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Pirate Bay Raid Investigation Finished

A Pirate writes "The Swedish Ombudsmen of Justice (JO) has finished the investigation of the Pirate Bay raid where close to 200 servers were confiscated. Just a fragment of these were actually Pirate Bay's and this led to both the police and prosecutor being charged with official misconduct, but the judges dropped the cases. In the report published by the JO he concludes that the judges were right, but there is also some very interesting information about how the MPA, IFPI and the American embassy tried to push the Swedish Minister of Justice and Secretary of State into influencing the police and the prosecutor to act upon The Pirate Bay."

24 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hey Swödige ! Act up !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    The Office of JO is officially non-political, but thanks for trying to play. Any more ignorance about the world around you feel like sharing?

  2. Re:Hey Swödige ! Act up !! by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Office of JO is officially non-political

    And here in America, the government is officially by, of and for the people.

    Any other spectacularly ignorant insights you want to share with us?

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Police and prosecutor should be prosecuted. by apathy+maybe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "[P]olice and prosecutor being charged with official misconduct, but the judges dropped the cases"

    And this is why the police and prosecutor will continue to break the law. This happens everywhere, unless the police are required to actually obey the law, there is no incentive to. Even when they are punished, it generally amounts to a slap on the wrist.

    The police can and will arrest people who have done nothing wrong (I and a number of others at a protest during the Forbes conference in Sydney in 2005 for example, all the charges were either dropped or thrown out of court, except those people who pleaded guilty).

    It isn't just illegal raids or arrests either. In Queensland an Aboriginal man was killed while in police custody. It was latter shown that he shouldn't have even been arrested, and that he was beaten to death. The police officer responsible continues in his duties (though he has been transferred from Palm Island). Actually, apparently he has now been charged, with manslaughter, after a former NSW chief judge examined the evidence.
    (See this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Island,_Queensla nd#2004_death_in_custody_controversy_and_riot or do a search.)

    So, it is obvious that the police need to be held accountable for their actions. While it is possible in most places to sue them (in the civil court), and this is what the various owners and users of these seized servers should do, the judge often finds that the police "were just doing their duty". No they fucking weren't! They were going beyond their duty.

    --
    I wank in the shower.
    1. Re:Police and prosecutor should be prosecuted. by CastrTroy · · Score: 1, Insightful

      . In Queensland an Aboriginal man was killed while in police custody. It was latter shown that he shouldn't have even been arrested, and that he was beaten to death.
      That doesn't surprise me considering that Aboriginals where considered part of the "flora and fauna" until 1967.
      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  4. Re:Good. by zappepcs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't want to seem like I think you are ignorant, but could you please point out, in great and precise detail, how TPB has *ACTUALLY* deprived an artist, or group of artists (name them all) of money they would have received if TPB did not exist, and exactly how much money that would be?

    Your comment is as much crying wolf as that of any RIAA lawyer.

  5. Looks like the man won by mochan_s · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow, this sounds like hassling that has worked against TPB.

    You host TPB servers. We will just randomly take the servers to the police station and shut down your business for weeks. And, you can't touch us with misconduct charges or anything.

  6. Re:Good. by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd be assembling a team of rabid attack lawyers, and training them to go for the wallet.

    You don't need to train lawyers to go for the wallet, that's the instinct that makes them lawyers in the first place.

    --
    Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  7. Re:Good. by Oxygenswe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    trying to sue the Swedish government will only be a long meaningless process which generally results in you paying them a lot of money

  8. Re:Good. by mungtor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So what you're saying is that if only one person will stand up and say "Yes, I would have purchased product XYZ but I downloaded it instead" you'll admit that piracy actually does cause monetary damage to the original creators of the content? I'm pretty sure there are a few people who would admit that they took the cheaper option.

    In a lot of TPB cases we're not talking about $0.99 per song either, but about somebody who would rather not pay $700 for Photoshop. Maybe Adobe wouldn't have gotten the money, but it's very possible that MacroMedia (bought JASC) is out the $150 they get for Paintshop as an alternative. So even though there is no monetary damage to Adobe, somebody else also loses a sale.

  9. Re:Good. by AusIV · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So if a company suffered financial damage because a careless raid took down their website, they have no recourse? Perhaps America's not so bad after all.

  10. Re:If the 10 Commandments were a "Living Document" by Billosaur · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Constitution of the United States is a "living" document. However, that said, the amount of life in it is only equal to the interest of the People of the United States in maintaining and safeguarding it. The Federal Government's task is to interpret the will of the people and create consensus (not just majority rule), the modify the document accordingly. This has been done in the past to rectify the injustice of slavery, provide women their given right to vote, and even to limit the power of the President of the United States by limiting the number of terms possible to serve in the office to two.

    If there's a problem with a "living" document, it's that it has been alive so long, that provisions contained within it have outlived their original intent and have not "evolved" to stay current with the progress of society. I think it's safe to say this is true of a great many non-Constitutional laws as well. I think a new breath of life needs to be applied to the Constitution if it is to continue to server the people in this century and those to come.

