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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.
Odd that they did this one year ago, when they went down for maintenance.
/ 000159.php?coral-no-redirect
(coralized link)
http://www.btflux.com.nyud.net:8080/archives/news
So, from TFA;
According to The Pirate Party, a Swedish copyright reform organization, the raid also seized Piratbyrån's (the Pirate Bureau) servers. In addition, The Pirate Party reports "...the servers where located in a protected area, to which the police had no legal right to enter..." Approximately 50 police participated in the raid, which placed into custody two PirateBay.org personnel.
Now I remember reading the legal threats page, and the phrase normally went along the lines of "US Copyrights Mean Nothing Here".
What changed? Sending letters is one thing, but something pretty heavy must be going on to warrant that kind of response.
Can any of our swedish friends fill in the gaps here? I'm sure we're missing something.
> Strike out immaterial law. Every last bit of it.
Not every bit. They want a five-year commercial-only copyright term; allowing for non-commercial copying and use during that period.
Also, personal information and trademarks are to retain their protection.
> Disregard WIPO and WTO completely. Even though the US will "go bananas" as they put it.
Again, not completely. The WTO regulates some non-IP issues, on which the Pirate Party has no opinion.
Note that their program would invalidate Creative Commons and the GPL as well. I am Swedish, I worry a lot about the IP land grab going on, but no way will I vote for those people come september.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Have a look at http://stats.autonomica.se/mrtg/sums/Stockholm_GE. html. The fact that the pirate bay clearly affected the total bandwidth of the entire city of Stockholm says something of how big the site is.
Given that their platform has caused the other parties in Sweden to reconsider their own stances on filesharing and IP, I'd say go Pirate Party, even if I wouldn't vote them. There are other ways to accomplish this, but this is a nice one.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
That's not really an apt comparison. While the open seas were a little bit like the Internet in that they were largely open to anyone that could get a ship out of port, there were also conventions between nations, long-standing naval traditions, and the simple fact that pretty much everyone recognized that taking shots at a vessel flying under another flag was an act of war.
Legal circumstances of other actions on the Internet are different in that there are serious but legitimate differences in the laws of different countries. The best example of which I can think are Europe's anti-Nazi laws, of which Yahoo famously ran afoul. Trading Nazi memorabilia in France and Germany is strictly forbidden (at least for private parties -- museums may have more leeway), while no court in the United States would entertain such restrictions for very long. In Russia, you have the legal authority to break DRM encryption for the purposes of making a personal backup (though not for warez trading), hence Elcomsoft's legal dilemma with the PDF cracker.
I can't speak to the situation here, because Swedish copyright law may or may not be on the side of TPB, and I'm not familiar with Swedish law in general, but the overall situation may not be nearly as cut and dried as you seem to believe.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
...and do you seriously think that sending 50 police officers, paid for by Swedish taxes, to arrest and intimidate individuals with no history of violence is a responsible and appropriate use of money?
I disagree however with the idea that one should only vote for parties that 'have a chance' of winning or anything like that
In America the Democrats and Republicans are both part of a larger group, a power monopoly. They take "sides" in order to make it seem like there's a choice. The last several elections were almost exactly 50-50 divided. The media and the politicians like to say this means the country is "Strongly" divided. I say that it means the two "sides" are closer together than ever, so it doesn't really matter which side you pick, you are voting for people who are part of a single group, the power monopoly.
Voting for some wierd outsider would be great for the country. We need to get 2 or 3 totally weird outsiders into the senate and congress. These weirdos would not necessarily have any influence with their few votes, but you know for a fact they are going to:
1. Attend every vote
2. Read and understand every bill
3. Debate every pork barrel/hidden law/etc etc.
4. Generally put all the other people on the spot.
Those people up there are supposed to represent our states and help to make the country a better place also. Instead, they all live in Washington, DC, go to the same parties, and rarely if ever come back to their states to find out what's really going on. And if they do talk to someone from the state, it'll be some rich millionaire or business that probably does more than it's own share of subverting the will and freedom and comfort of the residents.
A weirdo elected would
1. Not be invited to those parties
2. Would not be able to find a place to live in Washington DC
3. Would not know any millionaires
Therefore he would probably come back to his house in the state he's from during the recess and actually talk to people and find out what's going on.
The only real problem is that he would shake things up so much that the power monopoly would hire one of their many hit squads and he would die in a tragic "accident".
I want to see some Henry Clay style beatings in congress though. Put someone like a Jessie Ventura in and have him PHYSICALLY BEAT people like Tom Delay (not just a clever name), Orrin Hatch, John Kerry, etc. BEAT THEM INTO SUBMISSION like the frail moneyed frat boys they are. Instead, it's just getting more aristocratic up there, because the American people think they have to go with a sure winner--when really going with the weirdest person running would be the best for everyone.
Cool! Amazing Toys.