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The Pirate Bay Files Suit Against Big Media

Join the Pirate Party writes "Having found the necessary proof via the leaked MediaDefenders documents, the Pirate Bay is filing suit against the big record and movie labels operating in Sweden who have allegedly been paying professional hackers, saboteurs and DDoSers to destroy their trackers. They also claim to have filed a police report."

8 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Illegal evidence? by lobStar · · Score: 5, Informative

    In Sweden there is no such concept as "legally obtained evidence", any evidence can be presented in court and then it's up to to the judge to weight the different sides evidence against each other. The procedure with admission of evidence mostly exist in common-law countries, with a layman's jury.

  2. Re:Heh by netcrusher88 · · Score: 5, Informative

    much the same as bayimg, i imagine - not so much that the child porn is illegal, as that it offends the admins

    just my 2c

    --
    There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
  3. Re:Big ones by Cairnarvon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Extradition treaties don't allow the US government to apply US laws to Swedish nationals acting completely in accordance with Swedish law on Swedish soil, regardless of what some people may think.

  4. Re:Heh by mmcuh · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, the police have not returned any hardware or even backup copies of the contents of the disks, not to The Pirate Bay, the Pirate Bureau nor to some of the smaller businesses that were renting rack space in the same server hall. Some of the larger businesses that could afford scary lawyers have gotten their hardware back though.

    I don't know if there is a hard limit on the investigation time - I think the prescriptive period for copyright infringement is 5 years (though I'm not sure), so if that is what he wants to press charges for he has to do it before June 2011...

  5. Re:Illegal evidence? by ozamosi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Informative? Try misinformative...

    They have rules of evidence in Sweden, as confirmed by a quick search. I can't find a good site on how it works, but any number confirm that they exist. (They are quite necessary for justice.)

    It is perfectly fine to use any evidence you may have, no matter how you got hold of it, in court.

    The exception being, of course, things that a person have said to their doctor or lawyer, since they are forbidden to talk about what their patients say.

    Read chapter 35, paragraph 1 in law 1942:740, "rättegångsbalken" (law of prosecution? means something like that), in the swedish book of law if you do not believe me. You can find the law in question here, although it's obviously in swedish.

    So, who was misinformative again?

  6. Re:Heh by Poppler · · Score: 4, Informative

    What if the verdict was wrong? Rarely happens. Since the death penalty has been reintroduced, there have been 1096 executions in the US. During the same period, there have been 124 exonerations.

    Clearly, the verdict is wrong a significant amount of the time.
    --
    What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
  7. Re:Illegal evidence? by Wildclaw · · Score: 4, Informative

    I am from Sweden, so I was interested about the subject and searched on the Internet. I found a very good link on the European Commission website that contains some simplified information about the different justice systems in the european union. Below is the link to the english version of the chapter discussing evidence and proof in Sweden (There are also quick links to pages discussion the same for each and every country in the EU)

    http://ec.europa.eu/civiljustice/evidence/evidence_swe_en.htm/

    8. Can evidence that has been acquired in an unlawful manner be referred to as evidence?

    The principle of admissibility of evidence means that there are only certain rare exceptions where it is forbidden to use certain types of evidence. That evidence has been acquired in an unlawful manner does not therefore, in principle, prevent the proof being referred to during the trial. This can, however, be of significance in the weighing of evidence.

  8. Re:Heh by RodgerDodger · · Score: 4, Informative

    What's wrong with the death penalty? Ah, let's see...

    1) Human error. Unfortunately, being innocent isn't a guarantee that you won't be convicted of a crime (especially if you are poor and black). So there's a chance that a person killed by the state was not guilty of the crime. With incarceration, you can set them free and compensate them somewhat for the mistake. With a death, you can't.

    2) The religious angle. Many religious types believe that incarceration gives the prisoner a chance to earn redemption and avoid eternal punishment. (This works both ways - one long-held reason for execution was to allow a higher judge to determine the right sentence)

    3) The economic angle. Contrary to general opinion, prisons can and do make money. That's one reason why private industry lines up to run prisons. Why kill off perfectly good slave labour? Remember - the advantage of slave labour is that the shirts made on Friday aren't worse than the shirts made on Monday!

    4) Human rights factors. The US is the only western country, and one of three in the world, that will execute children and the intellectually impaired. Okay, by the time the appeals process goes through, the child is now an adult, but killing someone for a crime committed when they were 12? Seriously.

    5) The scattergun approach. Look at the sort of things you can get the death sentence for in the US. Heck, if you're driving a car and a passenger decides to shoot down someone, you can get the death sentence.

    6) The racist angle. The vast majority of people on death row are racial minorities - way out of proportion with the general prison population, or even the subset who committed similar crimes. Why? Because juries are more likely to give the death sentence recommendation to blacks and Hispanics. The lack of an objective and impartial set of criteria makes the use of the death sentence subject to these distortions.

    7) The poverty angle. When was the last time someone who could afford their own lawyer got sentenced to death in the US? The fact of the matter is that far too many of these death sentence cases are handled by overworked public prosecutors. If you've got a competent lawyer, and a death sentence looks like a strong possibility, then you will nearly always end up doing a plea bargain, resulting in an incarceration instead (often for a lesser crime, like manslaughter).

    I could go on, but... I just don't want to. :)

    --
    "Software is too expensive to build cheaply"