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

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

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

When you're a fledgling political party - you cannot buy this sort of publicity.

What we probably have here is pressure (who doesn't doubt it didn't go down like this) from a foreign organisation to shut down something that's legal under Swedish law. (The torrent files themselves contain no copyrighted information).

Is this going to permanently shutdown thepiratebay.org? I doubt it.

Is this going to help the Pirate Party's chances for election in the September elections and be detrimental to the content oligopolist's interests in the long run? Hell yes.

Mildly offtopic, if TPB is shutdown, the thing I'm going to miss most is their 'legal' section (with legal threats + responses) - here's one of my favorite responses (via google cache):

I have the distinct pleasure of informing you that no Swedish trademark and/or coypyright law is being violated, regardless of how the situation may or may not be under UK law. I would advise you to read up on Swedish trademark law, more specifically Varumarkeslag (1960:644), as this might save you a great deal of future humiliation.

I would also advise you to
a) not write the subject all in UPPERCASE, as it makes spam filters go nuts
b) not attach meaningless data from trademark registrys in PDF format and
c) stop lying.

(in response to a threat from Sega europe)

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

[iNTERcEPTOR-SdB]

Good luck to Pirate Bay. They make really good rum drinks! *burp*

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

[moranar]

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.

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

[slimme]

I used to work for an ISP's customer service and the response I gave to silly demands from foreign entities was similar to this response.

If you want us to take action, please provide us with a legal title that is valid in our country or cooperate with local law enforcement. Otherwise we will not respond to claims.

I guess the claiming companies cooperated with local law enforcement :-)

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

[extintor]

The pirate party and thepiratebay are not affiliated in any way. They are to different movements.

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

[Eideewt]

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.

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

[Martin Blank]

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.

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

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

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

[itchy92]

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.

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

[JoeSchmoe999]

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?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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

[Dutch_Cap]

"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.

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

[Stealth Dave]

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.

No, it's really more like walking into an art gallery with a camera and taking a few snapshots with your digital camera. Sure, they've still got their prints and original to sell, but with your blown-up-printed-on-the-office's-large-format-prin ter copy hanging on your wall, then it's not really stealing. - Stealth Dave

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

[Sleepy]

>The pirate party and thepiratebay are not affiliated in any way. They are to different movements.

Don't you mean... Vey are different movements. ?

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

[ceoyoyo]

Actually, the fact that someone can set up a political party to address a particular issue they're concerned about is what democracy is all about. This shows that democracy is NOT totally dead, at least in Sweden.

Some countries have one choice in elections. Some have two. Real democracies have as many as there are people to set them up.

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

[Arker]

Sweden, until rather recently, had one of the more enlightened copyright laws around. It explicitly required authorisation only for *commercial* reproduction. Making a copy of a cd, book, or whatever and giving it to your friends was never illegal.

Well, of course once the *AA found out about that they had a tizzy fit, and funnelled an unknown, but apparently substantial amount of money to Sweden, funding the Antipirat Byrån and some other organisations, as well as bribing lots of politicians. They haven't had the kind of success they've been hoping for, but they did manage to change the law to prohibit unauthorised non-commercial copying. A rather unpopular move with the voting public, I might add, which is increasingly resentful of the swedish politicians who have a pattern of voting in stuff that's unpopular with the citizenry but popular with wealthy foreign lobbyists. Politicians are traditionally held in VERY high regard in Sweden, and there's an overwhelming tradition of people trusting them, viewing them as experts, and assuming that if they do something like this they must know best. That tradition has been quickly eroding, by incidents like this. Before that law was hustled through in the back rooms, very few people were actively thinking about the issue. Afterwards, a significant movement started to form and demand that their liberty be restored.

Anyhow, they did manage to technically make filesharing illegal there, and there was a test case a few months back. It was reported that, basically, if the court didn't impose a fairly harsh sentence, the police would not enforce the law again. As I recall, the court did not go mad, and therefore it was widely assumed afterwards this was essentially a dead law. They can, of course, write someone up for it if they happen to see it, but they cannot, for instance, breach privacy laws to get your IP over such a minor offense, so in practice it's nearly unenforceable.

I'm guessing this raid will backfire horribly for those behind it. Unless I've horribly misunderstood the law there (and not just me, the pirate bay folks, who have significant legal respresentation and counsel available) hosting the torrent files themselves is still completely legal. If a court winds up agreeing with that assessment, the pirate bay should wind up getting everything returned along with an apology and a nice fat cheque. And I don't mean that in the sense I would in a similar circumstance in the US - it should happen but it never will - I mean it's very likely. The falsely accused are normally compensated for their trouble there. If that happens, it should be rather impossible for this to be spun away - it will become another police scandal coming at a time when the police have way too many already.

So far, every effort the *AA has made in Sweden has backfired in terms of public opinion. The more attention they draw to the issue, the more support for liberty seems to arise. Won't be surprised if that happens again, although I note today that the hacks at dn.se, the nations largest newspaper, are desperately trying to spin this the other way. But then again, they've been doing that all along...

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

[/ASCII]

Technically that may be true, but they both have roots in piratbyrån. Though the pirate bay was mostly brached of as a separate organization long ago.

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

[ceoyoyo]

Special interests don't deserve representation?

Defending minorities and special interests is a critical part of democracy. Ever heard the phrase "tyranny of the majority?" The minority's interests shouldn't be put ahead of those of the majority, but they should be heard, and not interfered with if they don't conflict.

Besides, special interests often have something important to say to the majority. Sometimes they even grow into the majority. Sometimes they already ARE. If properly informed about the issue, how many voters in Sweden do you think would agree with outlawing DRM, instituting or maintaining fair use and generally telling major American media companies to back off?

Yes, the Pirate Party takes a more extreme position, but I expect their goal is to pull more mainstream parties in the direction they'd like, rather than to actually form a government. In Canada your federally funded (and allowed) advertising budget is a function of how much of the popular vote you got in the last election. The Green party isn't likely to ever form an actual government but they DID get enough of the vote to get funding for the next election. That sends two messages. They can advertise directly and reach more people AND the major political parties will see that a significant number of voters are concerned about the issue.

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

[shmlco]

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"...

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

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

No offence, but you should really look at what typical recording contracts actually say before launching into a rant like that.

Hint: if you're part of a newbie band and things go to hell, you're probably going to get stuck with most of the expenses, not the record label.

People around here need to stop associating defending the principle of intellectual property with defending the big record labels, who are for the most part the scum of the earth.

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

[StikyPad]

This argument drives me nuts..."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.

"Value" is not a boolean. There's plenty of stuff I don't value enough to buy, but I'll still borrow it from a friend or listen to it on the radio. I may even record it when it's on TV. I borrow books from the library as well. They're not completely free, since my taxes help pay for the library, but the artist definately isn't getting compensated for every person who borrows a book or CD. Conversely, some of the items at the library -- such as reference materials -- are invaluable to me, I would definately buy them if they weren't available for near-free at the library. So by that logic, the publishers have lost a sale.

Essentially people are, and always have been, paying for things when they need to, not when the selling party wants them to. The selling parties would like to change that, obviously, but I'm not convinced that such a change is either necessary or desirable for the public good. As long as there's a mechanism in place for content producers to be compensated by those who choose to compensate, I believe that's sufficient.

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"?

There's a clear difference between reproducing something and destroying it -- namely one is commonly acceptable and the other is not. If I buy some corn, and then plant that corn instead of eating it, I can have the very same corn in my backyard that the farmer would have sold me next year had I not planted it. If I give away an ear, someone else can do the same thing. Is that fair? Of course, because I've done work to reproduce that corn. If I reproduce a CD, I've arguably done more work than the publisher. Perhaps the original content producer hasn't been compensated, but a) he was likely compensated a flat fee to begin with (royalties ARE rare), and b) it goes back to the point I made in response to the previous question: People pay when they must, not when the seller wants them to. But, you say, that's not the same thing! An artist has produced something new, not a piece of corn! True, but if I create a new vegetable, and then sell it to a farmer for exclusive distribution, whose fault is it when other people figure out they can just plant it themselves? I probably should have thought of that in the first place, and provided sufficient incentive for people to obtain it directly from me. There is merit to the idea that society should likewise provide some inventives for people to create new things (and copyright is one of those incentives), but an incentive is just that, and if it's not good enough, then perhaps we should explore alternative solutions. I would submit that copyright is "good enough" as it stands, or stood. That is; preventing other people, for a limited time, from reproducing/distributing a work for profit without permission from the creator should be a criminal offense. People who desire to compensate the creator have a means, and those who have no such desire will find other ways. Anything more is just creating more of a burden on society, and the benefits are questionable, at best. Making ALL copying a criminal act was, I believe, a mistake, in that it costs society more to make criminals out of people than to simply accept that such activity is impossible to control.

