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ThePirateBay.org Raided and Shut Down
An anonymous reader writes "ThePirateBay.org, a longtime fixture of the BitTorrent community, is currently under investigation. Slyck.com is reporting their servers have been seized by the Swedish police." What's really interesting about them is the strange political power that they held in their homeland. There was much discussion even of a political party. This will be interesting to watch unfold.
It is one thing for an internet site to claim they've been hacked / taken down, but if a political party does it, I'm sure it is a different kettle of fish.
Do you really think people accustomed to taking things for free and financing their business with porn ads should handle distribution of your tax money?
Seeing as trackers don't actually have any copyrighted information on them... how can they be illegal? Sure they are illegal in the US due to the DMCA, but here in Sweden there is no DMCA.
It is illegal here in the United States, but it sure isnt illegal in Sweden. You would do well to not assume the whole world has the same laws as the United States.
they couldn't do much worse(than those already in power).
No, it isn't. That's the point. Where TPB is/was located, hosting torrent files is not illegal because torrents -contain no copyrighted data-. If these guys ever traveled to the USA, they'd probably be arrested (hell, they'd probably be called "enemy combatants" by the *AA and incarcerated for life without trial). But as long as they stayed where they are, and kept their servers where they are, they should have been fine, provided the local law did not change.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Hmm, check how many bankruptcy filings there have been from members of congress. Then look at the number of failed businesses they have had....
A bunch of porn profiting pirates who are breaking even seem like a big improvement to me. At least they seem to understand that you have to have revenue in order to spend money.
I can't imagine why. The fact that you were using the free resource for a legitimate use doesn't have any bearing on their ability to sieze it due to illegal activity.
This is basically the same as American cops raiding Bell because the Yellow Pages lists the phone number of a paper mill, and paper can potentially be used to write harassing letters.
I think a better analogy would be cops raiding a house because the guy was distributing directions on where to buy [drugs,hookers,whatevers illegal].
How do you figure? From what I can tell, the bandwidth fluctuates pretty evenly on day-to-day numbers for the last several months.
There is one problem in your argumentation, I'm afraid.
The only non-negligible contenders to the Repunazi Party, the Commiecrats, are as bad or perhaps even worse. They're even more corrupt, even more populist (although the Republicans really went forward in this department during the last few years). Just think: whom do you thank for DMCA?
In the US, it's more like 3% of us and 97% of them.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Learning the basic difference between the Nordic (Scandinavian) country of Sweden/Sverige and a country called Switzerland/Swiss/Suisse/Schweiz/Svizzera located between Italy, France and Germany would be a nice start before tooting your horn about either country's laws.
The premature departure of ThePirateBay.org marks a significant turning point in the BitTorrent community.
Well, it's a web site taken down in a battle against a movement in modern society. Yes, it was a popular web site, but are we really calling the Suprnova take down the same in retrospect? All good that did was spawning many others.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Guilty of what exactly? The First Ammendment?
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
It's probably not an encrypted filesystem and even if it was they'd have to decrypt it so the police could look at the data anyway. They weren't committing any crimes so they have to prove that to get their servers back...
Have you metaroderated recently?
With WIPO and whatnot, it's becoming a safer assumption every day.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I can sort of believe that they had no illegal copies of anything in the office where The Pirate Bay was located. It makes it easier for them to wipe their hands of any wrongdoing.
However, as the main goal of the pirate bay is to facilitate copyright infringement, I find it very hard to believe that none of these guys had any illegal copies of stuff at home, on their laptops, etc.
Since their homes apparently also were raided, this is probably a way for the authorities to get to them, even if the Pirate Bay itself does nothing illegal. When you are involved in something like The Pirate Bay, it is too tempting to use it yourself.
Of course, if Swedish copyright law allows for downloading copyrighted material for personal use, then this will be fine as well.
Wow, 50 police men... That's more than we have on duty in our city, and they're too few. And they're supposed to handle, you know, abuse and stuff. Something here feels pretty wrong.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Many countries recognize the moral rights of artists in addition to commercial copyrights. The Pirate Party's platform is a 5 year term of commercial copyright. The right of attribution is a moral right of the artist.
The hypothesis is that it is easier to raid a bunch of real "hippies" than a group of lawyers-paying, well politically connected individuals and their limited liability companies.
Considering TPB probably wasn't obtaining money from the alleged infringement of copyright, they probably don't have the resources and organization of well prepared criminals or people operating borderline criminality.
