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ThePirateBay.org Raided and Shut Down
An anonymous reader writes "ThePirateBay.org, a longtime fixture of the BitTorrent community, is currently under investigation. Slyck.com is reporting their servers have been seized by the Swedish police." What's really interesting about them is the strange political power that they held in their homeland. There was much discussion even of a political party. This will be interesting to watch unfold.
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): (in response to a threat from Sega europe)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
From the first link, the aims of the Pirate Party seem to be:
My work here is dung.
I bet it was really ninjas.
Odd that they did this one year ago, when they went down for maintenance.
/ 000159.php?coral-no-redirect
(coralized link)
http://www.btflux.com.nyud.net:8080/archives/news
So, from TFA;
According to The Pirate Party, a Swedish copyright reform organization, the raid also seized Piratbyrån's (the Pirate Bureau) servers. In addition, The Pirate Party reports "...the servers where located in a protected area, to which the police had no legal right to enter..." Approximately 50 police participated in the raid, which placed into custody two PirateBay.org personnel.
Now I remember reading the legal threats page, and the phrase normally went along the lines of "US Copyrights Mean Nothing Here".
What changed? Sending letters is one thing, but something pretty heavy must be going on to warrant that kind of response.
Can any of our swedish friends fill in the gaps here? I'm sure we're missing something.
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.
Please let me finish freeing the flow of information, specifically Season 4 of Family Guy. Thank you.
thank god, 24 is finished !!
Seeing as trackers don't actually have any copyrighted information on them... how can they be illegal? Sure they are illegal in the US due to the DMCA, but here in Sweden there is no DMCA.
It is illegal here in the United States, but it sure isnt illegal in Sweden. You would do well to not assume the whole world has the same laws as the United States.
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.
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.
No, it isn't. That's the point. Where TPB is/was located, hosting torrent files is not illegal because torrents -contain no copyrighted data-. If these guys ever traveled to the USA, they'd probably be arrested (hell, they'd probably be called "enemy combatants" by the *AA and incarcerated for life without trial). But as long as they stayed where they are, and kept their servers where they are, they should have been fine, provided the local law did not change.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
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].
but swedish police officers might have not liked when they were told to "sodomize themselves with retractable batons".
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.
Now I feel guilty about ad-blocking the banners on there. . .
-CR
"So is the BSD licence even more 'free' (than GPLv2)? Yes. Unquestionably." --Linus Torvalds (TinyURL.com/2vugzl)
A Møøse once bit my sister ...
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
"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.
Learning the basic difference between the Nordic (Scandinavian) country of Sweden/Sverige and a country called Switzerland/Swiss/Suisse/Schweiz/Svizzera located between Italy, France and Germany would be a nice start before tooting your horn about either country's laws.
The 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.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
In other news, the global warming index increased unexpectedly by 1.2% this morning.
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.
It's as if millions of geeks cried out at once... and were suddenly silenced.
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.
...they're hoping that someone posts a link to a repacement site...
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
sig?
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
"I'm getting really tired of this "Not in my country" defense. It doesn't hold water."
So you'd prefer another country to have hold over what is and is not legal in your own?
What if the shoe was on the other foot? What if the law being violated was, for example, Iranian, and the website was American? I'm sure there are thousands of porn sites hosted in California that are just as blatantly illigal in repressive countries as TPB is in America. Would you be so quick to say "It doesn't matter what country they're in, it's still illegal in the prosecuting country, so that makes cracking down on them OK" ?
And no, it doesn't matter that the prosecuting country in question is "unfreindly" - in case you missed the memo, what matters legally are local laws and possibly extradition treaties. Plus, many Swedes would undoubtably view American law as repressive on IP issues, just as many Americans would view Iranian law as oppressive on free speach issues.
The "not in my country" defense is otherwise known as national sovereignty. Don't like it? Tough. You either abide by it, or accept the idea that another nation can enforce it's laws upon you remotely. If you wish legal sovereignty for your own nation, you must allow others the same right. To grant them any less makes you little more than a hypocritic shill.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I agree that you should know the party's complete set of politic viewpoints if you're going to vote them.
I disagree however with the idea that one should only vote for parties that 'have a chance' of winning or anything like that. People should vote for the party that represents them and their interests the better, no matter how important they are right now. Small parties usually are small just because of people thinking that way. If you think something, and believe some party is proposing a good response to your expectations, you should put your vote where your mouth is, and vote them. Otherwise, don't complain when the government does something you don't like, because they will be doing it with your implicit approval (except if they deviate from their own political viewpoint).
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
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.
Reality or nothing.
...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?
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?
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?
At least they waited until after all the season finales before raiding.
Just call losing the "smug smile" a down payment on the "shit eating grin" they'll have when they get back up and running.
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.
I disagree however with the idea that one should only vote for parties that 'have a chance' of winning or anything like that
In America the Democrats and Republicans are both part of a larger group, a power monopoly. They take "sides" in order to make it seem like there's a choice. The last several elections were almost exactly 50-50 divided. The media and the politicians like to say this means the country is "Strongly" divided. I say that it means the two "sides" are closer together than ever, so it doesn't really matter which side you pick, you are voting for people who are part of a single group, the power monopoly.
Voting for some wierd outsider would be great for the country. We need to get 2 or 3 totally weird outsiders into the senate and congress. These weirdos would not necessarily have any influence with their few votes, but you know for a fact they are going to:
1. Attend every vote
2. Read and understand every bill
3. Debate every pork barrel/hidden law/etc etc.
4. Generally put all the other people on the spot.
Those people up there are supposed to represent our states and help to make the country a better place also. Instead, they all live in Washington, DC, go to the same parties, and rarely if ever come back to their states to find out what's really going on. And if they do talk to someone from the state, it'll be some rich millionaire or business that probably does more than it's own share of subverting the will and freedom and comfort of the residents.
A weirdo elected would
1. Not be invited to those parties
2. Would not be able to find a place to live in Washington DC
3. Would not know any millionaires
Therefore he would probably come back to his house in the state he's from during the recess and actually talk to people and find out what's going on.
The only real problem is that he would shake things up so much that the power monopoly would hire one of their many hit squads and he would die in a tragic "accident".
I want to see some Henry Clay style beatings in congress though. Put someone like a Jessie Ventura in and have him PHYSICALLY BEAT people like Tom Delay (not just a clever name), Orrin Hatch, John Kerry, etc. BEAT THEM INTO SUBMISSION like the frail moneyed frat boys they are. Instead, it's just getting more aristocratic up there, because the American people think they have to go with a sure winner--when really going with the weirdest person running would be the best for everyone.
Cool! Amazing Toys.