The Political Pirate Party

[eldavojohn]

The lauch of the Pirate Party. The Pirate Party website (in Swedish as far as I can tell). And the English version. As you can see, it's taking forever for those pages to load (if at all). I suspect this to be due to their server reduction. The Wikipedia entry on the Pirate Party. An interview with the founder.

From the first link, the aims of the Pirate Party seem to be:

• Strike out immaterial law. Every last bit of it.
• Disregard WIPO and WTO completely. Even though the US will "go bananas" as they put it.
• Annul any further treaties or policies that hinder the free flow of information.
• Stand up for privacy. No data retention nonsense based on terrorism shills or failed **AA business models.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[Meneth]

> 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.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[Stentapp]

First comment from the Pirate Party: http://www2.piratpartiet.se/nyheter/the_pirate_bay _and_piratbyran_taken_down_by_police
"Swedish police has today taken all the servers of The Pirate Bay into custody. Two operators of The Pirate Bay are in police custody, and can't be reached.

Swedish police has today taken all the servers of The Pirate Bay into custody. The police chose to do this despite the fact that the services provided by the worlds largest bittorrent tracker are fully legal in Sweden.
The servers where located in a protected area, to which the police had no legal right to enter, but this was ignored.
Piratbyrån (the Pirate Bureau), a swedish pro-pirate lobby organisation, also got their servers seized, since they where located in the same room.
Two operators of The Pirate Bay are in police custody, and can't be reached.
This article will be updated as more news come in.
14:35: 50 policemen participated in the raid."

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[JanneM]

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.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[lbmouse]

You forgot to include a link to their international holiday site. It is also in September. Coincidence? I think not.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[arose]

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.

Why not? Unless they get the majority (do you think they will?) they should make a nice counterbalance.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[JanneM]

Note that Creative Commons and the GPL would not be neccessary if their program was successful :-)

Yes, it would, more than ever. Without any protection, anyone could take GPL code, bake it into their own and refuse to share any alterations.

Removing all copyright would constitute a massive shift in power towards the largest holders.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[homer_ca]

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.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[isorox]

I am Swedish, I worry a lot about the IP land grab going on

IPv6 will sort that out

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, it would, more than ever. Without any protection, anyone could take GPL code, bake it into their own and refuse to share any alterations.

And what would be the point? They wouldn't be able to sell more than one copy anyway.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[bzipitidoo]

You're saying we need copyright because we actually need copyleft. Without copyright there is no copyleft, as copyleft depends on copyright law.

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.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[bentcd]

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.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[NickFortune]

Note that their program would invalidate Creative Commons and the GPL as well.

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.

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[steveha]

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

Re:The Political Pirate Party

[JavaRob]

This is incorrect on two counts -- first, the Pirate Party isn't arguing for abolishing copyright (just limiting it to something like 5 years), second (as mentioned in other posts below) the GPL is *based* on copyright law.

GPL uses copyright protection specifically to stop commercial interests from, say, enhancing the Linux kernel and selling the result as a closed source product. Without copyright protections, the commercial company COULD do this with impunity.

Personally, I agree that current copyright law is ridiculous, but 5 years seems way too short. I would argue for something like 40 or 50 years. There are plenty of examples of creative work that was a dud on initial release, but became a cult favorite a decade later... or creative work that was the product of decades of work, from a creator who would not be able to "just do more" to keep an income stream once copyright ended. We want to support these kinds of "master works" or "life's work" projects, not say, "sorry, but your 5 years is up -- if the word is still spreading, hey; sucks to be you".

It wasn't the police.

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it was really ninjas.

Re:It wasn't the police.

[gbobeck]

I bet it was really ninjas.

No. The Flying Spagetti Monster launched a preemptive strike in order to clear the bay for his chosen pirates.

Ramen.

Re:It wasn't the police.

[JonathanSulo]

Fördömda svenska ninjor :)

Re:It wasn't the police.

[idiotdevel]

nope... it was PIRATES... oh the IRONY

Re:It wasn't the police.

[pcgabe]

Oh, when will Pirates and Ninjas stop this pointless, bloody feud?
 
...

And join forces to take out those damn dirty Vikings!

Re:It wasn't the police.

[temcat]

Grammar police is coming after you and won't listen to any excuses!

"Tack så mycket" eller "Takk så mye" :-D

Re:It wasn't the police.

[L0k11]

And now... Grammar police *are* coming after you and won't listen to any excuses!

odd

[jflash]

Odd that they did this one year ago, when they went down for maintenance.

(coralized link)
http://www.btflux.com.nyud.net:8080/archives/news/ 000159.php?coral-no-redirect

Re:odd

[nbannerman]

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.

Re:odd

[nordicfrost]

I got off the phone with Swedish police, they confirm raids in the Swedish file sharing community and at least two brought in for questioning.

I talkt to the Pirate Party leader, he confirms the raid, confiscated servers (Both Pirate Parties and The Pirate Bay), saying there were 50 policemen in the raid this afternoon (14:00 Cent Eur time).

Re:odd

[diskis]

Antipiratbyrån, which is a site representing the music industry reports that the piratebay har been shut down. Apparently not a hoax.

(The text is in swedish but mostly useless propaganda, so I won't bother to translate)

Re:odd

[Wellington Grey]

50 policemen?! Why so many? Were they trying to take down Neo?

-Grey

Re:odd

[TGK]

Your men are already dead

Re:odd

[shoolz]

It does seem improbable that the police would make a comment to a random caller, presumably from another country. We need a 2nd person to call and confirm; report back to this thread.

Re:odd

[neo]

Were they trying to take down Neo?


No, I'm fine.

Re:odd

[geekoid]

Neo? your about 4624 too late

Legal?

[nbannerman]

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.

Re:Legal?

[Eudial]

What changed? Sending letters is one thing, but something pretty heavy must be going on to warrant that kind of response.

Nothing as I can see it. It's still perfectly legal to link to copyright violating material in Sweden. The police probably hopes that they store some violating material on the servers. Which, hopefully, they don't.

That, or they're after the logs so that they can do it the American Way (tm) and start suing blind 90 year olds and quadriplegics.

Re:Legal?

[Asphalt]

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.

It's really quite simple.

Terrorists can download .torrent files. And if terrorists can download .torrent files, then terrorists can obtain unlimited copies of material by Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, etc.

This will (obviously) lead to a greater hatred of America, and western culture in general.

This will impact the safety of all of our children as terrorists with big boners from watching Britney in that video with the short skirt will erupt into testosterone-fueled rages ... and this will greatly impact our war on terror.

This has nothing to do with copyright law, and everything to do with the safety of the free world.

I don't understand what you don't get about it?

Re:Legal?

[Asphalt]

>Problem is that terrorists are more clever than to use unencrypted information  sharing, so what you're proposing is that we allow the Gov. to listen in on us while the terrorists really doesn't care.

   o <- Joke

    O
   /--\  <-You
    |
   / \

Re:Legal?

[Tweekster]

No they just target 13 year olds and people without computers.

Re:Legal?

[shish]

I don't understand what you don't get about it?

It all makes sense now you've explained it in full -- when the government are explaining they normally stop after the word "terrorists"...

Re:Legal?

[MrNougat]

Terrorists can download .torrent files. And if terrorists can download .torrent files, then terrorists can obtain unlimited copies of material by Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, etc.

This will (obviously) lead to a greater hatred of America, and western culture in general.

Following this logic (terrorists acquire torrents of mass-produced crap which leads to greater hatred of the West) -- I side with the terrorists in their hatred.

(Note to NSA - not with the blowing up of things, just with the hatred.)

Re:Legal?

