Slashdot Mirror
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?
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
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).
a true pirate starts drinking before the sun hits the yard-arm. yarrrr
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
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.
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
A .torrent isn't copyrighted and linking to copyrighted material isn't either.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
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?'
Contributory infringement has to be direct, not indirect. Pointing someone to a computer that has a chunk of a file is indirect. Giving them that chunk is direct.
The difference is important - otherwise, your electical company, your landlord if you rent/your bank if you have a mortgage, the company that made your computer, the chair you sit your ass in to type, and the boss who pays your salary so yo can afford all the shiny toys, would all be guilty of contributing to infringement, since without them you wouldn't be able to infringe the copyright. Oh, and the government as well, since they regulate the telecom industry and provide the environment that allows you to do all these things.
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.
The devil is in the details. In this case, "most of the western world" would probably disagree quite strongly on a) what constitutes infringement, b) how long works should be protected for and c) what the punishments should be.
For example, I doubt you'd find many people who think downloading a song that gets played ten times a day on free to air radio should be considered infringement. Similarly, you will probably not find a lot of sympathy for media companies claiming to be "suffering" from copyright infringement in the face of ever increasing profits and ever decreasing product quality.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?