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The Pirate Bay Is Back Online
Many readers have submitted news that The Pirate Bay is back online, operating for now as "The Police Bay." Writes one anonymous submitter: "Pirate Bay got new hardware, moved the servers abroad and used recent backups. So the only bad side-effect of this police raid is that hundreds of clients of the ISP PRQ still have not got their servers back from the police. When the police did the raid on Wednesday, they took Pirate Bay from Bankgirot's secure server room. Then they also took all the servers in PRQ colocation facility STH3, effectively disabling a lot of small companies. The connection between PRQ and TPB? - Same owners, nothing more, this is beginning to become a huge scandal in Sweden with coverage on TV and all newspapers 4 days in a row."
So, at what point does it become the responsibility of the police to do enough homework to make sure that their investigation dosen't harm many other businesses that are completely uninvolved in the search for evidence? What recourse do the other effected isp customers have?
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
If it's turning into a major scandal, could this mean that people in Sweden generally don't think gestapo-like tactics are justified to take down a few people downloading video games and TV shows?
Next thing you know, you'll be telling us that talking about war isn't actually talking about peace, and that freedom isn't actually slavery.
It's been a long time.
As an American who's disgusted with the current Copyright Cabal running roughshod all over everyone and everything, I'm glad there's somewhere in the world where this crap inspires the mainstream rage it should. GO GET 'EM.
What's it like in Sweden? What's a nice time of year to visit? Are there programmer jobs available? Do you still have that bikini team?
Be seeing you...
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
but if they are in the netherlands now, what is to stop the dutch police from doing the same thing?
yeah sure, it's a giant game of whack-a-mole, but isn't the lesson here to do to thepiratebay what was done to napster?
that is, when the riaa/ mpaa behead these entities, they go underground and become headless
that is: no central server. thus, napster morphed into morpheus, kazaa, edonkey, et al
which is the real lesson for the mpaa/ riaa: you don't kill this "infection", you only make is more resistant to your antibiotics
the mpaa/ riaa is breeding superpiracy
you would think that instead they would coopt the pirate bay, legitimize it
but no, they have to fight where it would be wiser to collude. they just breed a stronger foe, drive this behavior further underground, and not stop one bit of it, and just make it much more difficult to ever stop
their behavior is creating the culture of piracy. if they embraced and extended, instead of exterminate and berserk, the mpaa/ riaa would create a culture that would say "hey, this stuff is cheap, and high quality, and easily organized... why would i want to go to a bad quality copy of my media that is hard to find?"
surely they see that that is all they are doing, no?
they are digging their own graves
you can't fight technological progress
this genie is not going back in the bottle
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Pirate Bay is *more* legal than Google. Google at least exists in this "grey area" -- with things like Google Cache, and things like that, where they actually DO distribute the actual copyrighted content themselves occasionally. Nothing that the Pirate Bay serves up is actually copyrighted, since it's just .torrent files.
These news may be great for filesharing people worldwide. But from a political point of view the Piracy Party has not won until the the servers are back up on swedish territory.
Exactly which law makes torrent files illegal? Please be prepared to cite chapter and verse.
And no matter what statistics anyone may have come up with (or forged), Bittorrent is just a highly efficient means of distributing perfectly legal stuff such as Linux releases, scientific lectures and speeches, or free renders. Much like a knife is a proven instrument for cutting food, rather than reason for suspecting an intent to kill someone.
BTW if the laws had teeth against some real ills of the information age, and if the authorities were similarly responsive, though hopefully in a more targetted way, against botnet operators perpetrating DDoS and spam, we wouldn't need to have discussions like these for more than a decade already...
The torrent files that the Pirate Bay hosts are, it appears, legal in Sweden. However, the copyright infringement being perfomed by the individuals who download those torrent files and use them to make unauthorised copies of other people's work is certainly not legal in Sweden.
So, what's the likelihood that any records they may have kept of who's been committing copyright infringement are now in the hands of the Swedish police, the Antipyratbyran, and indeed the MPAA?
Pretty high, I'd say. Expect more raids soon... but this time, targetting the people who are committing the actual crimes, rather than the people who are exploiting legal loopholes to facilitate them.
Why not use the MPAA's bandwith?
http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_05_31.pdf
Worst analogy ever.
They've always been able to do this by connecting to a running torrent and seeing the peer names.
Why would they do that? Do they have something to hide!?
Horrible example. But in your own example, it would like if the police went after the manufacturer of the gun instead of the shooter. The PirateBay is not responsible for the use of torrents. Downloading TES:Oblivion would be perfectly legal in my country, as long as I also have had an original copy bought. It is not PirateBay's fault if I don't have the copy. PirateBay is legal, I am legal if I have bought a copy. Perhaps someone downloading from me could be illegal, but again that's not PirateBay's fault. That's his responsibility.
