The Pirate Bay Won't Be Censored

Naycon writes "In the end it looks like the Swedish police dropped the Pirate Bay from the list of sites filtered for containing child porn. The update of the filter, which is scheduled for later this week, won't contain the Swedish file-sharing giant. The police say that the reason for this change is that the torrent containing the porn has been removed. But the Pirate Bay states that no files have been removed. Was this just a cheap trick by the Swedish police to battle file-sharing? The link contains a statement from the Pirate Bay; several Swedish newspaper are also running the story." In a related story, reader paulraps writes "Sweden's Justice Department is backing a new proposal that would enable copyright holders to find out the identities of people illegally sharing their material on the Internet."

Comments

Won't Be Censored?

[niceone]

The linked article says:

I want to point out that still to this day, the police has not given us one single hint on what content on the site has been containing child porn - and the things we have filtered out has been proven not to be child porn either.

(my emphasis)
Which sounds to me like they did remove something, and maybe even that if there was child porn they would remove that too. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just the Slashdot headline seems inaccurate. (Unless the article doesn't mean what I think.)

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[niceone]

Heh, well I guess it's the Slashdot headline I didn't understand! I guess it means "won't be on the censored list". But the summary also says "the Pirate Bay states that no files have been removed", but the linked article makes it sound like they did.

Or something :)

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[TapeCutter]

Perhaps: "have not been removed" means "filtered before added".

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

They have removed lots of stuff. They aren't exactly trumpeting that particular fact in their public grandstanding, though.

Try comparing http://thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/ and
http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:B5kqltngQjcJ: thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/+http://thepirateba y.org/user/achim106/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1 for instance.

I tried submitting a more balanced third-party article about this earlier, but apparently it's not interesting to Slashdot unless it's spin.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Anonymous Coward]

And now many people will soon realize that they just searched google for child pron.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[someone1234]

I say, if they filter anything, child porn is a thing that must be filtered.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

Several different user accounts have mysteriously disappeared, within hours of this story hitting the net. No, I don't think that's a coincidence. The Pirate Bay admins themselves have complained that they had to guess at which files to remove because they got no communication from the police.

(The Police and The Pirate Bay both claim they were unable to contact the other.)

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[newr00tic]

"Whats in a filename?"

TPB has a policy that they will delete entries with "false descriptions." -Meaning, if only theoretically, that the Metallica songs would've been removed in an instant while the abused kid would be "left alone," so to speak.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[morgan_greywolf]

In most countries, searching for child porn isn't illegal. Downloading child porn is. After all, how would all those vigilantes out there trying to shut down all the child porn sites do so if they couldn't find them?

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[computational super]

I admire your courageous efforts to go out on a limb and commit yourself to such a controversial stance.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

Which sounds to me like they did remove something, and maybe even that if there was child porn they would remove that too

According to some comments in the blog, their admins checked a lot of torrrents some had claimed to be CP. They didn't find any of that, but did find other crap, like viruses, falsely labelled files, duplicates, etc and so they did remove those.

I have to say if one did want to trade CP, you would be competely insane to do it via a publc torrent indexing site. As far as I can see, the worst anyone has found is child models -- young kids wearing clothes, posing in a way some might find provocative, but no more so than in a JC Penney catalog. Sure, some are using it for sexaul gratification, but you could say the same about zucchinis and no one tries to ban them.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

I tried submitting a more balanced third-party article about this earlier,

Considering the comments you made today and on the prvious story, the idea of you writing a "balanced third party article" is ludicrous.

And since you've used Google to find these torrents, why don't you extend your campaign to them? By plugging the terms into Google, I can immediately find hundreds of sites with the same links. Is every indexing site, web or torrent, supposed to send new links to you for approval before they make them available?

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[catxk]

Your logic doesn't make sense. How could all those sorry bastards battle child porn if they couldn't download it first to check if it really is child porn? The thing with The Pirate Bay seems to be that some jerkoffs had described torrents as containing child porn, when in fact, they did not. That the police acted on this without verifying - downloading - the material is totally unacceptable and I hope they will get their fare share of kicks in the groin for it.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

Considering the comments you made today and on the prvious story, the idea of you writing a "balanced third party article" is ludicrous.

I wasn't referring to what I wrote. I was referring to the article I linked, which was written by a third party, and was not a Pirate Bay blog entry. I thought the summary was quite fair, though: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=216345

Or do you disagree?

And since you've used Google to find these torrents

I didn't, and Google actively works to filter out child porn. It's not perfect, but they are making an effort. The Pirate Bay, meanwhile, has not been. Other torrent sites remove this kind of torrent when they find it, but Pirate Bay has been making a point out of not doing it.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[MadUndergrad]

Those cops should know that porn on p2p is _never_ properly named! That was a pretty stupid move.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

Or do you disagree?

Since the article you linked to is in Swedish, how would I know? And you wonder why a summary, by Mr Anonymous, or a random blog in a foreign language wasn't published?

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

You were the one who was accusing me of writing biased articles, as I recall.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Anonymous Coward]

You two. Please stop fighting like children.

Someone might ask to see a picture or something.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[drcagn]

A file by any other name would be as incriminating

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[xENoLocO]

All in all, most of us are thoroughly confused, but we can't stop reading!

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[fredklein]

kopimi - Y-day 23:40
when searching for child porn the moderators found a lot of spam, false torrent descriptions and other stuff. it's therefor they got deleted.
the admins _suspended_ some torrents that where questionable but they are back if they where correctly described or such.
users are deleted all the time when they spam or put up spyware/virus and so on.

So, they searched for child porn, didn't find any, but did find mis-labeled torrents, spam, and malware.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Lars T.]

Those cops should know that porn on p2p is _never_ properly named! That was a pretty stupid move. Yeah, "underage model" actually stands for "Spiderman 3".

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Lars T.]

Your logic doesn't make sense. How could all those sorry bastards battle child porn if they couldn't download it first to check if it really is child porn? Errm, they aren't. Many police forces around the world have released statements that hunting for child porn is a sure way to break the law.

BTW, if "Underage cute-anna nn achim-project 5 galeries" and the others were harmless, why were the links to the torrents removed?

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

You were the one who was accusing me of writing biased articles, as I recall.

Not quite. I said "the idea of you writing a 'balanced third party article' is ludicrous". it still is, I'm afraid.

Anyway, there's no point in us feuding. You obviously have a deep hatred for anything that smacks of kiddie porn. I understand the feeling, but it's exactly this feeling which is being exploited by parties who want to attack TPB. I see no good at all being done for the subjects of these mysterious photos (mysterious because no matter how many times I ask, no one will even describe them). As well to try to prevent road accidents by stopping newspapers publishing photos of them. Attack the people who make the photos you hate so much. Rescue the children. Don't piss around in the virtual world.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[ArsenneLupin]

You two. Please stop fighting like children.
Someone might ask to see a picture or something. Would that be the kiddy equivalent of a cat-fight?

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Mister Whirly]

Won't someone please think of the naked children??

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Oktober Sunset]

and vice versa.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

I understand the feeling, but it's exactly this feeling which is being exploited by parties who want to attack TPB.

The point is that TPB brought this on themselves with their own choices, and trying to whitewash it all as nothing but a police conspiracy helps nobody. I'm sure the police didn't waste much time taking advantage of the situation after the humiliation they've suffered from TPB's actions, but in the end, they were justified in doing so, at least to some extent. Had TPB behaved morally in the first place, this situation would have never arisen.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

They didn't look very hard, then. Others have looked and downloaded and found (at the very least borderline) child porn.

They've also been making a whole lot of contradictory statements about the whole issue. I would not take anything they say at face value at this point.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[THESuperShawn]

What about ThePirateBay off-shoot Kopime (pardon if that is misspelled, it's blocked here at work and I can't check)? Doesn't their site feature a nude boy dancing on the front page? It's rather harmless but it is a fully exposed male child in many "scenes" of the animated picture.

Also, when the submission/article mentions filtering, I took it as ISP level network filtering sanctioned by the police/government- is that incorrect?

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Lars T.]

BTW, if "Underage cute-anna nn achim-project 5 galeries" and the others were harmless, why were the links to the torrents removed? If you weren't guilty of a crime then why did the police arrest and humiliate you? Because they're the fucking cops man, it's AT BEST a 50/50 chance to get a decent human as opposed to a power-tripping dickhead "just doing his job". I feel bad for you if you think that every move a cop makes is in your best interest. It's not, it's in theirs and if you have any hope of surviving you damn-well better make sure your interests coincide with his and no I'm not just being paranoid. So you are saying that PirateBay is actually run by the police.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I dunno - asking the cops what images are CP is a pretty straightforward thing to do. If it were a DMCA thing in the US, you'd require that sort of thing in order to do anything. As I recall, TPB states that CP is one of the things they don't allow, so it isn't as if they're a haven for this sort of thing.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[argux]

Never has the Redundant mod option been so perfectly adequate. This was probably THE reason it was meant to exist, solely to moderate that one post.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

The point is that TPB brought this on themselves with their own choices,

Their choice to set up a torrent site is what brought this on.

Had TPB behaved morally in the first place

They are being sanctioned legally, not "morallly".

Again, you're achieving NOTHING to prevent any abuse of living breathing people by this. You're just scoring points against TPB who I can only assume you have a long-standng feud against.

And STILL, you have refused to describe these pictures? videos? that are so "immoral". Absent that, and with the police seeming not caring about finding where they come from, just trying to suppress them, I must assume they're legal, if perhaps sleazy.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[adona1]

Google actively works to filter out child porn. It's not perfect, but they are making an effort. The Pirate Bay, meanwhile, has not been.

I think the whole basis for TPB's existence is the fact that they don't host anything, illegal or not. Therefore, they don't care what's listed on there. It's probably not perfect, but if pedophiles are willing to download child porn from public trackers, all the better...way easier to track them than trawling a darknet or chatrooms.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[adona1]

I think that's the problem ;)

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[catxk]

In this case, not even the police had checked the actual content of the torrents. To name something as if it were child porn is tasteless at best, but it isn't illegal.

Why the links were removed? My guess is some admin simply lost his nerves. Embarrassing for The Pirate Bay, no doubt, but as has been mentioned again and again: when someone wields the sword of child porn accusations, everyone around stops thinking and if you don't duck, you're gonna lose all your backup in no time, and since The Pirate Bay would be nothing without its extensive backup (especially from Swedish users), they ducked.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

Their choice to set up a torrent site is what brought this on.

