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Prosecutor Announces Charges Against Pirate Bay
paulraps writes "Almost a year after a police raid on the Pirate Bay's servers, a Swedish prosecutor has announced that he intends to press charges against the individuals behind the file-sharing giant. They will be prosecuted for various breaches of copyright law, reports The Local. But a Pirate Bay spokesman was defiant, saying, 'I think they feel they have to do it. It would look bad otherwise, since they had 20 to 30 police officers involved in the raid.'"
Almost a year after a police raid on the Pirate Bay's servers, a Swedish prosecutor has announced that he intends to press charges against the individuals behind the file-sharing giant.
So if the charges are thrown out because there is no real law in Sweden precluding their activities, could they sue the prosecutor for malicious prosecution, or attempt to get him disbarred (much like the prosecutor in the Duke rape case)?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Maybe they have presumption of innocence until proven guilty? Wish we had that over here.
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While this case may well end up bad for TPB (unless they can show that the MPAA was involved) it won't stop the next group from starting a TPB-like service. It will take more money than its worth to keep shutting down copyright infringement systems and people who use them.
In the end, DRM does not work, won't work. What the entertainment industries need to do is come up with a better product, better pricing, or both. They are trying to sell content to an audience that has about a 16 second attention span, and they haven't really done anything to deserve that full 16 seconds never mind something to convince people to spend their money in the way that the **AA wants them to. Despite any legislation that might be enacted or in place now, people will keep doing what they are doing. Until the entertainment industry changes their business plan the only thing that they have to look forward to is more court time and cost, more loss of face to the public, ever decreasing revenues.
Whether that is fair or not is now a moot point. It's happening, and all the **AAs of the world seem to be doing is fanning the flames that are lapping at the foundations of their business. There have been a few positive changes so far, but that is far outweighed by the harm they are doing to their own businesses. IWaM(tm) won't ever work, it's a suckers game, not much better for the player than 3 card monty. Sure, TPB might be in for some 'rough seas' in the coming months, but while everyone is busy with that case, more file sharing will continue unabated. Until the entertainment industries learn that they are behaving very foolishly and get on with creating real value products to earn revenue with, they will continue to burn bridges with the public, their customers, and their shareholders.
Good luck to them, they are going to need it to avoid having to learn the 'did you want large fries with that' sentence.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
No, you don't get your TV shows from them, as Pirate Bay is "only" a bittorrent tracker. It would be like saying you get all your take-way food from the yellow pages.
Note to self: get a sig.
From the Constitution: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries Current copyright law does nothing to prevent original authors and inventors from profit seeking businessmen.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Heh...I'm one of those people who don't buy anything from the RIAA or MPAA (or whatever they're called) but also don't pirate from them. You're absolutely right in that today's music and movies are very uncreative, but that started happening long before pirating became big enough to make creativity more risky. The simple fact is that the current music/movie industry has become too bloated to produce anything really good, baring a few exceptions (and by few I mean probably about 5-10 per month, which is a tiny percentage). The gaming industry is starting to get there too sadly enough.
The problem with music/movies isn't that everyone's pirating them and so no one's paying, it's that no one's watching/listening to them and so no one's paying. The last 3 movies I've been too (all within a week of release and pretty medium hype levels) haven't even come close to filling the theaters. The industry is just too bloated and until it cuts itself down again it's going to be bleeding money from the people who just don't care about it and have found a new hobby, piracy is just the excuse because they refuse to believe that Barbie's Magical Horse Adventure The Movie II won't sell big bucks even if no one pirated it...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Or am I outnumbered by the freeloaders who contribute nothing back to the artistic community, furthering its descent into homogenization and sequel-itis as studios are forced to rely on tried-and-tested money-makers because piracy makes risky investments not worth the cost?
You are outnumbered by people who couldn't or wouldn't afford to pay these communities in any case. If crap like sequels and sound-the-same music is what you consider "money-makers" then the problem is with your type for continuing to pay for that shit, not the freeloaders.
> especially since the GPL relies on copyright law
...
Yeah, we see the FSF lobbying for copyright extension all the time. Face it, in the eyes of the FSF, copyright is an evil which they have decided to pervert for good.