It seems that if you steal an apple, harm yourself with drugs , copy a good without stealing it you are worse then a violent offender, certainly far worse then a white collar criminal. Except that for each Kennet Lay apparently-convicted we still have one thousand dangerous financial felons devouring society in absurdly, but almost legal ways.
thepiratebay.org's response to Dreamworks:
You just know that everyone corporation and their lawyer quoted on the pirate bay website has been determined to find a way to get them.
...they're hoping that someone posts a link to a repacement site...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
That's a popular view, but I am unconvinced that just because somebody, or even the majority, believes that something is not ok for society as a whole it is ok to make that thing illegal.
Some things have negative effects on society as a whole that, if made illegal, would leave society even worse off. Example: the War On Some Drugs. Society as a whole is better off when people don't ruin their own lives, but it is even better off when the government doesn't ruin twice as many lives in its attempt to stop people from ruining their own lives.
Individual rights sometimes supercede society's best interests. Example: it is best for society as a whole for a genius to be as productive as possible, but she has the right to waste her potential by flipping burgers for a living or engaging in dangerous behavior (e.g. skydiving) if she so chooses. (Note that "copy" rights are not "rights" in this sense; their only reason for existence is society's best interest.)
Look, we agree that TPB is shady as hell, and certainly has no right to claim a moral high ground as they obviously exist (and prosper? maybe) on the back of content that they should not have the right to help distribute. That is what they do: they facilitate parties to commit copyright violation.
But to have a functioning society of checks and balances, you simply cannot have a situation of police enforcing "laws" which do not exist on the books of the country that TPB is in. As I understand it, in Sweden, what TPB does in entirely *legal*. Ammoral, probably (depends upon one's own moral compass), but not illegal. If the law of the land is inadequate, make "the powers that be" change the laws.
BTW, we certainly haven't heard the entire story here. I don't know anything about Swedish law, but it is plausible that they have a system of searching and seizing with warrants, and a warrant for the seizures may have been granted based on evidence and testimony that pointed to an action that actually is illegal in Sweden (such as, perhaps, a locally stored copy of a movie on their servers that they downloaded themselves without purchasing a copy?). Yes, I'm just making this up, but my point is that the police could shut down the operation from serving its primary, legal purpose if TPB was also committing a minor, illegal offence.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Police capture innocent people all the time. That's why they aren't judges or juries. In fact the police have extremely limited legal power. It's the courts that will decide if the Swedish lawmakers are siding with them or not.
Seeing as the Pirate Bay fellows looked pretty damned hard at the law, I doubt they'd be dumb enough to actually have any infringing material on their servers.
-Derick
>Now what the fuck was that "protected area"? A diplomatic zone???
Someone's house/appt? You know, cops can't just walk into any building and take what they want. Unless, of course, they don't like the person who lives there.
So, if I search Google for free full copies of copyrighted software, is it Google's fault if I download one of those free copies?
If I understand Bittorrent correctly, one is downloading from other people, not TPB. So, TPB is like Google for Bittorrent, right?
In which case, they can't fairly shut one down without doing the same thing to the other.
TPB and Google provide a service. What people do with that service should be the people's fault.
"In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
"I'm getting really tired of this "Not in my country" defense. It doesn't hold water."
So you'd prefer another country to have hold over what is and is not legal in your own?
What if the shoe was on the other foot? What if the law being violated was, for example, Iranian, and the website was American? I'm sure there are thousands of porn sites hosted in California that are just as blatantly illigal in repressive countries as TPB is in America. Would you be so quick to say "It doesn't matter what country they're in, it's still illegal in the prosecuting country, so that makes cracking down on them OK" ?
And no, it doesn't matter that the prosecuting country in question is "unfreindly" - in case you missed the memo, what matters legally are local laws and possibly extradition treaties. Plus, many Swedes would undoubtably view American law as repressive on IP issues, just as many Americans would view Iranian law as oppressive on free speach issues.
The "not in my country" defense is otherwise known as national sovereignty. Don't like it? Tough. You either abide by it, or accept the idea that another nation can enforce it's laws upon you remotely. If you wish legal sovereignty for your own nation, you must allow others the same right. To grant them any less makes you little more than a hypocritic shill.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
It's more like reading books in the store without buying them. You got the content without paying, but the original media is still there to be sold.
More likely, the police knew when TPB did their last maintenance shutdown and assumed a routine schedule.
The best time for the police to inspect an item that contains possible criminal evidence is before the owner does so themselves. For items that accumulate such evidence: the day before, if possible.
This is not my sig.
