Slashdot Mirror
Pirate Bay to Purchase Sealand?
paulraps writes "Notorious Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is planning to buy its own nation in an attempt to get around troublesome international copyright laws. The organization, the world's largest bit torrent tracker, has set its sights on Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea that has been designated a 'micronation' and claims to be outside UK jurisdiction. With a target price of £500m it won't be cheap, but Pirate Bay says contributors will become honorary citizens."
At that price surely it would be cheaper to build your own platform and if they truly are pirates it would be much cheaper to buy a pirate ship and take it by force.
As long as **aa talks, terrorist have won.
there is no issue with my network
Safer using a fraction of that amount to spread the site across the nordic countries + netherlands or some eastern european country.
1) I bet some data centers are bigger than Sealand.
2) Easier to cut Sealand off from the rest of the internet.
Dude, forget the whole bittorrent part, I'd donate just so I can get citizenship. That'd be a sweet novelty item, a Sealand Passport! Just as long as they don't have laws against dual citizenship that is ;)
With that price, couldn't they do something better with the money?
For that amount of cash they could probably launch a satellite. Now that's an idea -- how about trackers in the sky people can connect to by pointing an antenna to it? Since you'd have to aim at the satellite, it'd be very unlikely that somebody could snoop on the communication, and the precise location of the users could be unknown.
At least, unlike with Sealand, anybody with the right equipment could connect to it, without having to rely on other countries not cutting the connection to it.
That would be a waste of money. As much as I support piratebay, they are much more secure within Sweden than they ever will be at Sealand.
First, Sealand is not a real country, it is a part of Britain. The fact that some people who are good at manipulating media claims otherwise, doesn't make it so.
Secondly, even if Sealand was a real country, it's not a country any other country needs to maintain relations with. If they find out that they dislike you, they will be perfectly happy to shut down your Internet connection. That the server remains out of their reach is not important. More important is the fact that unless you agree to be e.g. British, you will not have the protection of e.g. British law against service providers who decide to shut you down.
Finally, it's a waste of money. If you really believe Sealand is a country, and that owning it will somehow help you avoiding legalities when hosting torrents, then you should just do the same as the current owner did: occupy it. At this time, there is only one person on Sealand (a security guard). I'm sure the cost of renting a small ship or a helicopter and sufficient crews to fight him will be well below the prize the current "owners" ask for.
- Claim it, and back up the claim with a strong enough economy or military that the international community decides that it's in their best interests to play along.
- Get a strong nation to recognise your claim, and put pressure on other nations to do the same.
Sealand failed the first one; they have no military, and almost no economy, and they haven't tried the second.Being a citizen of somewhere like Vatican City, which is internationally recognised, might be useful. Being a citizen of Sealand isn't; even if they did issue you a passport (the current administration doesn't), you can't use it anywhere. Similarly, infringing UK law on Sealand isn't a good idea. When Sealand caught fire last year, they called out the British fire brigade. I suspect the police have at least as long a reach, and the claim that you are not guilty because you committed the crimes in a nation that is not recognised by the UK government would not hold up in a British court any more than declaring your house to be its own jurisdiction would.
A better bet might be Luxembourg. According to the CIA factbook, the population is just under half a million. The number of registered Slashdot users is about a million. Unlike Sealand, Luxembourg is already recognised as a nation. Monaco, with only 32K people might be an even better bet. Failing that, I suspect that there are a number of third-world countries that would sell a segment of themselves and recognise its independent status in exchange for a few million dollars...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The only problem I see right now is that right now the Pirate Bay is operating inside a real country. If they move to sealand, what's to stop the MPAA/RIAA from buying an old Russian Bomber / Diesel Sub / whatever and just destroying the whole platform? Or hiring someone to plant C-4 on the base of hte structure and blowing it up? Further, Sealand only exists because the British have decided it's more trouble than it's worth to just invade it. What if the Brits get pressured into eliminating this grave threat to the international recording industry?