[Nickalreadyinuse]

Nothing as I can see it. It's still perfectly legal to link to copyright violating material in Sweden.

Actually, that's not true.

Actually that WAS true according to the very same Swedish Supreme Court decision which you are refering to! Public performance didn't at the time fall in to the exclusive right of the copyright holder in Sweden (Aricle 46 of 1960:729 Lag om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk), so it was legal. In the Olsson case the SSC affirmed the Appeals Court decision of not guilty!

However, this provision was removed in the July 2005 reform to conform with the EUCD (by adding provision 2 to the first paragraph as follows "except in cases where the communication occurs in such a way that members of the public may access the sound recordings from a place and at a time individually chosen by them").

This didn't fortunately affect the situation with links or other references to information stored elsewhere, because the "making available" definition was clarified in Article 2 so that linking can no longer be considered either "public performance" or "communication to the public", in accordance with the definitions in EUCD, so it falls completely outside the scope of the copyright law. Only if there is some collusion between the persons who actually make the material available from under their control, and the person who makes an online reference to it, can it be prosecuted for aiding and abetting.

So basically your precedent is now completely irrelevant and you are also wrong on the face of the text of the law and the preliminary works.

By raiding the pirate bay...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yarr! Imagine all the booty those law enforcement agents got their hands on!

Re:By raiding the pirate bay...

[Mayhem178]

Same deal as when they break up prostitution joints.

The Pirate Party

[Honken]

The pirate party is probably nothing more than a publicity stunt, however the impact that this question had on other Swedish political parties is quite substantial. This weekend the rather influential green party decided that they were pro-filesharing (although with some restrictions) and earlier representatives from other parties have said the same thing. While it probably won't have a major impact on the upcoming election in September it will none the less be an important question for some people.

TEXT if slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

In their native Sweden, ThePirateBay.org enjoyed a level of immunity from copyright prosecution rarely seen in the file-sharing world. Often defiant in the face of those wishing to enforce their intellectual property rights, ThePirateBay.org would go on to become one of the premier BitTorrent indexing and tracking sites.

As one of the largest trackers, ThePirateBay.org largely replaced the demise of the SuprNova.org search engine. SuprNova.org met its demise in late 2004, when it was under pressure from the entertainment industry to shut it operation down. Conversely, such pressure has been ineffective against ThePiratebay.org.

When such political pressure fails, the use of force is typically the next course of action. In a move that many thought would never come, Slyck.com learned this morning that ThePirateBay.org was raided by Swedish police.

"...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.

The seizure of ThePirateBay.org's entire server farm will guarantee this BitTorrent tracker will remain offline until the police complete their investigation. Whether this will keep ThePirateBay.org offline indefinitely is another matter.

"We are not sure when it will return, but we are moving it to another country if necessary," brokep said.

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.

The premature departure of ThePirateBay.org marks a significant turning point in the BitTorrent community. Although it's not currently known what, if any, entertainment entity is behind this raid, failure to secure ThePirateBay.org's permanent removal will only bolster this tracker's position of defiance.

Re:TEXT if slashdotted

[Jugalator]

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.

Re:TEXT if slashdotted

[mobby_6kl]

>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.

Re:TEXT if slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no court order is necessary if the the police have good reason to believe that a crime with could lead to prison is being committed or has been committed. There are two degrees of suspect, skäligen misstänkt (reasonably suspect) and sannolikt misstänkt (probably suspect), of which the latter, higher degree is required for a search.

The problem here is that the server room was designated a skyddsområde (protected area), as it contains business critical infrastructure and business secrets. In this case, a court order is indeed needed, and generally quite hard to obtain.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I do have a law degree (jur kand) and work as an assistant legal advisor at a Swedish company.

Re:Strange political power

[ChTh]

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?

An open letter to Sweden.

[Funkcikle]

Please let me finish freeing the flow of information, specifically Season 4 of Family Guy. Thank you.

Re:An open letter to Sweden.

[kimvette]

Actually, isn't it available on DVD now? I use Torrents as a form of timeshifting, but unless there's a movie or show I'm not sure I want to buy (e.g., THX1138 which I downloaded last week and watched, and decided I am going to order from Amazon if Sprawl*Mart doesn't have it - MPAA you have thepiratebay.org to thank for that sale, you know, that site you succeeded in bribing the Swedes to shut down. Oh, and thanks ro that action, I won't be buying DVDs for a while. I've been buying anywhere from 5 to 15 DVDs a month, now I will buy NONE until you STOP the proceedings and encourage thepiratebay.org to go back up, and STOP suing your customers and potential customers, assholes) I buy the DVDs.

24

[fluxindamix]

thank god, 24 is finished !!

Re:come on, let's face it

[andersbergh]

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.

They were too cocky

[gasmonso]

The should have stopped taunting the MPAA, RIAA, and just about every Hollywood movie house. Those entities combined have an enormous amount of influence and power. It was just a matter of time unfortunately.

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Mixed feelings...

[gowen]

Well, I feel the police are being heavy handed, but given the smug, supercilious and downright annoying tone of their responses to legal threats, its pretty hard not to feel a little schadenfreude that their bluster has been pricked and their bluff called.

Re:Mixed feelings...

[daff2k]

Why shouldn't they reply in any way they like? Just because those ridiculous threats came from the Big Media Entities like the IFPI, Sega, Dreamcast and what have you? How does that warrant anything but smug responses? As much as they'd love it (and apparently have conviced many people of it) the Big Media are not the supreme overlords of this planet (yet?). Heck, the "Content Industry" is even just a small subset of what we call IT industry, yet they manage to wag that dog just fine.

I welcome any opposition to that, and the PirateBay's replies were hilarious :)

Re:Mixed feelings...

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

...but given the smug, supercilious and downright annoying tone of their responses to legal threats...

Given the dishonest, beligerent, outrageous, overbearing and insulting nature of the legal threats in question, thepiratebay's response was completely justified.

Re:Mixed feelings...

[BFaucet]

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.

Interesting to say the least!

[Rob T Firefly]

IANA(.se)L, but I wonder.. let's say I was using TPB's tracker to share some stuff I had full legal right to. Public Domain, Creative Commons, original material, and such. With TPB shut down, would people like me be able to file some sort of legal grudge against the Swedish police?

Re:Interesting to say the least!

[NtG]

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.

Re:come on, let's face it

[Gr33nNight]

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.

Re:Strange political power

[Jarlsberg]

That's a laugh. At least they don't hide where their money is coming from ;). And about taking things for free and sharing it freely -- isn't that what all socialist goverments aspire to do?

TPB shutdown clearly visible in graphs

[Honken]

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.

Re:TPB shutdown clearly visible in graphs

[Carthag]

How do you figure? From what I can tell, the bandwidth fluctuates pretty evenly on day-to-day numbers for the last several months.

Re:TPB shutdown clearly visible in graphs

[ichigo 2.0]

Looks like slashdot is now affecting the traffic of the entire site of stats.autonomica.se.

Re:TPB shutdown clearly visible in graphs

[strider44]

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.

Re:TPB shutdown clearly visible in graphs

[bjoeg]

Sorry it shows nothing. Yes the graph shows an hour of no traffic, but traffic is back up and seems at a normal rate.

Re:TPB shutdown clearly visible in graphs

[A Holstenson]

The Pirate Bay is located in a large datacenter in Stockholm operated by Rix|Port80. The police did not only seize TPB servers but seem to have seized every server in that particular datacenter, which could explain the change in traffic.

Re:come on, let's face it

[spyrochaete]

Let's face it, it's illegal and they got caught.

Maybe some of the content was illegal, but what Pirate Bay did was not - at least by Swedish law (IANASwedeL). All they did was host tiny text files and provice a search database. They were a tracker, not a host.

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.

Re:Strange political power

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

they couldn't do much worse(than those already in power).

Oh shit

[Anonymous Coward]

If file-sharing friendly Sweden can go down, what could happen for other countries? This doesn't bode well for private trackers. Some are hosted in the Netherlands (Demonoid, Empornium, Pure TnA) or Canada (BitMeTV). Sweden-based TvTorrents might be next. Maybe its time to stop donating funds to the private trackers lest one gets accused of funding piracy...

