Not So Great A Pirate's Life for Some ...

Looks like some lame excuses for pirates ticked off the Feds again. As you may have figured out, based on how the Internet works, several websites started posting video files of new movie and DVD releases. Several websites were closed down, bank assets seized, and companies that advertise on those websites were also hit hard. Here's the story:

Feds crack down on Internet movie pirates, score bust

Of course, the websites and companies involved were all on U.S. soil. It's a lot harder to hit pirate websites that are overseas, or in nations that have less strict laws regarding copyright and intellectual property infringement. The Pirate Bay is still fighting litigation in Sweden, and would have been shut down a couple of years ago, were it not for the Pirate Party (Piratpartiet), a newly formed political party that won 7.13% of the vote in Sweden's parliamentary elections. Apparently, this has gummed up the works for Sweden's attempt to go after The Pirate Bay. Who would have guessed that pirates would go political.

Well, that's the latest from the world of piracy. Not as glamorous as stories of Blackbeard, "Calico" Jack Rackham, and "Black" Sam Bellamy, but I guess that's what we get for being born 300 years to late (to misquote Jimmy Buffet's "A Pirate Looks at 40").