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ThePirateBay Will Rise Again?
muffen writes "IDG.se has an interesting article up giving more details about the raid on PirateBay, and a little history of the organization. The news organ reports that nearly 200 servers were taken, and many of them had nothing to do with the torrent-serving group. After yesterday's raid, the site is back up with a single page explaining the situation. Brokep, one of the people behind PirateBay, claims that the site will be up and running within a couple of days. He also says that there is no legal basis for the raid against them and that he is certain that the case will not go to trial." From the site: "The necessity for securing technical evidence for the existence of a web-service which is fully official, the legality of which has been under public debate for years and whose principals are public persons giving regular press interviews, could not be explained. Asked for other reasoning behind the choice to take down a site, without knowing whether it is illegal or not, the officers explained that this is normal."
I myself live in America and the only way I can find information on this political party is online. I wish that there were more official resources in English aside from their site. There seems to be one page with the content exactly the same as Christian Engström's post.
Is it possible that this party is popular via lack of information? I would like to see them explain their strategy & give very detailed specifics about what they would like to see changed and why. I think that if this was posted, it may cause them to lose some support but would definitely let Sweden & the rest of the world know a lot more about the Pirate Party. I like their desired end results but how to plan to achieve these goals?
I don't want to sound like an ass but in my opinion, having 200 servers of a controversial party raided and confiscated by the local government is one of the best things that could happen to said party. Especially since nothing incriminating was found on them. Do political parties now earn "street cred" like this? Certainly would strike a chord with the youth & idealists. Hmmm, sounds like pretty unlawful search and seize action
Dennis: Come and see the corruption inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
King Arthur: *seizes the servers* Bloody file sharers!
Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about! Did you see him repressing me? You saw him, Didn't you?
My work here is dung.
This looks like a job for Captain Copyright!
Seriously - of course the pirate bay will rise again - what they were doing was not illegal under Swedish law.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I think the selling of Pirates is bad. The site should stay down!
Anonymous Cowards are at -6...
We can all freely download all those shows and movies and music and software produced by the companies represented by the RIAA and MPAA and BSA! We can continue this amazing paradox in which we bash the quality of their product while we spend exorbinent amounts of time and energy figuring out ways to get it quickly and freely!
Anyone that grabs someone by the shirt in a store is going to get sued... I don't believe this story is credible. Plus, someone that sells christian music and calls a patron a "bitch". (Not that christians don't cuss, but again, if the guy is having problems clothing his kids I doubt he's scare off a customer.)
Anonymous Cowards are at -6...
...alternatively assisting breach of copy-right law.
Are they seriously saying that they are not guilty of this? They are guilty as hell in spirit if not by the letter of the law.
from TFS: Swedish National Criminal Police
the police are criminal?
well at least in sweden they tell it like it is.. i guess Oo
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Dude, that joke hasn't been funny for years. (I mean why didn't you pull out BSD is dying?)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
The pigs argue that since all seized servers were in the same serverhall, they could take whatever they wanted. We'll see how that plays out, I suspect they could technically be right even if it would violate the spirit of the law.
What kind of idiot buys 1h of music on a disk, when they can get, legally or not, 16, without need to swap the disks? If you were selling vinyl records, you'd be just in the same situation. Compressionless music is in decline. Same as horse coaches replaced by trains. Piracy may have its hand in it but not as much as a source of -free- music but as a source of -music as mp3-.
Damn me if I'm going to waste 60 megabytes of data storage space for one 3-minute song.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Erm, nice sad story and all, but probably you should just realize that this will only get worse (from your perspective), so you'd better find another business model...
;)
just 2 random thoughts:
- online music stores make a nice profit
- CDs are overpriced
regards,
mitch
ps: I know there's a fair chance that I'm replying to a troll, but what the heck
// "If human beings don't keep exercising their lips,
// their brains start working." -- Ford Prefect
"...the site will be up and running within a couple of days" Hmmm, thought I heard that once when ShareReactor got raided a couple years ago.
http://religiousfreaks.com/WHOOOSH!
Boo hoo.
Do I cry that my 5th generation industry was stolen out from under my feet? Do I cry that my grandparents and parents endured hardships? No. They rolled with the punches and my dad worked construction/trucking. Maybe you should look into another industry. You smell the times changing, so react (you are allowed to do that, you know). Here's your plan: Get into another business and do it fast. You can keep your house if you're smart. No one is going to be crying over your family drama on Slashdot. Don't be emotionally soft and don't feel sorry for yourself. Pick yourself up and move on. Sell the store or change your business. It was a fun 12 years but the trend is over.
My work here is dung.
Im sure the folks at TBP were totally prepared for this raid. Their hilarious abrasiveness in the face of criticism only angered and further instigated the detractors. I am confident this group had prepared statements, lawyers already ready for the case, and these guys knew exactly how to react.
At least, I hope so.
Best of luck to them
The news organ reports
Exactly where on the author's anatomy is this organ located?
The MPAA's statement after the takedown of thepiratebay.
Seems like Swedish authorities gave in to the pressure from **AA groups. This may be good as it will put the general public on the side of TPB.
A poll in the largest evening newspaper in sweden shows what people think of the takedown of TPB. The question in the poll is, is it right to "attack" people that are involved in filesharing. Ja = YES and Nej = NO. The results speak for themselves.
Oh, and damn me if I'm going to walk over to your store and pick the disk, then fumble through 60 disks to find the song I want, if I can sit in front of my computer at home and just download it (legally or not) without moving my lazy ass off the chair, then quickly find it on a nicely sorted list on my harddrive. And add it to the playlist of 40 favourite of given mood instead of swapping 35 disks filled mostly with crap to get to hear the 40 songs I want.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
The media companies make it sound like copyright is a way of limiting your rights, but it was created with the intent of creating more diversity in content by limiting the rights of the content distributors (like MPAA). It used to have clauses which ensured the consumer's rights wouldn't be stifled (such as fair use). Why was copyright law created?? Because with the invention of the printing press things could be mass replicated much easier, the idea behind copyright was to limit who could print/sell stuff, taking power from printing press/distributor and giving it back to content creator, to allow people to create and distribute new content instead of letting the printing press have a field day selling us the same old crap making huge profits. Copyright law was created so that the content creator would be properly compensated. So that the consumer wouldn't be subjected to the same crap over and over again with no new works being created. The copyright law was made to protect the content creator and the content user. The copyright law was created to stifle the content distribution companies like MPAA, not the consumer. I don't know when this changed, but whoever had the wonderful idea of copyright would probably jam a sharp stick in his eyes if he saw what crud the content distributors have turned this law into. The copyright law has obviously failed in the past half a century and content distributors have too much power now. It's time for another copyright law with the original intent of protecting the consumer and the content creator and to make sure media conglomerates like MPAA don't make huge profits from nothing. There's no reason why a CD should cost $20 (and only a dime going to the creator) when the manufacturing cost of CD is in pennies... just my two cents. Sharing is caring. Let's try to put an end to the tyrannical misuse of copyright law. Thanks for reading!
Credible? I'd be happy if it had been written by someone with evidence of education above the third grade level.
Mind you, I felt like that about "A Million Little Pieces", too.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
If you read much, much closer, you'll realize that post is a satyre. It's been reposted on slashdot for a very, very long time. It's subtle, I know, but still.
Sorry, I must be new here.
My work here is dung.
Its an old troll post. I've seen it a few times before.
Hmmm... could it be that the mystery around the phrase "talking out of your a.." could be on the verge of being unveiled?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The MPAA can hack servers and harvest private information if it wants; not a single MPAA employee would suffer any sort of police harrassment. But someone ostensibly assists violation of MPAA copyrights and BAM! - 200 servers are confiscated by police authorities.