Wrong guess, I'm from the EU. My understading of copyright law in a foreign country a few Km away from me is not that bad, especially when I've been reading a bit about it. What you and your trolling friends refuse to admit is that TPB encourages and facilitates sharing copyrighted material. I will continue to use it no matter what Swedish law says (is it OK, is it not? Like I care...) but I will NOT kid myself into believing that TPB knows nothing about the Windows ISOs you can download thanks to their portal. The post I replied to was trying to get away with a ridiculous technicality which didn't make any sense, that's why I compared to another nonsensical one.
The police raid of TPB (at the direction of the United States) is widely believed to have been illegal under the laws of the country in which the raid took place. Attempting to applying U.S. legal theory to the situation does not magically change the jurisdiction.
Yeah, so what? I don't care about the raid, I am simply pointing out that TPB is happy to help with piracy. They don't host the material, OK. They're in the clear wrt Swedish law, OK. So what? It does not mean you can pretend that piracy does not take place thanks to their portal. Then if their law allows this, more power to them.
Why does the United States and some of its citizens believe respecting the sovereignty of nations is optional?
I don't know, ask an American. In the meantime, were you in favour or against the bombing raids on Milosevic? What do you think of regulating the activity of farmers in my country so that the farmers in yours get a better/worse ROI? And I could make countless examples... Don't believe Europe is immune to this kind of games. The USA are definitely not alone.
Global warming is a cube.
You know, ordinarily, police would love it if someone was distributing locations and phone numbers for drug dealers. Why doesn't the *AA thank them for giving them the IP addresses of illegal filesharers?
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Wow...you sure completely missed his point. Yes, they'll adapt their business models, to only produce those kind of shows that can make money even when widely pirated. His point is that this class of shows will include fewer, if any, good shows.
TV and movies are not like music, where the artists make most of their money outside of sales of the music (e.g., bands make their money from their concerts).
Piracy fails the "what if everyone did it?" test. When it is a small, underground activity, it likely actually helps music and movie and TV revenue, by acting as advertising. If it becomes the mainstream way of getting content, however, then it does make it uneconomical for the producers of content (except for news and for programs where the view interacts with the show, such as by voting on what contestants win or lose).
Why would they set one up? I mean, bit torrent is completely open. Anyone can get your IP when you download off a torrent.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
5) Slashdot sucks, because most people here don't see the immorality of file sharing, and don't see that incredibly expensive shows like 24 and Lost WON'T EXIST if they can't make money. We might actually be seeing the fall of good video programming. It may not exist in 10 years, except for amateur junk.
You were pretty good up to this point...
And I must say I support file sharing exactly for this reason.
I want mass media to die an ugly death!
Lost to me (although better than most other crap they put on television) still represents what makes me ill about television. Maybe I'm just bitter over "Enteprise's" failure or the cancelation of "Firefly" but I am disgusted by most cookie cutter music and lame stories that make no sense and waste millions of dollars to make movies and TV shows that are unoriginal and could be made by an ad lib script.
The only thing I bother today is Adult Swim on Cartoon network because of the imported Anime... Heck... My movie collection is nothing but foreign films because some reason... When you don't have kiss butt to a hollywood director and fix script problems with CGI and million dollar actors... You are forced to make entertainment the hard way. (Which is why I love fan fics remakes of star trek).
If these moguls lost quit making emo boy bands and crap movies... The world would be a better place.
If no one made money from art, then only true artists would make art... Plain and simple. Of course they'd be starving and need patrons like they did in the Middle Ages, but Da Vinci made quite a living without the need for copyrights of his work.
Maybe I'm an art house bourgeois uppity bastard who only like foreign films, but I'd like for one day in my life to be able to turn on the radio or TV and see something that is more than just "entertainment". I'd like to see art.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
1) TPB sucks, because they're just leechers making money off of other people's copyrighted work, all the while disengenuously crowing about "freedom".
I suppose Used Booksellers are leeches in your eyes as well. Should we shut them down too?
incredibly expensive shows like 24 and Lost WON'T EXIST if they can't make money.
How does filesharing substantially hurt 24 and Lost? The shows have already aired and made their money by the time they get onto filesharing sites.
