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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 soon they crowed victory, so soon will they be humbled. By the looks of things the takedown of the Pirate Bay was less than legal, and now with the 'Bay back online the MPAA must be feeling more than a little upset. Personally I'm of the view that the Pirate Bay was perfectly legal - they didn't carry any copyrighted works themselves, just as Google don't carry the materials they link to. What fun this whole affair will turn out to be...
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Nice to see an illegal copy of Vista is number one...
Looks like the Swedish Police is making a free, wide and very positive campaign to favor the Piracy Party. I bet they will be getting a lot more votes thanks to this weird operation. Thank you Swedish police officers!
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
I can only hope this is causing a huge scandal s Sweden as stated by the article. Can any Swedish readers provides us a synopsis of some of the reports on tv and in the newspaper?
From the IRC channel, it sounds like the new servers are located in the Netherlands with hot backups running in Ukraine. The MPAA just got rocked. If it wasn't so damn early, I'd drink to this news...
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.
..is available at YouTube. For some reason the police covered the cameras with plastic bags halfway through.
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
There will be demonstrations in Sweden's largest cities this afternoon, condeming the actions of the Swedish police and department of justice in this matter. It is being co-organized by the Pirate Party, and the youth organizations of several mainstream parties from across the political spectrum.
In Stockholm it starts at 15:00 on Mynttorget (right by parlament). That is in 15 minutes so hurry!
In Gothenburg a demonstration will start at 16:30 on Gustav Adolfs Torg.
..cops does it take to change a light bulb?
50. One to do it and 49 to confiscate every other light bulb in the house as evidence.
Representatives from two major political parties in Sweden, Folkpartiet and Vänsterpartiet have filed formal complaints against the Minister of Justice and members of his staff.
This has increased the general publics awareness of The Pirate Bay and probably increased the number of p2p users.
A very nice shot in the foot for the Swedish Justice Dept., the police and our very "customer friendly" **AA organisations.
# ~: no sigs today
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
Judging from a traceroute, the servers seem now to be hosted in The Netherlands.
I'm a bit surprised, when the admins of TPB said in Swedish media that they will relocate abroad, I actually thought that they would move outside the EU.
Let's see how the Dutch officials will react to this; how long TPB will stay up before they try to take it down again.
In Chaosradio International #009 one of the maintainers of TPB called "Peter" mentions traffic data and server capability of TPB and also comments on the Pirate Bay induced traffic on the Swedish part of the internet. According to Peter, each of the Pirate Bay high end servers handles about 20000 connections per second. This kind of packet flow once brought the main router of one of the biggest Swedish internet service providers to its knees. The traffic volume to and from the Pirate Bay actually isn't very high, just a couple of gigabits per second. The induced traffic between the peers allegedly reaches 50% of the total Swedish internet traffic. Swedes can get 1Gbps connections to their homes and don't have to pay an arm and a leg for it. 100Mbps is quite common.
The interview also covers the political environment and the internet culture of Sweden, and of course the raid.
Feele-a shereeng seete-a Zee Purete-a Bey, vheech ves clused doon fullooeeng Vednesdey's reeed by zee Svedeesh puleece-a, oopened egeeen oon Setoordey murneeng under a deefffferent neme-a: Zee Puleece-a Bey.
Zee seete's perffurmunce-a ves steell petchy et loonchteeme-a oon Setoordey, despeete-a beeeng roon frum noo serfers in Hullund effter ell zee Svedeesh iqooeepment ves cunffeesceted. Bork! Bork!
Zee reeed, vheech ves cerreeed oooot et husteeng cumpuneees in Stuckhulm, Fästmunlund und Fästra Götelund tergeted oone-a ooff zee vurld's lergest seetes fur shereeng mooseec, gemes und cumpooter prugremmes.
It ves prumpted by a cumpleeent tu puleece-a frum Unteepuretbyrån, vheech represents zee Svedeesh feelm und mooseec indoostreees' cupyreeght interests. Bork! Bork! Bork!
Un infesteegeshun egeeenst Zee Purete-a Bey hes beee oongueeng fur munths. "Ve-a beleeefe-a thet ve-a veell be-a fuoond nut gooeelty," seeed Fredreek Neeej, oone-a ooff thuse-a roonneeng Zee Purete-a Bey, tu Ixpressee. "Ve-a ere-a gueeng tu cunteenooe-a unteel zee ferdeect cumes. A-yup!"
