What's wrong with their attitude? They have a set of beliefs and they loudly espouse them. Their arguments are well-reasoned and, usually, politely stated. The only "establishment" they are against is the status quo of copyright law, it's not like they're anarchists.
They might slip into immaturity sometimes (see their "responses to legal threats page", for example) but it's not like the other side are angels either.
> Their arguments are well-reasoned and, usually, politely stated
Really? Mostly they just fall back on the usual anti-capitalist rethoric. Nothing particularly wrong with that but they certainly dont do it politely from what I have seen :)
In terms of the other side: true both have their faults. But why does that mean we should side with the pirates :) they have done something wrong.
"It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ....... morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.
Go fuck yourself."
I suppose this is one of the "responses to legal threats" you refer to.
If you read the whole thing, you'll note that the reason for that tone was that they were annoyed that DreamWorks had tried to send a DMCA takedown notice to a site obviously, and famously, far outside the USA.
As a dirty foreigner myself I can completely understand the annoyance with Americans who blithely assume that US law applies to the rest of the world, so maybe that wasn't the best example to raise. And as an American, I'm sure that if some Swedish company sent you a Swedish "takedown" notice under Swedish law and written in Swedish, you'd probably tell them to go fuck themselves, too.
probably just as the US companies are annoyed how TPB blithely assumes that being in a different country excludes them from copyright law...
The argument have 2 (probably even) sides with the majority of us stuck in the middle. Only one is refusing to budge and are acting like "dicks". So....
They might slip into immaturity sometimes (see their "responses to legal threats page", for example) but it's not like the other side are angels either.