Yesterday, an 11-nation raid was conducted on various online pirate operations. Conspicuously absent from the list was Sweden, which is not part of the EU. Well, today Sweden passed some strong anti-piracy legislation.

The most obvious consequences are for The Pirate Bay, which is arguably the world's biggest bittorrent tracker site, and resides in Sweden. They've been particularly smug about their immunity from prosecution. Although TPB doesn't actually host copyrighted data -- the torrent files and trackers they provide simply supply metadata telling your Bittorrent client how to find peers offering the data -- it seems pretty likely that they're not long for this world.

It goes without saying that this won't actually stop piracy, but when TPB finally goes down there'll be a transition, the same as there was when Suprnova.org was shut down. Matt and I were talking about plausible future hotbeds for piracy just the other night, actually. Matt's bet was China, but I have my doubts. It's true that their government isn't keen to enforce intellectual property laws, but though they might be lacking the will, their nationwide firewall gives them a simple way, should they ever decide to. Eastern Europe? Nah; Suprnova was based there (although it used an elaborate -- and awful -- international mirror system). The glory days of slavic piracy have come and gone, and as countries jockey for EU membership they're keen to chalk up good records on IP enforcement. Africa? No infrastructure. Central or South America? Brazil's pretty wired, plus it's run by a bunch of anticorporatist hippies, so it's a definite possibility. But Russia is already in a computer crime class unto itself. If I had to bet, I'd say the next big tracker site's address will end in .ru.

holy moly. last night's unbuckled was more of a success than i had hoped for. i, being guardedly optimistic, thought we might bring out 75-100 people - but we ended up with over 200! mad money was made (most of it going to the deserving bands, and a bit of it covering our flyer and giveaway expenses), and, despite the stifling heat in the backstage, i think everybody had a great time. thank you SO MUCH to everybody who came out - it meant a lot to see you there. and big ups to all the great people i got to meet - wes, michael, amanda, (update; john from prodandponder.com who is a great photographer) lots of cool DCist readers, and anyone else i'm forgetting. both the bands, cartel and bicycle thieves, were lovely and nice and talented and put on amazing shows, so i highly recommend you check out their sites and download some mp3s. it's all about the local music love.

due to the success of the show, i'm in an unreasonably good mood today, so i will forgo my normal bitter recriminations and wish everybody a very happy fourth of july! go america!

UPDATE: forgot to mention that a bunch of photos of the concert are here.