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Four Indicted in Pirate Bay Case
paulraps writes "Suddenly the founders of the Pirate Bay are not so hearty. The four men behind the popular file-sharing site were indicted in Sweden on Thursday on charges of being accessories to breaking copyright law. And this is more than just a shot across the bows. The prosecutor reckons that they can be hooked for 'promoting other people's copyright breaches' but there will be no walking the plank: instead, they face fines of up to $200,000 and the confiscation of all their hardware. 'The Swedish prosecutor listed dozens of works that had been downloaded through The Pirate Bay site, including The Beatles' Let It Be, Robbie Williams' Intensive Care and the movie Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire. Plaintiffs in the case include Warner, MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI.'"
This is a really interesting case, since the recording industry association and lobby (Ifpi and Antipiratbyrån) seems to have made their homework this time. This case will probably go all the way to the supreme court or even to the european court and both sides seem to be well prepared for this showdown.
The interesting argument brought up is that the defendants are in this to make money, and the prosecutor says he can prove elaborate plans to split the quite hefty incomes from advertising that the Pirate Bay is raking in. While linking to copyrighted material may be legal, making money from actively enabling people copyright infringement probably is harder to sneak by the courts.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Nothing has been downloaded through the Pirate bay's site.
Plenty has been downloaded because of it.
All the legal arguments are going to hinge around this vital distinction, so it would help if the submitter could have been bothered to get it right.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
So if we can prosecute swedish people for crimes that aren't crimes in their country can we also give speeding tickets to drivers on the autobahn that drive over 55 mph?
It's been said 1000 times: These things were not downloaded FROM the Pirate Bay - they just provide the reference as to where they could be downloaded from. Do you think that by listing The Beatles and Robbie Williams I'm supposed to have sympathy? By listing Harry Potter are they 'thinking of the children?' - is the list of big media supposed to be scary? TPB are very careful not to break Swedish law. They don't care what the laws of other countries are - (I'm looking at you USA) as they live in SWEDEN they are only concerned with Swedish law.
I hope they come out squeaky clean - as they should as they have not broken their countries law.
You must believe that there's something wrong with sharing. You can talk about money and laws the industry has made up, but you are ultimately recommending control and censorship of the internet. Freedom for all should trump the ability of a few to make money through obsolete publication models. Really, how impressed should I be that fifty year old media is available on the internet? The case would be laughable if it did not have the potential to do so much harm.
IANAL but as far as I know the police in Sweden is not actually allowed to search your property unless the crime you're accused for is serious enough that it could result in a prison sentence... So what they are basically saying is the police broke the law?
I've found pirated material via Google, Yahoo, Teoma, Altavista, and others. If courts world-wide decide that search engines that merely index and catalog illegal or copyrighted material can be held liable for the trade of illegal or copyrighted material, then that will be a HUGE problem for every company that has search as its core business.
What about hiring a prostitute from an escort/dating service listed in the phonebook? Can the publishers of the phonebook be charged as accomplices to the crime?
This case will have profound consequences for anyone in the search or directory business.
-ted
Do you consider the point of Google to be indexing illegal torrents? Or do you consider the point of The Pirate Bay to be something other than facilitating piracy?
...but by lawsuits?
Honestly, I think The Pirate Bay is the best thing to happen. Because of it, we've gotten rid of cable TV. My wife and I will download a TV show or a movie before we buy it, watch a few episodes or minutes, and then go and buy the legit copy. The Pirate Bay is today's equivalent to reruns or syndication for television shows, or Blockbuster or NetFlix for the movie industry. The monopolists are just mad because they lose control over which productions to push and which to let fall by the wayside. Even better, torrent search sites also replace Nielsen for rating what is popular. I can find the latest popular movies just by sorting by seeds, and because of this I have purchased about 40 movies that I would NEVER have even heard of. Heck, the wife and I actually bought the Bourne trilogy because of The Pirate Bay -- the TV commercials and trailers were so bad that we would never have even thought of it.
Am I a pirate? In some ways, yes, but we own tens of thousands of dollars worth of music, TV DVDs, and movies, and I attribute it solely to being able to taste before I buy. I think in the past year we've had MAYBE ten torrents that I forgot to erase when I realized I didn't like what I saw.