No, their choice to leave up borderline child porn material even when people complain about it is what brought this on.

You're just scoring points against TPB who I can only assume you have a long-standng feud against.

You know what happens when you assume, &c &c. I always found them amusing before this. I liked their irreverent attitude. In this case, though, I think they are definitely in the wrong, and I would like it if they were to realize this and changed their stance on child porn.

And STILL, you have refused to describe these pictures?

You can easily go find out for yourself. Or just read something like http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/07/45 346.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

They still have darknets and chatrooms. Do you think every pedophile on the planet knows how to get onto those? The less connected ones will use more public means.

And this is more a quesstion of morality than legality. I don't think a lot of the material in question is illegal, but they are helping people spread it, and they are doing so knowingly.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Lars T.]

In this case, not even the police had checked the actual content of the torrents. Says who? The Pirates who also claimed they didn't remove anything from their site? Case closed.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

You can easily go find out for yourself. Or just read something like http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/07/45 346.

I saw that before. That's what this is all about? Girls in bikinis? What a waste of everyone's time. You could get a bigger thrill from a department store catalogue. Why don't you picket one of them.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

Perhaps you are forgetting that we are not worrying about how turned-on anybody gets here? It's still about the fact that young girls are being deceived into posing for pedophiles.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

Perhaps you are forgetting that we are not worrying about how turned-on anybody gets here? It's still about the fact that young girls are being deceived into posing for pedophiles.

If it doesn't turn someone on, it's not porn. Though the converse doesn't apply.

And "it's a fact" is it? Or just what you imagine. And how does campaigning against a Swedish torrent site help them in the slightest? If the girls are exploited, WHY DOESN'T ANYONE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT? If you delete the photos, the acts are undone? Torrent are free, there is no financial incentive to create if that's your argument.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

If it doesn't turn someone on, it's not porn. Though the converse doesn't apply.

Did you actually read the article? It turns lots of people on. Which still isn't the point of the argument.

And "it's a fact" is it? Or just what you imagine.

Did you actually read the article?

And how does campaigning against a Swedish torrent site help them in the slightest?

It would certainly help that site if it cleaned up its act in relation to child porn, because as it is that is a huge weapon for its opponents to use against it. I like The Pirate Bay, and I don't want to see them get dragged down for this. And the only way that will happen is if they take responsibility, which they won't do if they just keep making excuses for child porn.

If the girls are exploited, WHY DOESN'T ANYONE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT?

People are. Did you actually read the article?

If you delete the photos, the acts are undone?

Do you think those girls enjoy having those pictures circulated across the net, once they've realized what they are for?

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

if they just keep making excuses for child porn.

Look, you keep stating that there is, or was, "child porn" on TPB. That is not a fact. You can show lists of files with "lolita", "Underage model" etc. BFD. Quite like some asshole with a grudge against TPB put them up. Who knows what's in them. As far as I've seen they're all completely legal. And I'm pretty sure the police also think that; otherwise they'd be all over the uploaders instead of dicking around trying to block TPB's DNS. There are pictures of children; and there is certainly porn. But there is no "child porn". I'm afraid I can't believe your assertions without proof.

Yeah, I read your 6-year-old Wired article. So what? Creepy websites with pictures of girls in their underwear. Sleazy, but obviously legal, as they were hosted in the USA and the FBI would send a tank through their door if they weren't.

You use George Bush logic: Bin Laden sent Saudi terrorists to attack the USA. Therefore the USA must attack Saddam, because we can't catch bin Laden and I hate him anyway. There is no connection between the acts you decry and the people you are actually attacking.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

Look, you keep stating that there is, or was, "child porn" on TPB. That is not a fact.

Here are some examples: http://www.xingfu.se/blogge/posts/07/07/08/Analys+ av+barnporren+pa+Pirate+Bay/

Warning: Depending on where you are, it might be illegal for you to visit that page.

And I'm pretty sure the police also think that; otherwise they'd be all over the uploaders

And how, pray tell, would they be "all over" people who are outside the country, and whose only personal data they have is their nickname on Pirate Bay?

Sleazy, but obviously legal, as they were hosted in the USA and the FBI would send a tank through their door if they weren't.

I guess you didn't read it, then, as it explained that the FBI did, in fact, arrest a whole bunch of them.

You use George Bush logic: Bin Laden sent Saudi terrorists to attack the USA. Therefore the USA must attack Saddam, because we can't catch bin Laden and I hate him anyway. There is no connection between the acts you decry and the people you are actually attacking.

Please don't insult my intelligence with that kind of strawman.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

Here are some examples

OK, finally. I only had to ask you about six times. 90% of the images there look like perfectly legal porn; only one or perhaps two, from the "achim project" apparently, have underage girls showing some flesh. Those might be illegal in some places. But I'm afraid they don't outrage me.

And how, pray tell, would they be "all over" people who are outside the country, and whose only personal data they have is their nickname on Pirate Bay?

If you use a torrent you necessarily have to expose your IP, and thus your ISP, and thus the police can demand the name of the owner of that IP at that time me from the ISP. Using a proxy or a public WiFi point, say, might make that harder to determine, but at least you'd expect the cops to try. Anyone stupid enough to put illegal images on a public torent site is not likely to be terribly competent in covering their tracks.

I guess you didn't read it, then, as it explained that the FBI did, in fact, arrest a whole bunch of them.

I did read the article, all of it and no, that's not true.

The only arrest mentioned was:

In a landmark 1995 case, a Pennsylvania man was sentenced to jail for possessing videotapes of young girls posing provocatively in skimpy clothing. It was the first such conviction dealing with this issue in which the genitals were not exposed.

One person was mentioned; arrested in a case that did not seem to involve the Internet at all. So you just made that up. And so, I've had enough of you.

Bye.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

But I'm afraid they don't outrage me.

Oh, how great for you. We're all very happy to know that.

If you use a torrent you necessarily have to expose your IP, and thus your ISP, and thus the police can demand the name of the owner of that IP at that time me from the ISP. Using a proxy or a public WiFi point, say, might make that harder to determine, but at least you'd expect the cops to try. Anyone stupid enough to put illegal images on a public torent site is not likely to be terribly competent in covering their tracks.

Of course, you still can't tell who uploaded it. And just downloading child porn is not illegal in Sweden. And most of those IPs will still not be in Sweden.

So you just made that up.

Actually, I mis-remembered, I confused that arrest and the mentioned FBI investigation of another photographer mentioned later.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[1u3hr]

the FBI did, in fact, arrest a whole bunch of them.
Actually, I mis-remembered, I confused that arrest and the mentioned FBI investigation of another photographer mentioned later.

You abused me for not reading your article. I had, it did not support your argument. It mentions one (1) person arrested in an unrelated case twelve years ago. Not "a whole bunch". And your examples of CP are, if not entirely innocent, nothing to get excited about, in any sense of the word. So I conclude with my original suspicion confirmed, that you have a feud with TPB and are just throwing any mud at it that you can find, and exaggerating and plain making stuff up to make them look bad.

Re:Won't Be Censored?

[Goaway]

Sorry, I quite like TPB. It's just that I hold my friends to higher standards than others, and they really are failing to live up here.

All about saving face...

[WIAKywbfatw]

By referring to a file that was supposedly removed the Swedish police can say that they did their job correctly and remove the black mark they put next to The Pirate Bay's name without having to backtrack or publicly apologise in any way.

This is pretty standard practice with police everywhere nowadays: the politics of policing seems to be more important than actual policing.

Re:All about saving face...

[QCompson]

Based on many of your previous posts, I have the feeling that borderline child porn to you means anything from a stick-figure drawing of a "naked" child to a family picture of a kid in a snowsuit.

Re:All about saving face...

[Goaway]

No, my definition of borderline child porn is material produced for pedophiles, by means of deceiving children. If you had actually read my other posts, you would have known that, because I've mentioned this a number of times.

Stuff like http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/07/45 346.

I definitely don't oppose stuff like sexual drawings of children, because those hurt nobody.

No surprise...

[tygerstripes]

This was all bull from the start.

To put it in perspective: the supposed issue was that thePirateBay held links to child-porn, which is illegal in Sweden (there are forms of content that are illegal, but only some to which it is illegal to simply link). The government was proposing to have most of the major Swedish ISPs blacklist the site for having such links.

TPB stated that they do not hold such links, and if any are reported they are immediately investigated and removed. Since it is a forum on which anyone can post links to content, this is the most active policy it is possible to enforce. Therefore there are no grounds for blacklisting.

Most people suspect this was just a muscle-flexing on the part of the Swedish government - possibly under pressure from US and other governments, and ultimately from the MPAA, RIAA and other non-US affiliated organisations - and that it would come to nothing. They were just saying "Yes, you know our laws and do not flout them, but don't push it".

And in this case, it seems that this is indeed what happened. They have shown that they're not afraid to exercise a little force to keep ThePirateBay in line (albeit unnecessarily, in my opinion), and I daresay they've not harmed their cause at all in this regard. TPB is actually pretty strict and even-handed anyway, but this may have meant to serve as a bit of a warning from the Govt to anyone looking for inappropriate material: If you're after kiddy porn, TPB is not the place to look, and nor is Sweden.

I've simplified a little, and coloured heavily with my own opinion, but I just wanted to present a little more background for those who don't really give a fuck about all this but will insist on commenting anyway.

Thank you, goodnight.

Re:No surprise...

[CastrTroy]

But TPB doesn't host any actual files, just the torrent. So if the only people downloading Bob's torrents are people that he specifically invites, then why would he be putting it up on TPB at all. Since he is hosting the torrent, couldn't he just email the tracker to all the people who he wants to send the file to, or simply send them a URL to some password protected web directory so they could download the torrent file? Seems like a lot of extra risk to take, putting something like that up on a public site, when you just want to share it within a small group.

Re:No surprise...

[Odiumjunkie]

Well, because it's the cleanest way of distributing a file to a number of people at once. It's efficient, and assuming no-one twigs, there aren't any copies left anywhere.

If you post even an encrypted RAR to a rapishare or a YouSendIt or whatever, then most likely there's a bit-for-bit copy of your stash on their servers for authorities to examine if they twig to what you're up to.

Fair enough, you could host the tracker yourself, but its not in the realms of the inconceivable for someone to do what I outlined.

Re:No surprise...