I agree that you should know the party's complete set of politic viewpoints if you're going to vote them.
I disagree however with the idea that one should only vote for parties that 'have a chance' of winning or anything like that. People should vote for the party that represents them and their interests the better, no matter how important they are right now. Small parties usually are small just because of people thinking that way. If you think something, and believe some party is proposing a good response to your expectations, you should put your vote where your mouth is, and vote them. Otherwise, don't complain when the government does something you don't like, because they will be doing it with your implicit approval (except if they deviate from their own political viewpoint).
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
something is very very wrong if a country can "spare" 50 policemen to work on a case where they are not even sure if a crime has been committed or not(!)
"...The police right now is taking all of our servers, to check if there is a crime there or not (they are actually not sure)," ThePirateBay.org spokesperson "brokep" told Slyck.com.
> If you don't think they can make a majority, then voting for them based solely
> on this one issue as a protest is useless. Single-issue candidates can always
> stir emotions, but they rarely can do anything worth while on other issues that
> have a more profound effect upon your life. What are their positions on anything
> other than copyright issues?
Irrelevant. If this party got a lot of votes - say 20% - then it would send a message to the other parties there's an issue that people feel strongly about. If people didn't vote for this party, then all the bitching on slashdot or wherever is just a bunch of wasted finger movements, that won't inform the candidates and voters of other parties - let alone everyday people - that there's an issue that people feel strongly enough about to want to use that years quota of democracy on.
It is down a quarter from any of ther other peaks - it's pretty obvious the difference. Also remember that this is not just Pirate Bay that's down but a few other high-traffic sites.
Others say we wouldn't need copyleft if there was no copyright. Without copyright, people could do evil things such as plagiarize. There may be ways to have the protections of copyleft without copyright law. We can have laws against plagiarism and similar evils without having to base them on or associate them with copyright law.
I would prefer an incentive based system. Having only the Big Stick of law to force people to do "right" doesn't often work, especially in America where protest against and distrust of authority is part of our culture. I would like to see a system that makes not sharing about as intelligent as shooting yourself in the foot, because if you don't share then you don't get any recognition or credit, and therefore no compensation. I'm not talking anarchy-- not let's throw copyright away and replace it with nothing. What something could or should replace copyright I don't know, but I have some possibly unworkable ideas about that.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Evidence? What evidence?
Oh, evidence that they were engaging in 100% legal activities? No need to gather that evidence; the operators admitted quite freely that they were engaging in operating a web site which distributed content which was copyrighted. Now, if they come to America the US government might have chosen to (illegally) convict them since our government seems to think that we ought to police the entire world, but they were still in sweden.
OBVIOUSLY someone got paid off to authorize this BS.
There is a huge benefit though:
It is very likely that once the operators are cleared of BS charges (what are they going to be charged with -- complying with the law?!?!) and the judge says "carry on then" that they'll go right back online, only they would likely do a major purge of all of the dead/unseeded torrents on the site.
(With that said, I miss suprnova
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It all makes sense now you've explained it in full -- when the government are explaining they normally stop after the word "terrorists"...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Note that their program would invalidate Creative Commons and the GPL as well.
More importantly, their program would make both Creative Commons and GPL redundant. With no copyrights, everything would be in the commons, so a separate "Creative Commons" would not be necessary. The only reason we need the GPL is because commercial interests use copyright to artificially restrict their customers' freedom to do as they wish with their products.
Abolishment of copyright would be a decisive victory both for CC and GPL.
sigs are hazardous to your health
You would do well to not assume the whole world has the same laws as the United States.
can you please explain that to our president?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sure. It's just that under that scheme, there's no reason for anyone else to buy it either. The market value of the content is dramatically reduced by allowing use without compensation.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Maybe if you could vote "No" to candidates there'd be a higher turnout.
A "No" vote = -1. "Yes" = +1.
The candidate with the most positive total or lease negative total wins.
In current "popular" systems if you don't like a candidate you have to vote for some other candidate or don't vote at all - this distorts stuff significantly - you could have a situation where a candidate wins even though hated by the majority, because the voters spread their votes amongst the other candidates. After a while the voters might end up just flip flopping between two fairly hated candidates, or give up entirely.
With my proposal if people really hate someone they get to "pull them backwards", rather than trying to figure out who else to "pull forwards" and hopefully the hated one doesn't win.
The popular method probably works fine if the _majority_ actually _like_ the candidates and want to _vote_for_ them, but it doesn't work if the majority don't. And perhaps the latter is true in the USA?
mmm... I can see it now.