The reason for this is explained in Sterling's account of the first major institutional crackdown on hackers, ezine publishers and other dispensers of information which some powerful corporation don't want to see in the wild. From the text:
So police is acting as mercenaries for the big corporations, since otherwise they'd hire their own. Not a very comforting thought, especially considering you are nowadays likely to be arrested for suspicion of violating corporate copyrights. Remember when police and laws were used to protect citizens, not criminialize millions for hurting corporate profit machines...?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
mirrored their data to another machine in another nation where the authorities can not touch it...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This is good news for the RIAA and MPAA.
Without TPD _nobody_ would know, hear or care about their crap^H^H^Hontent and the porn industry would reign the world of entertainment.
Hmmm... maybe this news isn't so good after all.
The most amazing thing of all is that the persons that were questioned, were forced to leave DNA. That's totally unheard of, and make one think that maybe this was done, and this will sound completely conspiracy nuts, on request from the US ("MPAA"). Collection of DNA has been reserved for severe crimes; Rape, murder, etc.
Personally I believe the goal here is to make an example of the ISP, PRQ. Taking non-related servers makes perfect sense in that context. They want to make sure no one dares host trackers, even if it's found to be legal! I believe the charges as they relate to "TPB" will be dropped, but they'll go ahead with materal found on the suspects home computers (sadly, it seems they weren't smart/careful enough to not sample their own warez, so to speak). However, for PR reasons they'll blur this issue, making a case against the individuals based on their home computers seem like a win against trackers.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
As sorry as I may feel for you, but you have to share the sympathy with all the typesetters, the shoemakers, the tailors, the editors, the layouters and all the others whose profession has become obsolete by technology.
Do you honestly ask for technology to be rolled back so you can keep your job? If so, how far shall we roll back? To the time before computers so we need more traffic cops (no coordinated traffic lights without computers), too? Or before the industrial revolution, so weavers can get back into their profession?
Sorry buddy. Time's past you, learn something that's still in demand if you want to stay in business.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As to why you business is in immediate danger:
The lesson, dont keep an out of date business plan....
If I were them, I'd rebuild those servers. No telling what backdoors and spy software those RIAA-MPAA goons/law enforcement officials put on the machines while they were searching for incriminating evidence.
Secondly, are you also amazed that Slashdot has survived this long? After all - slash, it's a bit aggressive isn't it? A bit stabby.
Expecting a site with a name which reminds you of knifing people to last is just being foolish.
Ok, Swedish Gammer Nazi time! ;-)
Piratpartiet means "the Pirate party", with the 'et' at at the end of the word making it definate in Swedish. Therefore there is no need to say 'the' in front. You could either say 'The Piratparti' or 'Piratpartiet' but saying 'the Piratpartiet' is like saying 'The the pirate party'.
In all seriousness of course I didn't expect you to know this but maybe someone will find it interesting nonetheless.
If what you seem to be saying were true then the internet and cheap burnable CDs would have wiped out the record industry because there would be no incentived for artists to sign-up. But in the real world it takes losts of advertising, promotion and wheel-greasing to create a snger/band/TV show worth anything. Sure there is the rare case where some pauper creates a brilliant piece of art in their garage that the whole world starts clamoring for....bat that is the exception. In the real world there tons of folks between the artist and the consumer working to sell a product to that consumer. And those folks work to feed their families like you or I. I'm not advocating draconian IP laws here (I think the exact process I mentioned above already protects the artists and corporations), but let's inject a little reality into both sides of the argument.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
After all of the ramifications and harm to innocent people this caused.
Independent artists use TPB. The Swedish record industry supports the raid. Oops?
About 100 to 1000 innocent firms were affected due to the raid by the police. Oops?
The Pirate Bureau which is a political party, was affected by the raid, which means that the media industry uses the Swedish justice system to close it down. Oops?
The legal advisor they used, who had nothing to do with TPB, was interrogated and forced to give his DNA?! WTF?
http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=118289
Cry fowl? In response to their servers being seized they made chicken noises?
In a swedish article on the same site, one of the pirates states that they will open again, abroad (outside Sweden, that is, duh).
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
...cry fowl...
YOU'RE A CHICKEN! You turkey!! You're such a pheasant!!
As a *AA/police honeypot.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
If it's CNN or NPR, it's in the very tip of the middle finger of the left hand attached to an outstretched arm. If it's the Wall Street Journal, it's somewhere deeply embedded in a rich person's pocket. If it's Fox News, it's in the middle of the brain, but unfortunately, said the head containing it is suffering from a recto-cranial inversion.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I've had enough of their paedophilic shenanigans... Captain Feathersword? Please!!!
Keep Pirate Bay shut down and put the Wiggles in prison where they belong!
Er, what? Oh... I see. Never mind!
Now the big question behind all that: if you want to make a living in the computer world as it is today, should you rather be a programmer or a lawyer?
Yep, just like this old fogie predicted, the piracy issues is evolving along nicely parallel to the 50's-60's "legalize marijuana" drug movement. Good luck, but we already know how it's going to turn out. I admire idealistic youth - they're young, they'll learn.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Please get the Pirate Bay back up, 'cause less pirates means higher global temperatures
...the country's name was SWEEDEN.
The whole point of it being in Sweeden was that it was untouchable there.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
What we need is a server in orbit sharing the links on a stealthed satellite. That'll screw them. Try shutting down the bit torrent links then.
WHOOOSH!
If you gon't care about any of this stuff why on earth are you reading /.?!?
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
What are you doing about all those ills you're judging the rest of us for not helping fix? Besides osting tripe here, I mean.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Sure they were being deliberately offensive, but they had solid, legal swedish case law behind them, so seeing whether they would last was a test of the integrity of the legal system (and the speed of the political system in making what they did actually illegal).
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Some of the other servers were related, insofar as they were also torrent servers. The site known as Karagarga was affected, as was the Asian DVD Club. There was no warrant against these sites, but they are down nonetheless... and I repeat, according to the police themselves, they are not even sure that the Pirate Bay, which they did have a warrant for, was violating any of the laws in Sweden.
What Pirate Bay did more than anything else to bring this massive shitstorm down upon their heads was not facilitate filesharing; rather, they taunted the MPAA/RIAA and their lawyers egregiously and often, and no doubt caused quite a bit of apoplexy among these people over the last few years.
Me, I'm not interested in the films that come out of Big Hollywood. I like old classics, I like arthouse, I like cult, I like rarities. The torrent site I frequent specializes in those genres, and doesn't even allow people to share Big Hollywood product. The site owners don't like the DMCA, but they do comply with it, and consequently have never been bothered by MPAA/RIAA about their activities. In their private forums, they have had a running poll going for most of a year now, which is somewhat illuminating... and overwhelming percentage of the members there (82%), people who are all quite familiar with where and how to download anything they want for free, still buy commercial DVDs and CDs! This data corroborates findings of researchers at major US universities, who have concluded that filesharing does not necessarily hurt the sales of traditional media. The research indicates that filesharing of majorly hyped Big Hollywood releases (like a new STAR WARS movie, for instance) has a small but noticeable negative impact on ticket sales and DVD rentals, but that filesharing of more obscure fare actually has a significant POSITIVE impact on ticket sales and DVD rentals -- it exposes more people to the work in question, and consequently, more people go out and buy a commercial copy of it.
