Actually for most of the sites life it wasn't known if it was illegal or not, since no such case had been tried in Sweden.

I guess I'm looking at it from a World perspective - and in the countries that carry the most weight this seems to be clearly illegal.

Interestingly, even when it's not, a la Mega, the police hired buy the rich don't even care if what they are doing is illegal.

I have no doubt this will cause enormous upheaval and hopefully change in the coming years, as more and more people become aware of how much they are overstepping their authority.

The publishing corporations in the US fought long and hard to make everything from libraries to recorded music to radio to VCRs to the Internet illegal, all on copyright grounds, and had they won the US wouldn't be any different than North Korea or any of the African dictatorships.

You could apply it to any law in history that has been changed through the action of a few people.

For all the people arguing this is glorifying breaking the law, it's worth keeping in mind all the people that stood up against raising the speed limit to 65 in the southern US states, or requiring seat belts in cars, or any number of laws that were considered "immutable" and carried severe penalties.

Yes, these actions are against current laws, but at citizens of the world we have a responsibility to stand up and make our voices heard if we ever hope to change anything. Many people will go to jail and pay big fines in the near future, but that is the way it has always been to influence great change.

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That extra oomph that's missing is you equating the apartheid and segregation laws (and their egregious nature) to copyright law. While I agree with your underlying point, the solution isn't to blow things out of proportion and compare them to some heinous human rights laws. It's a short hop from there to Nazis, a la Godwin's Law.

edited for clarity

It's not apartheid but I find it (the punishment) really odd that it's acceptable in today's world.

Copyright, a state enforced monopoly. national salt tax in India, a other state enforced monopoly.

If we just want to limit us to laws regarding state enforced monopolies, there are plenty in the history of mankind.

I would argue that it has become as much, at least at a high level (as another poster noted, the laws and precedents were less defined when TPB and others actually opened, and many people feel entitled to private copying irrespective of TPB). The basic claim of anyone sharing files is simply that they have a right to share them, including the copyrighted ones. It just happens to be the copyrighted ones that are contentious. I think the sentiment boils down to "would you steal a loaf of bread if you were broke?" (Yup. I know it's "wrong," but I'm no good to anyone dead...) One can debate the morality, but we can have machines bake bread (execute the bread algorithm) with minimal human intervention, and we have digital machines to make copies of information and entertainment at the user's own expense, so it's a pretty weak argument that the world should simply starve or go without; surely the utility from a fed person exceeds the cost of stolen bread today (if it doesn't, why doesn't it? have we really failed so greatly? why should we not simply act together so that bread is abundant enough that it can be donation-ware? production can be completely automated... we have to solve these problems some time, or we might as well admit we want everyone to suffer open-endedly - though we seem to be choosing exactly that through licensing models, SaaS, and digital library loans that expire...). Entertainment is not bread though (and copying is not theft), but entertainment is culture, and the cost of leaving people out IMHO also exceeds the "cost" of non-commercial sharing. These are all highly contentious and subjective interpretations, but as a whole society, we are pressed right up against that glass; it's easier to produce and distribute, yet we have to raise prices and enforce restrictions on permuting all the good ideas because we all have to pay the prices that reflect those behaviors. (IMHO, simply removing or phasing out that assumption would let good ideas multiply, to the benefit of consumers, while simultaneously relieving the price pressure, to the benefit of producers. Capitalism at it's best.) In the present, there is immense pressure to constrain knowledge since it is highly leverage-able. It separates the haves from the have-nots. The have-nots, however, can only copy and steal bread; they have no surplus. (Should they be forced, at gun point, to leave an 18% tip too?) I'm not saying the wealthy are "hoarding" their surplus - I believe value is created out of nothing short of opportunity - rather, I'm simply saying that feeding someone allows them to thrive, which is a net social benefit and, as such, non commercial sharing should be tolerated if not encouraged. To be fed is to be able. It's not a new dynamic, but the specific subject is: data behave differently from bread... Copying is fast and non-exclusive, like ideas; as we become more connected, preventing copying becomes the same as preventing thought. That's why copyright infringement has become a focal point: subverting copyright allows people to communicate freely and, more importantly, to subvert our rigged economy, which I do think is held together by numerous unjust laws, of which IMHO copyright, in it's present form, is one.