[1u3hr]

> TPB stated that they do not hold such links, and if any are reported they are immediately investigated and removed.
Those statements are not logically cohesive. If you run a tracker indexing hundreds of thousands of torrents, you have no idea whether or not you index any child porn torrents.

It's perfectly "cohesive" (if by that you mean logical). TPB didn't claim they had no child porn. They said thay would remove any if they were notified. What else can any site that allows public to upload do?

Anyway, no one who wanted to stay out of jail would use TPB or any public torrent indexing site to trade child porn. They'd have the FBI or the local equivalent tracking them and one fine morning have them come through their door.

Re:No surprise...

[G00F]

Well, actually this is what I think, If I was distributing something illegal:

First I would find a way to hide tracks for myself, then I would name and advertise the file to something that would be expect on TPB, but not something popular, like Win95, old hard to find movies, etc. Then e-mail/contact the clients about the file. After al lthe clients have acquired it, and a random amount of time, tell TPB that you found something they need to remove.

If anyone gets questioned, they where just downloading what they thought it was listed as. I am sure there would be a few innocent people caught up in this as well.

Making the guilty and the innocent look the same would help those offenders. Putting it in a hidden circle/place/group where they can't claim ignorance of the file contents and would make it easier for more leads into the group.

Re:No surprise...

[mpe]

Since he is hosting the torrent, couldn't he just email the tracker to all the people who he wants to send the file to, or simply send them a URL to some password protected web directory so they could download the torrent file? Seems like a lot of extra risk to take, putting something like that up on a public site, when you just want to share it within a small group.

Even if the child porn/terrorist plans/illegal drugs shipping/etc have a boring code name (and/or) the actual information is encrypted it's still possible for third parties to find out useful information, like the IPs of the clients, if you use a public bittorrent site.

Re:No surprise...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

This argument doesn't really hold water with me - sure, torrents are a form of metadata, but it's the magic key that lets you get at that file, so it's as good as holding the file itself.

Re:No surprise...

[1u3hr]

First I would find a way to hide tracks for myself, then I would name and advertise the file to something that would be expect on TPB

Well no one has suggested there were disguised files. People have listed files labelled "Underage models", "Lolotas" etc. Though I really doubt the contents would be illegal outside Saudi Arabia.

Anyway, your method is supposed to give deniability, but in reality, any whiff of suspicion will get those involved on a watch list for the rest of their lives, and thay would have to be prepared to have their homes and computers searched. They would set up private trackers, use onion routing, etc. Only a complete fool would use TPB for CP no matter how disguised.

No deletions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in the TPB blog, people posted links to questionable torrents, and some of them went dead soon after. I didn't verify the contents of these torrents, but some stuff was removed for sure. Like all torrents by this user:
http://thepiratebay.org/user/debruin/ (Nothing to see there now..since it was removed, but I am certain there was stuff there earlier.)

I guess if one were inclined to give both parties the benefit of the doubt, it might be a matter of what is seen as child porn. The police thought it was, TBP didn't, but deleted things anyway at the request of some users.

Re:No deletions?

[Rakshasa Taisab]

TPB seems to have has many times more child porn uploaded on their site the past few days, than all the years they've been operating. So whomever it was that decided to put TPB on that list, has in fact _increased_ the distribution of child porn.

Re:No deletions?

[Opportunist]

Not trying to create a new conspiracy, but maybe just had to create a crime to match the report...

Re:No deletions?

[Goaway]

Another example is http://thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/.

That one is still in the Google cache: http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:B5kqltngQjcJ: thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/+http://thepirateba y.org/user/achim106/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

The police thought it was, TBP didn't, but deleted things anyway at the request of some users.

Actually, no, they specfically didn't delete these things when users requested it before this big upset. It's only after they got all this unwanted attention that they suddenly started nuking entire user accounts.

Re:No deletions?

[hacker]

So whomever it was that decided to put TPB on that list, has in fact _increased_ the distribution of child porn.

Perhaps that was the point?

If you claim that they're being delisted because of child pornography, and then the masses decides to revolt against that by uploading gigabytes of child porn, you just validated your original (false at the onset) assertion. Now they CAN take TPB down, because they are, in fact, a party to distributing child pornography.

But as TPB removes it, they'll have to then start looking into benign-named torrents that may contain child pornography instead. An ebook on faucet repair in a 1gb .rar file? Are you sure?

Read the linked article

[Opportunist]

Mr. Andersson put it quite directly, and straight to the point: Bending over to the recording industry will do more harm than good in the long run.

Right now, it's quite possible to follow the trail of data. P2P links directly from source to destination. With data retention and easier access to user data, users will switch to tools that reroute the traffic through multiple nodes from source to destination, so following it becomes near impossible.

Currently, people don't use it. Simple reason: It increases traffic by a multiple, depending on the number of hosts you route it through, it can three, four or tenfold. And thus the data throughput is lower. So following the trail of "really" criminal data is quite possible for the police. Should someone (ab)use a P2P network to transfer data that doesn't only infringe copyright but actually contains something that would interest a general attorney (not only because of lobbying of certain interest groups but because it is the G.A.'s biz, because it DOES actually affect every citizen if a crime of this kind if committed), it's fairly easily possible to find source and destination.

If now file sharing is criminalized, people will quickly pick up obfuscation mechanisms to protect themselves against the recording industry. And thus will protect invariably those that use those channels to distribute data that can be used for (or is by its very nature) a crime. Not only against certain interest groups and minorities, but against the majority of people on this planet.

In other words, the RIAA is helping pedophiles and terrorists all over the planet (hey, why should terrorhype and thinkofthechildren only be used by the adversaries of privacy?).

Re:Read the linked article

[Eivind]

Yeah. But onion routing is only one way of foiling traffic-analysis. Downloading to a shared machine (with many users) that deliberately does not keep logs, and then transfering from that machine to your own using an encrypted protocol also works. It does mean transfering the content twice -- first to the shared machine, and then from there to your own machine, but that isn't a very large price to pay. But true, onion-routing is practical. And gets more practical as bandwith grows more than the content grows. I've got the lowest speed offered by my ISP. 10Mbps symetrical. At that speed, downloading an album of music compressed to say 192Kbps takes on the order of half a minute. If it would instead take 5 minutes, but be untracable, that wouldn't be a huge price to pay at all. Yes it's an order of magnitude more, who cares, it's still 5 minutes. Even larger stuff, say something which is 1GB large. At line-speed that is 10 minutes. If it took an hour, but was untracable, again that'd be a reasonable enough trade-off. And I'm being conservative here. You don't need to bounce the average packet trough 10 nodes to give plausible deniability. I doubt it's going to be possible to convict someone for something that it is, for example, 25% likely he is actually guilty of. (which would require bouncing packets trough on the average 3 dummy-nodes.)

Re:Read the linked article

[Eivind]

I don't think so. Typical implementations use encryption, so that there is no way for you to know what kind of content you are forwarding.

It'd be sorta like claiming your ISP is guilty of copyrigth-violations if they forward encrypted packets to you that happen to contain a copyrigthed work distributed illegally.

If that view went trough, it'd essentially become illegal for anyone to forward encrypted packets to anyone.

Re:Read the linked article

[Opportunist]

I know it's becoming common to reduce every argument to the bottom line and ignore the reasoning behind it, but do you think it's possible, at least here on /., to remain in the good tradition of actual discussion (akin to the philosophers of the days of yore, not Oprah and Springer)? If you don't like my argument, you're invited to counter it with an argument. Yelling WROOOOONG is none.

It doesn't make sharing copyrighted material legal. I don't claim that it does, nor do I want to argue in favor of copyright infringements. All I want to argue is that, knowing human nature, this is the logic consequence. What is more likely? That people stop using P2P to share files they shouldn't, or that they will adapt and evade the tracing mechanisms? Keep in mind that it does not require any knowledge of tracing and avoiding it, all it takes is to download a tool that does it for you. Quite similar to the way P2P already works. How many of the people using P2P tools have the foggiest clue how they work?

And since people will do whatever necessary to avoid being tracable, this development will lead towards more privacy for those that actually do commit a crime. When you push ordinary people in the vicinity of real criminals, they will aid those criminals, simply by being indistinguishable from them.

So if you want to take my argument apart, please do. I enjoy a good discussion, and yes, I'm aware of the most obvious counter argument, that it's the people's fault if they're helping the criminals by using better encryption and better obfuscation. The question remains whether they'd do it if they weren't pushed to do it. Because, as said above, people will not heed a law they don't support. They will do whatever necessary to evade it, but they will not bow to it.

Re:Read the linked article

[computational super]

If now file sharing is criminalized, people will quickly pick up obfuscation mechanisms to protect themselves

File sharing was criminalized as soon as Newsweek published the first article describing what it was to the computer illiterate. I reasoned along the same lines as you're reasoning when they shut down Napster (oh, boy, now the file-sharers are going to create an underground, untraceable network), but it never materialized. If it didn't happen then, it's not going to happen now (not that I'm a big fan of the RIAA - just pointing out that you're making some big assumptions here).

Re:Read the linked article

[Opportunist]

Things like this emerge out of need, not out of vision. After Napster's demise, there was no need for an untracable network. There was a need for a replacement, granted, and behold, it came into existance. Actually more than one.

Back then the RIAA didn't have direct access to ISP data, there was no mandatory data retention for ISPs as there is now in the EU, and actually privacy still mattered (kinda-sorta). This is changing. Due to eroding privacy and more and more pandering to content industry crying, more people will be caught file sharing. So the need for obfuscation emerges. It's the logic consequence. It's either that or discontinuing filesharing.

I highly doubt the latter will happen.

The logic consequence of that will, of course, be that onion routers and similar obfuscation tools will become illegal, due to them faciliating terrorism, child pornography or whatever boogyman will emerge 'til then. Not really a development that looks favorable. Sooner or later what filesharers will have to do is find the leftover loopholes in the law (like, deliberately installing "malware" on their PC that uses said PC as a relay for P2P traffic and claiming they didn't know, which is funny enough still a get-out-of-jail card if you participate in, say, a DDoS...).

Basically, the whole development isn't going to be good for the internet community as a whole. No matter whether I'm dead accurate or painting it a bit too black. Something like the aforementioned will happen, and I highly doubt that it will be beneficial for us.

Re:Read the linked article

[Opportunist]

If that view went trough, it'd essentially become illegal for anyone to forward encrypted packets to anyone.