Distributed tracking

[Meneth]

This, I think, clearly shows the need for a distributed publish/search mechanism for BitTorrent, like eMule's Kad network.

Re:Distributed tracking

[Xymor]

Welcome to 2004 Exeem tried that[distributed publish/search mechanism for BitTorrent], and failed miserably.

Re:Clarification...

[lanswitch]

In Europe we call it "democracy".

Re:come on, let's face it

[Verteiron]

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.

Re:Strange political power

[JanneM]

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?

What's wrong with porn ads if they're legal? Either something is legal, and thus ok for society as a whole (as opposed to any particular slice of society), or it's not ok for society as a whole, in which case it should be made illegal.

To put it another way: don't you want the people in charge to do the utmost not to waste your money unnecessarily? An ad-supported government should have fiscal conservatives everywhere salivating in anticipation.

And salivating further, no doubt if the administration gained further income by auctioning image, video or live access to a yearly interdepartmental gay/straight orgy. Anything to reduce the cost of government, right?

Re:Strange political power

[tinkerghost]

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.

Re:Strange political power

[pipatron]

Though this should be obvious it deserves to be mentioned: The Pirate Bay and the Pirate Party are not run by the same group of people. They just happen to live in the same country.

Re:come on, let's face it

[JudeanPeople'sFront]

Why do half-measures, let's close the internet while we're at it! Most of the traffic is porn and/or pirated.

Bad guys win after all?

[drgonzo59]

Microsoft willing to give away free licences for the govt. computers in exchange for the piratebay sMicrosoft willing to give away free licences for the govt. computers in exchange for the piratebay shutdown would do it, for example...

With any legal system there are a million of loopholes, that his how the lawyers make their big bucks. It seems like one of those MPAA/RIAA/Microsoft/Adobe lawyers found a loophole in the Swedish law after all.

It seems the like the guys at the piratebay.org has fun with the legal threats, insulting all those idiots, I wouldn't be surprised that a good number of them took it personally, knowing how big and inflamed their egos are. Does it mean the bad guys win after all?

Re:Strange political power

[oneandoneis2]

I'd take politicians funded by porn ads over the bastards taking a chunk out of my salary any day :o)

Re:come on, let's face it

[GrayCalx]

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].

Maybe they were warned about it...

[Garabito]

but swedish police officers might have not liked when they were told to "sodomize themselves with retractable batons".

Re:Clarification...

[rdoger6424]

[sarcasm viewpoint="right wing" nationality="USA"]
democracy? democracy is for communists!
[/sarcasm]

Story unfolds...

[Jarlsberg]

http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789 ,834356,00.html
For the benefit of those who don't speak swedish, here's a short summary:
3 people have been arrested, age 22, 24 and 28. They have not been charged, but are taken in because they the police suspect they have violated copyright laws. The persons are directly connected to TPB.org. They are as of an hour ago still under interrogation. 50 police men have worked on the case.

Re:Story unfolds...

[Jugalator]

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.

Re:Story unfolds...

[myspys]

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.

Aw shucks. . .

[CrtxReavr]

Now I feel guilty about ad-blocking the banners on there. . .

-CR

Re:Strange political power

[KiloByte]

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.

Re:A quote

[Jon Luckey]

"Vergoofin der flicke stoobin mit der børk-børk yubetcha!"

A Møøse once bit my sister ...

What the Swedish antipiracy firm (ATB) has to say

[entoke]

http://www.antipiratbyran.com/index.htm?id=news&p= p19#19

"The Pirate Bay nedstängd

Polisen genomförde idag en rad husrannsakningar mot lokaler där The Pirate Bay bedriver sin verksamhet. Klockan 12 30 stängdes sidan thepiratebay.org ned.

The Pirate Bay var fram tills igår knutpunkten för en stor del av världens illegala fildelning. Enligt egna uppgifter fanns det en dryg miljon användare som kunde laddade upp och ned främst filmer, spel och musik. Genom sin storlek och uttalade målsättning att hänga ut och håna berörda upphovsmän gjorde man The Pirate Bay känd över hela världen. Sverige blev internationellt känt som en fristad för dem som begick upphovsrättsbrott på Internet. Detta utnyttjades ekonomiskt för en omfattande försäljning av annonser, porreklam och insamling av donationer.

Det är bra att den svenska polisen nu prioriterar denna typ av brottslighet. Det är upphovsrätten som finansierar nyskapandet inom film, datorspel, musik och övrig kultur. Den som bryter mot upphovsrättslagen stjäl från framtidens kreatörer och biopublik. Därför är stängningen av The Pirate Bay bra för alla oss som uppskattar ny film och underhållning säger Henrik Pontén, jurist på Antipiratbyrån.

Svenska produktioner drabbas i hög grad av den illegala nedladdningen, säger Per-Erik Wallin, Föreningen Sveriges Filmproducenter. Om svenska filmer finns tillgängliga på nätet före premiären innebär det minskade chanser att filmerna ska spela hem produktionskostnaden och mindre medel för att göra nästa film. Det drabbar både manusförfattare, regissörer, skådespelare och filmarbetare."

Roughly translated

"The pirate bay closed

Today the police raided multiple places were The Pirate Bay conducts its operations. At 12.30 the site thepiratebay.org was closed.

The pirate Bay was until yesterday the center for a large part of the worlds illegal filesharing. According to piratebay itself there was over a million users who could upload or download foremost movies, games and music.

By its size and outspoken goal of ridiculing authors The pirate Bay got known all over the world.

Sweden got known internationally as an asylum for those who commited copyright crimes on the internet. This was use economicaly for a large scale sale of adds, pornadds and donations.

It is good that the swedish police now priority this kind of crime. It is the copyright that finances creation in movies, computergames, music and other culture. Whoever breaks the copyright steals from future auothors and cinema audience. Therefore the closing of The Pirate Bay is good for all of us that apreciate new Movies and entertainment says Henrik Pontén, legal advisor at Antipiratbyrån.

Swedish productions are very much affected by illegal downloading, say Per-Erik Wallin, Föreningen Sveriges Filmproducenter. If swedish movies are availible on the net before the premiere chances are smaller that the movies will get the production cost back and less means to make the next movie. It affects both scriptwriters, directors, actors and filmcrews."

Note that this truly is a crappy translation.

Has it not occured to anyone

[TheDunadan]

that tommorrow last year the exact same thing "happened" and it was hoax. I haven't read the article because the server appears to be slashdotted, but it seems awefully suspicious that the same story of TPB being raided by Swedish police shows up again a year later almost to the day.

Re:Has it not occured to anyone

[Tired_Blood]

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.

Re:come on, let's face it

[Bake]

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.

Re:come on, let's face it

[cpt kangarooski]

The DMCA has nothing to do with it. They are illegal in the US, because the US treats contributory infringement (i.e. knowingly helping someone infringe), vicarious infringement (i.e. profiting by another's infringement), and inducement (i.e. strongly encouraging someone to infringe in conjunction with assistance) as being punishable just as much as direct infringement. The idea of secondary liability is fairly common in our legal system.

Whether Sweden has anything like this, I have no idea.

Re:Strange political power

[Malakusen]

Today's State of the Union address is sponsored by Vivid Porn Productions.

I might actually start watching the SOTU again if they did that...

Re:same as a drug dealer

[EGSonikku]

Guilty of what exactly? The First Ammendment?

Damnit!

[cimmer]

In other news, the global warming index increased unexpectedly by 1.2% this morning.

Re:come on, let's face it

[MyNameIsEarl]

Sweden does not equal Switzerland last time I checked. I do believe they might export some sort of fancy meatballs though.

Re:Strange political power

[Asphalt]

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?

Only if the advertised porn sites contain a sufficient girl-on-girl selection.

Otherwise, no.

Re:Hoaxed?

[Agret]

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...

Re:Strange political power

[Pig Hogger]

Hmm, check how many bankruptcy filings there have been from members of congress. Then look at the number of failed businesses they have had....

Anglo-saxon politicians are, for the most part, failed businessmen.

Anglo-saxon culture views the State/Government as something bad, for which it is demeaning to work for. So the brightest people tend to work in business, whilst those unsuccessful in business but with still an ounce of ambition will be drawn towards politics, where they will apply their businessmen credo, which is to line their pockets.

