Denmark to become the first "hacker nation"

Danmark og Europa. Regeringens oplæg til dialog, article (in Danish)

[Please notice this is an April fools article.)

The government of Denmark has decided upon an unusual, not to say virtually untried, way out of the global financial crisis: Freedom of speech. Which might be read: "freedom from copyright".

"Our neighbor Sweden got into hot water by hosting the very controversial PiratBay web site", says Danish Prime Minister Mogens Glistrup. "But they did not go in prepared, they had not done their homework, and they did not have our motivation, determination, and frankly, our desperation." 

The Internet has long been seen as potential salvation for all kinds of desires and behavior which are in legal grey areas, some of them quite dark grey. The problem is that while there is a lot of money to be gained in these grey areas, there are also a lot of money to be protected by black-washing the same grey areas. 

"We plan to roll this out over a five-year period," says Glistrup.  "We are looking into kinds of pornography which is illegal in many countries, such as zoophelia." (It is worth noting that Denmark was the First Nation to legalize pornography in 1969, and other nations followed suit when rape stats dropped as a result. Denmark even exported zoophelia porn in the seventies, "which wasn't bad at all," according to Glistrup, "and production values could of course easily be much better today.) "We are considering 100% anonymous file hosting, even protected from international and our own law enforcement". 

We are investigating hosting sites which are generally banned contrary to freedom of speech, such as "hate speech" sites and information about how to make weapons, drugs, and explosives. But we are probably starting with the easy one: making it legal to link to, though not host, copyright-protected materials. Our stance will be "free and found is legal", or "finder's keepers" as our nay-sayers call it," Glistrup said with a self-depreciating laugh, adding that special taxation will "naturally" be the price for being hosted in this new haven of Net freedom. 

We wish Denmark luck in this endeavor. While it is clear that short-term harm may come from it, such as innocents dying in bombings or children learning the facts of life before the parents are ready to teach them, the long-term advantages are enormous, no less than the freedom of mind and knowledge, and this may eventually lead to spiritual greatness and who knows, perhaps even a galactic empire for mankind. 

1st April, 2014