital age.

No doubt the high-profile Pirate Bay trial has raised public awareness on the topic within Sweden and also worked to help mobilise young people to vote on an issue they cared about, where possibly they might simply have not bothered (the 18-25 demographic is hardly notorious for massive turnouts at elections).

Anyway there are basically two things that make the result an especially interesting one for me:

1. Firstly, I am impressed that an issue such as this can be discussed and debated to this extent in mainstream Swedish politics - it says a lot about the high level of web and computer literacy and awareness among the general population.

After all, the party took around 7% of the popular vote - quite amazing considering that in the UK (and elsewhere) you might struggle to find that many people who even care about the issue to any extent - though yes, there are more important things to discuss at election time - i'm not suggesting we should forget the economy to discuss torrents, just that it doesn't hurt to also be clued up on web matters as well ;)

2. Secondly, I am relieved that there are at least some countries in the EU where a protest vote has not necessarily equated to a surge in support for extreme right-wing groups. Unlike the depressing success of the BNP here in the UK, Sweden's shock result was the Pirate's success in winning a seat. Nonetheless it is scant consolation for the fact that the BNP's MEPS Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons are now receiving £80,000+ a year salaries and more than double that in office running costs from EU taxpayers...

Ah well, i'm getting sidetracked - let's finish with a good luck wish to the Pirate Party in Sweden: whatever your stance, it's hard to argue that rising levels of web awareness (a sure-fire consequence of the Swedish result) is a bad thing. Well done mateys!

Dejan Levi

Well, we're doing the same right here, right now - and we're not even apologising for it ;) - the reason being that a recent Twitter development is rapidly becoming quite an exciting prospect, even for the Twitter-sceptics among us.

The reason for all this is Twitdoc - quite simply a tool which turns Twitter into a massively useful and quick file-sharing platform. Not actually developed by Twitter but instead one of many independent third-party projects springing up to tap into the potential of web 2.0's currently favourite darling, Twitdoc is a service which lets you share files using your twitter account. It is not the only one, but is at the moment probably the best - allowing for a number of different file formats (including pdfs, word docs) with plans to add more in the future.

The whole process takes about 10 seconds to share a file - and you don't even need to sign up to Twitdoc to get started. Simply visit http://www.twitdoc.com, enter your twitter account details, locate the file you'd like to share, attach any accompanying text, and hey presto! job done.

So basically even if the prospect of reading hourly updates about this or that celebrity's latest thoughts on Louis Vitton toilet paper or the pros and cons of selling wedding photo rights to either Heat or Hello magazine doesn't turn you on, then twitter could still win you over with the prospect of an effortless, secure and efficient file-sharing service. No doubt Twitdoc and its rivals will improve in coming weeks with added file formats and new features, but even now there is enough there to convince even the most hardened anti-tweety...

Dejan Levi