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
  11. There is a difference between... by MyNameIsFred · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In my mind, there is a significant difference between the US government meddling in a country's political processes, and some religious group taking someone to court. You should not equate the US population, its government, US corporations, various religious institutions, and other organizations under one banner of "US meddling." Its not like there is one master brain that controls all of those groups and people.

  12. Re:I disagree with the tactics. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Does anyone still think the world would stop revolving if the MPAA decided not to make anymore movies? If every RIAA artist stopped releasing new music?

    Sure, there would be a period of adjustment.

    Then we'd all go on with our lives.

  13. Hollywood vs. Sealand by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 3, Insightful

    PB can buy all the Sealands they want; Hollywood and the rest will just sue the ISPs for providing the bandwidth.

    Given their budgets they could also hire some mercenaries and mount an attack on Sealand themselves.

    If they filmed it they might make a profit on it, too.

    Copyright (c) 2007 by me writing as "Ungrounded Lightning Rod".

    Leave a followup to any posting in my journal with a firm offer if you want to do the movie. Otherwise I may sue for copyright infringement if such an attack is made, filmed, and the film shown for profit - even on a news operation under the same umbrella corporation. B-)

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  14. Re:Living Document? Please no sir. by Billosaur · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What the Constitution says should be the law, not what people say it says.

    The problem with that is, just whose definitions do you use? The Constitution, like any written document, is subject to interpretation simply because while individual words have a limited range of meaning, their many and varied combinations can be interpreted along a wide spectrum. That's why we have a court system: to try and create a reasonable definition of a law in any given circumstance. Two opposing sides in an argument will generally insist on an interpretation biased toward their definitions. It's up to the court system to try and create consensus, and where not possible or practicable, to enforce a definition based on the court's definitions. And so then you have appeals, as people disagree with the court's definitions, all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, which is the final arbiter in most legal cases.

    The same problem exists with the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not kill. Seems straightforward. But thou shalt not kill what? Men? Women? Dogs? Cat? Ameobas? Fetuses? You can take a simple 4-word phrase and interpret it in myriad ways, all because of what it doesn't say as much as what it does say.

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
  15. Re:Good. by packeteer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a legal *OWNER* of PaintShopPro 7,

    You dont own PaintShopPro 7, you license it. This is a key distinction that many people forget.

    --
    unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
  16. Re:Good. by Zephyros · · Score: 2, Insightful

    +1 Funny doesn't add to karma, so people who want to give a little boost might mod +1 Insightful (Funsightful!) or Interesting...

  17. Re:Good. by dbc001 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I just bought an iPod. By your logic, maybe Creative wouldn't have gotten the money, but it's very possible that Microsoft is out the $300 they get for a Zune as an alternative. So even though there is no monetary damage to Creative, somebody else also loses a sale.

    This isn't logic, this is marketing. It's PR that Intellectual Property interests (BSA, RIAA, MPAA, etc) have been working on for quite some time. It simply doesn't hold up to rational discourse. Monetary damages due to pirated intellectual property are nothing but myth. And as community-shared intellectual property matures, the myth just becomes more and more absurd.

  18. As usual... by mengel · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The analogy is horribly broken, because if you steal a Corvette from a dealer, they do not have the unit to sell it.

    So let's say the recording industry has 150,000 copies of Brittany's Greatest Hits on the shelf, and someone makes a digital copy of same. How many copies does the recording industry have? 150,000 -- just like when they started.

    So when you come up with a way to make a copy of a Corvette on a car dealer's lot, but leave the original one there on the lot, you will have an analogous situation. Otherwise you've fallen into the trap of equating copyright violations with theft, the very mistake the *IAA are trying to talk everyone into.

    --
    - "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
    1. Re:As usual... by bonhomme_de_neige · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Agreed. But if they had 150,000 copies, and 150,000 people ready to purchase, and one makes that digital copy, now they can only sell 149,999 -- they are left with one copy.

      No, from the start they didn't have "150,000" copies. They had one master copy, and a potentially infinite number of digital copies to sell. The cost of producing the master copy has nothing to do with the number of copies sold. So, who decided that the "number of people willing to buy" was 150,000?

      The missing piece is this: price. They had, say, 50,000 willing to buy at $1, another 50,000 willing to buy at $0.50, and another willing to buy for $0 (that is, willing to download and listen to the song - not the same as someone who just doesn't like the song, or movie or whatever).

      Although it might seem like that last group adds no benefit to the recording industry, that's not the case. Those people might tell others about the song ($billions are spent on advertising every year - so you can't just ignore the value of this), or the might go to concerts, or they might by other merchandise which is not digitally reproducible (you can't download a Metallica t-shirt, at least not without investing some time and equipment in printing your own).