This has no chance in hell to fly. You will have banks (who will certainly NOT want to live anymore without netbanking, since it shifts the work towards their customer) and large corporations (who would never do without VPN anymore) against you. Both very strong, powerful and financially potent, and quite heavy on the lobbying lever. If the content industry can outweigh them, it's time to be very, very scared.

Re:Read the linked article

[fredklein]

Actually, it'd become illegal to forward ANY packets- Those 1's and 0's could be a (miniscule) part of a copyrighted work.

associations with child porn

[MrSpiff]

it has also been suggested in various swedish blogs that the reason for this could be to label the pirate bay and file sharing in general as a dirty business and to scare people away from it by associating it with child porn. representatives of the danish antipiracy movement has stated that child porn is actually a good tool for fighting piracy (source http://forum.piratpartiet.se/Topic79221-15-5.aspx# bm79282), if service providers agree to filter child porn and help prosecute those who distribute it (as is the case for most providers in sweden today), it will be a much smaller step to do the same for copyrighted material.

Re:associations with child porn

[Goaway]

That may very well be the case.

However, it's also true. The Pirate Bay has been running (and, I hear, still runs) torrents for very borderline if not outright illegal child porn material. They have refused to remove them (like many other trackers do) until now when it suddenly got worldwide attention, when they started nuking torrents left and right.

Compare http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:B5kqltngQjcJ: thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/+http://thepirateba y.org/user/achim106/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1 and http://thepirateba/ y.org/user/achim106/ for instance.

Re:associations with child porn

[Goaway]

Less broken links: http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:B5kqltngQjcJ: thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/+http://thepirateba y.org/user/achim106/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1 and http://thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/

Re:associations with child porn

[MrSpiff]

even so, the very reason why The Pirate Bay has not yet been shut down by swedish authorities is because no copyrighted material actually exists on their servers due to the nature of Bittorrents and simply linking to it is not a crime (yet atleast). swedish child pornography laws only prohibit posession of child pornographic material, linking to it or viewing it, even posession of it in the form of a browser cache in some cases is not considered illegal. the staff of TPB does not have the resources to view the contents of all torrents they track, but they do remove what they can whenever they discover virus or child pornography.

Re:associations with child porn

[Goaway]

Actually, they have specifically not removed these torrents in the past, when they have been reported. They only removed them now due to massive media attention.

Furthermore, it does not take much effort to search on obvious child porn keywords and check, or just plain remove them without checking. Many other torrent sites remove all torrents like this.

Re:associations with child porn

[MrSpiff]

quoting one of TPB's admins, brokep, from his blog (http://blog.brokep.com/2007/07/06/swedish-police- will-censor-the-pirate-bay/):

To make things perfectly clear - we don't host any content. And I have never seen child porn on the bay. Our moderators work on all the reports we receive from the public and they contact ECPAT or other organisations if they found suspicious stuff. The police has never contacted us in any aspect regarding child porn!

Re:associations with child porn

[Goaway]

To make things perfectly clear - we don't host any content. And I have never seen child porn on the bay.

Quoting another admin, anakata:

"We have a police to not remove torrents. We have however reported the ten or so suspected child porn torrents to the police..."

http://www.flashback.info/showpost.php?p=7647263&p ostcount=264

So one says they have never seen child porn, the other one says they have. Let's just say their statements in general are not quite matching up in this matter. They have been taking a very laissez-faire approach to child porn, and now that it's coming back to haunt them they are covering up. They're hardly unbiased in this matter, and they aren't being very honest, so I would recommend against taking what they say at face value.

Re:associations with child porn

[tinkerghost]

To make things perfectly clear - we don't host any content. And I have never seen child porn on the bay.

and

"We have a police[policy] to not remove torrents. We have however reported the ten or so suspected child porn torrents to the police..."

The 2 are not mutually exclusive. One states he has not seen any child porn, the other states that they have forwarded 10 or so suspected child porn torrents to the police. If they haven't received any confirmations on those 10, then there's no confirmed child porn on TPB and both statements can be made without contradiction.

Re:associations with child porn

[Goaway]

That's nothing but semantic games and weasel words. It's the kind of thing Slashdotters will scream and shout about when politicians do it.

Re:associations with child porn

[MrSpiff]

Thank you. It's very important to not forget the fact that a lot of p2p content is questionable to say the least, but for it to be illegal it must be subject to investigation by professionals and tried in a court of law. Sadly for our legal system, the swedish police authority wants to cut the process a lot shorter. Also, just because pictures of scantily clad children and teens upset a lot of people doesn't make it illegal. I would consider TPB to be hypocritical if they let their own judgement decide what's ethical to share through their service instead of the law.

Re:associations with child porn

[Goaway]

Once again, Google does work actively to block child porn in their index. It's just that their task is a handful of orders of magnitude bigger. And TPB certainly wouldn't be incapable of policing and removing suspicious torrents - many other torrent sites already do.

Also, they don't do much the same thing. The Pirate Bay is not a torrent indexer, it's a BitTorrent tracker. They run all their own torrents, they don't find them elsewhere, so they certainly have a much larger responsibility towards what they let onto the site.

Re:associations with child porn

[Husgaard]

You keep repeating these links. But in this context it actually indicates who this uploader could be.

The GP post tells about a danish anti piracy guy telling that child pornography is good to use as a tool for fighting piracy.

I can tell you that this was said by the danish attorney Johan Schlüter (head of the danish anti piracy group) in a hearing held at the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 29th. He told about the great success they had had in Denmark getting allofmp3.com blocked with the danish child pornography filter. He also advocated child pornography as the way to fight piracy, as the politicians understand child pornography better than copyright.

If you look at your Google cache link, you will find that the user achim106 started uploading in June 4th - the first monday after this hearing. You can also see that he has never uploaded anything during the weekends, only on working days.

Is this some anti piracy guy spreading child pornography as part of his work? We may never find out, as the swedish police seem very reluctant to investigate this. Anyway, none of what he uploaded was actually child pornography. It was a combination of "barely legal" porn and non-pornographic pictures of children - just what you would expect from an anti piracy guy who wants to upload child pornography without being in possession of any.

Re:associations with child porn

[Goaway]

Does it matter? My point was that The Pirate Bay did nothing to remove it after it was uploaded, and only pulled the plug after the media attention. The trap would have been entirely ineffectual if they had just pulled the torrents in the first place. They still walked right into this one.

Re:associations with child porn

[adona1]

Which makes sense, it's a much better idea to let the police find out that the torrents don't have child porn than for TPB to download them themselves, find that they actually do and then get busted for it.

from the article:

[cliffski]

"The aim of the proposal is to facilitate efforts to clamp down on illegal file-sharing. This in turn is expected to stimulate the development of lawful alternatives for the spread of music and movies over the internet, according to a statement from the Justice Department.

Tobias Andersson, press spokesman for lobby organization Piratbyrån, was critical of the move.

"This is completely crazy," he said, before adding that "it is time to stop pampering the record industry".

"The danger here is that it will speed up the development of anonymous file-sharing programmes that make it technically more difficult to trace somebody's internet use. These kinds of services can also be exploited by people involved in criminal activities, such as paedophiles".

============

Okaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy. So the guy from the 'pirate party' is now trying to defend a website full of copyrighted material because "to attack our freedom to share copies of spiderman 3, is to encourage paedophiles".
This is truly pathetic, and goes to show the lengths some people will go to in order to keep on getting music, movies and other stuff for free. If the pirate bay really gave a damn about free speech, they would remove *all* copyrighted material, and merely use the site to host information that genuinely should be protected, like leaked documents from whistleblowers, information that governments want suppressed, political opinions far outside the mainstream etc etc. The fact is, maybe 0.01% of stuff on TPB will fall into a 'geneuine protected speech' category, the rest is just copyrighted stuff people want to leech.
By doing this, ironically, they are totally undermining the legitimate argument for the protection of a free, uncensored web, and peoples right to publish information of a sensitive nature. If you put some civil right activist in a courtroom arguing that its essential that TPB exists because it is a defence of free speech, he will just be totally crushed by an opposition lawyer who hands the judge a PC and shows him the top 500 torrents on TPB.

If you care about privacy, freedom of information and censroship, defending people like TPB is entirely the wrong way to do it. They trivialise the entire argument into "my human rights to get free hollywood movies".

Re:from the article:

[Anonymous Coward]

Piratbyrån does NOT represent the Pirate Party of Sweden, nor is it The Pirate Bay.

PiratByrån - NGO.
Pirate Party - Political Party.
The Pirate Bay - Bittorrent tracker search engine.

All run by different people. Obviously, they have overlapping interests, but so does your local recycling center, the green party and greenpeace.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

hello coward. has it occurred to you that these guys are just facilitating others breaking the law? its a pathetic moral defence to say "I'm not actually physically hosting the bytes in this case", its a bit like saying "I just told them how to bypass the locks, I didn't actually physically break in, officer"
TPB exists so that geeks can get hollywood movies for free, while its owners rake in advertising cash. It's a business model based upon copyright infringement and leeching. Dressing it up as anything else is just naive

Re:from the article:

[Agrajag-01]

It seems odd that a positive bias is afforded to the pirate bay (certainly not negative) when we know they really do facilitate copyright infringment. It is worse though that they can continue however kids using peer-to-peer, and not event understanding what peer-to-peer means, get clobbered.

Demanding that we be able to view/listen to our purchased products how we see fit is a very different argument to defending people who admit and even enjoy notoriety as thieves.

I am a bit hypocritical in that I might download a movies to see what it is like or copy an overnight rental for viewing later but if I like it I nearly always buy it. It just means I spend less on junk (now that has hollywood scared, not that I have watch many hollywood films in the past 5 years). I say almost because some foreign stuff is pretty hard to get.

Re:from the article:

[Hydian]

Okaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy. So the guy from the 'pirate party' is now trying to defend a website full of copyrighted material because "to attack our freedom to share copies of spiderman 3, is to encourage paedophiles". You completely missed what he did say in your efforts to rush forward with what you wanted him to say.

What he said is that forcing file sharing to go underground is going to accelerate the development of tools that make said file sharing harder to trace. If child porn is the government's larger concern as they claim it is, then they should recognize that those same tools will be used by those priority targets which will make catching them tougher. It is true, but not a good argument.

