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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."

26 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Finally by kaos07 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's taken long enough but it seems these corporations who employ mafia-like tactics will finally get what they deserve. Kudos to the whistle-blowers within MediaDefender, The Pirate Bay for having the guts to file a lawsuit, and Sweden's Communistic copyright laws allowing this happen.

    1. Re:Finally by drsmithy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sir, I was talking in jest. My point was that Sweden's apparent relaxed attitude to copyright laws harks back to Marxist ideas of sharing and community-owned property.

      Uh, no, a "relaxed" attitude towards copyright may merely indicate a recognition of the fact you can't "own" information like you can physical property.

    2. Re:Finally by ManifestAmbiguity · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."

      Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, Monticello, August 13, 1813

      Please feel free to refute this flawed logic he is using, if you can. And I don't believe this Thomas was a communist, but I could be wrong there.

    3. Re:Finally by drsmithy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Are you an artist ? Have you tried to make a living out of your art without the "backing" of some RIAA-like group ? Specially early on your career.

      Have you considered this is simply a reflection of how the market (society) values the production of the average "artist" ?

  2. Cyberterrorists. by haeger · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Using illegal tactics to shut down a legitimate site has to be cyberterrorism, right?

    Animal rights activists who hack and deface sites seems to get that label. I'd find it quite hilarious if "Big Media" would be labeled as such too. They'd be in some interesting company.

    .haeger

    --
    You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
    1. Re:Cyberterrorists. by erroneus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well there are those rootkit incidents... you know, the ones one the music CDs and the games?

  3. Re:Heh by Sprite_tm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    With the difference that what The Pirate Bay does, actually is legal in Sweden.

  4. Re:Heh by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This is like the drug dealer calling the cops because someone stole his stash.

    This is like the Amsterdam coffee-shop proprietor calling the cops because someone keeps trying to break into his premises, and stalking his customers.

    Remember, The Pirate Bay is doing nothing that is illegal in Sweden.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  5. with the difference, that the drugs is legal by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what you are basically saying, this is like a doctor calling the police because his drug cabinet was smashed.

    Granted, this is also like a slave owner reporting a runaway slave to the police or the citizen who turned in Anne Frank just doing his civic responsibility (Oh hi godwin, how you doing.)

    The simple fact is that the law isn't always "right". Some big media do not like swedish law, just as some hard drug users do not like swedish law, or as same slaves did not like eh slave laws etc etc. The problem is that if you then fight that law by disobeying it, you run the risk of the police coming around and talk sternly to you (or if you are black gun you down as you reach for your wallet, somethings never change).

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  6. Murdering a drug dealer is still murder by Overzeetop · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is that not true?

    Whether the drugs happen to be legal (caffeine, alcohol, pot, hash, pseudoephedrine...) or not is irrelevant. A crime committed against an unpopular person/group is still a crime.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  7. legality by arikol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As has already been shown, Piratebay is a legal service (in Sweden) hosting no copyrighted material. Swedish law does not condemn faciltating copyright infringement.
    Swedish law does however not really like sabotage, vandalism, unautorized access and other sauch malarkey.

    That said, I didn't see that one coming, laughed out loud.
    It's about bloody time that someone took big media and smacked them a little for all these strongarm tactics.
    Hopefully the media coverage on this will highlight some of the issues, like HOW the media companies think business should be run. If small businesses tried this they would immediately be taken down (in almost any country) for much more serious crimes than copyright infringement.

    And please try not to call it "pirating". That's a term coined by the mpaa (if I remember correctly) to try to make it sound really bad. If we, the geeks, are careful to call it what it is, copyright infringement or illegal copying, we can perhaps change public perception of the issues a little.
    The ONLY thing that bugs me about thepiratebay is the name. Yes it IS cool but also makes us all look a bit like rebelling teenagers, even those of us who have thought deeply about copyright issues and realised that the system needs fixing to work in the modern world.

  8. Re:Heh by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Distributing drugs is illegal

          Oh goodness me, what am I going to do with all that morphine, fentanyl, diazepam, and ketamine I have under lock and key at my clinic?

          Distributing drugs is not ALWAYS illegal.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  9. Re:Heh by ultranova · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is like the drug dealer calling the cops because someone stole his stash.

    No, it's like someone who has told someone else that a third party has a certain file calling the cops and telling he has had his home vandalized by Mafia thugs and corrupted cops and government officials working for foreign financial interests.

    It's not the Pirate Bay which is criminal, likely treasonous and has connections to organized crime (not to mention has emulated their business model) here.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  10. Re:Heh by Orange+Crush · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The site is a bad egg that is up to no good in the hood!

    Copyrights are protected by law. Trackers and checksums pointing to outside sources of copyrighted material are not illegal in Sweden. Yes, they encourage copyright violations. This may be "bad" in the moral sense (depending on your morals, I tend to side more with Trent Reznor myself).

    Now, hacking a legitimate (in the legal sense) website is very much illegal and I certainly feel it's immoral. If my next door neighbor put a giant arrow in his yard pointing to my house proclaiming "STEAL FROM THIS GUY!" I'm still not allowed to go burn his house down.

  11. Re:Heh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's like a guy's rented car being slowed down by a speed limiter even though the guy is driving within the speed limit.

    No wait, that would be DRM.