The changed the old logo adding cannonballs shooting from the pirate ship smashing a hollywood sign. Way to go my proud swedish brothers. I admire your balls! (ehm.. well you get it).
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.
Well, for the record, 2006_05_31.pdf.
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.
But do we feel safe that we used pirate bay? It's not insane to think that the police will follow up IPs of DLing torrents and use this as "reasonable" evidence to investigate further in other countries (USA for example), then take this as far as to taking down trackers or even tracking down single IPs and sueing/arresting people.
I like muppets.
I was fully expecting anti-terror units in all black combat suits, with shotguns pointing, flashbangs going off and stuff. But nooo. Also no ninjas cutting peoples' heads off, RoboCops or a horde of battle monkeys. All very boring scenery.
/. frontpage story as soon as the Pirate Bay has a torrent of the raid video online.
By the way, PLEASE make a
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
the clumsiness with which the swedish police went about gutting an entire isp when they only wanted one server
nor was i talking about the corporate interest-coddling legal procedures of the usa where one powerful private complaint might lead to a shut down
i have no problem with thinking the the dutch way of going about shutting down a server might superior to both models
what i am getting at is the weakness that you only need to shut down one server AT ALL, no matter how difficult or easy that is to do
i am saying that all these trigger happy tactics do is breed a headless system where there is no single point of failure
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why not use the MPAA's bandwith?
http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_05_31.pdf
Mininova, Demonoid and a bunch of other huge sites are located in NL and the RIAA/MPAA cabal has been trying for ages to take them down. It just hasn't worked. The Pirate Bay will reopen its servers in Sweden as soon as the equipment is returned post-investigation. Judging from the public outcry against the long arm of the **IAs, it shouldn't be too long before The Pirate Bay has servers in three different countries.
Leaving aside the legality of the police actions, which sound dubious under Swedish law from everything I've read...
I think a lot of people here aren't looking at the bigger picture. Whether you like it or not, the vast majority of the international community in the western world does agree on some basic legal principles:
Now, Sweden may choose to disagree, and within its own borders, that's its prerogative. The problem is that in this case, the damage is not contained within its own borders. By dissenting from the general concensus, Sweden is providing a safe haven that allows people to break the law in other countries with apparently impunity.
You can't really expect the rest of the world to stand by and let this happen. If Sweden doesn't play ball, at least to some reasonable extent, then it's likely to face serious consequences on the international stage. Do you really want to see Sweden facing formal reprimands and trade sanctions in five years?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
A .torrent isn't copyrighted and linking to copyrighted material isn't either.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
1) TPB sucks, because they're just leechers making money off of other people's copyrighted work, all the while disengenuously crowing about "freedom".
2) The MPAA sucks, because of their tactics
3) Sweden sucks because they allowed themselves to be a tool of the USA
4) The USA sucks, because of their overreaction to file sharing, and being a tool of the MPAA.
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.
*sigh*
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Software pirates don't have guns.
This wouldn't have happened if those network admins were armed.
paintball
"The MPAA has a multi-pronged approach to fighting Internet piracy, which include educating people about the consequences of piracy" Is this going to be the old-school 'piracy == terrorism' line? I hope not; I'm look for a more SouthPark style: 'Here's X's private jet, notice anything? X used to have a Gulfstream 4, but now she's had to sell it and get a Gulfstream 3 because people like you used to download her music for free. The Gulfstream 3 doesn't even have a remote control for its surround sound DVD system. Still think downloading music for free is no big deal?'
honeypot
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Piratbyrån is a different organization (lobbying org.), albeit with similar goals.
Where do you draw the line?
The torrent file is just a hash tree.
So with your argumentation, MD5s would be illegal, too, right? (same thing)
What about CRC32. Is that not-illegal enough for you?
Hint: there is a difference between an summary of a work and a hash. That is that the summary is a work in itself thats derived on the original work, while the hash is just a data structure.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
That's interesting, they compare the popularity of thepiratebay.org (21st in Sweden by Alexa), with CNN.com (125th in Sweden, Alexa). Color me surprised: a swedish site is more popular in sweden than an american site.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
A torrent file is basically an "assembly instruction manual" for data file(s). Just as it's not illegal to distribute instructions for building a bomb or a gun, it is also not illegal to distribute instructions on how to create a data file. Actually building (or using) a bomb might or might not be illegal, but merely delivering the instructions on how to build it is definitely not illegal (at least in the U.S., so far). Just so with torrents: hosting the torrent files, distributing them, downloading them, that's all legal. Actually using the torrent file to "build" the data file(s) it represents is what is illegal, if the file(s) being (re)built are copyrighted.
