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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.'"
FTA:"Whatever the outcome, we will continue. If we are outlawed in Sweden we will continue elsewhere. There will be no downtime," said Andersson.
Ok, I'm just thinking here, but please bear with me. Lets imagine that thePirateBay does have to "continue elsewhere". And for the sake of argument, lets imagine that "elsewhere" is from a communications satellite.
I know this is ridiculous, but really - perhaps in 10 to 15 years launch costs will drop enough to allow private web servers to be launched. Again, just bear with me please.
Let us further imagine that after launch thePirateBay relinquishes control of this orbiting tracker to the community at large, such that it's owned by no one, but maintained by many.
Who would then be prosecuted? By which countries laws?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
This isn't a lawsuit.
It is a criminal charge launched by a prosecutor that only 6 months before the raid said that the Pirate Bay didn't violated any criminal law.
Then, he was called to a meeting with the justice minister and suddenly he orders a raid on the Pirate Bay. A coincidence? I think not.
Since it is illegal for a minister in Sweden to make such orders, it would have been nice to see the justice minster explain this for the parliament committee that handles such suspicions. However, whom is chairman of this committee now? Yes, the former justice minister...
There are various (at least supposedly) independent authorities you can complain to if you've been wrongfully prosecuted. I have no idea what the success rate of such complaints is, but the option is there.
HAND.
The prosecutor and reps from the Swedish police were invited to Washington DC (and they went there (10 persons) except for this very prosecutor that thought it would look funny if he did) just a month or so before the raid. In Washington they went to US Department of State, US Copyright Office, US Department of Commerce, US Patent and Trademark Office, FBI and some other people.
Politicals messing with the justice system is highly illegal in Sweden.
They cannot "contribute/bribe/whatever you call it" prosecutors to take up certain cases.
However, it has actually already been suggested that american political forces may have influenced some Swedish polticians who then may have suggested that some procecutor should take a look at TPB. This made the headlines because of the legal implications if it is true.
But how do you prove it?
Not really, because there is WAY less money involved, thus the lawyers cant make a kazillion dollars by suing everone for everything. Thus, the lawers have no real interest in pursuing cases for the sake of the share of a possibly huge fine.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
OK A couple facts, Napster was the biggest file sharing system for music for years before it's downfall, The Pirate bay is one of the biggest torrent sites out there.
Let's see what happened after Napster, oh yeah music stopped being shared.
Except on Gnutella.
And Grokster.
And Kazaa.
And Edonkey, and Limewire, and Bearshare.
Oh and on the IRC channels where it was before and after napster, and private FTPs, and some program I remember using in college, and others.
Oh and Bittorrent. No one needed Bittorrent for music before Napster but now it's a major program for it.
Essentially when they destroyed Napster they didn't stop the file sharing they just fractured it to the point where all the shards of File sharing was split up and created 10 times the problem.
It's just an example as these lawsuit doesn't matter for us. The owners of Pirate bay will care, but in the end the destruction of that site will only create new tools and sites for everyone to use to share their warez. The MPAA needs to find substitutes for this, even Pirate bay has said that if they are sued they'll move to a country that will allow them to exist with out being accused of wrong doing. The only ones not getting this is the corporations who think litigation not innovation is the answer.
No, you appeal to the higher court of course.
You can make it all way to the supreme court, but they only takes principal important cases. They will most likely take the Pirate Bay case when it has been thought the lower courts. Observer that both parties have a right to appeal a decision, so the prosecutor can appeal to a higher court if he loses in the lower court.
Even if you have tried all courts and lost or the supreme court won't take your case, you might still get a retrial if new evidence is discovered or a formal error was done by the lower courts. The supreme court might then order the lower court to retry your case.
Last, if you get convicted the penalties are quite low. The maximum penalty is lifetime prison (only used for murder), but this is usually converted to 20 years by the government after some years.
Even if the Pirate Guys gets convicted, I don't think they should see more than some months in prison. Since they should be regarded as a quite harmless type of convict, this prison sentence would then be served in a minimal security prison. This usually mean that you are only locked in during night and can even work during the days.
I am not against paying good companies for their good products, the issue lies when entities decide that you are forced to pay them. Look at the Spanish example, they literally pay an extra tax for each blank CD, flash disk or whatever piece of hardware that might be used to copy one byte of music, and they pay their author organization for all of it, no matter what thing you would pirate, in fact they assume that you want to pirate and just make you paid, it is pretty odd.
I also dislike the fact that companies just reduce the value of their product instead of improving it and they actually expect to get earnings from that, why does DRM exist? It seems it is just to piss off the legitimate customer.
As a matter of fact, many guys who commit "piracy" have already paid a lot of licenses , and would just need the right to use their music, software, and movies in a legit way. With all those things that won't let you play movies you bought to component output, and all those things that come with games that hurt performance of your OS or just the fact that game companies have decided to force you to use the costly original CD all the time with the risk of scratching or even breaking it. Or music that decided it should only work in one operating system.