Honestly, if networks and cable companies would get together and allow rebroadcasting on demand of major shows, the vast majority of people would simply do that if they missed a broadcast. Or they could allow downloading of the show off their website, complete with commercials, in a time-limited "secure" format that would expire, say, a month after initial broadcast date, so as not to interfere with DVD sales. Most downloaders would probably go for something in pristine quality that would be easy to locate and download, over the dubious quality of an anonymous fileshare.
Anyway, the point is that this is not about making money. There are plenty of ways for them to make money off the internet with their shows, as they are beginning to discover. This is about control. The suits have shown over and over again that they resist any attempt to lessen their total control over the distribution of their product, even when it can make money for them. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
The MPAA, US government, and Swedish police took down the The Pirate Bay website. If I told you that was about to happen, you'd probably see it as a very bad thing for bittorrent file-sharers and Swedes.
Instead, the action has been criticised in Sweden, gained the pirate party a lot more support and publicity, and the website has been put back up within about 2 days. Now it's hosted in other countries, and if any of those countries attempt to take it down, you can bet that it will again get widespread coverage in the news.
The Pirate Bay has gone from being a website into an idea. The MPAA thought they could just take it down and that would be the end of it. Instead, it seems that any attempt to take it down just gets support for file sharers and causes copyright laws to be questioned. Other countries can take it down, too, but the Swedes have set an example - there will be political backlash every time someone tries to mess with The Pirate Bay.
So why then would the US go after a company in sweden that does not have those law, while they leave local companies that go beyond "contributory" (ala google with their caching)?
OK the answer is obvious, but what happens when all the torrent sites are shut down? Does the MPAA go after the search engines next?
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Have you ever considered that it isnt a loophole and just the way the law is supposed to be. They have known about it for a long time, if it were a loophole it would have been "fixed" maybe that country wants it to be that way.
Kind of like Russia and allofmp3.com. Maybe the Russian legislature just wants the law to work that way, they have had ample time and obviously been pressured to fix it, yet have not.
And btw, downloading stuff might very well be illegal for you, but the internet is a global network, which means laws of one country do not apply everywhere, yes yes, I know this is a difficult concept to grasp but it is true.
BTW, i wouldnt be proud if I were wearing a half life 2 tshirt.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
and you entirely missed his point. Which was: either those shows can begin to provide the content online for people who want to download it and watch it on a computer, or they can lose their ass to piracy. Most people are willing to watch a few commercials if they can download the show they want, when they want it.
Not everyone, myself included, has time to be at their TV everyday at a given hour to watch their favorite show. I hate to break it to you, the studios aren't making any money when people Tivo either. I suppose next you'll tell us all how horrible it is when people skip the commercials using their Tivo? They can adapt their model, or they can die. Someone somewhere along the line will figure out how to provide those "expensive" shows on demand, and they'll reap the benifits. If not the current regime, then whoever replaces them. Stop being so naive and stop eating all the shit the **AA throws on your plate.
Wow...you sure completely missed his point. Yes, they'll adapt their business models, to only produce those kind of shows that can make money even when widely pirated. His point is that this class of shows will include fewer, if any, good shows.
I'm not exactly sure he missed the point. The central expression is "good shows". "Good" by what definition? Is he worried that humankind will not see the n+1st season of 24, x years from now? Or that he won't? I just fail to see the link between countable commercial success and some ill-defined, subjective definition of "quality" if applied to entertainment. Just look at what shallow, voyeuristic crap your general-prupose, mind-wasting TV program mostly consists of today. No imaginable change could make that much worse, in my opinion. But maybe someone can tell me why shows that have been designed with ~100% piracy in mind must under any and all circumstances be worse than those today?
TV and movies are not like music, where the artists make most of their money outside of sales of the music
How very shortsighted. Is this another law written into stone, not subjectable to change? An actor's public image is determined mainly by what role(s) he plays and what he says and does in public outside of movies, and not primarily by how much money his movies make. Of course, if an actor doesn't rake in cash with his movies, he won't play in many movies, but if NO movie makes box office money (assuming ~100% piracy), then the playing field is level again. Just think of how much money is made through merchandise. Of course, merchandising does by far not work for any movie, but as a matter of fact, the most succesful movies in term of box office nowadays are all movies with lots of merchandising potential (Star Wars, Matrix, LotR, Harry Potter, Spiderman, X-Men, etc. etc.). The actor can furthermore capitalize on his/her success in various other areas involving public appearance. Think of something, I'm getting tired of laying it down.
Piracy fails the "what if everyone did it?" test.