If you want to start a website that does nothing but provide instructions on how to build bombs, you can do it. Even if every single person who downloads those instructions uses them to build a bomb and tries to blow up a packed church on Sunday.
well it was online... till we slashdotted it.
believing the big bang requires a certain amount of supernatural faith
Nice feral apostrophe, by the way. Haven't seen one of those for a while.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Quickly, citizens!
The Pirates have gone global this time. They can change their port with the tidal waves of mind crimes and its nefarious actions.
It's not time to save on resources. The criminals can move between countries in a matter of days.
We need the help of a new super-hero spotted in Canada previous week! Only him can track down the Pirates and sunk their ship of infringments around the Earth.
Support the fantasy! Don't let our dreams die!
Captain Copyright, our prays are with you. Save us from the Pirates!
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Swedish police has more leeway in Sweden then in the US because we don't have any institution to audit them. In american police (at least judging from police movies, correct me if I am wrong) it is considered improper for somebody to investigate themselves and therefore there are special police units that investigates on the actions of policemen. Here in Sweden it is the same polices doing internal investigation as all other investigation.
Also when it comes to courts. In the US you have a right to be judged by your peers (in theory, atleast). In Sweden you have the right to be judged by your politicians - remember, those same people who apparently ordered the bust (which they had no right to do, as so many others have pointed out).
The Swedish legal system is a catch 22 when it comes to govermental responsibility. The police carries out the orders from the politicians, the police investigates itself if anyone complains that their actions were illegal and if that investigation shows something was not right the politicians get to judge whether it was right or not of the police to carry out their orders.
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.
Pictures from the piracy demonstration
Piratdemo1.jpg
Piratdemo2.jpg
Piratdemo3.jpg
Piratdemo4.jpg
Piratdemo5.jpg
Piratdemo6.jpg
http://tpbeng.blogspot.com/
look for "The Pirate Bay to be spread over six countries":
24 and Lost won't exist? YES! YES! YESSSS!
*Starts pirating in earnest*
...that someone had set up a powerful magnet system in the door to the servers so that if they were removed, the drives were turned to soup. Someone here is bound to know if such a thing would work, would do any good, or is even possible. I was just curious.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
"Just because a lot of people do it doesn't make it legal, moral or right." When TPB went down in Sweden the traffic/internetload lessoned by 20%. TPB has 1.3 million (9 million citizens in sweden and one million of them are using torrents according to various reports) users daily. We are not thieves because the system says so, the system is wrong because WE say so! The people creates the system not the other way around. For a very interesting read: http://copyriot.blogspot.com/ (Quite long, but very fascinating)
"Just because a lot of people do it doesn't make it legal, moral or right."
Ummm... try telling that to any other group that has been harrassed by stupid laws. Why don't you start with homosexuals? 55's the limit.
You must've been The Little Lemming That Could. Standing at the edge of the precipice while your friends were getting laid.
Pull my finger for my public key.
1.) Go to a store and watch the movie/listen to the CD."
.SE, else they (MPAA, RIAA, White House, WIPO) will consider it a win.
What about movies that are currently in the theatre and I want to know if it's worth paying the 25+ bucks to see it on the big screen (I always go with my roomate and girlfriend). I see movies all the time at movie theaters, or more aptly, theatre.
"2.) Go to a friend's house and do the same thing."
Ummm no. I have the amenities want at my house. Nor do I have many friends, as I'm a recent implant of Austin.
"3.) Double-click a stream on the internet. Get a sample from iTunes, for example."
30 secs in the middle of the song, chosen out of the best 30 secs mind you, does not a good representation make. Especially for any song over 2 minutes. I have a favorite band, they have music on iTunes. I listened to the previews, they were good so I decided to buy the CD. The CD sucked, and I couldn't get my money back.
"4.) Listen to the radio (yes, SOME channel out there plays what you like)."
Broadcast Radio does not play the songs I like. Now if your talking internet radio it normally takes (even the big guns in my genre) 4-6 weeks for them to get it in the stream, and I can only listen to internet radio streams a) when I'm online, b) when I'm not doing something else online, c) when I feel like it. Kinda hard to stream an mp3 stream to my car (I know I could pay upwards of $60+/month for a highspeed cell connection, but up yours if you expect me to do that.