You can understand what makes some of us applaud when the DRM protection is broken or when a crack/hole to some game's CD protection is found.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
I take it that it never occured to you that Sweden has copyright laws? As does nearly every other country on Earth?
Even worse:
The Pirate Bays servers was hosted at another facility than all other servers that where seized.
The most evidence points towards that the police raided the other facility since this would hurt the ISP that hosted TPB financially and that this would deter any other from hosting them.
It the Swedish government would have admitted that US demanded The Pirate Bay closed, they would also kind of admit that they ordered the raid on TPB.
And since this would be highly illegal in Sweden, would you confess this?
Or fragment the operation such that not enough of it exists in any single country to be sued in that country. Only when the distributed pieces are put back together is a valid tracker emitted.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"The FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."
That's very interesting; let's break it down:
1. "Unlawful use of force" - Like the raids
2. "Against persons or property" - see 1
3. "intimidate or coerce a government" - That sounds like what happened to the Swedish government
4. - and a segment of their civilian population
5. "in furtherance of political or social objectives." - 5 out of 5, Johnny. Tell 'em what they win.
Are you really that naive? As a game designer I can tell you flat out that piracy has NOTHING to do with why EA pumps out Madden after Madden... MONEY is. It's not about how much they're losing to piracy (though it is a ton, like you I'm not in favor supporting piracy) - it's about how much they're making by doing the smallest amount necessary to get the naive, gullible and apathetic market to buy their game. They make shit games because you BUY shit games. It really is that simple. The same is true of music and movies. I recently worked for Warner Bros. on their game side (WBie)and can attest to this.
Piracy doesn't affect quality - it affects price. However, even then its effect per unit is minimal... Price, content and quality are largely factors of the market - we make the minimum the market will bear because to do any more means we make less money, piracy or not.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to shower myself clean... for hours. I feel dirty admiting that in public.
You're right in that there are probably relatively few people here who actively endorse piracy, but there are inevitably going to be a lot of people who silently endorse it, and consequently mod-up related posts.
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.
You just said something I don't really understand. Really, what the 'corporate world' is doing with copyright right now hasn't changed the world, nor copyright laws, that much at all. When I was a kid in, say 1966, people could go downtown and buy a record album. There wasn't widespread ability to reproduce the record in any way, except a few audiophiles with their expensive reel-reel recorders, and the average person just bought vinyl disks to listen to.
That isn't a lot different from the world the 'corporate' folks want today to be like. Except we won't have to go downtown to buy the albums.
The conflict comes in how we, the consumers, and they, the music/film distribution industry, cope with change.
It's ridiculous when people act like the MPAA/RIAA have 'ruined' things. Times changed, and we're all adapting to it. If change is to be defined as 'things are now ruined' then it's the new technology that has 'ruined' things. Though I can still go downtown (actually I have to drive through downtown to the other edge of the small town I live in, to WalMart) and buy an album when I want. So things haven't really changed.
I believe people should pay producers of content for their work, but I also believe the US needs to mind it's god damn business about copyright outside of it's borders.
You forgot his "educational" trip to the United States to learn how to deal with those terr^H^H^H^Hpirates. The trip took place about a month before the raid.
"Very few Slashdotters, as far as I can tell, actually endorse piracy outright."
My family name has it's roots connected to a guy who donated 22 viking boats to William the conqurer and acompanied him into the battle of Hastings. From my point of view (and I don't think I'm alone here), it depends on who the pirates are, and what they are plundering from whom.
If it's the *IAA then I think most people here oppose thier legalised piray for the reasons you mention, a cartel of "censors" corrupting the political process is a BadThing(TM). Personally I spend less on movies and music than I do on toilet paper and I am simply disintrested when it comes to downloading movies or music, but that's related to age and a preference for other forms of entertainment more than any moral or legal judgement.
"we're not a bunch of corporate hating communist hippies"
Here I have to disagree, again it depends on "who" the corporation or "communist" is, and what it is they are doing to whom. As for "hippies" I was born in '59 and my definition is quite a bit different to the mass media sterotype, just as they don't want to live in my world - I don't want to live in their world, but it's an interseting and pleasant place to visit.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"If you're actually paying the programmers, musicians, and directors then, yes, you probably are pretty close to alone."
:) Some of the best software utilities that I've purchased over the years (and whose licenses I've maintained - I have one for which I've had a license for well over 15 years now, which I'm happy to keep current as it just keeps getting better and better) come from small companies that have only a few programmers, sometimes only one person.