It seems that the real problem is not that filesharers are evil 'pirates' who are cutting into MPAA/RIAA profits due to their wicked refusal to pay for culture... the problem is that when you buy a cinema ticket or buy/rent a DVD, and you have never seen the film or heard the album before purchasing, you are far more likely to spend money on movies and music that you ultimately find disappointing, and people don't like that. Filesharing should properly be regarded by Big Hollywood as pressure to stop making such a tremendous amount of recycled garbage, stop using marketing as the ultimate focus and raison d'etre of every film and CD produced, and get back to the old school traditions of making fine art for fine art's sake, with marketing a strictly post-production affair that has no say in what scripts get chosen or how directors do their jobs.
Would you buy a car without taking it for a test drive? Would you pay for clothes without trying them on? How many times have you walked out of a theater after a film, or ejected a DVD from your DVD player, and wished for your money back? All the actual hard data that has been collected shows that even hardcore filesharers DO go out and buy commercial DVDs and CDs; they like to own the tangibles and they like to support the artists and companies whose work they appreciate... so filesharing isn't piracy, it's more akin to trying something before you buy it, and rejecting it if it's poorly made. MPAA/RIAA's strident insistence that filesharing is piracy is simply their bid to retain their obscenely high profits without doing the tough job of making products worth buying. They prefer to work according to formulae and sell the same tired bullshit again and again, with explosions and special effects in lieu of actual
The servers that were taken down belonged to The Pirate Bay (torrent hosting and tracker) and its sister organisation Piratbyrån (political organisation without party status).
The pirate party is a registered political party with different leadership and different servers hosted elsewhere. The pirate party servers went down because of the slashdot effect, but are up again (however not fully functional it seems).
A number of totally unrelated sites where also taken down, probably as an intimidation action pointed against the customers of PRQ, the ISP that has a close connection to TPB.
According to this website(swedish), the pirate party increased its membership by 25% in one day after TPB went down. The pirate party has a bit over 2000 members.
Wait, that doesn't mean his argument is inconsistent, it could also be that the law is applied in an inconsistent manner.
... is asking for it, imho. It does nothing to help get the concept of fair use and evil market restriction technologies through to the elder blockheads in politics.
I really can't say if I should wish for these guys to be put away or sued to chunky kibbles at least.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
A hollywood movie has budgets these days in the 100 to 200 million $ range, yet when the DVD comes out it's on average $20.
You're telling us that it cost the same kind of budget to develope a musician? BULLSHIT!
Do I cry that my 5th generation industry was stolen out from under my feet? Do I cry that my grandparents and parents endured hardships? No.
That's because you're not a jew.
I bet if you read shelleytherepublican.com you'd think that's for real too. Guys, engage brain when reading.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I no longer buy very much from them. I tend not to buy music CDs, I tend not to buy DVDs, I tend not to really go to the cinema much, unless there is a blockbuster that I, and not THEY like the look off, much to Hollywood's discord.
I've not bought a playstation, or an Xbox360, nor will I be doing so. DRM based systems die in terms of interest the very moment I find the product is laced with it.
There seems to be an idea that, certainly in the UK, its fine and dandy to rip off the consumer, create mass uncertainty and doubt about what you can do with your own media. The model that you rent but do not 'own' what you have paid for, is clung to like a rock by every media laced company and entity out there.
The majority of this comes with a backdrop that these products HAVE to flood the market to be a success, and when they do not succeed its down to piracy. So they claim.
The distribution model for goods and services is a win/lose equasion that is determined by the consumer, NOT the distributor. The largest angle the media companies HAVE to find is one that makes a evenue stream for them, while actually giving consumers what they want.
Now, if they want to proceed with DRMing their junk - because a great deal of what they pitch is exactly that, and if they as millionaires, and well heeled celebrities wish to persue getting off on suing teenagers who have hardly a pair of dimes to run together anyway, so be it, BUT I won't help them do it.
No matter how much you like media, its high time everyone took a hardline, if you don't want to be treated like a victim by the media mafia, and you don't want kids sued for idolising some people, then stop damn well buying goods and services from these people. Tell your friends and family, tell your collegues, tell the news, why you won't support these people any longer.
If enough people make a stand, it will change whats happening.
Can anyone provide a translation of that page?
Dr Michael Hfuhruhurr Notice that in the comments someone says, "I saw this on Slashdot a while ago". And that name? Clearly a reference to a thread-ending historical figure. QED
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Yeah, I was hasty with the reply, I apologized for it (see first reply to my post). Again, I'm sorry for making you read more than you had to.
Legal or not, the internet will eventually kill your business anyway. You should have recognized that oh, about 6 years ago. If the record industry had an ounce of sense they would have gone to online distribution years ago and put you out of business.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
http://piratebaylives.ytmnd.com/
I've been upgraded to "bad"!
So that's what astroturf smells like.
"When society sends its police at the young generation for listening to music and watching movies, it's not the young that are in error. It's society that needs to get a grip." - Rickard Falkvinge I think he offers a good argument.
PDF Warning: MPAA Gleefully Issues Press Release Detailing the "Sinking of Pirate Bay"
http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_05_31.pdf
By the time this is picked up by the media, PB will be back online. I *love* it.
-[d]-
The BBC site says that the raid was carried out by 50 police officers. In one way, it's good to know that Britain's not the only country which mismanages its police resources so badly, but it still seems hugely disproportionate (techy types not known for their violent resistance tactics). Presumably, the operation would have been just as effective (and arguably, just as wrong) with a couple of officers, a couple of techy coppers, and a couple of big blokes to hump off the servers. It does send out a signal about the recording industry's perverse hold on the authorities. I'd love to the monopolies commission going to the HQ of a big record company with 50 officers to seize a few price-fixing files. Somehow I think it won't happen.
First off, this story is a crock of shiznit. Nobody who is actually in this position writes such schmaltzy prose. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised is somebody in the RIAA paid an intern to make it up and post it here... well, actually, that kind of quick response to anything *would* be surprising.
Secondly... Christian rock fans pirating music? So much for the religious moral high ground!
Lastly, as an atheist and music fan, the P2P phenomenon has made more music available for sampling, from bands who otherwise couldn't have afforded the distribution. I download new acts, listen to them, and then go out and buy the ones I like. I am purchasing more music now than at any time in my life.
This isn't about protecting music-- we will always pay for music. This is about protecting record companies: folks who are more accountants than music lovers.
Come on, the PIRATES bay?!?!?!?!?
they were just sayin g NA NA NA NA NA NA: you cant catch us!
Yes, that is exactly what they were doing. It's roughly similar to civil disobedience.
They were saying: We are the people, we want things this way. A democratic government is obliged to respect our wishes because we are a majority of the population. Foreign corporations cannot make up ethics and laws to suit their business plan, they require our consent.
They have always been treating this as a political battle, not a legal one. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Sweden is unusual in that a large portion of the populace is informed about this issue and supports TPB rather than the MPAA. I don't think this is over yet.
This is the stuff that brings down governments.
Wow. You realize that you just blacklisted a PAYING customer. The whole flaw in the logic is that the people downloading the songs would have payed for them in the first place. I knew tons of people 10 years ago who taped 100's of CD's which were better quality than most of the MP3's being ripped and distribted. I download MP3's, but things I really want I still buy. Most downloaded MP3's are just not that high quality and I like having the CD. That being said, I usually rip my CD's so I have them on my laptop and MP3 player. I would not buy CD's if I couldn't do this. I occasionally give tracks to friends.
Look to the record industry for the problems. 15 years ago I could buy a CD for around $10. Now they're 50% to 100% more, when the cost of making the CD's has gone from 2-3$ to next to nothing. And in my opinion the quality of new music has gone downhill. There's certainly much less that I'm interested in buying.