"5.) Rent the item before buying it."
Tell me a place where you can rent a PC video game, an obscure industrial audio CD, or even a buy either one of them and return for my money back when I don't like it, I'll love you forever.
"With all those options available, pirating seems less and less of a legitimate option."
Actually it is looking like a more viable option.
"Who's pirating? A lot of people. What are they pirating? A lot of stuff."
Say the numbers on Slyck are correct and we'll add in another 10 million on BitTorrent/Other networks. This gives us 17.5 million people pirating. 17.5 million is alot. But that is what 5% of the total population of the US. The numbers, even at 100 million pirates, are satistically nil when dealing with the populations of the planet (potential 6.5 billion). Sure that's alot of people... you're right.
"Just because a lot of people do it doesn't make it legal, moral or right.
If a majority do it and put thier will to their representatives it _CAN_ be legal, morality is based on ethics which changes over time, and there is no such thing as "right".
As for the story, I think that TPB needs to get servers going BACK IN
-jijin
Used books is similar to duping data?
Not at all. Only one person has the book at one time. Not so with bittorrenting.
As to 24 and such TV shows, there are more and more people stealing these shows daily. Those people are unlikely to watch it first run, they are viewing it off the internet, with no ads.
That's lost revenue.
As to whether the companies could be smarter, that's not for you to decide. Why not walk into the GM headquarters and explain "you're not selling your stuff in the right way, I'm gonna start stealing cars off your assembly lines and selling them the ways I see fit".
See how that goes over.
This is a ridiculous reverse justification for theft.
If you don't think the company is doing a good job, then don't patronize them. But don't steal their stuff either. Just like you would with an object you cannot copy, like a car.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The problem is, you're wrong with your bottom line:
The bottom line is this: copyright infringement DOES cause serious problems. It causes money not to go to shows/movies/etc. It causes creative ventures to be cancelled. It causes people to lose jobs (not just the stars who have money -- people like the crew that have little).
It's actually the copyright in the first place that causes the problems. It creates an unnecessary cartel of employment and jobs that hurts the rest of society. Art used to be about performance before the copyright cartel, and most of the works of art that people consider great were created under that system, not under the copyright system. Many of us believe, with well developed reasons, that the world would be better off without any copyright.
Yes, some jobs will be impacted. Jobs that needn't have existed in the first place, and that are essentially leeches upon the rest of us, like most lawyers.
Other jobs will be created, and in the balance, all of us will be better off.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I am supporting them as an effective pressure group to bring copyright law back in line with the desires of the people. Personally, as a commie, I'd rather see copyright being abolished outright, but for something more realistic, the Pirate Party programme (5-year copyright term, noncommercial copying unrestricted) sounds just about right to me.
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.
Biologically, we're born competitive. What copyright does is ensures the best, most creative minds actually get rewarded.
Er, no. What copyright does is shift the market from one where people get paid based on their talent and effort ("if you give me X dollars, I'll write or perform a song for you") to one where they get paid based on making copies ("if you want this information, you have to pay me for a disc containing it"). It infringes on the majority's freedom of speech ("sorry, you can't transmit that information without permission") just so a minority can treat their artistic talent as something that can be wrapped up in chunks and sold in jewel cases, rather than a skill that they actually apply in practice.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
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?
ThePirateBay Releases Version 2.0
June 2, 2005
Ummm Last I check it's 2006..
Oh yea then there's also this.
I never said I never broke copyright law. But I don't kid myself about it when I do it. Sometimes I'm doing it for the right reasons, sometimes I'm not. But I don't lie to myself about it.
You made the argument about being similar to used bookstores to bolster your argument. It is useless as an argument, because of the reasons I point out. If used bookstores duplicated books and sold them, then it'd be a useful argument, they would indeed be similar.
Your hypothetical situation does indeed arise. I know people who have gotten back episodes that way and then began to watch the show. However, regardless of whether it helps the company or not, it's illegal, it's stealing their content. If the company is smart enough to allow you to view back episodes to get caught up, that's great. If the company doesn't do it, it isn't up to you to change their business model.
It is their right to hold on to their stuff so tight that they lose gobs of money. You don't get to remold their goals because you think you know better, even when actually you do know better.
Again, just like a non-duplicatable object, if you don't like how they sell it, you are free not to buy it. You aren't free to rip it off.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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!