As far as your misconceptions about freedoms...the fact that some people abuse something is by no means a legitimate argument against freedom of speech. That is about the dumbest thing that I've ever heard. Not that any of it matters in this case since no one country owns the internet. TPB doesn't break any laws in their country and you don't have any more right to try and push your laws on them than they have to push their laws on you. You don't have to like it, but you should respect it.

Re:from the article:

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get your knickers in a twist - Copyright infringement isn't wrong, it's just currently illegal. If there was a law telling you to kill your firstborn, would you obey it because it's the law? No, of course not. A law forbidding you from passing on information is arguably "less" bad than a law requiring you to kill your firstborn. But it's still bad, and one should not respect unjust laws.

If you disagree with a law, encouraging disrespect for it is a good thing, and The Pirate Bay encourages disrespect for copyright law.

Re:from the article:

[ultranova]

its a pathetic moral defence to say "I'm not actually physically hosting the bytes in this case", its a bit like saying "I just told them how to bypass the locks, I didn't actually physically break in, officer"

Yeah, it would be just as wrong as publishing an article about .

TPB exists so that geeks can get hollywood movies for free, while its owners rake in advertising cash. It's a business model based upon copyright infringement and leeching.

I assure you, I haven't been tempted to download Hollywood movies or RIAA music for ages. I can't imagine why anyone would be.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

I don't respect people who take other peoples hard work, distribute it, and make advertising revenue from doing so.
Plus, have you thought through their argument?

industry says "we want to remove the anonymity of filesharers"

pirates say "this is wrong. removing anonymity will result in more anonymous file sharing services, which will be a haven for paedophiles"

so basically the pirates are saying anonymity is bad because it will allow people to break the law. And from this, they conclude that anonymity should remain.
What part of their logic actually makes sense to you? Anonymity either encourages the breaking of the law or it does not, you cannot have it both ways, just because you want free music.

Re:from the article:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't respect people who take other peoples hard work. (a) nothing is taken. Copying is simply not stealing.
(b) the amount of "Hard work" is rightly irrelevant in a capitalist society. Karl Marx believed in the now-long-discredited labor theory of value - that something is somehow "worth" the amount of effort it took to produce - trivially stupid, once you stop think about it: If I work for years to make a car out of toothpicks or something similarly pointless, I've just wasted a big chunk of my life producing something of very low value to the world. The failure of Marxist communist theory to correspond with reality ultimately stems from Marx's belief in the Labor theory of Value, not "human nature" or some nonsense. His axioms were simply wrong.

I'm totally fine with hollywood shutting down and the record companies going out of business and some artists going back to having day jobs. Total Freedom of Information is far more important than privileging those very artists most willing to help build a police state to secure their privilege. Copyright and patent have no place in a free capitalist society. It saddens me that so many young people think should "fight capitalism", they should recognise that the current Western system is nowhere near capitalism and getting further away the more state power to grant market-destroying monopolies like copyright and patent is exteded.

Re:from the article:

[Tuoqui]

Freedom of Speech means being able to say and do things that other people find offensive.

Much of the piracy you see is a result of an old outdated 'Copyright' law. One that has been systemically modified, expanded, extended, and enhanced over the years from what it was originally meant to be.

14 Years was the original duration of Copyright. If it was still the case then maybe just maybe people would respect it more. Now its been expanded to Life + 70 years and in the case of companies possibly indefinately/forever. All on account of corporate interests *COUGH*DISNEY*COUGH*! Under the original duration things might become public domain while still culturally relevant

Now for a short educational film on Copyright Law yes it's been posted on slashdot as its own article before but it applies here.

Either way rampant piracy has as much to do with an outdated business model, treating their customers like criminals, DRM (or anti-DRM) movement and other such things. I find it hard to respect a company that smacks me over the head with a moral argument about piracy before the start of every film I go to see IN THE THEATER.

Any other company would go out of business treating their customers like criminals. Why should they be permitted to thrive?

Re:from the article:

[arkhan_jg]

This is truly pathetic, and goes to show the lengths some people will go to in order to keep on getting music, movies and other stuff for free. If the pirate bay really gave a damn about free speech, they would remove *all* copyrighted material, and merely use the site to host information that genuinely should be protected, like leaked documents from whistleblowers, information that governments want suppressed, political opinions far outside the mainstream etc etc. The fact is, maybe 0.01% of stuff on TPB will fall into a 'geneuine protected speech' category, the rest is just copyrighted stuff people want to leech. All the 'good' things you mentioned are almost certainly copyrighted too you know. Who gets to decide what is 'good' infringing material, and what is 'bad' infringing material? Defending free speech means defending all of it, even those things that you disagree with personally.

Ah, but leeching free copies of spiderman 3 isn't free speech at all! I hear you say. Which just goes to show what a good job the media industry have done.

Remember, copyright is a two-way deal. I suspend my free speech right to diseminate copies of public domain material for a period of exclusivity for creating copies by the original author. For 14 years, if I remember rightly. All so that ever greater amounts of creative works enter the public domain, for the benefit of all - our shared culture to grow ever richer, for derivative works to grow, for the education and entertainment of all. All works will enter the public domain, because the stories and ideas and shared culture that people create from also come from the public domain.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years. Copyright isn't a deal any more. It's 'intellectual property'. Ideas, stories, music all of it. Locked up in digital vaults, defended by infinitely-extending copyright duration. Huge amounts of material should be in the public domain by now, and yet none of it is. Some musicians in the UK are complaining that their 'property' is about to expire after 50 years. Well, the deal was even less generous when they created the works, yet they want to extend the duration of the copyrights again, and again, and again after the fact.

Well you know what? Stuff them. They had a deal. and they broke it, over and over again. I have a right to make backup copies, I have a right to share these materials with my friends and I have a right watch it in any damn way I please. The law may not recognise these rights, but any law which criminalises 60-70% of the population (and if you include trivial violations like media shifting, it's damn near 100%) is a bad law, and should be repealed. There are alternative ways to encourage and fund creative works, and get them into the public domain - lets explore that.

You argue my views, and the exercise of them is illegal, and should be prevented by people like TPB. How is that any different than making illegal and banning 'proper' free speech like whistleblowers? They feel that all speech is to be protected, even copyright violations, as copyright law is broken, just as laws protecting corporations from whistleblowers or banning political speech are broken.

They trivialise the entire argument into "my human rights to get free hollywood movies". The human rights underlying the whole copyright argument - free speech, privacy, anonymity, corporate mal-influence over the political process, restriction of the public domain, DRM etc etc are pretty important too. Defending the pirate bay is a way to bring the whole thing into the open, and perhaps reform the political and legal landscape to benefit the public and the artists rather than all the money and influence being with corporate middlemen who add nothing to the exchange, only pervert the system for their monetary benefit.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

TPB only links to copyrighted and illegally hosted material, and it does it deliberately in an anonymous way to help them get away with it. IE doesn't mask the URL does it? Think about it. And learn to be civil kid.

Re:from the article:

[lilomar]

It seems odd that a positive bias is afforded to the pirate bay (certainly not negative) when we know they really do facilitate copyright infringement. I, for one, do have a positive bias toward TPB, even though they facilitate copyright infringement. Mostly because I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to how copyright infringement is a Bad Thing(tm).

You yourself admit that it has helped you weed out the junk in your movie purchases. And the studios still get your money for the good stuff. If this means that the movie studios and the record labels don't get to make any money off of stuff people don't want to watch/listen to, all the better.

Bottom line, if they are making quality art, people will pay for it (assuming they don't alienate their customers by having a couple of their "John Doe" lawsuits brought to the attention of the general public)

Re:from the article:

[lilomar]

I don't respect people who take other peoples hard work, distribute it, and make advertising revenue from doing so. Technically, TPB doesn't distribute, It provides a forum for others to distribute. The people distributing aren't making money from advertising. They are paying for their own bandwidth, so you could even argue that they are losing money. The advertising on the Pirate Bay's site is so they can afford to run the site, servers aren't free you know.

Plus, have you thought through their argument? Yes, let me break it down for you.
In the beginning, there was Napster. Napster and other "p2p" sites weren't really peer-to-peer. they were "facilitated peer-to-peer" or peer-to-server-to-peer. In this environment, it was relatively easy to get the IP address of an infringer, all you had to do was check the server logs. Then the RIAA, MPAA, and associates began cracking down on this "p2p" traffic and suing the living crap out of every one they caught (or thought they caught) infringing.
So, many (the more cautious) began using torrents. Torrents are truly p2p (with the exception of the server hosting the trackers, which is just a direct download, no sharing involved) and so, much harder to track, but not impossible.
Now, for the Pirate Bay's argument:
"If you continue to persecute bittorrent sites, it will lead to the development of even more anonymous, (encrypted, node-hopping) networks, where it will be harder to find someone when a real crime (e.g. kiddie porn distribution) is committed."

What part of their logic actually makes sense to you? All of it.

Anonymity either encourages the breaking of the law or it does not, you cannot have it both ways, just because you want free music. Anonymity is a tool, to be used for bad or good according to its user. It can be used to protect kiddie porn dealers just as easily as it can be used to protect free speech. In this case, the free speech happens to be, "Hey, I don't agree at all with your silly copyright laws! So pbtthh on you!"
The point of the statment was, If you force us pirates (arrgg) to develop and use even more anonymous means to our end, then don't blame us when the pedophiles do the same.

Re:from the article:

[hesiod]

> TPB only links to copyrighted and illegally hosted material

That is a bold-faced lie and it can be proven almost immediately that you are completely full of shit. Civility includes not libelling others, you hypocrite.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

the advertising on TPB makes a fortune, to run a site which you keep boasting hosts no content, and thus is relatively low bandwidth. Its a big money making scam, dressed up as some sort of 'stick it to the man' bullshit.

I don't want uploaders anonymity removed so they develop a more hardcore encrypted system, I want them to obey the fucking law and pay for content like honest people. Is that so hard to understand?

The people using the pirate bay are just too tight assed to pay for their entertainment like everyone else. there is no political or moral argument here, it's not food or shelter. its just people stealing stuff. And don't embarrass yourself with any pedantic argument about the definition of theft. If it was made by someone else and has a price, and you take it without paying, it's theft.

Re:from the article:

[ravenshrike]

Actually, he's stating a very logical consequence of shutting down public BT sites and programs. People looking for normal copyrighted files will look for/make the programs needed which will as a consequence of government action be anonymous. The amount of people looking for non-illicit material is much more than those looking for illicit material, thusly they are more likely to get such a program made. However, once made it is certain to be used by the purveyors of the illicit material(in this case child porn.).

