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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.'"
...to be logged by you.
If they are going to press charges, why is the pirate bay still up? Shouldn't the first step be to shut it down?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Calling it "Pirate Bay" was just asking for lawsuits.
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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.
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This is what happens when you take to a life of crime on the high seas!
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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.
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If they had named it Liberation Cove or Freedom Files I'm sure their would be none of this nonsense.
Personally, I think FSIAS would have been better...File Sharing Industry Association of Sweden.
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.
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...
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?
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
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.
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.
If you're going to be elitist, it would help to be elite.
> 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?
As I guage it there are a few key bones most
Sorry, we're not a bunch of corporate hating communist hippies, most of us just have the common sense that the corporations involved seem to lack. So don't act like you're morally superior or something... equating the slashdot crowd to the hysterical prepubescent throng that constitutes Digg is a bit... insulting.
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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 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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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.
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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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.
Satellites are all very well, but limited for this sort of application for technical reasons. The one that excites me is the prospect of the Antigua data haven: because the US laws on internet gambling constitute an unfair barrier to free trade with Antigua, they're threatening to retaliate by declaring all American copyrights, patents and whatnot entirely void. Best of all, the US won't be able to use its large allies and front organisations as leverage: the EU and Japan are supporting Antigua, and the WTO reckon disregarding US copyrights would be perfectly fair under the circumstances...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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