It's okay for a private businessman to line his pockets; that's what businesses are for: fatten their executives, and, if there's some left, the shareholders.

But it cannot work for the Government, because it acts for the whole society, but politicians act like businessmen and still stuff their pockets at public expense...

Re:come on, let's face it

[Jugalator]

As Slyck said, the TPB folks said the police wasn't 100% sure the confiscated computers had any illegal material on them.

I wonder if this is an attempt/hope that they'll have carried actual infringing material on the server to set a crime in stone. I mean, if all they needed was some stupid .torrent hashes, they could've done this months earlier?

First hand information here:

[giulietta masina]

The Pirate Bureau have set up a temporary news blog to inform the public about this whole incident: http://piratbyran.blogspot.com/

Shutting down The Pirate Bay can be compared to shutting down Google, by Swedish laws. Both sites supply a search engine with which you can find legal and illegal material on the internet. TPB will prevail.

Re:First hand information here:

[giulietta masina]

"The Pirate Bay exists SOLELY for the unauthorized distribution on copyrighted works."

First off, this is so wrong. Until today I was sharing my own independent movie production through TPB. So the "solely" part is incorrect.

But in any case, it is still not illegal to link to copyrighted material in Sweden. There are several precedental legal cases from the past years that establishes this. And this is the main point.

Re:come on, let's face it

[mrchaotica]

With WIPO and whatnot, it's becoming a safer assumption every day.

Re:same as a drug dealer

[Guysmiley777]

No, he's not. Let's take your myopic case to the extreme, shall we?

A person walks up to a police officer and says "Sir, that man across the street is selling illegal drugs!" The police officer's response: "You're under arrest for providing information as to where illegal drugs can be purchased."

Ahhhhhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's as if millions of geeks cried out at once... and were suddenly silenced.

The Pirate Bay

[GauteL]

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.

Re:The Pirate Bay

[extintor]

The thing with swedish law AFAIK is that the posession of "pirated" materials are not illegal. Just sharing it. So having 60 GB of MP3's on your laptop is perfectly legal.

Re:The Pirate Bay

[hyfe]

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.

Exactly due to the risks involved, I'm willing to bet quite alot they kept their own computers clean.

Even if they had stuff on their own computers, I'm very unsure if they actually could be charged. I imagine Sweden, as Norway, have pretty stricts laws on how police can gather information, and in which situations the information gathered can be used. After all, we don't want any random policeman with a grudge to be able to ruin somebodies life.

now what

[jaimz22]

now where am i going to buy my software!?

Re:Just a Hoax -- dunno

[Svartalf]

When I see reports from people that would stand to gain by crowing about a raid
saying that they got raided, along with it peppering the news feeds over there
in Sweden, I have some reservations about it being just a hoax.

That's not to say it's not- it's just I wouldn't be so certain as there's too much
going on right at the moment that run counter to that assessment.

It's the cover up, stupid !

[elpapacito]

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.

Why people really are reading this thread is...

[andi75]

...they're hoping that someone posts a link to a repacement site...

Re:Why people really are reading this thread is...

[Lord_Dweomer]

You sound like you're trying to make us feel guilty for that. Of COURSE we're looking for a replacement site (well, not me personally as I have several others I can go to). We all loved the Pirate Bay and had some "brand loyalty" towards them if you will, but they provided a service, and no longer do, so of course people are going to look for an alternative.

But I think that's just a secondary reason for reading this thread. The Pirate Bay has really done a lot to speak out against all the idiocy that has been going on with copyright laws. Hell, they were even going for a political party, but now they have been apparently wrongly been taken down. There are many more reasons for concern over this other than where to get your next .torrent fix.

Re:Why people really are reading this thread is...

[thelost]

there are plenty of alternatives to thepiratebay and always have been. torrentspy.com comes to mind, mininova.org, newnova.org, isohunt.com, newtorrents.info, eztvefnet.org.

it's so obvious...

[Lazy Jones]

With their political ambitions growing and the backing of a significant part of the population becoming obvious, the government (the ruling party) and its lackeys within the police have a very good reason to bust them, whether in accordance with the law or not. Let's hope for a good backlash in the next elections.

Re:Strange political power

[Politburo]

American Idol loves to say "That's more votes than the last election" or some other bullshit. What they conveniently leave out is that you're allowed to vote more than once for American Idol.

Re:Strange political power

[Peter La Casse]

Either something is legal, and thus ok for society as a whole (as opposed to any particular slice of society), or it's not ok for society as a whole, in which case it should be made illegal.

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.)

Re:come on, let's face it

[zerocool^]

And here's where you're wrong and trolling:

We're not talking about the DMCA, we're talking about basic theft.

NO, NO, NO, WRONG.

Theft is when YOU HAVE SOMETHING, SOMEONE ELSE TAKES IT, and YOU NO LONGER HAVE IT.

This is copyright infringement. It is NOT the same thing as theft. In a way, the copyright owner has something, someone else takes (an exact replica of) it, but the copyright owner STILL HAS IT.

It is not as simple as "reduce the problem down to something you can understand and digest easily", and "repeat it often enough, it becomes true". You can't make a simple analogy out of this; it is not a simple problem. Attempt to understand it. Bring yourself to it's level; not vice versa. This works for all complex problems, be it micro v. macro kernel, evolution v. creation, pro-choice v. pro-life, etc. Elevate your understanding.

~Wx

The Pirate Party

[Christian Engstrom]

Unfortunately our server has gone down right now (overload, not police raid), so I'll post the English description of our political agenda here.

The Pirate Party

The Pirate Party is a newly formed political party in Sweden. We want to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected. With this agenda, and only this, we are making a bid for representation in the Swedish parliament in the upcoming national elections in September.

Not only do we think these are worthwhile goals. We also believe they are realistically achievable on a European basis. The sentiments that led to the formation of the Pirate Party in Sweden are present throughout Europe. There are already similar political initiatives under way in several other member states. Together, we will be able to set a new course for a Europe that is currently heading in a very dangerous direction.

The Pirate Party only has three issues on its agenda:

Reform of copyright law
The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a balance between the interests of publishers and consumers, in order to promote culture being created and spread. Today that balance has been completely lost, to a point where the copyright laws severely restrict the very thing they are supposed to promote. The Pirate Party wants to restore the balance in the copyright legislation.

All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created.

The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today's copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead. No film studio or record company bases its investment decisions on the off-chance that the product would be of interest to anyone a hundred years in the future. The commercial life of cultural works is staggeringly short in today's world. If you haven't made your money back in the first one or two years, you never will. A five years copyright term for commercial use is more than enough. Non-commercial use should be free from day one.

We also want a complete ban on DRM technologies, and on contract clauses that aim to restrict the consumers' legal rights in this area. There is no point in restoring balance and reason to the legislation, if at the same time we continue to allow the big media companies to both write and enforce their own arbitrary laws.

An abolished patent system
Pharmaceutical patents kill people in third world countries every day. They hamper possibly life saving research by forcing scientists to lock up their findings pending patent application, instead of sharing them with the rest of the scientific community. The latest example of this is the bird flu virus, where not even the threat of a global pandemic can make research institutions forgo their chance to make a killing on patents.

The Pirate Party has a constructive and reasoned proposal for an alternative to pharmaceutical patents. It would not only solve these problems, but also give more money to pharmaceutical research, while still cutting public spending on medicines in half. This is something we would like to discuss on a European level.

Patents in other areas range from the morally repulsive (like patents on living organisms) through the seriously harmful (patents on software and business methods) to the merely pointless (patents in the mature manufacturing industries).

Europe has all to gain and nothing to lose by abolishing patents outright. If we lead, the rest of the world will eventually follow.

Respect for the right to privacy
Following the 9/11 event in the US, Europe has

Re:come on, let's face it

[debest]

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.

Vikings are Norwegion

[geeksdave]

The vast majority of Vikings were Norwegion not Swedish. My Viking ancestors kicked your ancestors buttocks. Be nice or I'll throw lutefisk at you.

Re:Vikings are Norwegion

[Ch_Omega]

Damn, commenting someones bad spelling of the name of my country, and I manage to get it misspelled myself. Hehe.. Ofcourse it's "Norwegian". :)

Re:Vikings are Norwegion

[pcgabe]

grab one about Irish history.