You, on the other hand, have the audacity to think it's a good idea to drive away one of your admittedly few paying customers because he's going to rip the CD. Good luck to you.
he is certain that the case will not go to trial
Why not? I would sue the arse of those responsible for this unlawful raid. That would be a nice kick in the face to Antipiratbyrån, IFPI, **AA and similar mafia groups.
Because there are occasionally real stories worth yammering about.
Some asshat hosting torrents then dancing around copyright law isn't what I call newsworthy. He's a jerk.
Hate the studios all you want, but if you didn't like or want the media you wouldn't pirate it. The media is a work product so even if the artist is getting screwed [their choice btw] doesn't mean you should effectively benefit from it without compensation.
So this guy isn't hosting the files, he's making it damn well easier to get to them though. And while I can see they're not the same action I also won't shed a tear if it gets taken down.
It isn't like he's hosting torrents to Linux distro ISOes or something.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I bought a DVD music video of a popular band, it contained a virus.
I bought an MP3 on-line from a major site, I couldn't listen to it on my portable player.
I bought a CD from a music store, it contained a root-kit which gave hackers access to my computer.
The RIAA sued a Grand Mother for Piracy, and she didn't even own a PC.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Want me to still buy your music after all that has happened? Think again.
They have fought the war on drugs with skill? Surely you jest. After spending a trillion dollars since the beginning of the war on drugs, all drugs are more available than they were before the war began, and potency is, if anything, improved. If there is a war on piracy, and it is fought as skillfully as the war on drugs, then in 30 years or so we'll have a few more million people to clothe and feed and shelter in prison, we'll be out another trillion dollars, and piracy will have increased.
In my opinion it's quite strange how much interest the Pirate Bay generates...
As a techie, I'm all for peer-to-peer sharing earning itself a 'good' reputation, and not being seen as pure evil, in any context, by the mass media, hollywood, recording industries, next door neighbours etc.
So I'm happy when legitimate uses for P2P (e.g. Sky by Broadband) are introduced.
But absolutely bewildered why a torrent site blatantly for downloading copyrighted works for free gets SO MUCH ATTENTION.
I for one, don't think the register is such a good/solid idea. Having that kind of national registry implies that:
- Some store who still run on very old hardware will be required to upgrade, and to add an internet connection if they don't have one already
- Stores will be obliged to ask for a photoID (because after all, if no IDs are asked when CDs are purcased then how do we know they aren't a pirate?) which means longer delays in lines.
In addition, what's simply to stop someone to ask someone else to go purchase the CD? Better yet, what about online music store, how will they verify one's identity for online music sales? Of course there are multiple solutions one could suggest, but most if not all of thosse have an easy work-around.
I'm 23yrs old, I vacation once a yr, I own an ATV, I have an xbox and I enjoy snowboarding. Now what's all that have to do you say? Well after many conversations with my parents, it's obvious to me that :
- They didn't have as much disposable income as kids today do, which means their "down time" activities were much more limited. Listening to music was a cheap way to relax and spend down time. Kids today have more priviledges and things to do. They will prefer saving their money to put towards their car insurance bill and pirate CDs so they can listen music in their car while driving around as opposed to paying for their CDs and NOT being able to drive around since they oculdn't afford to pay the insurance bill.
- Illiterates were much more common some 15, 20yrs ago. Today, kids are being encouraged by their schools and/or teachers to read as many books as possible, since the more you read the more likely your vocabulary will improve.
Finally, I'd like to say that your opinion is only one side of the story. Don't forget that the Internet helps promote and distribute for small groups who are little or not known at all and who might not have the means to distribute their material.
I've often bought CDs which had maybe 2 or 3 good tracks on them out of 15, and the rest were, as I like to call them, filler tracks. I do admit, I personally download MP3s and I'm not ashamed of it. I started
downloading MP3s when I got tired of filler tracks.
Erik
...were found on a person at Megamall, therefore all people at Megamall can be arrested and all items confiscated as evidence.
Honestly, they don't care, they just follow orders, about the same anyplace in the world, there's no over-all practical difference between nations in this regard.
Currently my favorite one they "enforce" in the US is "free speech zones". They swear an "oath" to the Constitution then go ahead and "follow orders" with that concept.
Apparently they hand mod points to people without a sense of humor -- admittedly "Offtopic" if you want to be picky, but the parent was modded "Funny," though I note it has now picked up both "Offtopic" and "Troll," for what reason, I cannot fathom. Perhaps it was the work of Ninjas.
One can only hope the forces of MetaModeration will prevail!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Or, as anyone who knows a smidge of Spanish calls them, "The The Tar Tar Pits."
Man, you really need that seminar!
You see, you can have an infringing copy, and so long as you're not the one that infringed getting it, it's not illegal.
It's the act of making copies of a covered work without a license from the rights holder to do so that makes it an infringement- and that's how the laws are worded worldwide. They can have bogus copies all over the place, but if they aren't actively seeding a torrent and aren't caught sharing it, there's technically little they can do about the pirated copies. They can ask that you destroy the content, but you don't have to- because Copyright law doesn't give them the authority to compel you to do it. You have to be the one actively infringing (past or present with proof) for them to have a leg to stand on.
So, unless they find the files in a seeder directory or have logs of them doing the downloads or seeding, they've got nothing on them if they've got infringements on their machines. I'm pretty sure they're not stupid enough to have been seeding, ever, so I doubt the Police, acting on RIAA/MPAA's behalf, will have anything that will stick- they'd have shut them down a lot sooner if they had real ammo on them, as they've been rather defiant and are so big. It's pure intimidation and harassment- and it's going to backfire on the *AA people.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Record store owner bitches and moans about not getting enough sales.
Someone comes in who's actually going to buy a CD.
Record store owner grabs him by the shirt (probably liable for assault in most jurisdictions) and kicks him out of the store... without making the sale first.
Said teen probably tells all his friends the guy who runs that record store is an asshole, so none of his friends (who may or may not engage in piracy) go there either.
Record store owner continues to wonder why people don't buy music from him.
I've learned something today. Assaulting customers before you take their money results in going bankrupt.
(All of the above is assuming this isn't a laughable fake, which it probably is.)
Dude, that joke hasn't been funny for years.
I don't know... "[The police and other law enforcement agencies] have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?" That still makes me chuckle everytime.
Oooh! feel sorry for me.
Lets make some laws to protect my outdated business model so I don't have to be creative and actually work for my living.
Many times the library does not have the title that I am looking for and so I go to TPB or the like and usually they have it. Instead of maintaining an unreasonably collection at a large brick and mortar library, libraries could run torrent trackers and provide most of their collection online at very little cost to the public.
I have a large cd and dvd collection that is filled with things that I want to own but some things I do not want to own. I only want to enjoy them once. I suppose if it were up to the **AA, they would shut down public libraries as well.
It's memorable and there are already legal examples - Pittsburgh Pirates, Disney's Pirates of the Carribean, etc. I certainly haven't seen any raids on Disney's site.
Back in the 1980s I even knew a sysop that ran a legal BBS called Pirates Harbor. He promised "booty" as you progressed levels up in the system including download privledges, but all the software available was legal. A lot of the software hosted there was actually created by pirates, but made for use by gamers. I remember stuff like a Wizardry Scenario Editor, an Ultima sprite editor (I know the author of that one), a booklet of hack codes for different games (assembly calls for stuff like infinite lives), and also the one that got me in trouble in Jr High - the BBS version of the Anarchist Cookbook. In a nutshell, I printed 3 pages on bombs and a black powder recipe for a friend at school and then he made photocopies and started selling them. Someone got caught and turned in people up the food chain until I was fingered. I had a scared chat with a police officer and the Principal, but nothing illegal was done and there was no school policy banning information (until the next week). It was long before Columbine - I'd have been expelled and straightjacketed if I brought such a thing today. Incidentally, I did build one bomb - a smoke bomb (saltpeter and sugar) - which was pretty much where my interest in the subject ended.