Remember who these large production companies are: they're multi-tiered organizations where the right hand doesn't talk to the left hand. These companies do many things:
1. Raise money and invest in productions (i.e., producing)
2. Market finished productions (i.e., advertising)
3. Protect the industry insiders (actors, directors, producers, and crew) from competition by locking the distribution medium (i.e., monopolizing)
Now, the future is getting rid of them. Want to raise money for a money or a TV pilot? Invest in making a trailer. Put it out there. Get people interested to fund your production, maybe even sell bonds (of course the SEC and IRS will prevent you from doing this versus a market economy where people understand the risks inherent to investing). Once you've raised enough, you go and shoot the flick. Give it away online at low res, or evne at high res, and sell value added products to raise the funds. If people love the production, they'll pay for it. We do. Many of our friends do. Most of my family does.
I laugh when people try to get great shows back on the air, like Serenity. Joss Whedon is one of the most vile monopolists ever. It's his fault directly for the death of Firefly. He could get online, start a money raising campaign, and go back to business. But he wants to pander to his union/monopolist buddies. He loves the residuals he receives on the backs of others. He's part of the industry, and that's why I'm glad Firefly failed, even though we love the show and watch the legal DVDs regularly. Screw Joss, screw Hollywood, and screw the industry twice over -- they're not ready for a truly market-based economy of art, where people subsidize the FUTURE production of more content by purchasing the previously produced content.
The Internet will destroy these monopolists/mercantilists quicker and quicker every day. Their only option to "save themselves" and their grotesque profits is to use the laws that THEY created, prompt the pawns that THEY elected, and force people to pay money that the people earned through labors they actively did. The people behind the Pirate Bay spend an amazing amount of time keeping it running. The users may submit content, but the servers, Internet connections, software code and overall support need labor to keep it running. TPB deserves every penny, and then some. Maybe TPB should produce a high budget movie or TV series.
Does anyone read that and NOT think: "What's the difference from Record labels?" =P
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Is downloading movies and songs illegal? yes.
NO. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!
UPLOADING *copyrighted* movies and songs *which you don't have the copyright holder's permission to distribute* is illegal.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
How does that matter? If it's illegal, it's illegal even if you only do it a little.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The question still remains: what is that value?
Since all of these various and sundry people paid NOTHING
for it, then you can't make any conclusions about the value
of the work. Sure, you can assign some arbitrary dollar
values to the cost of bandwidth and the cost of storage
space but those are already sunk costs.
The rest of my bandwidth is FREE if I am not already using it.
The last 200G of that oversized hard drive is FREE if I am not already using it.
Piracy happens because the people have the means of production
and the marginal production cost is pretty much zero.
Now since these guys are Sysops and not just random Joes,
the justice equation is a bit different. This is perhaps
the first high profile MPAA/RIAA case where they actually
had any business threatening the perpetrators with 6 figure
damage awards.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why don't you write a song or book or create a painting, and I'll copy it. Lets see how quick you change your tune.
You realize you're throwing this challenge down to a group largely consisting of people who regularly write copyrighted works of computer code and contribute them freely to the world, right? Most of those here who don't have a coding credit to their name make extensive use of those works, contribute testing and bug reports, etc. You're talking to people who already put their money where your mouth is. You're doing it on a site that's owned by a company whose entire mission statement is facilitating that, and which makes money doing it.
This (admittedly cowardly) anonymous poster is not a troll.
The point is valid tho a little rude.
Any one using torrents to download copyrighted material, especially recently released copyrighted material, should never lose sight of the fact that what they are doing is illegal and probably at least a little immoral. You have to balance the immoral hijacking of the copyright laws against taking the results of peoples work without compensating them. Likewise there is the issue of artificially inflated monopoly prices vs what the real cost of production is.
There is a strong argument that 50 year old songs by dead artists should be in public domain. Until our government representatives were bribed by rich corporations (i.e. disney, et al) copyright law was roughly 28 years. Numerous egregious examples ("Happy Birthday", "It's a wonderful life", "Mickey Mouse") show clearly how this area of the law is being abused at a large cost to society which has a reasonable expectation that works will go into public domain where they can be used to create new art.