Holy crap! So, what you're saying is, he's a doctor, AND a ninja, AND a Viking?!!

Those pirates are screwed.

Not unprecedented

[Anonymous Coward]

For powerful pirates to be regarded as popular heroes among a local community, even to the point of having semi-official protected status, is not without precedent. The pirate Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, could not have operated for so many years in the Bahamas without numerous safe harbours and local bigwigs on his side, including the governor of the British colony of North Carolina.

But then, the British Crown gave protection and rewards to many pirates. Of course, the politically correct term was "privateers". Guys like Sir Francis Drake, Sir Henry Morgan, and Governor Woodes Rogers may have been regarded by other nations as murderers, thieves, slavers, and rapists, but to the British they were plucky men of renown.

So for ThePirateBay.org, this may not be the end, but only the beginning!

Here's one for you.

[sketchman]

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.

Re:come on, let's face it

[RsG]

"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.

Re:Strange political power

[JavaLord]

American Idol loves to say "That's more votes than the last election" or some other bullshit. What they conveniently leave out is that you're allowed to vote more than once for American Idol.

There are other dynamics at work as well:

1. You can vote from your phone for American Idol, you have to trudge out to the polls to vote for the next president, on a work day on top of it.

2. Politics are more difficult to follow then American Idol. Almost everyone can watch American Idol and decide if someone can sing well or not. How many Americans do you think understand or care about foreign policy? How many care about fiscal policy? How many care about Social Security other then it 'being there' for them?

3. American Idol tends to be more 'tribal'. What I mean by that is it often puts people of different ethnic backgrounds or gender against one another, and the media plays upon those differences to encourage more votes. For president, you typically end up with rich WASP male #1 vs rich WASP male #2.

How many women do you think will turn out to vote for Hillary just because she's a women in 2008? Don't discount that type of motivation from a previously disenfranchised group, it's a strong one.

Re:Strange political power

[DataCannibal]

As opposed to a real government who...er...takes things for free (income tax) and finances it's business through ..er.. taxes on betting, alcohol and tobacco.

Excuse me for being a bit dim but I fail to see a great deal of difference.

Re:Voting as a message

[cHALiTO]

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).

Re:Voting as a message

[Threni]

> 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.

Re:come on, let's face it

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Well that a really bad analogy (and geography) and many have pointed out many reasons why, but a couple things I haven't seen mentioned yet.

and you couldn't find the guys who were stealing the chocolate out of the stores (although you could probably find them if you asked the newspaper guys), what would you do?
You'd question the newspaper, make sure you got the info needed to get the theives and make sure ads like that stopped appearing. Aka: kill the torrent site.

First, in the case of torrents there is no secret information about who is doing it. Every IP address seeding or downloading via a torrented file are publicly viewable. No need to even bother the "newspaper".

They didn't "question the newspaper" they shut it down (at least for now).

"make sure ads like that stopped appearing" OK, if we want to run a society based on what arbitrary people think is the right thing to do in a given case then that would be fine. However, if you perfer living in a place that is governed by some set of laws you'd better make sure there is a law on the books saying that posting such ads is illegal. If not, I think your computer should be siezed for writing REALLY bad analogies on /. Sure no law would back me up on that, but it sure "feels" like the right thing to do so lets just do it.

Nah, no political power

[Lars Arvestad]

What's really interesting about them is the strange political power that they held in their homeland.

I am Swedish and I don't think that TPB has had much influence at all, laws and attitudes would have been just the same if this was an organization outside Sweden. My guess is that the presence of the organisation is simply reflecting current attitudes in general in Sweden today. It is notable that a minister in the socialdemocratic government downloaded mp3s, burned them to CD, and gave it to friend as a birthday present (Swedish article) already in 2000, without seeing any wrong with it.

An explanation to this phenomenon could be a tradition of relatively strong consumer protection laws (and traditions), and that the "personal use" clauses in copyright have always been defended here.

Re:Strange political power

[owlnation]

...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?

uh, what's up with this? There is a benefit though

[kimvette]

from http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=3955&date=20 060531 :

Police have been monitoring the website and the men behind it for some time. Computers were taken during raids on the men's homes and offices to secure evidence.

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 :( It was THE best torrent site for finding rare/unavailable TV shows and abandonware)

Re:Strange political power

[clickclickdrone]

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?

At least you'd know where you stood with them unlike the current incumbents who say one thing and do another.

Official statement from the Pirate Party...

[Stentapp]

...can be read at http://www.piratpartiet.se./ English one to come.
Here is my very rough NON-OFFICIAL translation:
"PRESS RELEASE
For immidiate publication
31 may 2006

For more information, see party webpage at http://www.piratpartiet.se/ or contact Rickard Falkvinge, +46733555293

The Pirate Party critizises the police for illegitimate intrusion

Swedish police has today taken all the servers of The Pirate Bay into custody, along with the servers of a number of other unrelated web hotel customers. The police chose to do this despite the fact that the services provided by the world's largest bittorrent tracker has been deemed fully legal in Sweden.

The police means, according to an operator of the site, that the police wants to test the legality of the activities.

"Which company would have accepted this treatment?", says Rickard Falkvinge, party leader of the Pirate Party. "Which Company would have accepted that the police arrived and ceased all company activity, before proven guilty of crime?. In this case the Pirate Bay has not commited any crime. They are disliked by large american media interests, that is true. But it is not a crime to be disliked, and definately not a reason for the swedish police to enter and shut down one of the worlds' largest communities for youth people."

"This is exactly the kind of raids that the Pirate Party wants to stop", concludes Rickard. "When the society sends the police on its youth population because they listen to music and watches movies, then it is not the youth that are wrong. Then it is the society that has to do better."

About the Pirate Party:

The Pirate Party is the largest of the new parties for the national elections in Sweden 2006. The party was founded 1 january this year and promotes an open information society, shared culture, and protected private life.

Re:come on, let's face it

[Lumpy]

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?

English quotes from Swedish police, Pirate Party

[praps]

Full article in English here with recent quotes direct from the Swedish police and the leader of the Pirate Party. Apparently it's a very early stage in the investigation - so maybe more arrests to come?

Re:Strange political power

[TheLink]

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?

SIlver Lining...

[Dot Solipsism]

At least they waited until after all the season finales before raiding.

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

[geminidomino]

Just call losing the "smug smile" a down payment on the "shit eating grin" they'll have when they get back up and running.

Nooooo! Where will I go Now to get my Linux ISOs?

[syntap]

That site was one-stop shopping for all my distro needs. Why would they raid and take down a legit service?

Backups?

[Tom]

How long until the last backup goes live on some other server somewhere else?

Re:Blog updated,

[giulietta masina]

This is a very rough translation of The Pirate Bureau's press release:

PRESSRELEASE
For immediate release
31 may 2006

Police tricked by movie industry to shut down The Pirate Bureau

Today the police carried out a razzia against The Pirate Bay, the world's largest Bittorrent-tracker. The site have for several years been a gathering point for culture-interested people all over the world. Everything from homeproduced papers to obscure Japanese music to Eurovision-videos have been spread using Bittorrent-technology.

The servers themselves have never contained any illegal material. The torrent-files, links that people use to connect to each other and transfer the material, only contains text that is hardly copyrighted.

"The Antipirate Bureau have obviously mislead the police in this case" says Tobias Andersson at The Pirate Bureau. "It seems like they have convinced IT-incompetent policemen that the servers are filled with copyrighted material. This is a serious misuse of tax money."

"Meanwhile, several other sites on nearby servers have also been confiscated. This is the most serious escapade. The Antipirate Bureau have obviously convinced the police to shut down their antagonists, The Pirate Bureau, while their at it."

"The Pirate Bureau have for 3 years worked for an open debate on copyright and patent laws and questions. We are very upset that the movie industry does not date to participate in this debate, but instead wants to trick politicians and police into criminalize opponents and a huge part of the Swedish population."

"Of course this means nothing in practice for filesharers around the world. There are thousands of other sites and networks for them to get what they want. People just change place. Filesharing is like a hydra, if you cut of one head two new ones will soon grow out."

