Set up a torrent tracker, get fined, go to jail.

Join a bank, destroy the economy, profit.

Let's draw out the distinction.

The Pirate Bay guys were criminally prosecuted for....violating (largely obsolete) copyright. Almost no one in finance has been held even civilly liable for vastly more economically damaging actions.

On the one hand, we have damages worth maybe (maybe) a few million. On the other, a few trillion.

On the one hand, innovation and better music is stifled - benefits are foregone. On the other, reform of a broken banking system is stifled - losses are incurred.

That's everything that's wrong with the economy in two sentences: the ongoing inability of today's leaders to deal with 21st century economics.

The recording industry, no doubt gnashing its teeth at such research, will be even less pleased to note that it was all funded by Uncle Sam through a pair of National Science Foundation grants.

It was less than two weeks ago when The Pirate Bay implemented a new feature making it easier for site users to post links to torrents on their Facebook profile, so their friends can download those torrents with just a single click.

This morning Facebook decided to put an end to the sharing and blocked not only the feature, but all links to Pirate Bay’s torrents. The ‘Share on Facebook’ button on the TPB torrent download pages doesn’t work anymore, and neither does the Facebook bookmarklet. Manually adding a link to your Facebook messages isn’t allowed either, regardless of the “legality” of the content it’s linking to. Facebook has basically launched a site-wide ban of Pirate Bay torrent URLs.

Interesting.