The Pirate Party passes legislation that invalidates the protection of Copyright. Everyone's favourite Evil MegaCorps open offices in Sweden to take advantage of the bonanza, rip of the Linux kernel and sell it for money because the free versions have presumably vanished in a puff of logic, and besides which they can rely on Sweden's newly repealed IP laws to protect their own closed source kernel and... you know, that doesn't sound right somehow.
Or maybe the grand master plan is to make lots of changes in Sweden, and then to sell the product in other countries... where the GPL does function and where they will be forced to release the source their changes... nah, still doesn't work, does it?
Are you sure you've thought this one through? In the absence of strong legal IP protection, is there still a need for the GPL? It seems a bit like saying, "if there were no guns, there'd be nothing to stop the bad guys from shooting people".
I'm havng difficulty worrying about this one.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Abolishment of copyright would be a decisive victory both for CC and GPL.
Not quite.
The GPL uses the power of copyright to enforce certain goals. If copyright loses force, the GPL loses force.
The BSD license is basically "you can do anything you want" and if copyright runs out, that's pretty much the situation. If copyright loses force, it's like everything is now BSD-licensed.
With no copyrights, Microsoft could take FSF software, change it, and sell the result without releasing source code. RMS would not be pleased.
The only reason we need the GPL is because commercial interests use copyright to artificially restrict their customers' freedom to do as they wish with their products.
No, another reason for the GPL is to keep anyone from taking free software, changing it, and not releasing the changes to the world.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
This argument drives me nuts. They're not selling you the paper on which the book was printed. They are selling you the entertainment/knowledge/whatever you derive from the content of the book. The lost sales argument aside, this is the problem I have with any music/movie pirates who justify it the way you did. "Well, I wouldn't buy that shit anyway, and I just made a copy, I didn't physically deprive them of anything." Well, 1) How pathetic must you be to waste your time downloading shit you don't value? Either that or you're lying, and enjoy getting something for free. And 2) If you delete a bunch of vital information on a company's server, would you use the defense that "I didn't physically destroy anything, I just realigned some bits on a hard drive"?
Of course not, because the typical /. demographic understands that you can't apply laws and governance of the physical world to the virtual, technology world. So perhaps it is not THEFT in the traditional sense, but it is THEFT in the "I'm taking something that I'm not authorized to take" sense.
I post similar comments everytime I see this issue raised, and most people must think I'm a shill or something. I'm not; I personally believe in free (speech and beer) information, and public disbursement of my creative efforts. As a multi-medium content creator, however, I recognize that not everyone believes the same things I do, and it's more important to respect that than to push my own beliefs.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
How odd that you think a concuring opinion by Justice Thomas somehow overturned a precident, when the opinion of the court was the one written by Justice Rehnquist.
IMHO the language J. Rehnquist uses shows respect for the doctorine of Stare Decisis:
Rehnquist's opinion has the court declining to expand congressional powers, but neither does the opinion contract back those powers already ruled constitutional. It declares no previous decision overturned. And you'll note the opinion citing supporting decisions. Stare Decisis in action.
btw I have no interest in breaking balls. Its just irksome to me that some people seem intent on undermining the purpose of the judicial branch. Its their job to fill in the gaps of statutory law, not to be mindless robots ruling on the letter of the law rather than the intent.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
What about Libraries? I can go to my local library, check out any books I want for no money read them and if I truly like them go out and buy them. Have I dramatically reduced the value of the book? If noone bought any books but everyone went to the library to read said books, would the library be considered pirates and be responsible for the "loss of income", raided and all the stacks confiscated?
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
It's more like photocopying the entire book and taking the copy home with you. You get to enjoy the content any time you want without going back to the store. And although reading the book in the store might be legal (but rude), photocopying the whole thing is certainly copyright infringement and against the law.
Wow! You're an idiot!
How DO YOU THINK they GET THE ORIGINAL ITEM?
Typically, they buy it in a store, it's given to them by the studio as a screener/review/demo copy, or (less often) copy it at the studio.
Shoplifting != piracy
Shoplifting !-->piracy
I "know people" who pirate movies, music, and software. If you broke into their houses you'd find shelves and shelves of store-bought movies, music, and software. Why? Because they're not shoplifters or thieves. They buy the things they love, and frequently make copies for their friends. Sometimes they set up torrents for them.
This is the norm- not your hypothetical thug who does a smash & grab at Best Buy. You're trying to tie together two crimes (theft of a physical item and copyright violation) that are fundamentally different and unrelated. Stop it. You're wrong, and you're making yourself look like an asshat.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
This is a common misconception that I see around slashdot...