SWEDISH AUTHORITIES SINK PIRATE BAY
Hmm... How are you going to sink a bay ? Isn't it already full of water ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
RIGHT: Unauthorized redistribution of copyrighted works is in violation of the Berne Convention, which Sweden is a signatory,
WRONG: so it IS illegal for Pirate Bay to do what they are doing.
Pirate Bay was NOT, under no circumstances, authorizedly or unauthorizedly redistributing copyrighted works. There were NO copyrighted works in PB's servers. ".torrent" files are just files that contain the following information: "the tracker XXX is keeping files YYY, ZZZ, TTT available for bittorrent swarm downloading." And "contributory infringement" is NOT part of the Berne convention... it's an USofAn "innovation". BTW, down here in Brasil there is no "contributory infringement" either.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Strange that you feel the rights an organization maintains somehow depend on their name...
You sir, ought to be modded redundant. Before you make ridiculous assertions that the legalize marijuana movement ended during the 1970s, I suggest actually reading the Wikipedia article; The legal issues of cannabis. If continual progress each and every month equates to failure in your mind, then I'm sorry but you need to revise your thought processes somewhat. Even in the U.S. at the state level, authorities are seeing the light and legalizing cannabis in small quantities - full legalization is on the way, whether it'll take 2, 5, 10, 20 or 50 years it will undoubtedly arrive.
On topic, the supposed "end" of the Pirate Bay doesn't herald the end of BitTorrent - infact this will merely boost the cause of those hosting the site. Once the Swedish authorities wake up and realize PB has done nothing wrong, then the true campaign to relinquish all copyright law can truly begin.
If this, a raid involving 50 officers, can happen in Sweden, a usually progressive, efficient and liberal nation - what would happen in more authoritarian nations? The sooner as these ridiculous, oligopoly-serving laws are erased from statute books worldwide, the better.
too long / didn't read.
Let me get this straight. YOUR business model is failing so you want help from the government?
Damn commies.
More like civil obidience. They (think they) are not doing anything illegal. It's like calling a group of people "The Jaywalkers" and always crossing the road when the go-light is on.
This is clearly a conspiracy to keep people from seeing "An Inconvenient Truth", the new Al Gore movie. George Bush and his oil company cronies don't want the truth to get out. ManBearPig! I'm Serial.
Some will consider this offtopic, but it really isn't when the discussion moves to filesharing being a sort of: "try b4 you buy". Anyone that goes to a movie is entitled to a FULL REFUND of the ticket price if they go to the box office within a 20 minute window AFTER the movie starts and demand one. Not the trailers, etc., but the actual film. They are REQUIRED to give it to you, no questions asked!
Whats wrong with 'Pirate Bay' ? They were never saying 'Na Na Na', they were saying they are a search engine, and plus under Swedish law, they didn't do anything wrong. I fail to see any merit to your comment other than to be flamebait.
I think many people would like to donate them money so that they can be helped in this state-sponsored oppression. I know I do, so I would like to know if there is any way to do this. Warning! Answers to this post may lead to phishing sites so beware.
Huh? It's normal to barge into private premises, arrest people for no reason and siege their property? In a totalitarian government, ya... But I don't think that's the kind of system that is running in Sweden.
From the MPAA's statement: "The bottom line is that the operators of the Pirate Bay and others like them are criminals who profit handsomely by facilitating the distribution of millions of copyrighted creative works and files protected under the law," said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA. "We applaud Swedish law enforcement for their effort to stop egregious copyright infringement on The Pirate Bay."
The only Criminals who profit handsomely by facilitating the distribution of millions of copyrighted creative works and files protected under the law in this story are the MPAA. Piratebay is a search engine. You have to break a law to be 'Criminal'
It wes highly unpopular, but passed nonetheless at the behest of a highly vocal minority of zealots.
It stuck around for about a decade before being repealed for 2 reasons: 1, it was abysmally ineffective 2, it was causing more organized crime.
incidentally, canada also refused to go along with this law as well.
notice any parallels with a certain 1998 law?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Yep, just like this old fogie predicted, the piracy issues is evolving along nicely parallel to the 50's-60's "legalize marijuana" drug movement.
Actually, you couldn't be more wrong. Most people back then didn't do drugs if they were Joe Six-Pack. However, most people already break the law when it comes to pirating.
Not only that, the RIAA and MPAA want to get rid of fair use.
They want to make time shifting and recording TV shows illegal because using the DMCA they have made it illegal for Joe Six-pack to by pass the DRM.
This is stuff that grandma, Bob the Blue Collar worker, and Sara the Single Mom already do and they don't think its morally wrong. This was stuff they were doing in the 70s and 80s with the VCR and tape recorders.
So this is more like Prohibition of the 30's. People, young and old, don't think it is wrong and they actively do it every day without thinking twice.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Of course it will! They can just put up a torrent... oh, wait.
You must think in Russian.
My business faces ruin. Troll sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many trolls as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique troll stores that sell obscure, lame jokes that no-one laughs about, not even the people that make them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the geek market. My store specialised in trolls - stuff that geeks find hilarious and/or annoying. I don't sell sick stuff like Goatse or Tubgirl, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive In Soviet Russia sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase trolls without anuses or violent diarrhea. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
copy Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer trolls. Why is no one buying trolls? Are people not interested in pop culture references? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Slashdot is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three trolls world wide appears on Slashdot. On Slashdot, you can find and read hundreds of dollars worth of pop culture references in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the lame joke industry, from artists, to troll companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the karma store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike trolls, it's harder to copy karma on Slashdot.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with space ninjas gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to post this troll on Slashdot right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of +1, Funny."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the troll industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "Zo...you ah going to post zis to your frends on Slushdot, punk?" I asked him in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger/Kindergarten Cop voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of space ninjas. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If space ninjas want to steal from the pop culture reference industry, then the pop culture reference industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable troll store will allow you to buy another troll. If the pirates can't buy the trolls to begin with, then they won't be able to post them on Slashdot, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the GNAA outlining my proposal. Suing space ninjas one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention space ninjas use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of space ninjas would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected space ninjas to a hotline, similar to Bust Your Boss. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take space ninjutsu serio
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Yeah. Really smart. No wonder your store is failing. Those people were about to BUY your cd and now you wont sell them anymore in the future. You're an idiot.
I own over 400 real cds, and haven't stepped foot inside a recordstore since the 1990s. You're in an industry that does not need to exist anymore; get out now while you can.
And if you have any stock in telegraph companies, or abacus companies, I suggest you divest yourself of that as well.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
fully replicated servers in multiple countries...
Deleted
Sounds more like someone called someone to scare piratebay. Good. Now are they going to look into co-location, and ensuring that however legally questionable some of the content might be, they can at least argue fair and reasonable? I don't know EU organizational law. Where I come from a certain amount of latitude is usually granted in cases where their is no clear legal comment. For instance purchasing a audiobook, then wanting to share it with someone. The *AA would let you think that's not legal. Morally: Sure why not? E-Book same thing: In order to print some E-Book formats in a freelance operation, their were laws clearly saying one way or the other.
