p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- On Neil Diamond’s Album, Hot August Night, he calls out, “Hello out there, Tree People …”

His words, which impressed me more than 30 years ago, are obviously an acknowledgement by Neil that even the non-paying tree people had a value by adding to the carnival atmosphere of the concert and were therefore worthy of his recognition.

He didn`t chastise them for being free-loaders — everyone knew they were freeloading. He merely acknowledged them warmly.

However, it was also those words that in my mind justified the actions of myself and three friends when we jumped the fence at the Western Springs Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand, a few years later to watch Led Zeppelin.

Did we break the law? Obviously. So why did we do it ?

Well, at the time we were poor starving students who couldn`t afford the $7.00 concert entry ticket price.

Shit — for me, $7.00 equaled 2 loaves of bread, 2 dozen eggs, a ½ pound of butter and a jar of coffee and bag of sugar for two weeks (Basically I lived on a variation of poached egg on toast for breakfast lunch and tea). In other words the price of the concert tickets was two weeks food bill but I had serious conflict. From a higher power than that which employed the security guards around the Western Springs venue – my girlfriend wanted to see Stairway to Heaven being performed live.

Can you imagine me saying No? (Especially when we were staying at digs only 800 meters from the Western Springs Stadium fence-line.)

The peer pressure was to jump the fence.

Now imagine if we’d been strangers to the area and the four of us had driven there by car and stopped to ask a lone walker for directions to the Concert — ‘Hi, can you give us directions to the Zep concert please?’

Sure, the average citizen would answer and then they would proceed to give directions.

Then we’d jump the fence and enjoy the concert for free.

Can you imagine the following Newspaper story in 1976? – “Person giving directions to Rock and Roll concert freeloaders gets 12 months Jail and $50,000 fine.”

You can`t because back then, jumping the fence wasn’t much of a crime.

So tell me: am I growing crazy? Or did The Pirate Bay case see the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms get overturned in Stockholm?

What happened to the right to give directions without being automatically associated as a criminal?

Here`s the link to the Translation of the Courts ruling in the Pirate Bay Case now translated to English http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/04/piratebayverdicts.pdf

Here`s the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html. I challenge anyone to find a reference to jail term as a remedy recommended by the convention.

If the Swedish courts don`t fix their own mistake, the European Court has no choice but to intervene.

Article 1 Obligation to respect human rights

The High Contracting Parties shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in Section I of this Convention.

Article 6 Right to a fair trial

1 In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/International/nyhetssidor/arkiv.asp?ProgramID=2054&formatID=1&Min=2003-09-14&PeriodStart=2009-04-22&Period=1&Artikel=2787459 tribunal established by law. Judgment shall be pronounced publicly but the press and public may be excluded from all or part of the trial in the interests of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, where the interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties so require, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice.

Pirate Bay Judge Conflict of Interest? http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/International/nyhetssidor/arkiv.asp?ProgramID=2054&formatID=1&Min=2003-09-14&PeriodStart=2009-04-22&Period=1&Artikel=2787459

Tom Koltai - p2pnet
[Koltai is an economist in Sydney Australia. He's says he's been online for 26 years, has run several ISPs and, "lobbied governments in four countries to prevent Internet restrictive usage legislation from being enacted". He says he's a strong believer in P2P, "as being a technological requirement to fully exploit the convergence of telephony with computers and remove the last barriers to human communication and interaction".]

Follow p2pnet on Twitter.

April, 2009