Examples like Apple's iTunes' success (and most TV consumers' laziness, btw) show that this scenario will remain what it is today: an industry scarecrow far from reality. There are (or could be) just so many more aspects to a movie or music CD than just retail price. If you can't compete on price alone, get ahead on other aspects. It's really simple, and does not even require a fundamental change of business model. This whole war of *AA vs. The World is nothing but the industry's struggle for a price monopoly irretrievably lost to file sharing. Now it's real competition, not just the pseudo-competition of Sony Music vs. Warner Records or Paramount vs. New Line Cinema.
In conlusion: Don't paint the future so bleak, it's just not going to be as bad as you might think. Don't just take current trends and extrapolate them without boundaries, you will almost certainly overshoot. There are too many economic realities which will persist even in the remote future. To change them, a fundamental economic change would have to happen as well.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
(Not that I don't agree with their service. The MPAA does deserve to go out of business. But claiming innocence about the service's intended usage is pushing it a little bit too far...)
I hate to be cynical, but in my area they heavily traffic the interstate until everyone has a ticket for going 3 MPH over the speed limit. Back alleys aren't as profitable so they're not really a concern. =OP
what happens when all the torrent sites are shut down?
Incidentally, when's the last time YOU won a game of "whack-a-mole" with an infinite number of levels?
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
Well, no, some channel doesn't. I did not buy a single cd in the 15 or so years prior to my discovery of p2p. Not one. Because the music I heard sucked and too many cd's were full of bad songs. 15 bucks for a single song is just too much.
Since p2p, I've been on a music buying spree. I'm finding music I love everywhere, download the entire cd, and then buy it direct from the artist. I like my audio uncompressed and in it's natural state, and most music lovers I know feel the same way. At first I bought from stores, until RIAA sued it's first kid. I immediately began boycotting RIAA affiliated stores and musicians.
The music industry is not losing money on piracy. They're making more than ever. What they *are* losing is the musicians they've been treating as slaves all this time. If they'd treated fans and musicians decently from the start, this would never have been an issue.
So that's the real-world result of 'piracy'. Musicians are actually getting my money for the first time since I was a teenager.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.
Gasp! Are you saying that American law isn't the supreme law of the world? Handed down by god himself to the puritans, so that they might convince the entire world of the immorality of nipples, pot, and sharing?
We have footage of police wandering around, and footage of cameras with plastic bags over them. Why no footage of a policeman putting a bag over a camera? In this country, CCTV cameras are mostly arranged so that if you try to disable one, you'll be caught on camera doing it by another.
I really want a still image of a policeman putting a bag over a camera that I can distribute far and wide.
Xenu loves you!
Unfortunately, the US seems to think that it can still play the superpower game, when in fact its more of a "first among equals" situation.
Remember, 95% of the planet doesn't live in the US, and isn't governed by US law or practices. With the international flow of information, etc, we can cherrypick our virtual location on a case-by-case basis. For example, want to criticize country A? Set up a server in country B. Want to criticize country B? Set up a server in country A.
Corporations have long been doing the "cherry-pick a jurisdiction" for all sorts of things, from labour to legal venue. They're pissed off because now the average Joe can and is taking the same loopholes.
Being relistic (I know, this is slashdot, so realism may be seen as extremely off topic), the whole **AA problem is the result of an industry that was, historically speaking, for most of its existence, a decentralized cottage industry, that for a short time, thanks to advances in technology over the last century, became a big, "manufacturing-type" business, and is now in danger of returning to being decentralized again thanks to further advances in tech, and people's refusal to let themselves be manipulated the way they used to be.
What are they going to do in 20 years when we don't need singers, actors, key grips, cameramen, etc. ... when everything can be simulated by a hobbyist sitting at a keyboard, and when virtual worlds have more grip than a "stupid linear movie"? The answer - they won't do anything - they'll be gone.
TV, movies and music are already losing people to the net, games, etc. This is because there are still only 167 hours in a week, and every hour spent online or playing a game is an hour less to watch TV or see a movie.
On a related note, Nintendo's Wii is probably going to hurt Sony's entertainment business as a whole, as its pitched at the general population, and will drag millions more to spend more time playing rather than watching Sony's library of movie properties. The idea behind blu-ray or an hdtv player in a console is to "tie in" other forms of entertainment. People are going to vote with their wallets.
If Hollywood wants to continue to compete, they're going to have to justify their access to the consumer's most valuable resource - time. So far this year, they haven't - their movies suck to the point where even downloaders don't want to bother, its a waste of bandwidth and disk space and TIME.
Like I said, time is your most precious asset, and what they want. Ask yourself this - will movie theatres even exist 20 years from now, when the average consumer will have a 10-foot wall screen, surround sound and immersive environments where people can meet, party, and play? Or are they going to go the way of the drive-in, bulldozed to make way for housing.