Re:from the article:

[lilomar]

TPB hosts no copyrighted content. It does host the torrent trackers that point others to the torrents. It also hosts the website itself and all the overhead that goes with that. Plus there is the upkeep of the physical servers to hold all of this, perfectly legal (at least in Sweden), content.

The only ads I have ever seen on TPB are for TPB, TPB merchandise, and The Swedish Pirate Party (as in political, not like with rum and buxom wenches). So they aren't making a fortune of advertising. They might be making something on the merchandise, but I doubt it. And even if they are, it isn't a "scam" it is providing something for payment, which is known as "capitalism".

I don't want uploaders anonymity removed so they develop a more hardcore encrypted system, I want them to obey the fucking law and pay for content like honest people. Is that so hard to understand? What I don't understand is what your method of forcing them to "obey the fucking law" without forcing them underground is.

there is no political or moral argument here, Yes, there is, many have made one. I have made one. Unless, maybe it doesn't exist because you say it doesn't? Yeah, that makes sense.

Try to realize that just because something is against the law, doesn't mean that there is a good reason for it to be so.

Re:from the article:

[Jeek Elemental]

as I see it, this isnt a question of whether lawyer X would get crushed by lawyer Y, its basically if copyright as we know it should exist at all.

There isnt some divine commandment handed down to a bearded mountain climber that says thou shalt not copy, its up to us to shape how information flows.

At one extreme you have free information, where any byte enjoys the same rights as the next, regardless of origin.
At the other, a byte is wrapped in any number of legal layers, dictated solely by its origin.

I dont know where between these extremes we should land, but Im pretty sure I dont want some hollywood company deciding it based on a business model.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

Nope. "to each according to there needs, from each according to their means." I think that was Marx, and it also sounds like the arguments put forward for taking other peoples work for free often spouted by defenders of TPB.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

"The only ads I have ever seen on TPB are for TPB, TPB merchandise, and The Swedish Pirate Party "

seriously? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

turn off adblock mate.

Re:from the article:

[lilomar]

Ok, as embarrassing as it is, I just realized that I actually did need to turn off adblock. /me slaps forehead. (O.o)

My point about them needing the money for the servers still stands though.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

"infofacist" lol. you crack me up.
jesus how difficult is it for you to grasp the concept of 'fixed costs'. go look it up kid.

Re:from the article:

[fredklein]

Its a big money making scam, dressed up as some sort of 'stick it to the man' bullshit.

You're just jealous you didn't think of it first.

I want them to obey the fucking law and pay for content like honest people.

Law =/= Right

Legal =/= Honest

people using the pirate bay are just too tight assed to pay for their entertainment like everyone else

There are a ton of arguments I could make here, but I'm sure you'd just ignore them all. But let me list a few:

1) Seeing a movie in the theater costs a lot. Depending on how many people are going, snacks, babysitter, transportation, etc, it could run more for one movie than people budget for food for the week. So, those people CANNOT AFFORD to see that movie. There is no way the MPAA would be getting any of their money, because they cannot afford to pay. Since the MPAA ain't getting no money nohow, there is no loss if the person Downloads the movie.

2) Movies are increasingly crappy. It's nice to be able to see a (admittedly low-quality) copy of the movie to see if you WANT to go see it in the theater (or buy on dvd).

3) Most, if not all, the stuff I download (hypothetically, of course) is NOT first-run movies. I (hypothetically) download TV series, older movies, anime, etc. TV series? Older Movies? Guess what- these are shown FREE over the airwaves on TV!!! The only differences are:
1) Poorer quality.
2) No ads.
3) Convenience.

Since I would channel-surf during the ads anyway (or get up to get a snack, or go to the bathrom), #2 is irrelevent- I would not watch the ads in any case. The poorer quality might very well lead me to actually BUY the DVD(s) (assuming it is available!). But the biggest difference is #3- Convenience. I can watch the episode/movie I want to watch , when I want to watch it. I can pause, stop, jump back and forth if I wish. This is a BIG 'plus' for me, and does not affect the MPAA (or whoever) whatsoever.

So: Downloading does NOT negatively affect the producers if you are downloading stuff that is free-over-the-air.

If it was made by someone else and has a price, and you take it without paying, it's theft.


True.

But, if it was made by someone else and has a price, and you COPY it without paying, it's Copyright infringment.

You may call it a "pedantic argument", but that's the whole point: if it was 'theft', then they would charge file sharers with "theft". But they don't, do they?

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

No I'm not. I just disagree with you, but if you are incapable of debating the merits of your argument without becoming abusive, that just speaks volumes. You claim TPB is some kind of pro-free speech site that happens to have the odd copyrighted file. I point out the entire top 100 is copyrighted, and you get all antsy about it. Face facts, TPB is a warez site. its designed to make getting illegal copies of other peoples work easy. The top 100 shows this glaringly. Just face the facts, the site is entirely indefensible.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

"You're just jealous you didn't think of it first."

No, actually I consider taking other peoples work for free and distributing it to be deeply immoral. Clearly, your morals are 'different'.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

I'll come back to slashdot when I feel like it mate. It's not your website, and knowing your sort, you'd claim that 'all property s theft' anyway. HAHAHAHA.
So tell me, when you're not TYPING IN CAPITALS, how do you earn a living, in some magical way where people do not need to pay for what you do I presume?

Re:from the article:

[mmcuh]

Anonymous? Have you ever used a BitTorrent client? It's trivial for anyone connecting to a torrent to get the IP adresses of other people using the same torrent. It's "anonymous" in the same way that piling up a huge stack of pirated Windows Vista CDs on the main square and throwing them at passersby is "anonymous".

Re:from the article:

[matazar]

I'd rather pay the actual artists then the record labels who get most of the money. Download the music and if you like it, buy the album, go to a concert or buy some other stuff from them. Or better yet, download the songs you like off of iTunes, so the musicians actually get the money. http://isohunt.com/ has been attacked by MPAA/RIAA for a while. They have no problem working with the MPAA/RIAA so that the artists get money. However, they refuse to work with them because they (and the record labels) won't make as much money off of it. I'm not saying piracy is right, but the whole thing is screwed now because the other side is greedy.

Re:from the article:

[DGolden]

I'm not your mate you english twat. Getting paid for your work is not the same as being able to charge a per-copy fee. I get paid to write _new_ code all the time. The hard part of composing a song, writing a book, writing a computer program etc is making the FIRST copy. I work on commission to do that. I'll still do fine when copyright law is abolished.

Re:from the article:

[mpe]

the amount of "Hard work" is rightly irrelevant in a capitalist society. Karl Marx believed in the now-long-discredited labor theory of value - that something is somehow "worth" the amount of effort it took to produce - trivially stupid, once you stop think about it:

Plenty of advocates of this position probably wouldn't believe it is "Marxist"...

If I work for years to make a car out of toothpicks or something similarly pointless, I've just wasted a big chunk of my life producing something of very low value to the world.

Or you might have produced a "work of art" which somone is prepared to pay a huge sum on money for. Thing is that "the market" can be very fickle when it comes to deciding if something is "art" or not.

Re:from the article:

[mpe]

14 Years was the original duration of Copyright.

That was in the 18th century when sailing ships and horses were the fastest transport available. Thus it might well have taken months to years to actually get copies to all your potential market.

If it was still the case then maybe just maybe people would respect it more.

Or something equivalent for the 21st century.

Now its been expanded to Life + 70 years and in the case of companies possibly indefinately/forever.

The "life + 70 years" is effectivly infinite, unless you are very young when the author dies.

Re:from the article:

[DGolden]

Illegal does not mean wrong, and a copy of someone's work is not their work. (Destroy one copy, the other still exists. They are different things).
Personally I don't argue against attribution (being recognised as the author of a work), and disagree with plagiarism (it's fraud). But that's very different to current copyright law, which gives people power to prevent communication of information, and is often used as an _excuse_ for building a surveillance state, alongside terrorism and child porn.

Re:from the article:

[fredklein]

I consider taking other peoples work for free and distributing it to be deeply immoral

So do I. It's definately immoral to 'take' someone's work.

Copying, on the other hand....

Re:from the article:

[hesiod]

You keep crying civility, yet... Ever heard of the boy who cried wolf?

The fact is, you stated a false absolute. I, through personal experience, am proof against that. Yet you still cling to your lies. So.... Why should I not consider you a troll (at best) or a liar?

Re:from the article:

[hesiod]

You are a douchebag. No one, that I can see, will deny that TPB is used MOSTLY by individuals engaging in copyright violation. We (I can only speak for myself, truly) are arguing against your pointless insistence that it is ONLY for such material. This is untrue. THAT is why we are so adamant about your assholishness.

Re:from the article:

[cliffski]

wow, your debating skills are just awesome. what other childlike insults do you have ready when you realise that you have totally lost the argument.
Its always the anti-copyright people who get wound-up, insulting and abusive isn't it? says a lot about the kind of people who take that view.

Re:from the article:

[hesiod]

I find it hilarious that you talk about my "debating skills" when you make wide, sweeping claims that are provably false. In addition, you never even responded to my counterargument. It's not the "anti-copyright people" (which is ludicrous in itself, since I never said that was my position) who are insulting. I called you a douchebag because you are, in fact, a douchebag. This is not because of your position, but because you are a troll.

Something is funny

[gbickford]

From Goaway's comment on the most recent pirate bay article:
http://thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/
When I checked it there was nothing there so I looked in the cache http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A//the piratebay.org/user/achim106/&sourceid=mozilla2&ie= utf-8&oe=utf-8

Some info about the filter

[tpwch]

In a swedish newspaper they stated that they hadn't removed anything. Guess both sides are lying here.

Anyway, here is some info about the filter:
The filter is not mandatory in anyway. Its voluntary for the ISPs to implement it, and I'd estimate that about half of the swedish ISPs does it. Its also just a simple DNS filter, so its easy to get around by using another dns server, or running your own.

What is interesting in here is the fact that the agreement between the ISPs and the police states that neither party can show the list to anyone except a few technicians needed to implement the list. That kind of worries me, since they won't even show us what is censored. I think it may even be illegal, since Swedish freedom of press law says that you can't stop anyone from publishing anything, you can only take action against them after it has been published and spread if they are spreading illegal content, this is just because they want the people to be able to see what it is they want to censor, to make sure it can't get out of hand I suppose.