      So - no problem if everyone buys at the price they're willing to pay. This is an example of "differentiated pricing", which is taught about in an introductory economics course as a good thing, something industries strive for (examples cited in your textbook will be "child tickets" for movies and events). The only problem is if the people willing to pay $1 get the song for free instead. (Back to the original point - this is the only source of "lost revenue" due to piracy in the equation).

      This problem is easily addressed as follows: those people who are willing to pay more place a value on their own time. To them, the opportunity cost of spending 20 minutes to look for a torrent is more than paying $1. Thus, they would rather spend 2 minutes and pay $1 to get the song than spend 20 minutes and get it for free. It might seem hard to believe such people exist if you're not one of them, but believe me they do. These people pay $3 for a bottle of spring water at the service station instead of walking to the supermarket next door and buying the same thing for $1.50 (and there's nothing wrong with that - just pointing out the non-digital analogy in this logic).

      To a rational person it would then seem the solution is to provide an option that allows them to do this. The more business minded people of the world (eg. Apple) have already done this, with great success. If I can explain this in 5 minutes, it can't be difficult to understand. So why is the RIAA still not putting their efforts into this wholesale? Well, I guess you all know the answer to that question.

      As for a site going down as 'collateral' for being hosted at the same datacenter as some illegal site, this is definitely grounds to sue for compensation. An online business that relies on its website as a primary sales channel loses all the sales they would have made that day if the site is taken down - this is the reason that SLAs even exist. To take the car analogy up again: let's say you bought a (completely legit) Corvette from a dealer. Later (or earlier), unbeknownst to you, the dealer (had) sold a stolen Corvette to someone else. As a result, your Corvette is siezed by police. Reasonable? I think not.

      --
      "Why are you watching the washing machine?"
      "I love entertainment, as long as it's clean"
  19. Re:Good. by erikdalen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    well, except it didn't contain any illegal content. just a bunch of .torrent files.

    --
    Erik Dalén
  20. No. by DrYak · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's just funny.
    It's funny, because some american politician are pathetic how they try to actually take over the net.

    If anything happen to the root DNS, the history will just follow the same path it did with any open-source or other open- projects : fork.

    Just like when CDDB2 became comercial, poeple just switched to freedb.org (which contained the last public copy of the data), if the root DNS gets pwned by politicians with agenda, most probably a couple of alternative server will emerge. And because this is usually handled by the ISP itself (they just change which DNS server their servers have to ask), the users won't even notice the change.

    Maybe there may be some initial fragmentation, as people try to settle for 1 single root-DNS-replacement (and not a dozen of non-synced-between servers). But as mot countries administer their own domains only com/org/net and such will be affected.

    In fact there are already some alternative root DNS that exists, in order to provide new top-domains not provided by the official root.

    So, no. The loss of the root DNS will not be the end of the internet as we know it. It'll be only a way to produce a lot of pissed administrators.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  21. Re:A Bit Premature by kinglink · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Considering most people outside of people who would visit Pirate bay (aka hackers/crackers/pirates/ what ever you want to be called) and people on sites like Slashdot (cool people) don't even know a raid happened. I'd say it'd be forgotten in a month.

    It's not waco. No one died, a bunch of computers got seized... Sadly no one cares no matter how many rights are brought up.

  22. Re:Napster II by Juzzie79 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Son, Pirate Bay is a distributor. If I knew of a guy who was handing out pirated DVDs, and I told my friends about him, does that make me a distributor? Because in effect, that's what TPB is doing. They distribute .torrent files. Those files contain absolutely no copyrighted material, they just tell your Bittorrent client where to find other people who have the material. So while you might like to think TPB is a distributor, the data that actually comes off their servers contains no copyrighted material whatsoever.

    The only difference between Pirate Bay and Netflix is that so far Pirate Bay has gotten away without giving the content owners a cut of the revenue. Yep, you do work in the media industry, because they're unable to identify the obvious difference either. Netflix sends you a DVD with material that is copyrighted. TPB can't do that, because the copyrighted material isn't on their servers. When I download a torrent, I get the material in tiny chunks from hundreds of people all over the interwebs. TPB itself doesn't send me any of those chunks - they all come from other evil pirates like me. Meanwhile, media conglomerates steal from me constantly. Every year, works that were supposed to pass to public ownership are retained under copyright due to American politicians being bought by large media companies. I'm in Australia, and yet those same crazy laws apply thanks to Team America. Life+75 is just ridiculous. In a world where content makers have instant, cost-free duplication and distrobution, 10 years of copyright is more then adequate for a creator to make some money off a work. And yet, I'm sure we'll see Life+125 come in as soon as Mickey Mouse comes up for expiry again. You are supporting the theft of my culture on a daily basis. Don't expect me to respect your "potential loss of profits". I'm all for copyright, as long as it's fair. Right now, it's not. So I'm not prepared to abide by it. I'll find alternitive ways to encourage the artists I enjoy to keep creating art.