The Pirate Bureau started in the summer of 2003 to focus on and discuss copyright topics. The Pirate Bureau means that copyright in many aspects have played put their role, and instead of protecting artists blocks creativity and feed a lucky few. Since the start, about 60 000 members have registered at the site where discussions and idea sharing take place in forums. The Pirate Bureau have also given talks in the parliament, created campaigns and started the world's largest Bittorrent-tracker, ThePirateBay.org

Re:Do something about it

[CogDissident]

Hey buddy, I like data dumps as much as the next guy, but make it readable, please.

You are absolutely right, this is great publicity for piracy and piracy organizations. And we can make sure that even more persons hear about this, and make people understand just how many persons there are that care about this question and want the pirate bay to stay up. Here are some e-mail and postal addresses to the Swedish police, the anti piracy bureau (a swedish lobby organization like the riaa), and some important swedish politic organizations. If you're Swedish please pick a few of these and email/post a message and tell them what you think about this. Or even if you're not, do it anyway. It can't hurt. You can make a difference!
If you're worried about åäö in the postal adresses, just use aao, it will get trought.

The Goverment (postal): Sveriges riksdag 100 12 Stockholm Sweden

Important Politicians: Göran Persson Fredrik Reinfeldt Lars Leijonborg Göran HÃgglund Lars Ohly Maud Olofsson Peter Eriksson Maria Wetterstrand

Political Organizations (postal): Socialdemokratiska partistyrelsen 105 60 Stockholm Sweden Moderaterna Box 2080 103 12 Stockholm Sweden Folkpartiet Box 6508 Drottninggatan 97 1tr 113 83 Stockholm Sweden Kristdemokraterna Box 2373 103 18 Stockholm Sweden Centerpartiet Box 2200 103 15 Stockholm Sweden Miljöpartiet de Gröna Prästgatan 18 A Box 2136 103 14 Stockholm Sweden

The Anti Piracy Bureau: Postal Adress: Antipiratbyrån S:t Eriksgatan 117A Box 23021 104 35 Stockholm Sweden Swedish police (different adresses are for different districts):

e-mail: polismyndigheten@blekinge.police.se
polismyndigheten@dalarna.police.se
polismyndigheten@gotland.police.se
polismyndigheten@gavleborg.polisen.se
polismyndigheten@halland.police.se
polismyndigheten@jamtland.police.se
polismyndigheten@jonkoping.police.se
polismyndigheten@kalmar.police.se
polismyndigheten@kronoberg.police.se
polismyndigheten@norrbotten.police.se
polismyndigheten.skane@polisen.se
polismyndigheten@stockholm.polisen.se
polismyndigheten.sodermanland@polisen.se
post@uppsala.polisen.se polisen@varmland.police.se
polismyndigheten@vasterbotten.police.se
polismyndigheten@vasternorrland.police.se
polismyndigheten@vastmanland.polisen.se
polismyndigheten@vastragotaland.polisen.se
polismyndigheten@orebro.police.se
polismyndigheten@ostergotland.police.se
rikspolisstyrelsen@polisen.se
skl@skl.police.se postals

(the first one is the national one, so if you send do several of them, always send to this): Rikspolisstyrelsen Box 12256 102 26 Stockholm Sweden
SKL - Statens Kriminaltekniska Laboratorium 581 94 Linköping Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Blekinge lÃn Box 315 371 25 Karlskrona Sweden
Polismyndigheten Dalarna Box 739 791 29 Falun Sweden
Polismyndigheten Gotland Box 1153 621 22 Visby Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Gävleborgs län Box 625 801 26 Gävle Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Hallands län Box 1031 301 10 Halmstad Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Jämtlands län Box 707 831 28 Östersund Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Jönköpings län Box 618 551 18 Jönköping Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Kalmar län Box 91 391 21 Kalmar Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Kronobergs län Box 1211 351 12 Växjö Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Norrbotten Box 50135 973 24 Luleå Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Skåne 205 90 Malmö Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Stockholms län 106 75 Stockholm Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Södermanlands län Box 348 631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Uppsala län Box 3007 750 03 Uppsala Sweden
Polismyndigheten Värmland Box 157 651 05 Karlstad Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Västerbottens län Box 463 901 09 Umeå Sweden
Polismyndigheten i Västernorrlands län Box 720 851 21 Sundsvall Sweden
Polismyndigheten i

Re:The law doesn't have to change to change

[Jon Luckey]

Stare decisis gets broken, just recently in fact, as Clarence Thomas has been demonstrating

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:

      To uphold the Government's contentions here, we would have to pile
      inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert
      congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police
      power of the sort retained by the States. Admittedly, some of our
      prior cases have taken long steps down that road, giving great
      deference to congressional action. See supra, at 8. The broad language
      in these opinions has suggested the possibility of additional
      expansion, but we decline here to proceed any further. To do so would
      require us to conclude that the Constitution's enumeration of powers
      does not presuppose something not enumerated, cf. Gibbons v. Ogden,
      supra, at 195, and that there never will be a distinction between
      what is truly national and what is truly local, cf. Jones & Laughlin
      Steel, supra, at 30. This we are unwilling to do.

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.

More like...

[ThePyro]

It's more like reading books in the store without buying them.

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.

Re:More like...

[PsychoSlashDot]

>> It's more like reading books in the store without buying them.
>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.

What if you just memorize what you read in the store?

I ask this before I go all prophetic, but it's important. We are realistically on the brink of massive advancements in technology that will dramatically change the nature of retention of experience. It's almost possible to manufacture cameras so small that they could realistically be implanted in the body comfortably. It's definitely possible to do the same with microphones. We have successfully performed experiments that intercept signals coming from a cat's eye via the optic nerve and display some of what's seen on a flat screen. We've got low multipixel displays being injected onto the optic nerve of some blind patients, enabling them to "see" things.

It is only the matter of a very short amount of time before Joe Average will realistically be able to digitally "remember" anything he ever sees or hears. He will be able to retain any sight or sound and replay it in perfect fidelity at will. I'm not talking about VR, but RR; replayed reality.

It's your experience. You had it once. Just because your grey cells alone can't retain it perfectly isn't a long-term profit market.

It may be a generation, or two, or even three, but it's going to happen that the entertainment industry won't be able to sell you an experience twice. Books, music, live performances of plays or concerts and virtually all other audio/visual markets will radically change. Forget peer-to-peer. This is just the start.

As an aside, really, strip clubs will be able to maintain themselves, happily, since consumers of pr0n tend to want to see NEW things each time.

Art19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

[zaroastra]

Art19 of Human rights: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.


Now who is the pirate again? As I see it, people that call us pirates because we gladly spread information through informatic media are really violating one of the most forgoten articles in the bill of human rights, which in fact was signed by almost all the countries in the world.

Please spread your ideas throught europe and the rest of the world, because we need paladins for a cause that most people wont even see it until we reach a police or fascist state.

Cheers: Z

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

[dual_boot_brain]

Depends on the states criminal code. In some states the getaway driver can only be found guilty if the prosecution shows by clear and convincing evidence that they intentionally acted in such a way as to assist with the commission of a crime. If, for example, I am driving a RIAA lawyer around town and and he asks me to stop at a certain house and wait and I do and while inside the house he sodomizes the owner's poodle then leaves and I drive him back to his BDSM club where he is arrested for sodomizing the poodle I will not be charged with the commission of a crime because I had no idea he planned to sodomize the poodle. I did not have the requisite intent to assist him in his poodle sodomizing crime. On the other hand, if an MPAA lawyer is driving the RIAA lawyer around looking for a poodle to sodomize and the MPAA lawyer knows they are looking for a poodle to sodomize and the RIAA lawyer does, in fact, sodomize the poodle, then the MPAA lawyer can be charged with a crime.

What planet are you from?

[Cybrex]

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.

From their website...

[Ngwenya]

TPB (good luck getting to it!) is claiming that the warrant for search and seizure was :

In the morning of 2006-05-31 the Swedish National Criminal Police showed a search warrant to Rix|Port80 personnell. The warrant was valid for all datacentres of Rix|Port80 and was directed at The Pirate Bay. The allegation was breach of copy-right law, alternatively assisting breach of copy-right law.