:) - That's a joke, too, BTW)
Well, count me in on that
I tend to buy music directly from the artist now, whenever possible, though I admit that, given a choice between paying $14.98 from Amazon.com and getting two day shipping for free because I'm an Amazon Prime customer, and paying $15.00 plus shipping and handling, I tend to go with Amazon.com. And, certainly, I'm not criticizing them for making as much money directly as they can, but, if they chose to make a deal where the CD that I want to buy is available for less via Amazon.com and I can get it without additional shipping then I'm not ashamed to buy it there rather than directly from them. That's capitalism at its best, right? One of the best things about the Internet is that such price comparisons are simple now.
Sometimes, a CD will be available on Amazon.com, on CDBaby.com and the artist's own web site... and even their record label's site. I pick the one that is least expensive to me, overall. Sorry, but, I'm not rich, and, at least I'm PAYING for it, rather than cheating the artist out of any money at all by downloading it for free from somewhere, right?
Hell, if I were like many here, I'd say "Those bastards are charging more for their CD on their own site than I can buy it for from Amazon.com! Therefore, I'm entitled to get it for free, because they are greedy and trying to cheat me! After all, information wants to be free! And, it's only 1's and 0's anyway! And, they can make money from their performances!"
Did I miss anything? I'm not hep to the current anti-copyright rhetoric here on Slashdot *grin*
I do admit, however, to never having purchased anything from a director (well, not anything that I'd actually admit to in a public forum
"Current copyright law does nothing to prevent original authors and inventors from profit seeking businessmen."
That's a GREAT red herring! So, I'm mildly curious: How would you protect the original authors and inventors from profit seeking businessmen? Pass a law? Care to phrase it here?
Regards,
dj
When I was a kid in, say 1966, people could go downtown and buy a record album. There wasn't widespread ability to reproduce the record in any way, except a few audiophiles with their expensive reel-reel recorders, and the average person just bought vinyl disks to listen to.
When you were a kid in 1966, Dover Publications was making a good living, and making a lot of science and math students happy, by reprinting rare, long out-of-print math, science and engineering classics, that nobody could get, usually by authors that were long dead, who would have been dismayed to know that their books were unavailable and would have been happy to have their books reprinted and enjoyed by future generations, even if their heirs (if any) didn't get anything from it. I read a lot of those books and I was grateful to Dover for them.
Now there are lots of science classics that were once in print by reprint houses like Dover, that have reverted to copyright limbo, and either aren't available anywhere or are only available as rare books for $200-300 or more apiece. This at a time when the Internet finally has the technical capability to make books available free. I know because I've tried to get books like that, and libraries 500 miles away from me are no longer willing to copy an entire book even if I'm willing to pay them for it. I can't even get the same books I used to read to give to my nieces and nephews. This was further documented in the Supreme Court case of Eldred v. Ashcroft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft.
When you were a kid in 1966 you could buy cheap records of music that had passed into public domain (or from the Soviet Union, which didn't believe in copyright). As late as the 1980s I bought a re-release of a 20-year-old public domain German recording of Wagner's entire 4-opera Ring cycle for $10. The Sonny Bono act has taken that out of the public domain, and it would cost me $100 today.
This is a subversion of the Constitution. The only reason Congress passed the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is that they were bribed by the entertainment industry.
You're worried about crime and being fair and doing the right thing? Doesn't Congressmen taking money from the entertainment industry to pass laws that violate the Constitution count?
Because Sony and BMI wants to peddle their crap music I can't get French, German and Russian texts on vector analysis and biophysics any more. I can't even get cheap classical music, or the now out-of-print old folk music and jazz that I grew up with, or the rock-and-roll of the 50s.
I don't download music, so I'm not arguing from personal interest in defending it. But the entertainment companies themselves are greedy motherfuckers, who broke the law themselves by paying off Congressmen to pass laws that violated the Constitution, and stole our books, music and movies from the public domain.
If somebody sets up a web site to legally distribute torrents outside the influence of their bribery, it serves the entertainment companies fucking right and I don't have any sympathy for them.
If somebody illegally distributes torrents, it also serves them fucking right and I don't have any sympathy for them, because they ripped me off first.
If the billion-dollar entertainment companies go out of business like the carbon paper companies did, it also serves them fucking right. For 75 years they've been living a great life with $100,000-a-year (or $1 million-a-year) jobs, fucking actresses and models, drinking good booze and snorting coke, on a market model based on mass marketing plastic records and movie film. Well, it's all over. You're technologically obsolete. The American manufacturing workers got screwed, so I'm not going to worry about you. We don't need you to tell me what music I'm supposed to like.
If we still had fair, reasonable copyright laws like we did before 1998, that wou
Face it, in the eyes of the FSF, copyright is an evil which they have decided to pervert for good.
Not at all! In fact, later this month, Stallman will be talking in Sweden making suggestions to the Pirate Party encouraging them not to loosen copyright too much! Free software needs copyright.
Look out!