People don't "waste their time downloading things they don't value"... it takes no time, and ridiculously little effort. With nzb files, you can take about 15 seconds to queue up a download for an entire season of a TV show, for example. Let it run overnight on your fast cable connection and when you wake up in the morning, it's just done. No effort, really. No time spent, really. The argument "well, if you go through so much trouble, you MUST value it" falls apart when you realize that it really isn't any trouble/effort at all. Also, it's not so much a question of valuing or not valuing something, it's a question of what KIND of value you see in a product. Let's say a company is selling a DVD of a very bad movie (let's use Gigli as an example) for $19.99 at the local store. Now, I (and everyone else on Earth) know that Gigli isn't worth $19.99, but I do have SOME limited interest in seeing the film, or at least part of it, just to see HOW very bad it actually was. Is satisfying that curiosity worth twenty bucks? Hell no, but it's worth 30 seconds of my time. This example leaves aside the issue, obviously, of that content which isn't even for sale, AT ANY PRICE. I fail to see how you can seriously assert that copyright infringement of, say, an Anime series which isn't available in the United States is problematic. What lost sales are there if there are no sales to lose? What artist is going to be upset and not receiving compensation from someone whom they've never sought as an audience? These are just two examples of cases where "you must value it if you download it, so why not pay for it" fall apart.
As for the "fairness" of someone getting compensated for their creative work... well, do you watch every commercial when you watch a TV show? Do you ever fastforwad through them with your TiVO? The TV episodes were available, for free, in the past. The fact that I wasn't physically in front of the television at the time they were offered is irrelevant. I own a TV and I pay for a cable connection, so I'm paying for content and delivery. If I want to time shift (and if I choose to do that by downloading the episodes from Usenet), that's my business. No one is losing anything there. I didn't download the episodes instead of buying the DVD... I wasn't going to buy the DVD. Why? Because I don't want to watch a TV series over and over again like I do with movies. I want to watch a TV series ONCE, and it's my choice to wait until the whole season is over so that I can see the whole season at once and don't have to be pissed off by being forced to wait a week between cliffhangers.
I understand that there are other kinds of copyright infringement out there that have a much less rigid relationship to fair use and timeshifting... but the point is, that there ARE some things that the **AA considers "copyright infringement" that are both legally (as I read the law) and morally (as I've explained) A'OK.
"The market value of the content is dramatically reduced by allowing use without compensation."
Not necessarily. For example, Janis Ian claims she has actually sold more cd's thanks to Napster and its offspring. Most DVD's I own were bought because I downloaded the movie and decided I really liked it. I think p2p will usually increase the sales of quality and decrease the sales of crap. The movie and music industry prefer to produce crap because it's easier and cheaper, which is why they oppose p2p.
Evil is as eval("does");
The idea behind not taking a stance on other issues is important. You see in Sweden, you only need 4% of the vote to get seats in the parliament. Since the left and the right block are almost equal in seats in the parliament (and issues some would say), the small independent party can wield an unproportional amount of power.
So by coming to an agreement with one of the two major blocks, to cooperate on their issues if they agree to vote for your few core issues, the smaller party can pretty much decide which block gets to form governement since they hold the balance of power.
However if the small party would have fixed opinions on too many issues, their power would be weakened by the fact that they could only cooperate with one block, thus no longer holding the balance of power. Or if they have fixed opinions on too many issues that none of the blocks agree to, then government can't be formed and only solution will be a new election.
In Sweden, .torrent files are not a violation of copyright law, and hosting a tracker is legal. But there are still copyright laws. This means that if the folks behind the Pirate Bay are only tracking and hosting .torrents, then they are in safe water. But if the police uncover any evidence during the raid that the Pirate Bay folks actually downloaded any copyrighted files, then they could get in trouble. If one of the founders downloaded a torrent and then seeded it (even if just for personal use), then the police could make the case that they were also distributing copyrighted materials, and that would be illegal.
#include ".signature"
The polio vaccine was discovered by Dr. Jonas Salk, who was a medical researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. Much of the funding came through the "March of Dimes", which was a grassroots organization founded by president Roosevelt.
So the polio vaccine was in fact developed through public funding rather than by the big pharma companies. And it still counts as one of the biggest medical achievements ever, if you look at the number of people that it saved.
Possibly because the vaccine could be produced freely once it had been discovered, since it was not restricted by patents.