I would also say that when employees in this industry make over a million dollars a year, they are being overcompensated and there must be some artificial reason why which will eventually be flattened.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
ARTISTS, WELCOME TO REALITY:
No artist can claim the ignorant position that they did not anticipate the theft of their creations.
I know people steal music. A huge portion of the connected population does. So, you just have to be aware, like I am, that when you write a song and get it published: people are going to steal it!
Since the history of man, theft has existed. It was in fact a way of life prior to the advent of lawful society, even still for many. IANA evolutionary biologist, but I suspect our urge to steal music, and in some individuals many other things, is a byproduct of our distant scavenging ancestry.
My dad owns a car lot, and experiences frequent crime. He does not sue the socket/ratchet company that enables a thief to make off with a set of rims. He has insurance for this sort of thing. Maybe it's time the recording industry quit their bitchin and buy some insurance (and I don't mean lawyers/politicians/lobbyists).
Move all sig!
Oh right, because you're not choosing to create a copy on your own computer when you download it? It magically appears and is not in fact a copy, but a clone, or perhaps a duplicate?
Plus the fact that these guys don't upload any copyrighted material, so technically what they are doing is legal, unless there is a law which relates to this. I just used TPB a little earlier to get a link to a SuSE 9.2 DVD torrent (because I don't know any SuSE 9.2 repositories and the SuSE 10 DVD is giving me 2 swap file options when I try to run it to update our webserver, and neither works..)
which is totally what she said
While I applaud your publishing under a creative commons agreement, it doesn't prove anything. You chose to allow your work to be copied.
Pirate Bay are neither visionaries nor heroes. The only cause they stand for is greed. If you want something and it's not free, circumventing the current system just means that you refused to pay for it and stole it.
Setting the copyright infringement is stealing argument aside, wouldn't a better show of solidarity against the current publication model be to completely ignore the copyrighted works and deal only in creative commons and GPL works? When the artists can't make any money from concerts due to the lack of publicity (or public interest) then they will be compelled to use a distribution model that you agree with.
Using the "information should be free" mantra to justify your unauthorized copying of songs (or whatever) is a bogus attempt to justify your selfish habit.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Yes, but the
Just to note that you're referring to things not being freely shared which agitates the
look, don't get me wrong, I think artists making gajillions shouldn't complain either. But I do take issue with your last statement. I'll dissect it a bit.
"There is no right to profit from your work."
Correct.
"There is a right to try to profit from your work."
Sure, even if that's not written in stone anywhere - it's as basic right, I suppose.
"The difference is subtle but very important"
Absolutely.
"and frankly, I'm starting to get more than a bit sick of the copyright creeps demanding that all society and technology bend over backwards to help them profit."
And that's where I take issue. There is a difference between telling society that
A. they -must- purchase Artwork X
and
B. they -must not- pirate Artwork X
In situation A, society is bending over backwards to help them profit and I agree, there shouldn't be some mandate saying that every consumer must purchase a minimum of Artworks to help the artists.
In situation B, however, all that is said is that if society -wants- a given Artwork, they'd better either pay for it, or deal with the fact that they won't have said Artwork. And that, I think, is perfectly fair. If that results in the Artist neither getting purchases -nor- popularity from pirating, then that's the result of the Artist's own choice.
Hey you know thats bullshit. My god-given right to take what isn't mine trumps some production-assistants need to eat and pay their bills. After all, it was their fault that they worked hard on some crap like Harry Potter, and it is karmic justice for me to take it. Maybe if enough people take and enjoy the content without paying they'll stop making crap like that.
setting aside the fact that copyright infringement is not theft, who said I download copyrighted works? The OP suggested that if someone copied something I created, I would instantly change my political opinion about what the Pirate Bay guys are doing. I don't think this is true.