Re:Some info about the filter

[tryfan]

> since Swedish freedom of press law says that you
> can't stop anyone from publishing anything

Except child porn. It's per definition illegal to publish child porn in Sweden, by an exception to fundamental law.
Another thing is, of course, that it hasn't been legally decided yet whether it's illegal to publish *links* to forbidden material, whether it's copyrighted material or whatever.

Re:Some info about the filter

[fredklein]

In a swedish newspaper they stated that they hadn't removed anything. Guess both sides are lying here.

kopimi - Y-day 23:40
when searching for child porn the moderators found a lot of spam, false torrent descriptions and other stuff. it's therefor they got deleted.
the admins _suspended_ some torrents that where questionable but they are back if they where correctly described or such.
users are deleted all the time when they spam or put up spyware/virus and so on.

So, they searched for child porn, didn't find any, but did find mis-labeled torrents, spam, and malware.

Re:This just in!

[Digital Vomit]

Ah, it seems that this pornography ring in the Swedish police force was cleaned up earlier today.

Re:Some stuff was removed

[Digital Vomit]

Many people believe that concepts like copyright are doing severe harm to the progress of human culture, arts, science, and civilization as a whole. Anyone can see the damaging effects of intellectual property laws firsthand in this dawn of the Information Age. Sharing movies, books, etc. is only one aspect of this fight which must be fought...and won. That you can't see beyond the issue of mere "movie piracy" (which has a negligible to zero effect on movie sales anyway) makes it little wonder that this seems like a silly ideal to fight for.

The free flow of information could be saving lives and making the world a better place for everyone if it were allowed.

Or is it all about stopping child porn?

[mrbluze]

By referring to a file that was supposedly removed the Swedish police can say that they did their job correctly and remove the black mark they put next to The Pirate Bay's name without having to backtrack or publicly apologise in any way.

That's probably right, but perhaps there is a bit more to it. Perhaps it is in the interests of law enforcement agencies for there to be sites like The Pirate Bay in order to track, profile and investigate potential offenders. A bit like a 'raise the flag and shoot whoever salutes' trick. It wasn't, after all, their job to stop software piracy, copyright infringement or anything else other than child porn.

I would imagine it's actually rather difficult to infiltrate a group of individuals which does not meet in a public place, nor communicate using conventional methods. It's also difficult to form such a group without ever having communicated somewhere in public - but they'd do it if they were forced to. Therefore, it's not in their interests to push the activity too far underground.

Just an idea, anyway.

Re:Or is it all about stopping child porn?

[computational super]

using more advanced methods

More advanced than video or photo? You mean holographs or something?

Re:Or is it all about stopping child porn?

[mpe]

I would imagine it's actually rather difficult to infiltrate a group of individuals which does not meet in a public place, nor communicate using conventional methods. It's also difficult to form such a group without ever having communicated somewhere in public - but they'd do it if they were forced to.

If a group can form (and add members) then it can be infiltrated. It's simply a matter of law enforcement understanding how to do so.

Re:So what you're saying is

[Goaway]

Try reading that again. I was saying the exact opposite. They did NOT remove those torrents in the past.

Re:Is this an argument over method or over result?

[Tuoqui]

So you are saying that we should treat the guy sharing a bootlegged copy of Spiderman 3 as if they were peddling child porn?

All joking aside, and as much as I dislike pedophiles. I have to say the exact same standards for someone sharing a copy of some movie should be the same standards we use to prosecute pedophiles.

Which is to say that you should not be able to convict someone based on an IP address alone. The police when dealing with those who peddle and share child porn often have to go through alot. The timeline is typically something like this.

Pedo gets caught talking to a 10 year old girl IRL by their parents. (skip this if its potential sting operation by a legal entity)
Parents contact FBI (see above)
FBI agent pretends to be 10 year old girl.
Pedo eventually tells FBI Agent posing at 10 year old girl to come meet them at X-location.
FBI gets warrant to show to ISP getting themselves the physical house address to the IP address corresponding.
FBI gets warrant to search the premesis based on evidence in last step.
FBI raids the house when they see the people are home and seize all the computer equipment and arrest everyone inside.

Which is a far cry away from the RIAA/MPAA model
Get IP Address
Issue DMCA order to ISP to get them to try and cough up the name/address of the person who owns the account
Extort money from said person (We know that you were sharing music/movies! Here take our offer of $3000 so we can go away and pretend this never happened)
...
Profit!

Re:That is such a load of steaming bullshit....

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you asked those 10% how moany of them have actually learned of your program through illicit distributions? Don't be so quick to disregard that a large portion of those who download actually choose to support good software.
Hell, even though I hardly ever use some software, e.g. K!TV, I've sent more than one of your licenses' worth to both because I want them to develop further. I can't remember last time I used K!TV. Or Damn Small Linux, same story.

Hell, if it wasn't for evil nasty pirating, I wouldn't have any albums by Willard Grant Conspiracy (love that guy's voice) or for that matter, The Postal Service's only album.

Sure, I might be an exception to the rule, but rather than seeing 100'000 pirate downloads as 100'000 lost customers (never gonna happen), consider it 100'000 pitches to prospective customers where you don't have to actively do anything that you would not have done anyway (i.e., clean up your code, add new features, change colours every few iterations). (anon because I've moderated)

Re:That is such a load of steaming bullshit....

[cliffski]

agreed 100%

Child porn, eh?

[J'raxis]

People were predicting over here this would be the excuse they'd use to take TPB down. Nice to see your government's scumbaggery is so predictable.

Re:Some stuff was removed

[cliffski]

so how does this:
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3735159/Outlaw%5B2007% 5DDvDrip%5BEng%5D-aXXo
(the top torrent on TPB right now)
an action movie, "save peoples lives"

I cannot see anything in their top 100 that isn't a PC game or a TV show / Movie.

Where is all this life saving human right stuff then? or doesn't that generate enough ad views for the guys running the site?

Re:Yay!!! TPB is legal in Sweden..

[Ash-Fox]

Are you saying that all the downloads are for products that aren't good enough to be bought?

Living in Poland, getting to know some local populace.. I'd have to say that people in Poland value their entertainment. But they value their money a lot more and they will not spend it if they can help it.

I've known people who were filesharing non-stop getting cut off from the Internet for over a year. They did not buy a single movie/song during that period.

Of course individuals vary, but I do believe that is a 'common mentality' in Poland, this is probably true for some other nations.

Re:one don't smartass childporn

[trashbat]

childporn is a to sensitive topic to be brushed away with the usual smartass piratebay routine. I's just as good to duck when they start tossing childporn over the battlefield, even if it's nonce sense.

Fixed that for you ;-)

A Modest Proposal

[dabadab]

We are said that file-sharing is killing the business of publishers so they may give up creating new content.
Following that logic, file-sharing child porn is something that everybody should do as it would make creating child porn economically unfeasible and would end it.

(Of course, I am just joking.)

Re:Yay!!! TPB is legal in Sweden..

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded the song "I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow the other day.

This is not a lost sale. I would never buy the CD the song is on. In fact, you CAN'T buy this CD in the country that I am in. It simply doesn't exist here. And, even if it was, I wouldn't buy it. Basically, it's a good song that I'll listen to on random play. But, pay for the whole CD? Nope.

On the other hand, I saw a video on YouTube by a band named "Clutch" the other day. I downloaded another song of theirs off the internet. And now, all of their CDs are now on my wishlist for my next B-Day. I'd buy the CDs myself, but they don't exist in the country that I live in.

Kinda adds a whole new wrinkle to the situation when someone wants to pay money for the CDs, but can't because the CDs haven't been released in a particular country.

In my case, my only choices are to
1) never buy, and never listen
2) wait until someone buys for me, and not listen until then
3) download now, and wait until some buys for me

Am I a thief?

Not surprising really.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

This is pretty standard practice with police everywhere nowadays: the politics of policing seems to be more important than actual policing.

Not surprising really. They got to survive the constant stream of criticism, scrutiny, and at times, downright hatred from the portion of the public who instantly feel threatened by authority.

AGAIN

[iONiUM]

Repeat after me: TPB does not host copyrighted material, they only host the directory of where to get it. Maybe you should go after google next, because they index TPB. No? THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP, or, change your argument to not make you sound like an idiot.

Re:Some stuff was removed

[jstomel]

The pathetic thing about the pirate bay in general is they're doing immature things that aren't worth risking your freedom for. People are meant to risk their lives and freedom for ideals worth protecting, not the freedom to download copies of the latest far from essential Hollywood trash without paying for it. Absolutely, people should never do silly things like protesting unfair copyright laws or tea taxes. All civil disobedience should always be based on high minded intellectual ideals and never on actual concrete things that piss people off like unfair taxes, or the price of bread. Thank you for revealing to us what people are meant to risk their lives for. People are obviously too stupid to make that sort of decision and we have desperately needed someone like you to come along and tell us what ideals are worth fighting for.

The copyright holder rights

[Jugalator]

In a related story, reader paulraps writes "Sweden's Justice Department is backing a new proposal that would enable copyright holders to find out the identities of people illegally sharing their material on the Internet."

I find this pretty sick... Isn't the point of having law enforcement do this because they are supposed to uphold certain legal standards? Sure, they may still not always do, but besides that. What if the copyright holder happens to be someone like Hell's Angels and they legally get your identity, a gang comes knocking on your door and kick the crap out of you? Of course, it's wrong to share copyrighted work without their permission, and it's also wrong to kick the crap out of someone in response, but it's a possibility they open for. They open for more about a "law in your own hands". I can't really see a reason a copyright holder should get hold of the identity of an offender? What exactly are they hoping to achieve with that? To more quickly get sorted with the legal work and suing people, without considering much about how this newfound information will be used by the copyright holder?

It's a similar case with pedophiles and publishing their identities. However, at least then they can prove directly harmful to their near environment. But in this case, it's on a different scale. About file sharing on the Internet. I don't see the same urgency to reveal identities with this crime. They need to weigh that urgency against the risks of people abusing this to sidestep law at all times. Two wrongs don't make a right...

Re:The copyright holder rights

[cdrguru]

You basically cannot sue "John Doe". The RIAA has been able to file temporarily for discovery purposes but I am sure they have amend their filing quickly as soon as the identity of the person is discovered.

Without an identity, you can't sue. Period. So if a "copyright infringer's" identity is not available, there is nothing that can be done. Obtaining the identity is the first step in a civil procedure.