Does someone from sweden know if it Would it be better to co-locate to a place like Sea Haven, that claims to be neutral?
Was that a Yellowbeard reference? One of the most underated films, it's a shame it isn't more widely known...
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
I don't recall any mention of catapults, trebeuchets or battering rams. Sorry, just had to seize the moment.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Wørd...
Hey, my daughter worked at your store before you went out of business. She gave me hundreds of brand new CDs for my birthday every year.
Now you're out of business and she's out of a job. Damned pirates!
The first one that jumped out was "claiming immunity to copyright laws". They of course never claimed this; they claimed that they weren't breaking any copyright laws. So that's libel, right?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Too funny, they already have traffic cops + the automated lights! At the same time! I was watching this once in Atlanta, I was crackin up how insanely stupid it was. Two fast food joints right next to each other, noon time rush. Now here, you can RENT a real cop, with his official uniform on, the whole deal, badge and gun, but he is off duty-but still on duty because cops are always on duty, something like that. You must OBEY CITIZEN! It is so much an hour to hire one of these official mercenaries. These two fast food joints had the renta cops "directing traffic", thoroughly screwing up the flow of trafffic with the automated lights nearby, so that their restaurant customers could get in and out of the parking lots fast. Here's the funny part, it was a WAR to see which cop had the most authority presence and could get HIS customers in an out even when the cop just 100 or so feet away was giving CONFLICTING SIGNALS by hand and whistle, stop, go ahead and turn, yield to these guys turning, etc. It was HILARIOUS (unless you were an unlucky driver just trying to drive on down the road by the normal rules and lights and not patronize either restuarant) and a microcosm of what is clearly wrong with the so called law and justice system.
http://thepiratebay.org/
Why does yahoo do this
When you bought the store you adapted it to become more profitable. You found a niche and fit into it well. Markets change and if you're going to be successful, you've gotta change your buisiness model with them. I think you're probably realizing this too late, but I'd say figure out how to fit the new market. Say... sell MP3 players at low prices, provide some computer stations for kids without credit cards to legally download music in mp3 form to their newly bought MP3 player. Start selling things that can't be pirated, like services. Get into recording and publishing. Get a starbucks franchise in your store and build a little stage for upcoming superstars to show their stuff. Learn to be cool and relaxed. Make your store a cool place for kids to be kids, but also safe a safe place so that parents don't worry about letting their kids hang out there. There are a thousand ways you can make profit if you're as willing to change as you were at first. You got stuck and comfortable and now you're afraid of change. You can't fill your wallet or your stomach with tears, new laws or black-lists, but you can fill them by meeting percieved market needs. I might mention that socializing sells. Every new and great money making idea in recent years revolves around social needs, from starbucks to reality shows.
You know, across the mall or down the sidewalk? You just catch her out of the corner of your eye. She's got a nice short skirt on and a snug shirt and you just can't help but notice her. She's got really nice legs and you take a moment or two out and just let your gaze linger on them for just a brief before walking on.
Well, you're guilty in spirit of adultery. I'm telling your wife.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
As it turns out, the illegal action against the pirate bay was on direct order from the swedish justice department (this is also illegal in Sweden), which in turn acted on a request from the US government, which in turn acted on behalf of MPAA.
This is all classified, but leaked to a very authoritative (as BBC) TV channel in Sweden.
Therefore, the swedish government is determined to ignore the law, as has happened so many times before.
Look for the pirate bay in the free world, i.e., in china or something.
Some people, including those pirate bay fools, seem to be of the impression that a site like the pirate bay is all legal in Sweden. Nothing could be further from the truth. Their behaviour is actually quite silly. Now without quoting paragraphs and stuff I like to point out two of the more obvious problems.
First off if you have a web page you are responsible for the contents on it. If you let users post something on your site you must moderate it. You might not be breaking the law if someone post something illegal on your page but you certainly are if you fail to moderate, eg remove, said post within resonable time.
Now the second and in this case probably alot more interesting is the fact that it is illegal to aid or encourage any kind of illegal activities. Wheather we like it or not distributing copyright protected material is illegal right now. And no one can really claim that the sole, or at least very dominant, purpose of this site was to connect people who wanted to break copyright laws. Accoring to piratebay.org "The allegation was breach of copy-right law, alternatively assisting breach of copy-right law." the second part there is just smack on the button, "assisting breach of copy-right law". That's illegal, anyone saying what they did was anything else but that?
a baía do pirata dot-com, anyone?
I hear they also have a thing for free software.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=22620&a=6020 79&lid=puff_602080&lpos=rubrik
According to this story It was the MPAA that was behind the raid. After being contacted by the MPAA, the US government got into talks with the swedish ministry for foreign affairs here in Sweden. The ministry of justice contacted police and prosecutors, but they didn't want to do anything since the legal issues here are unclear. So the ministry of justice contacted the national police chief and got orders to raid the server hall. The legality of the operation is highly questionable and borders on ministerstyre, whatever that would be called in english, it means that ministers tell government agencies what to do or how to interpret laws. This is illegal in Sweden.
You are automatically equating protest with the word disruptive. Look what you have written. This alone proves you have little idea what you are talking about, nor have you been paying attention to the long past history of political "protesting". And before the knee jerk denial that you said that, look what you wrote.
I have personally witnessed this violation of rights BS and been the target of cops at *completely* peaceful protests where they went apeshit under some orders and attacked the crowd, going back to civil rights days, pre-anti nam war days, and from then onwards. Not to say violent protests don't happen as well, I won't deny that, but by no means are they all, most usually at least start out peaceful until the overt or covert(yes, this happens) functionaires start the violence, giving them the excuse to go nuts. I have seen it too many times now to not know this isn't SOP with them.
It does no good if you can't assemble where the action is, 10 miles down the road behind a fence is not "the right to assemble",the government has placed illegal and unconstitutional restrictions on a right, they have said you need "permission" to exercise a born-with right. This is illegal. That right no where states you have the right to assemble where THEY tell you to assemble. That's something they just started doing because they got the guns and follow orders from their "superior beings" whomever those entities are.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
It does not state you have "some" rights to assemble or that you can only assemble in some designated "zone". Show us where it says that, I have provided the full quote. If you can, I'll concede gracefully, but I have read that numerous times in my life, and can't seem to see those little clauses you insist are there. If it is public property, you have a right to assemble there (obviously personal private property is a different subject entirely), you have the right to your speech, and the right to be heard with your petitions, whether the petitions are oral, written, or visual, as petitions could take any or all of those forms. We the people have a right to tell our elected folks what we think about what is going on. Period. If they keep trying to dodge the petition, they are violating their duties as elected people, no matter what media form the petition is in. They can't refuse the petition. They can't legally order their mercenaries to keep you away from them when you are trying to deliver your petition to them, but they constantly do that. I know why of course, it's because by and large they are mostly corrupt crooks and want to keep their cushy well paying jobs and positions of "rule" over people.
If you got a political beef, you and your peers have a right to assemble, and to petition the government. That's it, it is that simple ancd clearly the intent of the founders. they were just coming from a time where the redcoats broke up crowds, told them they couldn't be in the town square in a group, arrested "ring leaders' for their "speech", kept them from "petitioning" the crown's authorities, etc, that's why the amendment was written exactly like that. It is beyond clear. They do NOT have the right to restrict you in such a way that they are dodging their duties as governmental workers/politicans/or functionaires, they are REQUIRED to listen to your petitions as acceptance of their official office, to follow the laws. Yes, they have to listen. They still might not agree with your petition, but they have a duty that goes with their oath. And if you come in a group, to show solidarity and the numbers,i.e., an assemblage, too bad, that is a free persons right.