So, obviously Swedish law does have the notion of secondary infringment (ie, even if no infringing materials. Now, whether the hosting of torrent files constitutes assisting breach according to Swedish law remains to be seen. I seem to remember that previous case law said that it wasn't - but my memory could be faulty.

Interestingly, they conclude with:

The TPB can receive compensation from the Swedish state in case that the upcoming legal processes show that TPB is indeed legal.

So, with all the fevered speculation, all we can really do is sit and wait for more details to emerge. I don't know if there is any sort of donations which can be made in the case that all of this is not a hoax, but if anyone knows, details would be appreciated. (Of course, this is an open invitation for any Swedish bloke to play the "I'm Spartacus! Donate to my ...err... TPB's account" card.)

--Ng

Re:Bullshit.

[pla]

Isn't it the creator's right to do what they want with what they have created??


No. They have one and only one "right" by which to control the distribution of their work - Never commit it to any form accessible outside their own head.

Once they accept the idea of utilizing legal restrictions on distribution for the purpose of making a profit, they have accepted an implicit (and to some degree explicit) contract between themselves and society.

Originally that meant that I as a human would not copy your (a fellow human's) work without permission or some form of compensation. In exchange, you turn a buck (hopefully thereby allowing you to create more) and eventually the work goes into the public domain to benefit us all.

When "you" no longer refers to something born of woman; when "eventually" means "so far into the distant future that we have a good chance of no copies surviving long enough"; when "the work" refers to something so laden with DRM that even if a copy existed, no one could use it - Then "you" have failed to uphold your end of that social contract.



If the BBC owns the rights to Dr. Who, and decides to chuck them all out, why shouldn't they be able to?

I don't mean this caustically, but if you don't see why we should consider an act of uncreation as nothing short of "evil", I don't think I can explain it to you.

An alternative to pharmaceutical patents

[Christian Engstrom]

And what is this plan?

Basically this.

I apologize for not having a more complete translation of our proposal ready, but this is the basic idea.

At least in Europe, over 80% of the pharma companies' revenues come from the government (since we have universal medical coverage). The pharma companies claim that they have to charge several times more than the production costs in order to fund research. But they only spend 15% of their revenues on research. Most of the money they receive from the government actually goes to marketing (around 50%) and profit (around 15%).

If the government would fund research and the buying of the pills separately, the total bill would drop by at least 50%, since there would be no need for the excessive marketing any more. And there would be no need to keep the research results blocked by patents, since they would have been paid for already.

So there would be no need to threaten third world countries with economic sanctions just because they try to do what they can to provide AIDS medicine to their own population.

Re:An alternative to pharmaceutical patents

[Christian Engstrom]

But perhaps you've heard this before 'If medical research were left up to the government we'd have best iron lung in the world but not a polio vaccine.'

If someone does indeed say that, it appears that he is wrong.

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

Re:An alternative to pharmaceutical patents

[barawn]

so if the Indian and Chinese pharma companies take the medical research that Europeans have paid for, create knock-off drugs, and sell them cheap in Europe to undercut the European pharma companies then you would be fine with that?

Wait... so if the Indian and Chinese can produce the drugs cheaper than Europe (with appropriate duty, of course - drugs companies in Europe pay European taxes, drugs coming in from outside Europe should have a duty charged to make up for those taxes) - why shouldn't they? Why does this hurt the pharmaceutical companies? They'd be getting money directly from the government (which, in any case, they do now anyway - find me a drug that didn't have its origins in a university hospital and I'll find a thousand others that did) for the research whether they sell the drug or not.

Any pharmaceutical company in Europe will have a few years head start on foreign companies, because they've got experience with making the drug - that, and they'll also have the quality control stuff out of the way. Presumedly foreign drugs would also have to have quality controls to ensure that they're equivalent to European-produced drugs. And when/if the other countries can start making the drugs cheaper, then it's time to move on.

I have to agree that splitting research and production of pharmaceuticals is probably an ideal way to go. Drugs should be cheap if they're cheap to make. Morally, it's just wrong to keep them expensive to pay for new, future drugs.

And believe it or not, financially, it's probably wrong, as well. In the long run, it's easy to believe that an economy could be healthier with universal, cheap health care due to the increased productivity and lifespans of the population.

I am sure that the Chinese and Indians would be happy to have you pay for all the research so that they can knock-off your products for pennies on the dollar when the research actually turns up a useful new drug.

Again, I say: who cares if they do? If they can actually make the drugs cheaper, then the European economy saves money, especially if the proper duties are assessed, because the European people end up paying less for the drugs.

One company in Europe that makes the drug might get hurt, but really, whose fault is that? Why should it be the government's job to protect a bad business model?

Re:An alternative to pharmaceutical patents

[barawn]

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?

Re:You're right

[ceoyoyo]

True, but two parties is still kind of confusing. Why not cut it down to one? MUCH simpler! The citizens won't be nearly as confused at elections.

Re:come on, let's face it

[MirrororriM]

strongly encouraging someone to infringe in conjunction with assistance

I strongly encourage everyone to go here and start downloading.

Now arrest me.

Re:Voting as a message

[inKubus]

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.

Re:Why I am pro-closing ThePirateBay.org

[kimvette]

By that reasoning, your landlord is responsible for making sure you don't infringe on the law by smoking pot?

Microsoft should be held liable for producing a product (M$ Word, M$ Outlook) which can be used to document and disseminate documentation of methods by which terrorist activities could be carried out?

GM should be held liable should some wank use his Camaro as a getaway car for a bank robbery?

I. Don't. Think. So.

They probably WILL be shutdown

[eklitzke]

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.

Re:come on, let's face it

[wheany]

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.

You're missing the point

[sd.fhasldff]

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)

mod parent down - incorrect facts

[TERdON]

Sweden, until rather recently, had one of the more enlightened copyright laws around. It explicitly required authorisation only for *commercial* reproduction. Making a copy of a cd, book, or whatever and giving it to your friends was never illegal.

You're misinformed. Yes, you were allowed to give your closest friends a copy. There was a levy fee on the media because of it though. And you couldn't give ALL your friends a copy (disregard the typical slashdotter with 6 friends).

If you spread copies widely earlier, it was just as illegal as it is now

This calls for..... T-SHIRTS!

[binarybum]

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.

Its more of a Socialist mentality...

[Upaut]

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"?

I am a college student, with depleted financial resources. I do not wish to spend money on a product, unless I find it useful/enjoyable. I am a pirate. I pirate movies, programs, and music. Everything I dislike will be deleted in under a month, because I cannot waste storage space on my hard drive. Everything I find highly useful, I buy. In the end, I buy more then my "streight-edge" friends. I own a legal copy of dreamweaver and flash - something I always scoffed at, but once using I fell in love.
All of my DVD's were once pireted, and I now own all of my favorites (40 titles... Who needs food with all of the LOtR Special edition...) I even own porn on DVD, ones that I found myself watching again and again. (I dream of Jenna, DDDTR, DDD2000, Space nuts) And for music, I try an artist before I buy, I probably would never of bought half of the bands in my collecton without trying them first. I even pirated pages and keynotes, and after finding how easy and eye-catching they made my presintations, I ended up buying them (If I could of bought keynotes alone, I would of. I find LaTEX a better tool for reports.)

So, when it comes to "downloading shit I don't value", but that I hear lots of good things about, I end up trying before I buy. I want the product to earn my money. If you could of tried a disapointing game? Stopped yourself before selling 18 bucks to see "The Time Machine" in theaters, wouldn't you? Before picking up the new Opeth cd, only to discover it a steaming pile? Pirating thins the heard of bad movies, music, games, and software. In the end, a pirate develops a form of brand loyalty, and stays with a good product, buying it, and recomending it to co-workers. Pirates do not "waste" time downloading something they may not want: they are simply giving it a chance to be bought in the end. Does that not lead one to spend money where one would normally not? Does that not actually improve the earnings of the companies whos products you "stole"? Since Napster and the like, I have bought more music then I ever did before.

In the end, the only ones that do not get my money are those with truely horrid products. Rehashed movies, poor plots and forced acting in a movie, lackluster games, and sloppy software. Not to mention all of those pop bands that all sound the same. Explain to me how you can wate you money on seeing these? How can you waste you money on buying these?

Re:come on, let's face it

[zerocool^]

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