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The Pirate Bay is Here to Stay?
vitaly.friedman wrote to mention a Wired article about The Pirate Bay, a file-sharing crewe out of Sweden that thumbs its nose at the MPAA just for kicks and has yet to be shut down. From the article: "The Pirate Bay's legal adviser, law student Mikael Viborg, said the site receives 1,000 to 2,000 HTTP requests per second on each of its four servers. That's bad news for the content industries, which have fired off letter after menacing letter to the site, only to see their threats posted on The Pirate Bay, together with mocking replies. Viborg said that no one has successfully indicted The Pirate Bay or sued its operators in Swedish courts. Attorneys for DreamWorks and Warner Bros., two companies among those that have issued take-down demands to the site, did not return calls for comment."
The Pirate Bay isn't a "file sharing crewe", they're an open bittorrent tracker with a website. They're not a release group like Razor 1911 or The Humble Guys.
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From the site's about page:
The Pirate Bay is the worlds largest bittorrent tracker. Bittorrent is a filesharing protocol that in a reliable way enables big and fast file transfers.
The Pirate Bay was started by the swedish anti copyright organization Piratbyrån in the late 2003, but is since October 2004 separated and run by dedicated individuals. Using the site is free of charge, but since running it costs money, donations are very much appreciated.
There is a nice directive-in-the-making called IPRED2 which criminalises copyright infringement.
They aren't hosting any of the content. Only text files (as explained on their web page).
:) )
It is not illegal (Again, according to their web page) to host files that *point* to the content. Untill that changes in their country, they will stay alive (also, so long as they can keep their bills paid, that would help...
bork bork bork!
The sad part is that a large number of slashdotters will convince themselves that this type of thing is good despite the fact that the site is very clearly engaged in theft. For the umpteenth time, no. Not theft. Copyright violation, or 'piracy', the land-based kind, where nobody gets boarded, killed and thrown to the sharks. And at that, they are not engaged in 'piracy' either. They are at most 'enablers' or 'accomplices'.
I don't really see how you're prevented from visiting any doctor you please. At least in Montreal, I can go to any damn doctor I please. I'm moderately sure that most other provinces work similarly.
In fact, I think most American insurance companies force you to stick to a particular HMO - this seems like an even worse loss of freedom, since you're forced to select a doctor not from what you decide is the best option, but from the pool that your insurance company is willing to pay for.
Admittedly, you give up one freedom - the freedom to use your pay as you please - but you also gain the freedom to visit any hospital, anywhere in the country, and know that you can get health care and you won't go bankrupt for it.
By Swedish this is perfectly legal. Some years ago a guy was sued for posting links to mp3's on his web page. And the Swedish court desided that it was nothing wrong with that. He didn't ditribute the mp3's only showing were they where. And the same thing is pirate bay doing now.
Hope my english is better the Swede in the muppets show.
There are some legal complaints and the response from TPB posted at their website: http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php Funny to read them though.
Daxy's Networking Blog
Social-democratic, not socialist-democratic.
Have you read their legal page? They're just taunting them, yes. Apparently they have some pretty strong precedent in Swedish law to back them.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Freedom to not run across the border to have to use a doctor of my choice?
That's pretty hilarious, considering how many U.S. citizens organize trips to Canada in order to escape from the skyrocketing medical and pharmaceutical costs in this country.
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm swedish, and obviously I'm flattered by your opinion. However, you paint a little to rosy a picture. Countrary to popular opinion there are some homeless here, and if you visited Stockholm or Malmö I am surprised you didn't see any. Not homelessness on an US scale maybe, but the problem still exists. Also, the the privacy and freedoms you speak of is under threat here, just as it is anywhere else in the west. The swedish government is leading an effort to increase electronic surveillance in the entire EU, for example. (The opposition basically agrees, so I guess privacy will just have to take one for the team, no matter what happens in the upcoming election.) On the whole, this is a good place to live, and stand up well in comparison to just about anything out there. Just don't expect heaven on earth.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
First of all, there's not nearly as much crime in Sweden as there is in Australia. The Swedish government takes proper care of their people, so no one feels a need to commit crime. There's no homeless people sleeping in parks at night. People are much, much friendlier.
It is too cold to sleep in the parks, that is the main reason you don't see them there. It might be that we have fewer homeless people here than in other countries, but they certainly exist and the situation is not nearly as good as you suggest.
And there are many who feel that Swedes are cold, more so than friendly.
I don't have any crime statistic, but I would be surprised if it was much lower than for comparable European countries. The most scary thing to me is that we have an unemployment rate of about 15% today and this hasn't changed for several years. It is a social bomb ticking away.
They also don't have any terrorist panic. There's no "terrorism alert levels", and there isn't much security. There's not even nearly as many police around as there is in Australia.
I haven't been to Australia, but aren't you describing most of Europe here? I can tell you that many Swedes would actually like to see more police on the streets.
I just hope everyone who reads this post can imagine what life would be like to live in a country where you don't need to be afraid of terrorism or crime, a country where almost all of the population gets a good education, and all this despite alcohol (and probably other drugs) being more easily accessible in this country.
Are you suggesting that alcohol is easy to get in Sweden?! The alcohol taxes are among the highest in the world, and you can only buy alcohol in special government stores. They are closed on Sundays and it was only last year that they started being open on Saturdays.
I like Sweden, but I have to say that you have a very unusual view of my country. Either that or you are astroturfing for the government...
Reality or nothing.
Look, things are far from perfect, and Bodström does need a reality check, but things are far from as bad as you make them out to be. In fact Sweden still receives top marks for freedom.
And Guillou and Bratt served two years for not revealing their sources and are long since out of prison. In fact, the Swedish consitution again receives top marks for protection of the press, even though you're not allowed to perform espionage, which one can debate is exactly what they did (even though their actions were IMHO justified).
Also, the data processing directive, while misguided in implementation, is actually there to protect you, from corporations and the like. Really a blessing, but alas heavily disguised.
Stefan Axelsson
"If you write a 20 page paper and turn in for a course and get an A, then someone photocopies your paper and turns it in and also gets an A are they doing something wrong or unethical?"
When i start claiming that i wrote the new metalica album, then your example would make sense. People arent passing off other peoples work as their own, they are merely disseminating other peoples content, almost always with credit to the original author. Thats why when you download an episode of lost it doesnt say "Churla's magic island of doom.avi" it says "lost.avi". IF you tried to pass off an episode of lost as your creation people would laugh at you. in other words, your analogy falls very far short.
Considering the rest of your post seems to be random words thrown together, i think we are done here.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...