They are NOT RULERS, we are NOT SUBJECTS, much as they and apparently you seem to believ
"Remember when police and laws were used to protect citizens, not criminialize millions for hurting corporate profit machines...?"
No I don't actually. There never was a place or period in the history of the human race where the "police" (or their equivalent) worked to protect the average citizen. Yes, some individual police officers do great and important work helping people, at great personal risk. But for the most part, "the law" is structured to protect wealthy interests and the police are used to protect those interests. The biggest dealers of harmful addictive drugs in the U.S. are big pharma, but the police system is used to persecute sellers and users of drugs not produced by big pharma, which threaten its profits.
In the early 1900s, who did corporations use to break up unions? The police. In the West the police were used to protect the railroads and other landed interests. Before there were corporations, there were feudal lords. They used the equivalent of the police to keep down the peasants. Remember the Robin Hood story? Who was he fighting? The SHERIFF of Notingham.
The powerful have always used force and violence and "the law" to protect their interests and to keep the weak and powerless in their place. Nothing has changed here.
Apparently White House had recieved pressure from a Hollywood organization to somehow get rid of The Pirate Bay. White House thus demanded from Swedish Justice Department to "deal with the situation". Swedish JD forwarded the order to the police department, who informed them that TPB, according to swedish law, had commited no crime. JD, not being famous for interest in the law, put it dollars (crowns really) spinning to end TPB by creating a massive investigation.
Swedish JD has broken the swedish law before to please USA. For some reason JD seemes to be awfully interested in maintaining their relationsship as a puppy of USA.
Almost more disturbing is that the police chose to take down not only TPBs servers, but also servers belonging to many other popular sites. For no specific reason beside them being in the same room as the TPB servers and that the police didn't share the opinions expressed by these sites.
An amusing fact is that the Internet traffic went down with 20% after the close-down of TBP. This shows just how publicly accepted piracy is.
By the way, if you want to call one of the villains behind this coward attack, the leader of antipiratbyran (bureu of anti-piracy) named Henrik Pontén, his cell phone number is +4670-5929922. Enjoy!
you people know this is a well known troll post right? just like bsd is dying.
Heres the google search of it.
I think the first time i saw it i naievely replyed to it as well.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Their legal counsel is a law-school student and not a certified lawyer. I don't know if that makes any legal difference though. I am a bit curious as to how they are going to use those DNA samples? I can't think of much use for DNA besides proving that they have actually touched the servers, which they have been filmed doing on several occasions by swedish television.
I wonder what the possibility (probably nearly impossible?) is of taking one of these, loading it up with a very, very small webserver hardware setup with a largish hard drive (maybe the whole thing potted in epoxy with a heatsink sticking out?), a several watt 802.11g AP and antenna, then getting it put up in orbit by the Russians? I bet you could get this done for about $250,000.00 (US) if you really wanted to (for the sat, hardware, launch costs, and of course, bribes)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Zero of those traffic deaths have been scientificly proven to be caused by pot. There are very few studies available, but those that have been done (here's one link) seem to show that the paranoia more than offsets the loss of attention and motor coordiantion. The US NHTSA and DOT came to similar conclusions. Of course if it were legal, it would stand to reason that there would be less paranoia of getting pulled over and this effect would reduce. In case you're curious, the DOT figures for drivers in injury accidents testing positive for pot without alchohol was 2%, no control figure was given, but I'd wager the figure for drivers on pot is a little above 2%.
Disclaimer: don't use it, just irked that I'm forced to use inferior drugs like alchohol.
-Ryan C.
"they're communists after all"
How short our internet memory is... http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Indymedia/ Remember when the US went through the UK to get Italy to seize servers?
That would be the 'roughly' part. It's similar in that the goal is to force the hand of the opposing party. With regular civil disobedience, the goal is to force the government to put people in jail for things which are obviously stupid. Here, it's to force the MPAA to take them to court. In both cases the objective is to put an end to rhetoric and vague threats. TPB's position is that they are going to win in court, and then the MPAA will be screwed.
Is that the raid was forced by swedish minister of justice Thomas Bodström after pressure directly from the American government. Thomas Bodström is a member of the currently ruling socialdemocratic party which is also known for having extradited people to Egypt after pressure from the Americans without due process of law. However the one responsible for approving that was a cunt called Anna Lindh who later got stabbed to death in a shoppingmall. More info can be found at http://www.riksdagen.se/templates/R_PageExtended__ __7639.aspx
In the tradition of taking obvious trolls seriously, here's my answer to you.
Well, let me help you out: you are facing banckrupty because you are, according to your own statement, selling CDs no one wants to listen to. Furthermore, many independent artists nowadays either give their music away freely to act as promotion, or simply sell directly to customers.
You can avoid this by either getting CDs people want to listen to, or, preferably, by getting out of the CD business completely and selling something else. CD business is becoming obsolete, buying from iTunes or downloading (legally distributed music) is simply a supreme way of getting music.
Actually, it is a lot easier to copy books than music over the Internet, since even the whole Wheel of Time series (11+ books) is only 11MB as a PDF file.
No, the real reason why books sell better is that there are a lot of good books being written all the time, and you don't need to worry about a book containing rootkits or DRM crap.
For example, I just recently purchased several Pratchett's Discworld novels for 8 euros apiece, and have spent several enjoyable evenings reading each.
Throwing customers out propably won't help your sales any either.
I wear old clothes and a cheap haircut. Few people laugh at me. It's all about style - some people have it and some don't.
You just need to show your girls old episodes of Happy Days, and tell them to watch Fonzie closely. Learn from the master. You don't expect to become a martial arts master without training under some crazy old Japanese man, so why would you expect to have style without training under Fonzie ?
You might want to see a doctor about that.
Unfortunately, by this account, you are a lousy businessman.
Coming to think of it, I haven't heard a new song from Metallica for years, and had nearly forgotten they exist. That's the price of taking a stance against windmills, I guess. But no worries, I have lots of legally downloaded music - this album by Harvey Danger, for example.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
More info:
http://www.jpl.se/~dalen/demo.html
Erik Dalén
I see this all the time... People refuse to believe that what was once a value-adding activity is no longer that, so in my country we have ascensorists, typists, old equipment operators, etc. going on strike, holding hostage the work environments and machinery, and pressuring the government, which unfortunately folds way too often and creates inefficiency.
It is my view that we would be a lot better off if those people were encouraged/helped to re-train and take new jobs we have lots of demand for. I see work not as reducing as some "end-of-work" people say, just that it is shifting towards more unstructured or service oriented tasks, and not only hand labor is being automated, now routine "intellectual" tasks are too
Of course not everyone can be re-trained, but hopefully someone wiser than I will find a solution...
I've been twice I think to record stores, and I almost never listen to the records I've bought, changing CD's is extremely inconvenient. As everyone else has mentioned, shopping for music, books and movies is actually a more value-added activity online (I can see reviews, listen to samples, etc, way faster than I could in a store), unlike say shopping for a house appliance, clothes, impulse buy/luxury items, or a car where the physical experience hasn't been duplicated yet. So I'd say that as soon as more people think like me, your business model is doomed (it will probably live on but as a niche market).