> Am I alone in actually paying the programmers, musicians, and directors for their work?
No, I pay them directly, it's just the (big) labels which don't get my money. Of course, this seriously limits the kind of media I watch and listen to, but I'm not a big media consumer, and there's a lot of interesting indie content out if you look for it.
> as studios are forced to rely on tried-and-tested money-makers because piracy makes risky investments not worth the cost?
> Haven't you guys made the connection as to why popular music today sounds the same
Frankly, judging by how they treat the artists, I have the impression that they feel any jerk they pick off the street can be marketed into the next big hit. And because they are most likely using research on the current market preferences to decide what to push, it's no wonder that their product evolves very, very slowly.
And yes, I am on the side of The Pirate Bay, considering that what they do is, as far as I know, perfectly legal in Sweden.
It is completely irrelevant to me what US laws Pirate Bay broke. I support them because they are in Sweden. China can't arrest me for criticizing them, Mexico can't arrest me for not paying Mexican federal taxes, and Saudi Arabia can't arrest me for shaving my beard. Why can the MPAA coerce the Swedish police to conduct raids in accordance with US copyright law?
I could classify you as a "lawful good" person who always abide by the law but unfortunately doesn't see beyond "lawful / unlawful".
The RIAA and MPAA have become somewhat an evil empire where they only care about money. They rip off the artists they hire because they're a monopoly. If an artist doesn't want to sell his soul to the RIAA and produce / sell his own music, he'll be forgotten into oblivion.
Why? Because he gets no publicity, no tours, no airtime on the radio, no nothing. Simply because he didn't want to accept to get only 0.2 cents per CD sold.
It's something called the Status quo. Regarding myself, I am against the RIAA for various reasons:
1) They're the devil incarnate for their monopolic practices
2) They don't let us record our music CD's into MP3
3) They have pushed the congress to make anything that helps 2) Illegal
4) They abuse their economic power to force OTHER COUNTRIES to adopt their twisted view of the law
5) They don't give a **** about our property when they install rootkits in our computers
6) HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THAT THEY'RE SUING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE FOR THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS EACH?
In my personal opinion, anyone who buys RIAA-sponsored CD's is doing evil. I would rip a CD of my favorite group and deposit 1 dollar to the artists, which is much more than they get from the RIAA per disk. But guess what, that's why there are LEGAL DOWNLOAD SERVICES. Unfortunately, the revenues of these also go to the RIAA and not to the groups directly.
But why do so many Slashdotters seem to be in favor of ripping off artists, programmers, writers, directors, and so forth?
In my particular case, I don't really copy stuff to any great degree, but my purchases of movies and music are way down in large part because of the shambles of copyright law that the corporate world has made, enabled by their bought-and-paid-for representation in Congress.
Unlike the "theft" the entertainment industry (and the occasional self-righteous, annoying stuntman) is constantly whining about, every American citizen has suffered real, quantifiable theft in the form of having works of art withheld from public domain with no real expectation of them *ever* losing protection, in direct contradiction to the stated purpose of copyright. There's not a single good reason why anything recorded by the Beatles should still be under copyright, nor "The Godfather", "Jaws", "Star Wars", the original 79 episodes of "Star Trek", or any number of other works which have already made their creators unbelievably wealthy. The original 14-year copyright term was quite reasonable and would still provide an artist a reasonable period of time to realize some material benefit from his works. As it is now, it's quite possible for someone to be born, live a long natural life, and die without ever having seen a lot of works ever go out of copyright. I don't believe anyone can argue that the original intent of the Constitution's founders was the travesty we have now, and do it with a straight face.
The recording and music industries have stolen vastly more from the public through this mechanism than the "losses" they're suffering, so I don't feel the least bit sorry for them in regards to their current infringement issues.
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It occurred to me. It also occurred to me that if the Pirate Bay had broken the swedish copyright laws that Sweden would deal with it. It would NEVER occur to me that if someone in Sweden broke an American law that the Swedish government would prosecute them for it. Does that mean that whenever I see someone spit gum out on the sidewalk I can cane them because that's the law in Singapore?
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