References:
PBS: A Science Odyssey
"Access Excellence" at The National Health Museum
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
Nobody is stealing stuff in USA and exporting it to Sweden. Even if distributing copyrighted data without permission could be considered theft, the people who "steal" it are just uploading a different file to Sweden. The "thief" holds the copyright to this data file and can do what ever he wants with it. The Swedes are just hosting a file whose copyright owner has given them permission to host it.
The Swedes are doing nothing illegal. The original "thief" uploads the data directly to other "thieves." None of the data that is contained in the files that are being distributed without permission touches the Swedish server.
That's what peer-to-peer networking is about.
Fundamentally, your arguments boil down to the "Photoshop is too expensive for me" rationalization. And since it's too expensive and you'd never buy it anyway, it must be okay to steal it.
Yes, Adobe would have never sold PS to you. But by stealing and using it, you didn't pay $99 for PS Elements. Nor did you buy Paintshop Pro, nor any of the plethora of shareware products out there. Heck, you didn't even "support" open source.
Back to Gigli. By downloading it you didn't pay $19.95 for it. Nor did you pay $4.95 at the bargin bin, $3.99 for PPV, $3.0 at Blockbuster, from NetFlix, or $1.99 at the grocery store. You didn't even wait for it to be "free" on TV or cable, or check out that paid copy from the library. Nor did you do any of those things that evening for another movie you might have liked more, nor did you go to the movies, buy and read a book, and so on.
Which is why rationalizing that your actions regarding Gigli had no impact are just that. You had plenty of alternatives. But they weren't "convenient" and weren't at a price you were willing to pay.
Face it. Whenever you want whatever it is you want, and don't want to pay for it, in your mind your actions are automatically "justified"...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The point wasn't that Government should develop a vaccine (or do research in general), but that they should FUND it. Which, indeed, they already do. (And that the result of the publicly funded research should be... public)
"How did these companies manage to convince the creator they were necessary in the age of digital content? They are leeches who have yet to wake up to the fact that their business model is faulty."
Hi there. I have a pretty good singing voice, and a sheaf of paper with some lyrics that I wrote. I would like your help in:
I don't want to spend any out-of-pocket money on this, since, like most struggling musicians, I don't have any. If I get a record contract, the record company will take care of all the above. They'll cover the expenses. Worst case is that I'll make no money; if the record loses money, I won't have to pay them back. And, no, I'm not interested in just putting my stuff on Magnatune and hoping to make a few hundred bucks a year. Just as you would like to reach your full potential at your choice of profession, I would like to do the same.
But since all the people who do that are unecessary, it wouldn't be fair for you to ask for any sort of payment for your time and effort in helping me accomplish all those. After all, that would make you just as much as a "leech" as they are. So, what do you say?
"Not to mention that original copyright laws - a time-limited monopoly - has been twisted into an abomination that only serves the industries. Seventy years after the creator's death? Combined with "work-for-hire" clauses which effectively makes a company the "creator"? Society is not served by that, only the media megacorporations."
This is correct if you don't include the many individual rightsholders whom copyright law has served. All cats are white, except those that aren't.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I for one hope that this only turns into an opportunity to strengthen the PB. It looks like they are still accepting donations at http://www2.piratpartiet.se/
More importantly - support PB financially and publicly with Apparel! As I understand it, most of the profit from this store goes to the PB.
ôó
Well, yeah, what I was referring to is people who believe in creation with the logic "Life is really complex. I have no freaking idea how it works. Therefore, god made it."
That's an unfair reduction of the facts. Attempt to understand it, seek information from reliable, scholarly, peer-reviewed sources. If you can't be bothered, don't tell people who do these things that they're wrong.
~Wx
sig?
Regardless of who actually came up with the vaccine the point of the quote remains the same. Governments aren't exactly the best places for innovation;
Which is why we innovate at universities.
This is just asking governments to fund the universities. Which, they do. But when the results start getting close to production, the government funding dries up, and then the pharmaceutical companies take over. This is essentially what they're trying to fix - it's fairly insane that the public essentially funds the majority of the research for pharmaceutical companies, and then just hands them a nice neat product which they then produce, and market the hell out of, at insane prices while using patents to restrict production in other places where the cost would be cheaper.
So essentially, all you're really doing is asking the governments to finish what they already started - fund the drugs all the way to completion, rather than just the majority of the way.
If we want more discoveries like this we simply need the lobby the government to give more money to universities, not abolish the patent system.
Why, precisely, should patents be allowed for drugs that are primarily discovered by government-funded research?