One thing any island nation that is not self sufficient needs to remember is that a blockade can strangle them without a shot being fired. In Sealand's case, all it would take is to cutoff their internet connection to the outside world and their data center is down. If it is a hardwired line the terminating point can kill it; if it is satellite the satellite company can no doubt be pressured into dropping them.
If they really piss people off step two is cutting all sea and air traffic; plus countries could issue arrest warrants for the owners and wait until they left and simply grab them once they are within reach - who wants to spend their entire life on a floating platform simply to pirate movies and songs?
Finally, if they raised the money they'd have the clout to negotiate licenses with many, if not all of the copyright holders - or simply buy whole catalogs. If they could pull off enough donations they'd have people begging to partner with them. then again, your MPAA/RIAA diesel boat scenario is more probable then them raising the cash.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
As pointed out in the previous Sealand article, you have to connect to someone. So you get your fiber run out to.... who? England? France? India? Look what the Russians are doing with their oil.
Pirate Bay would get cut off in a heart beat.
Cutting some cables might not fix the problem, though, since there are other options (satellite communications; connecting through a proxy, say a ship in international waters; etc.). So, if this went through, most likely the young nation would quickly be 'liberated'.
(But we all know it won't succeed, it's just a publicity stunt by TPB, and an amusing one at that; they do know their PR, those people)
They don't steal anything, copyright infringement isn't theft. You been listening to too much **AA babble.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Better yet, with that kind of money you can start PACs (Political Action Committees) all over the place and buy off, oops, I mean influence politicians until the laws are all in your favor or at least more neutral.
Also, with that kind of money, I'm sure you can buy an small island in a nice warm place and have the country who currently owns that small island recognize it as a sovereign country (a nice fat contribution to "ME fun" of the President/leader would secure that deal and take out the sting of losing a worthless chunk of land).
The problem with Sealand is that England can take it over anytime, it's sovereignty is recognized by no one country except by the owners. Buying it is a scam. You get nothing. And if worse comes to worse (in terms of laws), Piratebay will have to host servers in their country, who says England and the neighboring countries won't just cut the connection?
This idea is beyond stupid. Stick with the Pirate Party - the name is great with this generation. Get buzz on college campuses, go on the Daily Show and Colbert Report (am waiting to see if the parent companies would permit this, as well as Jon himself), and profit!
One little problem...
The country where you put your embassy has to recognize you as a nation
They don't steal anything, copyright infringement isn't theft. You been listening to too much **AA babble.
Sure it is. Steal: 2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
You can agree or disagree with the concept or the severity of the crime, but at least have the balls to call it what it is.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
500 million pounds? That won't pay for many legal copies of anything... wasn't the RIAA charging 175,000 dollars per copyrighted song? Better to buy Sealand... As for not being able to make a living... I see Metallica is doing just fine, despite all those songs of theirs being available for free off P2P networks. I won't say piracy is stealing... but piracy doesn't mean people would have bought it otherwise. So, no sale or ... no sale. How does that affect your ability to make a living?
Julie Moult is an idiot.
The OP used the word "steal" not "theft".
If I say a baseball player stole second base, and some Slashdot troll says "no he didn't, running from first base to second base isn't illegal under local larceny statutes", you'd pop in to defend him, wouldn't you?
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I don't know about you, but when somebody distributes something, which I worked hard to produce and sell, freely onto the Internet, I get really upset.
I'm sure you do. So would I. It is also illegal in most places, and ethically wring in the opinion of many. That still doesn't make it theft. Theft is a specific crime, and doesn't cover everything else that is wrong any more than "murder" or "speeding" does.
sudo ergo sum
"I will make this song, pay money to record it, pay money to make a disc out of my recording, pay money to distribute it, but as I will have X thousands people listening to my song, I will sell X thousand discs and be able to pay my fees and have a living." was a valid thinking but is not anymore. I would not call it stupidity because changing old thinking habits is a feat few people achieve but now this is it :
Stop thinking you can force someone to buy a physical support for information (this is hard for a lot of people)
Stop thinking you can get money for transmission of information (this is hard for most people I know)
The only solution I see is that people should be able to be paid at the production step, not at the distribution step.