Re:The copyright holder rights

[Husgaard]

In a related story, reader paulraps writes "Sweden's Justice Department is backing a new proposal that would enable copyright holders to find out the identities of people illegally sharing their material on the Internet." I find this pretty sick... Isn't the point of having law enforcement do this because they are supposed to uphold certain legal standards?

The "problem" for the anti pirates in Sweden is that a number of court cases have established that file sharing is too small a law violation for even the police to obtain the subscriber identity behind an IP number.

And of course the swedish anti pirates would love to start running an extorsion-like business like the RIAA is doing. So now they are lobbying for a law giving them the right to get this information directly without having the police involved.

Re:Yay!!! TPB is legal in Sweden..

[smallfries]

I downloaded the song "I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow the other day.

Now I understand why there is a post anonymously option on slashdot...

wish we could confidently stand behind US laws...

[moxley]

I think that the multinationals (music industry etc) and their US government lackeys will continue to do whatever they have to do until they shut TPB down.

If that means having someone post purported or real child porn to the site and then raiding TPB, that is what they'll do. There is no doubt in my mind that they will create a situation to enable them to take action if necessary. The criminal and corrupt elements within the US government (of which there are many, and they are the same ones who would be taking money from RIAA lobbyists both on and off the record) have learned that this is the most effective way to get things done when they want to, but can't because people's rights get in the way.

Usually they try intimidation, if you see the letters page on TPB you can see the many attempts at this; while their responses are not the most professional thing in the world, I find them very enjoyable to read because these corporate lawyers are so used to being able to scare people into submission. It's especially enjoyable to read the ones where there has been a back and forth going on and you see the lawyers get more exasperated - yes, they are juvenile at times, and seem to be asking for further confrontation - but enjoyable nonetheless. You can see them at the link below.

http://thepiratebay.org/legal

At least in Sweden they can say "this is our law, if members of our government or police or US companies don't like it, too bad because the law trumps their opinion." It used to be that in the United States we had a constitution that protected us from government abuse. Now we don't - and the small portions of it which have not been completely subverted are just ignored at the whim of the powerful.

so, sweden's government is just as bad as the US

[DragonTHC]

with real problems in the world. These fucking twats are wasting everyone's time because people are downloading movies and music from the internet?

our congress is just a bunch of two dollar whores!

since when does the movie and music industry have so much clout in sweden?

They all need to eat a bit of their own shit!

Top 100?

[Xenographic]

I don't know if it's in the top 100, but the Comes v. Microsoft case materials were put in a torrent on TPB, and I believe it was my suggestion to put them there (someone on Groklaw said they'd preserved them and wanted to know what to do with them).

Re:Some stuff was removed

[CeramicNuts]

Exactly. these dowloaders may not be technically "thieves" but they are definitely asshole freeloaders. and the proprietors of thepiratebay make money entirely off the backs of others peoples work. they justify their unethical nature by complaining about britney spears and hollywood and how this small clique of rich people control everything. of course they aren't ripping of britney spears, they're ripping off the things they enjoy.

it is important to fight DRM, but these jerks definitely make that fight harder as the line between freeloaders and we who fight user-hostile technology is blurred.

Re:Some stuff was removed

[mr_matticus]

Movie piracy has a negligible effect on sales now because lots of the bootlegs are terrible, torrents can be painfully slow, and because people know it's against the law. Some will still do it, but most "pirates" are occasional ones. The movie industry doesn't really care if some random person downloads one or two of their movies. It's basically a wash anyway, because some will later buy it who otherwise wouldn't, and others will get frustrated by waiting two weeks when they can just as well go to Blockbuster and pay the $3. That doesn't mean they should just go ahead and allow it.

Legalizing the sharing would decimate every means of making money to recoup the cost of films. If people were suddenly allowed to download whatever they wanted, the services would move directly into the mainstream, increasing bandwidth consumption for one, and absolutely would impact DVD sales and rental businesses and even box office sales. What possible reason would you have to pay for something you could legally get for free? Making it not illegal to perform digital transfers off digital films would further basically guarantee that there'd never be a profitable blockbuster ever again.

What people here on Slashdot also usually fail to realize is that the profits from those movie studios are invested in other things. Some of it goes to finance the next movie in the pipe; lots of it goes into medical research, banking investments, massive tax revenue for government services (at local, state, and federal levels), and venture capital firms which provide the startup money for all sorts of small businesses.

So while it might be fun to talk about the demise of a multibillion dollary industry that makes you pay for things, what would you do when getting a loan became harder because bank revenue streams dried up or when valuable government services get cut back because the hundreds of millions of dollars they collect from studios disappeared? It wouldn't kill the economy by any means, but if the bank declines just 1 million new home loans to make up the difference, that could have a real impact on your life. Is that worth not having to pay $15 for a DVD? These companies are an important asset to the economy, like Microsoft or IBM or Walmart. How does getting free movies help you out at all? Take the companies out the equation without replacing those profits and government revenues and you're making things *worse* and not better. A few greedy and crooked people got insanely rich from some distasteful business practices. That's the story of almost any major corporation. How that translates into moral outrage that you have to buy DVDs and pay for movie tickets is beyond me.

They are done for

[Snaller]

"They have removed lots of stuff. "

So now the PirateBay has accept editorial responsiblity and remove offending material? I'm not sure they get to decide what they consider offending in the long run.

Re:They are done for

[Goaway]

So now the PirateBay has accept editorial responsiblity and remove offending material?

Yes, they do. Why is this surprising?

Re:They are done for

[Snaller]

"Yes, they do. Why is this surprising?"

Because then they are responsible for copyright violation as well. Their only defence would have been that they don't censor their users.

Re:They are done for

[Goaway]

No, their only defence has been that what they are doing is not illegal under Swedish law. It has nothing to do with "not censoring" their users. Which they do. They remove torrents which are mislabelled already.

Re:They are done for

[Snaller]

"No,"

Yes.

"their only defence has been that what they are doing is not illegal under Swedish law."

That's their excuse, several swedish legal experts says otherwise. But even if it currently is in that state Sweden will be pressured to change their laws since Sweden has signed the Berne convetion - perhaps by the US but more likely when the EU copyright reform has finished, all member countries must conform (or get out)

Re:They are done for

[Goaway]

"No,"

Yes.

You did not actually support your earlier statement. My refutation still stands as stated.

Re:They are done for

[Snaller]

""No,"

Yes."

Bla bla. Swedish law does not allow its citizens to help others comit crimes, therefore its not legal - if you wish to suggest otherwise you'll need to prove it.

"You did not actually support your earlier statement."

Sure I did, I pointed out its their excuse. Its not legal to help with copyright infringement in a country which has signed treaties who say the opposite.

Re:They are done for

[Goaway]

Your original statement was that their only defense is that they don't censor their users. You have not provided any support for this, and as far as I can tell you just refuted it.

Re:They are done for

[Snaller]

"Your original statement was that their only defense is that they don't censor their users."

It is.

"You have not provided any support for this, and as far as I can tell you just refuted it."

Yes many times, sorry you can't understand it.

Re:Some stuff was removed

[DGolden]

It could well be a step along the way in its own small way, if it serves to encourage contempt for copyright law.

Re:Some stuff was removed

[mr_matticus]

Your premise is faulty. A motion picture is not a live event. It is a digital recording which only makes money if people pay for viewing it, either in the theater or through official copies. It is not a play, or a concert, or a live sporting event. People would not pay to have someone else show them a digital recording were it legal to download perfect copies online for free. There are not enough people in the world who love the sticky-seat, low-quality furniture experience of a 35 foot screen to make a major blockbuster worthwhile. Patronage and fame don't bring in money for movies--they pay out money as a result. A famouse person doing a movie demands payment. Where does that money come from? Advertising costs money. If you're referring to putting in commercials before, during, and after films, well you're just kicking a dead horse. They certainly won't pay for an ad-studded film if they get the commercial-free one. Product placement is in poor taste, but it's the only option you give that's logically feasible. Are you really suggesting that studios should make films full of product placement every five seconds (grossly offensive movies now wouldn't even begin to cover it--I, Robot would look ad-free) to pay for your freeloading?

You don't need the film. They don't need to give it to you for free. You shouldn't have any rights to anyone else's work just because you want it. Otherwise, I'm coming to live in your house. I don't make a distinction between work to build a sunroom and work to edit a film. You want to draw a line in there so that you don't have to feel like you're stealing; I draw no such line. Almost none of us has a job that produces anything. You should stop asking for a pay check, since you want these people to work for nothing, too. After all, if non-tangible products aren't property and shouldn't be charged for, you're just stealing money from the company where you work.

Thought it WAS removed.

[aliquis]

I have tried but I can't find the right post in the old thread, anyway someone linked to the torrents uploaded by a user on pirate bay and atleast according to the torrent names they seemed to contain child porn, however when I visited the url they where gone so I checked google cache and the page turned up with the names of the files. I'm pretty sure I made a post with the url to the google cache but I can't find it in the thread.

Re:Some stuff was removed

[cliffski]

so speaks someone who has never created anything original, clearly.

Re:That is such a load of steaming bullshit....

[empaler]

(turns out moderations are undone even if I press for "anon". woot.)

Amazing how you in four short sentences call bullshit twice and use a dozen exclamation marks.

Apart from that, if the supermarket gives away free food it has effectively taken money from their own pockets to pay for a product to give away. (They do this all the time, by the way, in the form of free samples - which boosts sales of the products, otherwise, why bother?)
On the other hand, we have a software developer who might only ever have sold 10'000 licenses. He'd be steadily updating the software, he'd even have to (gasp!) bugfix.
Enter the pirate crowd. Suddenly he gets enormous exposure. He gets a lot of attention he wouldn't have gotten, a lot more people (prospective customers) knows his product. Let's say 100'000 new users, 80% of which stop using it after a week, 10% after a month. The last 10% keeps using the program regularly, and of those 10%, 9 of them never buy a license, but the last 1 percent point do. That is, 1% of 100'000. 1'000 new paying users. 10% increase.

I know of no study of the above, but I'd eat my own favorite hat on that on average, small developers benefit from pirate software.

Re:Some stuff was removed

[mr_matticus]

Nobody has a copyright on the English language. It's public domain, and even if it were a fabrication of one man, the copyright would have lapsed centuries ago, not to mention when people starting speaking ModE, which of course is an independent work only loosely based on ME. In short, stop being or moron or stop posting.