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Well, to arrest somebody and check their DNA, as they did with the regal representative of the pirate bay, is not allowed by Swedish law unless there is a very high degree of suspicion (in Swedish law stthere are different degrees of suspicion. They are often used in an arbitrary way, but their purpose is to regulate how much force the police uses in relation to how likely is it that the person is guilty) AND the crime they are suspected of is punishable by prison. Copyright violation is not punishable by prison and therefore it would technically be illegal to check their DNA. It is important to note, though, that the swedish legal system is not politically independent as it is in the US. The people on the "juries" are politicians and the number of jury members a party gets is determined by the amount of votes they get in elections. So, as the majority of the swedish parties are against the pirate bay, this will probably pass in a Swedish court.
Damn it! Could there be an open-source iTunes equivalent, where everyone can post music BUT where downloading an MP3 costs 5 cents (that goes to the artist)?
As to movies, I'd rather see them in a cinema. As to porn, I really believe that it should be about prostitution, rather than rape (and its the second if noone pays for it). (True) amateur porn is, of course, nice, and for free - thank you folks.
As to games - I buy them.
As to Win XP, Id switch to Linux as soon as someone made a good Linux game. And I use OpenOffice.
Books? I cant read a book on a computer screen. It's no fun. I need to be able to take it in the WC with me. I buy them on paper.
Patents? Patents as implemented nowadays suck. But its the implementation that sucks, not the idea of patents. And I dont think it can be much better. Id rather go without such implementation, if it wasnt for stupid venture capitalists who would not invest without "protection" and "patents". Really, what are they thinking? Nothing patented actually constitutes a million-bugs-making idea. Ingenius ideas are always obvious (in hindsight), so - not patentable. No idea about that...
And so, could you use your God given programming skills to make an E-bay/BitTorrent equivalent for free posting of music and video files? The laws dont need to change - whats needed is to put the the CD/DVD publishing industry out of the loop. First hey charge for burning CD, then they charge for distribution, then they charge for being the only node in the network (a monopoly), then they use it to enforce the dominace of the node - it ends here.
Oh and.. pls dont patent the above idea, will ya?:)
The parent post says, "What it takes is hard work." then two sentences later says, "I can tell you that it is not hard...." So, hard work isn't hard?
Speaking as someone who works in another creative field, it does take good promotion (usually through marketing/advertising) to make a work of art that will get attention, just as the grandparent post said. The trick is, as the parent post points out, that this can be self-promotion. Self-promotion can be done on a much more modest budget than an all-out print/TV/radio advertising campaign can.
It sounds like the poster's father is good at self-promotion in addition to having musical skills, so it is easy for him to get attention. Unfortunately, not everyone is blessed with these types of skills. Plus, forming contacts can take a long time even if you are good at it; sometimes it takes longer than someone can survive without steady income. True, you can short-circuit the system if you happen to stumble across a good social network to tap into, but you can't rely on that.
And, you are right in that giving away stuff for "free" can help build a reputation. I write about game design and game business on my game development blog for free and talk at various conventions in order to stay in contact with people in my industry. It is incredibly important to get the word out about you and your work. My reputation and writings have gotten me quite a bit of contract work to help keep food on the table while I starve for my art. This is one reason why I think P2P networks are great: they allow people to distribute their work for free if they want. Not necessarily something I can take direct advantage of in my situation, but I have seen how it helps others.
However, I think that if we really believe this is the best use for P2P networks, then we do need to take a stand against the people that just want stuff for free. We need to quit with the "it's not theft because you still have the work even though I'm enjoying it without paying!" bullshit. Or the "I wouldn't buy it anyway, so it makes no difference of I download it!" excuses. Don't even get me started on the "I'm doing civil disobedience (from the safety of my basement!)" garbage some people tout as an excuse. These are all excuses people use to justify their own desire for free stuff.
If we let the P2P networks flourish with a majority of truly free stuff, if we allow content creators who want to give away their stuff to create a counter culture, then we'll see a real change. As long as people are downloading stuff for free instead of looking for independent artists, it puts more control in the hands of the MPAA and RIAA and other associations and large companies like that.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the best way to hurt the MPAA and RIAA is to stop downloading "mainstream" stuff for free and go look for independent artists that do stuff you like. At the very least, start supporting big acts that give away songs, videos, or even whole albums for free. As long as people continue to violate copyright, these associations will continue to wield so much power and influence. As soon as we have people actively looking for indies, then the large marketing and promotion budgets will become less necessary, and self-promotion will come easier. By violating copyright law and downloading songs/movies/games/whatever, you are just supporting the role of these companies even more. Let me make this perfectly clear: You are not weakening the MPAA or RIAA or other such association by downloading commercial products without paying for them.
This applies to all creative works: music, writing, games, etc. If you want something, then pay for it. If you don't to pay, then look for cheaper/free alternatives. By giving these alternatives a chance and helping to support the artist, they can continue to give you content and they don't have to sign a contract with the devil (in the form of the MPAA or RIAA) in order to make
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
FYI: This is a known troll that appears everytime there is an RIAA involved article.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
"I'd be happy if it had been written by someone with evidence of education above the third grade level."
You'll only be disappointed if you try to improve your education here.
Pirate Bay did nothing wrong. If we accuse Pirate Bay of pointing to copyrighted material, then we must accuse Google, Yahoo, and any other search engine on the net of the same crime. Imagine Pirate Bay was manufacturing guns and those guns where used by people to murder each other. Pirate Bay didn't shoot the gun, the people did. You don't see gun companies going out of business just because someone was killed by a gun. Come to America and see for yourself. I'm tired of the manipulation of law and the duel standards used by businesses. For once I would like to see some honesty and uniformity in our American laws and I'd like to see a few passed which enforce the people's constitutional rights rather busniess laws which deminish them.
"News organ"?!?!?!
;-)
Have the Swiss come up with some sort of cybernetic strap-on appendage that makes a report when information comes across the newswire?
Perhaps it is called a Pen, model #15. For short, they call it a Pen15
I'm sinking... someone help me out... tough crowd...surely someone can come up with a wittier remark!
Libertas in infinitum
...pirates raid YOU!
Libertas in infinitum
Fair play to you. That's a nice comeback.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I think what happened is that foreign (ie US) entities hoped records of access were kept on the servers and wanted to get their hands on those records for prosecution in their home countries, and made a deal with Swedish officials. The Pirate Bay won't be shut down, but its users may end up sued. Just a hunch.
The BG government has argued that there is blatant corruption in the EU as well (but this is just speculation on my side, unlike the above events and exchanges that are public) - ThePirateBay does not keep a very low profile, and indeed their e-mails section doesnt help.
So, to avoid being perceived as an institution that is hypocritical or keeps double standards - TPB has had to be raided - the Sweedes bought it. Sorry, folks :(
http://thepiratebay.org/ is up. Also in the Videos Section there is a movie TPBBust1.mov, its any ones guess :)....
Bow down for the ones we serve... it's back up!!!!! http://thepiratebay.org/
Well, that didn't take long; The Pirate Bay is up and running again. They're even sporting a brand new, fresh logo.
:)
And a new name; "The Police Bay". At least they haven't lost their sense of humour
But marijuana today is much safer than marijuana in the 1960s - in the US, it's mainly high-potency buds, rather than low-potency leaves, so you're smoking a tenth as much green plant material to get high. Europeans seem to smoke it as hashish instead, probably because their supplies are imported from places like Morocco where you can grow it outside and pay off the police rather than being locally grown inside or on hidden farms, but either way the concentrated stuff seems to be more useful commercially. I did once meet some Americans out at a hot spring who were extracting hashish oil from leaves - they'd soak it in butane to dissolve the THC, squeeze it out, and evaporate the butane using the heat from the hot spring so they didn't need to risk using fire.
Either way, you ought to be protecting your lungs by using a decent bong instead of one of those little pipes.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks