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.

Comments

Re:come on, let's face it

[SilentChris]

"Please try to keep your analogies vaguely relevant. We're talking about copyright infringement here, not theft, so let's at least keep it IP-related. Examples of relevant crimes would be Americans infringing Swedish copyrights (downloading ABBA tracks or whatever), or violating other Swedish IP laws (maybe making fake IKEA furniture, or using industrial espionage to get illegal access to Saab trade secrets)."

See, this is the classic Slashdot response and it's totally faulty.

How do you think sites like Pirate Bay get their material? I'll give you a few examples:

1.) A guy walks into a CD store, pockets the CD and walks out. The CD store eats the loss.
2.) A worker at a major motion picture steals prerelease cuts and takes them home. Not along has he stolen physical goods, but he and his coworkers may lose their jobs in the process.
3.) A worker at a game store opens a game and makes a copy before it's released. The consumer buys the now scratched-up version, returns it, and the game company eats the loss.

In all cases, physical theft DOES occur at some point. In nearly all cases, people get fired -- often having nothing to do with the theft. Not to mention all the copies the companies could have sold if hundreds of thousands of teenagers didn't download it for free.

The common Slashdot mistake is to isolate copyright infringement as its own event. It isn't. It's part of a circle of events that involve physical loss, loss of jobs, etc.

Re:This is the sort of publicity you can't buy.

[ajs318]

PirateBay is just a high-tech, "white-collar" version of shoplifting DVD's, however you justify it to yourself.

Except that, unlike traditional shoplifting methods, this way the DVDs actually remain on the store shelves to be sold, thereby not hurting the retailers.

Side note, what do the Master Bakers' Association of America {or whatever they call themselves} think about the popularity of home bread making machines? Should a levy be imposed on every kilo of Strong Flour to pay for the business they are losing?