    Okay how about this:

    Imagine there's a public road with lots of houses on both sides. And there's the starbucks coffee shop. The big corporation is selling coffee to the residents every morning, who badly need it. Now some residents need to drive far to get to the coffee shop and in the wrong direction (opposite of work). A guy figures out the formula for his favorite starbucks coffee and decides to open his own specialized little coffee shop at home. Because he has a little house, he can't sell the coffee to many people at once and being low budget has no money to advertise, but some close neighbors who like the same type of coffee are spared the tedious trip to starbucks for getting their fix. Soon many more such coffee shops open, but it's still all garage type, low profile and very few people know where to get their favorite coffee besides starbucks.

    Then a smart guy buys a big truck and fills it with lists of the small coffee shops. He drives up and down the road and people who ask are given a list of all the shops that sell their favorite type of coffee so they can pick the nearest to buy the coffee there.

    Now less and less people go to starbucks and starbucks likes it not. So they decide to make sure no more formulas are stolen from them. They put up rules for how, where and if you can drink the coffee you bought from them and on your way out you get a retinal scan.

    Also starbucks now hires gangsters to force the advertising truck from the road, shoot the driver, flat the tires, jam the road etc...

    Today there are many drivers advertising the little coffee shops and secret letter correspondence between starbucks and the gangsters has leaked to the public recently. A pissed off driver who has been a victim of gangster harassment has now called the police and the special execution forces of the justice department.

    Making the same coffee as starbucks is illegal, advertising fowhere to buy it is not.

    To be continued...

  12. Re:Big ones by Tom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hopefully their government will have balls as well when the IP merchants finally bribe the government to take the kid gloves off... Government officials' first priority is to get re-elected (so they can continue stealing, if you're the cynical kind), and the last attempt to turn the swedish government into a part of the US police force turned very badly against them. I never heard anything about the criminal charges that were brought against the then minister of the interior, but the shit-storm hit fast and hard and very publicly - the #1 thing politicians try to avoid.

    I doubt they'll be making that mistake again.

    They'll probably bully the ISP next time.
    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  13. Re:Heh by badspyro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What if the verdict was wrong? what then? You have just taken away something that can never be given back. A human life. It is more valuable than gold or anything known to man, as nothing can buy you another one.

  14. Re:Heh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's 'wrong' with the death penalty? It certainly sounds a lot better than sitting in a cell for 40-60 years and making people waste millions of dollars on you during that period.

    Oh great. Killing people for the sake of the bottom line is not only acceptable but also preferable! Hooray to capitalism, by which the blackness of any bottom line comes first in front of the life of a human being.

    I'm all for the death penalty, I also think that anyone given life in prison should be able to *ahem* 'opt out' for sake of money and mind.

    If someone wishes to commit suicide then he should be free to choose it. A civilized state does not commit murder. Ever.

  15. Re:Illegal evidence? by gordo3000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    so in other words be just as childish and stupid about how you live your life because someone else is?

    how about people today take the high road and just boycot all big media? you want to give them a real fuck you? one hwere the government won't step in and help them constantly? Don't buy, download, listen, or watch any of their stuff. support independent labels and independent movies or find something else to do!!!

    your idea is stupid. people have been doing it and it's not giving the media companies a bloody nose. It's giving them massive government support around the world, direct tax revenue flowing towards them, and a reducing of our legal rights because they can make a legit complaint.

    I hope kids around hte world finally realize that you don't harm a media company by downloading their stuff; you only make them more powerful by giving them powerful allies in various governments and legal precedents around the world. The person who downloads rampantly is doing them the greatest favor imaginable.

  16. Re:Heh by Lane.exe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The legal definition of theft is appropriation of another's property with the intent to deprive that person totally of the use of that property. In other words, I steal your car when I take it, and drive away with no intent to return it. If I take your CD to my house, copy it, and return the CD, I haven't deprived you of any property so totally as to bar your further use of that property. So I haven't committed theft. I may have violated the copyrights on the CD, but not theft.

    --
    IAALS.
  17. Re:Heh by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    seriously dude, ketamine has been replaced by numerous less-harmful drugs for literally all of it's applications.

          In the United States. You are making an assumption that I am in the USA. I am not.

          As for ketamine being "pretty damaging" - lol. You can't learn medicine by reading wikipedia. It has less risk of cardiopulmonary depression than diazepam, has a longer half life than midazolam, has none of the serious depressing/nauseous effects of opioids, and is PERFECT for sedating small children for an hour or so while certain procedures are performed (ultrasound, CT, etc). It's dissociative effect prevent it from being used as a mainstream anesthetic for surgical procedures but for sedation it's great.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  18. Re:Heh by Oktober+Sunset · · Score: 5, Insightful

    of course not, pirating music and movies costs multinationals money, molesting a child costs them nothing, it's obvious what is more evil.

  19. Re:what revolution? by Nullav · · Score: 4, Insightful

    here all the media companies go out of business, and all music, software, TV and movies become free for everyone? Also known as the day that mass culture died
    That's not culture, that's manufacture.
    --
    I just read Slashdot for the articles.
  20. Re:Heh by Oktober+Sunset · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now less and less people go to starbucks and starbucks likes it not. Now more and more people go to starbucks and they are making more money than ever before and starbucks likes it not.

    Fixed it for ya.
  21. Re:Heh by Greg.Rodden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I mean what are they going to do? Sue me?

    heh bad joke, sorry

    --
    I have ridden the mighty moon worm!
  22. Re:Big ones by jc42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

    The current US administration uses the term "irrelevant" for such things. What they do is send someone in to kidnap you, and fly you off to some hidden part of the world where they work you over for a few years. Then, when they tire of you, they fly you to some other part of the world, kick you out of the plane, and leave you to find your own way home.

    Y'all know what cases I'm talking about, right?

    There's no reason to expect the Bush administration to honor Swedish law any more than they honored, say, German law.

    --
    Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.