Stickybuffalo.com

i can’t really blame the TPB guys for throwing in the towel — those crafty swedes been fighting the good fight for a long time, against some real heavies. what’s galling is this ludicrous, self-serving statement they’ve posted:

As all of you know, there’s not been much news on the site for the past two-three years. It’s the same site essentially. On the internets, stuff dies if it doesn’t evolve. We don’t want that to happen.

We’ve been working on this project for many years. It’s time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen!

heck yes! that would be a disaster. and inviting a for-profit corporation with plans “to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content” to the table sure sounds like a terrific way to foster innovation and maintain the vitality of the site. it’s how napster has managed to stay atop the technocultural-relevance heap all these years, after all. unless…

If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to.

mm hmm. maybe this is just me being cynical, but bear with me for a second. do you think maybe it’s possible that the new owners — whoever the fuck they are — don’t particularly want or expect the site to succeed? that a lot of very wealthy and powerful interests have already spent years and millions trying, precisely, to create a situation where “nobody will keep using it”? i’m not sayin’, i’m just sayin’: haven’t some unscrupulous characters been known, at times, to take out “insurance” on properties that then mysteriously burn down?

naaah! those guys would never intentionally mislead us in order to put a transparently cheerful spin on their total annihilation in court, and certainly not in adorable skwisgaar-like broken english. just look how excited they are about this great new opportunity:

TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It’s win-win-win.

… I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don’t worry – be happy!

golly! i, for one, can’t wait.

I’ve been glued to HuffPo all weekend watching their thread for the latest news. They’ve scooped CNN countless times. MSNBC continues to fail to cover the situation, instead showing episodes of some crappy docu-drama. If the dribble of verifiable information is correct, this should be the week Iran shuts down. If only we’d had the guts to come out into the streets against Bush in 2000, think what might not be happening now.