Also I am getting tired of the "respect my artist lifestyle, I expect to get money when I distribute music" tirade because it is not an argument, I could easily tell "respect my computer scientist lifestyle, I expect to be able to share, upload and download informations without constraints" that is true and that is not an argument either.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
> It's not like Sealand will have "weapons of mass destruction"
No, they will accuse it of trafficking in kiddie porn.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Is it something you can buy? Did you get it for free, without approval of the people selling it, and not as a gift? Then it's stealing. Quite frankly, it's really appalling how all the pirates out there assume that what they do doesn't affect other people. I admit, I hate the RIAA and MPAA as much as any of you all, but I'm also a musician and I believe that it's blatant disrespect for what I do when people download songs.
"I don't really care if they label me a Jesus Freak / There aint no disguising the truth!" - DC Talk
Did you actually remove anything from the "theft victim"? Nope. That's a key part of theft that isn't met with copyright infringement. You are not depriving the owner of the thing you are taking, hence it is not a theft. Just at taking a picture of your house isn't stealing your house.
Most. perhaps only many, people who copy electronic media would not have purchased the item anyway, at lest that's the claim. I tend to think it true. In the day's of dial-up modems at 1200 baud, there was piracy. There were also music and movies on physical media.
Today we have broadband internet and digital music which allows almost instant copying over the Internet. Are music, video and software sales up or down over the last 10 years?
Yup. And by more than simply the growth rate of computers.
On a related tangent... software developers: please stop calling your demo software "shareware". If you put out crippled software and require payment to unlock it (time or feature restrictions), then that is a DEMO. Shareware is when you put out a full version of software and ask people to pay you voluntarily. Freeware is fully functional software with no payment strings attached at all.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Going into Home Depot and putting a screwdriver in your bag and leaving is stealing. A screwdriver was manufactured. Materials and labor went into the process, ones that are no longer available after the product is purchased. You can't endlessly copy a single screwdriver at no cost.
/. mmmk?
On the other hand, you can copy music again and again and again, just like software, at no cost. Monetarily, that means if I copy my friend's CD, or grab it off of the net, the loss you incur because of that is zero. You don't profit off of it. But you don't lose anything either. Unlike if I steal a screwdriver, which costs money to be manufactured again.
And that, succinctly, is the reason why it's called copyright infringement, rather than stealing. Both are against the law, but the word stealing is more emotionally charged, so the *AA are pushing it. Just like they call musicians "artists." And then stab them in the back. If you're so pissed about people stealing from you, you should first examine them. As "fraud" and "predatory tactics" are closer to "stealing" than "copyright infringement." That or examine your navel and stop posting to
"Build a man a fire warm him for a day, set a man on fire and warm him for the rest of his life."
You've bought it, which I (and most people) believe means you should be allowed to use it in that way, and laws in many places in the world also grant you that right (which DRM takes away). The purchase makes all the difference, despite what anyone (eg, RIAA) would try have you believe. It's called copyright, and the right are given to all parties. They have the right to share it only with people who pay for it, if that's what they wish, and people who purchase it have the right to use their purchase however they wish, as long as it doesn't inflict on the creators previously mentioned rights (ie, distribute to people who haven't paid the creator for it).
"Copyright infringment" takes the rights away from the creator, and DRM takes the rights away from the user. They are both theft, because they take away rights that the creator/user (respectively) is entitled to. It's not copying their rights. It's taking them.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Yeah it's actually quite scary, from reading slashdot you'd be forgiven for thinking that the whole world is black-and-black (Linus says slashdot sees things in black and white, I'd go one step further)... when you get out there, you'll find there's white and everything inbetween.
