As I mentioned in a previous post, I think adoption is a great and completely under-rated tool when it comes to increasing one’s family. I also don’t personally have anything against Madonna, or at least I didn’t until now. I have a problem with ignoring the needs of children inNorth America who live in poverty, misery, abuse, and malnutrition because it doesn’t have the same PR potential. One plane trip to Africa with her entourage would probably feed a hungry North American child for life. It could probably also put an underpriviledged young adult through college.

Over the last few decades as the problems in Africa have become better publicized due to concerts, charity work, and Hollywood, anything to do with that country gives you instant street cred as a humanitarian. Madonna has always been a supremely intelligent opportunist, and her tongue-swapper on stage with Britney Spears, during Brit’s breif period of mental illness, is proof of this fact. Yet no one called on her for exploiting Britney Spears’ clearly vulnerable mental state for the sake of publicity and a great photo op. If it was a male performer in his 50s open mouth kissing a 20 year old on national television, the headlines would have been pretty base and predictably exploitative.

Justice was done here, and I really trully do hope that this child has  a good life without her.

http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=1562000

For someone following this story from the get-go, and considering that half of prosecution arguments were thrown out within the first few days of the lawsuit, this judgement is surprising and strange. Strange because the site itself, does not and never has contained any actually copyrighted material, just links/addresses of people who share the content. What the article does not say, if the courts will now force The Pirate Bay to hand over their logs, if they do indeed keep any.

It is a somewhat chilling reminder that no matter how free you think you are to post something, whether it’s a link to a file or an inflammatory comment, someone is responsible for reading it, judging if it violates some sort of law, and then deciding if it gets posted. No public forum, no web site is safe. You would think that of all places Sweden’s perpetually neutral stand, would have pre-empted the immense lobbying pressure that the media giants usually manage to unleash on the more succeptible media whorish governments, like the US, Brittain, Canada.

To inject some context for non-technical people the following examples are provided:

1) It’s like charging the Telephone company, if someone posts copyrighted or hatred-inciting material on a telephone pole.

2) It’s like charging a city if someone draws something lewd or offensive on the sidewalk with chalk.

3) It’s like laying charges against a grocery store owner, if someone uses the bulletin board to post offensive material.

In a press conferrence, one of theirs said, “We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8003799.stm

An ironic twist is that the server pictured, which was The Pirate Bay’s first actual server, is now in the Stockholm Museum. I wonder if the museum can be charged with copyright infringement because the server may still contain traces of links that at some point may have linked to pirated content.

Don’t get me wrong I think adoption is great, provided it’s for the right reason. Press coverage just does not fall into that category. What is the message Angelina Jolie and Madonna are sending to American kids? You can’t provide as much press coverage, therefore, I don’t want you? If this was a really trully alltruistic gesture, it would have been done quietly whether locally or abroad.

On the bright side, this guy below would be happy to be adopted by Madonna. I”m sure he’s even willing to suck on a bottle and be burped for a roof over his head that isn’t made of tin and twigs (and the whole eating thing is good too, they don’t get that regularly in Africa). Tacky and low-class Modonna, get a new PR person.