Swedish Pirates..?

A beautiful gift from my Swedish friend, I have started reading Astrid Lindgren’s Mio, Min Mio in Swedish.

I just can’t get enough of her. What an extraordinary woman! If you’re not keeping up, Astrid Lindgren is the author of Pippi Longstockings and a massive Swedish icon.

Pippi by Sarah Mensinga

She’s kind of what you would call a big freaking deal over there.

Anyway, all this is just my way of saying I love Sweden. I’m a scandophile- I’ve made no secret of that so far in this blog but just in case it hasn’t sunk it quite yet, let me tell you once more.

JAG ÄLSKAR SVERIGE!

Shut up, Evie, what does this have to do with children’s books?

Hush, dear. It has everything to do with children’s books.

There are a few things Swedish people know how to do better than anyone else in the world and one of them is children’s books.

Another is lagom.

Lagom? Huh? Pretty sure that isn’t a word, Evie.

OK, for starters- stop interrupting me. I’m getting to it. And secondly- you’re right, it isn’t a word in English because lagom exists only in Swedish.

The best translation I have is somewhere between enough and sufficient. It means ‘not too little, not too much’ and it’s pretty much the basis of Swedish culture.

Swedish people just get off on being normal. The concept of lagom informs all aspects of Swedish life, spreading equality and making sure nobody is better than anyone else. Or perhaps more significantly, that nobody has any more than anyone else.

It’s also a large part of the philosophy of the Swedish file-sharing (read: illegal piracy) website, The Pirate Bay. Because if everyone is equal and nobody deserves to have any more than anyone else, isn’t a file-sharing website a great way to ensure this?

Granted, the motivations behind The Pirate Bay may not be quite as innocent as I describe but stick with me here for a moment.

Let’s talk about copyright.

To completely simplify the ideology behind The Pirate Bay, the basic idea is that all information should be free to everyone and that current copyright laws are insufficient to work and control media distribution in the current technological climate.

The Pirate Bay thinks copyright laws are unnecessary in regards to personal use and I tend to think the same thing – although not quite as virulently.

As soon as you write something, you have copyright over it. The Creative Commons project aims to give a more complex form of copyright so creators can choose to what extent they are happy for their work to be reproduced – but I’m cynical.

I haven’t added a Creative Commons license to my blog because I’m just not convinced that it works.

People don’t always have bad intentions when they copy material they find online. In fact, in the majority of cases I would guess that they don’t.

Human beings like to share- it’s in our nature and it’s the nature of story telling.

I look for stories with two mums because I want to share my reality with you – if I copy a passage from a book or an image of a cover for this blog, it isn’t because I’m trying to rip someone off, it’s because I simply want to share.

And in the same vein, if you want to share any of my images or reviews, I’m fine with that as well.

When it all boils down, do you really think someone who was planning to steal and monetize someone else’s content would be deterred by this little symbol hidden deep within a site?

Not likely.

But speaking of images of Alexander Skarsgård in the shower… Here’s a screen cap of a film. Copyright infringement? It’s likely.

He’s Swedish though- so it’s totally lagom.

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