I don't think that just because the court calls it "copyright infringement" means that it isn't stealing. You're taking ("displacing", "moving") something without permission, you're depriving someone of their right to control their creation, at least, and sometimes even their income. I really don't understand how people on here can think that's not stealing. And to say that people who DO think it's stealing are brainwashed by the RIAA/MPAA is absolutely absurd; most people here in England have never even heard of them, their kind of organisations aren't anywhere near as visible over here as there, and even AS YOUNG KIDS I remember hearing claims of "you stole my idea!!". Thus is the beauty and flexibility of our language, something that cannot exist within the legal system (which has to be an unambigious as possible), something slashdot (with some exceptions, I guess such as yourself) seems totally ignorant of.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
No, but they have the right to control their creation, which includes, if they wish, only sharing it with people who pay them for it. And so, if you refuse to pay for the use of their creation, you are taking away their control of it, which means you are depriving them of their legally granted right.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Rubbish. You are arguably/potentially depriving someone of their rightful income - since we do not and can never know whether <any/some/most/all> of the people who pirated the <software/music/movie/etc> would have bought it if pirate channels did not exist.
You can dismiss that admittedly subtle distinction as "mumbojumbo" or "newspeak" as well if you like. No skin off my nose; those of us who realise that the real world IS full of subtle distinctions can continue to have an appropriate nuanced debate, you can carry on boiling things down to oversimplified soundbites that sound better when chanted by a lynch mob ;-)
GP post is absolutely correct. The two things (theft of physical objects vs copyright infringement of non-physical content) are very different; they may very well both be wrong, but if so they are wrong in different ways, and a proper adult discussion on the subject will necessarily make this distinction and treat them accordingly.
FWIW, I'm heavily involved in music of many forms. I've sold my music via record labels; I've also sold stuff without labels, selling direct from artist to fans; I've produced music on commission. I've given away music as a form of promotion in order to earn money from live gigs; I've done live gigs for free in order to earn money from CD sales. I'm confident I've done most any permutation of "create content" and "make money" you can care to name.
As opposed to the people who immediately sidetrack, at the first possible opportunity, to the overcomplicating and oversoftening semantic argument of whether or not copyright infringement is "theft", completely distracting everyone from the more important question of whether it's "wrong" or "harmful".
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
If you don't want your idea to get out, don't tell anyone about it. Otherwise, work for your money and put on a performance for people.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Parent: "Copyright infringement and theft are not the same thing."
You: "Quite frankly, it's really appalling how all the pirates out there assume that what they do doesn't affect other people."
Would you like to address the actual point, or do you enjoy flogging straw men too much to bother?
You: "I believe that it's blatant disrespect for what I do when people download songs."
I believe it's blatant disrespect for truth and accuracy when people twist language to pretend that two totally different things are the same. Yes, copyright infringement is illegal and immoral; no, it's not stealing. (For example, theft is always a criminal offence, while copyright infringement is usually a civil offence. BIG difference.)
If you find "copyright infringement" too much of a mouthful and want to use a short snappy word with emotional connotations, please just stick to "piracy", which has been being used to mean "copyright infringement" for hundreds of years.
By the way, I would also appreciate it if you did not conflate "download" with "download illegally". If I download a free song, I am not disrespecting musicians. If I download a song I have bought from the ITMS, I am not disrespecting musicians. Yet you have just said that I am, which is utterly nonsensical.
Why do people even argue about whether or not it is OK to call "copyright infringement" "stealing"? Just call it the globally acceptable phrase "copyright infringement" and save us all the huge argument already!
Thanks!
(Something tells me that my calm and reason is not on this occasion going to be enough to single-handedly stop the flame-war...)
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I'm not sure about other states, but where I grew up (Maine), theft of services is a crime, even though the victim didn't lose any physical property. I worked at an amusement park when I was in school, and anyone who came into the park or went on rides without paying to do so could be arrested for theft of services. Obviously there are differences between sneaking into an amusement park (or movie theater, etc.) and downloading a song, but the whole "they still have their property, so it isn't theft" argument is not necessarily correct.