Oh, your whole post was based on a fallacy and a flawed assumption? Sorry about that.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Knowing that theft will happen does not make the theft any better or more right. Seriously, what kind of argument is this? PirateBay links to illegally downloadable material. It is illegal for me to download the latest Harry Potter movie. Simple as that. Yes, the theft will happen; does that mean we should just pass over it when it happens and let sites like PirateBay alone (who, as has been previously pointed out, are definitely in it for the money)? That's pretty stupid. Murder is going to happen whether it's legal or illegal, but that doesn't mean it should be legal or we should just ignore it.
I'm not arguing FOR the RIAA, I'm arguing for SOMETHING. I think this particular instance is a good thing, though.
Of law, yes, of ethics, perhaps not. Both are violations of copyright, but the GPL violation is usually also plagiarism. The BitTorrent uploader does not claim that the music he distributes is of his own creation; instead he clearly labels it with the name of the original artist, giving credit where it is due. The GPL violator appropriates the work of others and passes it off as his own. Legally they're both in the same boat, but morally there's a world of difference.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I think you missed the point; copyright has nothing at all to do with the issue of downloading the material. Gulliver's Travels is under public domain, so it would be "authorized downloading of public material". Also a mouthful. What people are talking about is unauthorized downloading.
Period.
When you add copyright into the mix but ignore the unauthorized bit, you help to promote a culture that views the middlemen as the sole holders of enforceable copyright. The general public has been tricked into associating copyright with the **AA, which means they don't associate it with personally created works. This means that for the most part, corporations these days are able to "steal" works created by individuals and most individuals don't realize they had any rights over that material. It also means individuals who are aware that they have rights are still more willing to "sell out" to a corporation because they view the work as useless to them unless it is sold to a "copyright holder".
Just like the MPAA has released movies to the public but retains copyright over them, I have released this post to Slashdot but retain copyright over it (consider it licensed under Creative Commons). If anyone turned around and re-published this comment in a book, on another website, or used it as part of an advertising campaign, they would be using my creative work for profit. This is just as illegal -- I might even want to sell my own book of slashdot comments one day.
Does that sound silly? Probably. For two reasons: 1) I submitted the post to a public forum where others could view it, and 2) I'm not a corporation seeking to make a profit off of the post.
Think about that for a moment. Item 1 is exactly what happens with movies and songs. Item 2 shouldn't really make a difference, unless you belive that copyright should be enforceable without qualifaction, AND you have subscribed to the falsity pointed out above that only copyright-holding corporations should lay claim to copyright.
Your argument is effectively that people have a choice whether they buy music or not, so they shouldn't complain when the terms are unfair because they're free to reject those terms.
That's a gross oversimplification, presumably based on the myopic assumption that market forces are the end-all be-all of any socio-economic situation.
Often, fans aren't just buying a CD because the object is worth $x to them, they're also doing it to support the artist. The value in the transaction is not just the object, but the knowledge that the fan has given money to someone they admire, to encourage them to keep creating good art. Considering this, it's very much the fan's concern that pretty much all the money they pay is going to someone other than the artist.
Glad I could clear that up for you.
You have to look at the motiviations. The difference is that the large corporations who weep about infringement on their movie copyrights are out there to make money. They purposefully withhold access to their movies unless they are paid money for them. They lobby for the creation of all kinds of rules and develop technologies harmful to innovation in a misguided attempt to get all the money they can. I still can't get my TV to work correctly with the CABLECARD my cable company gave me. I'd have an HD TiVo right now if there wasn't that hindrance. I only pay for songs from Amazon and not iTunes because I know I'll be able to do what I want with them, which is legal anyway but which DRM prevents me from doing.
By contrast, the motivations behind the people that created the GPL are explained on their website: "Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software." People get upset about GPL violations not because they are losing money, but because companies are taking their code and incorporating it into their own products where they restrict the use of it. I think if most contributors of GPL software had their way then all software would be 'free'. I have over 50 computer games that I've paid for. I almost never purchase a game without first finding out if there's a 'crack' for it. I don't want to have to find the DVD each time I want to play the game, I want to click on an icon and play in seconds. Some of the most successful games of all time were a success in large part to the developers allowing the public to modify the game. I once had a CD with a thousand user-created maps for DOOM. Look at the Quakes and Unreal games, and at RTS games like C&C and the Warcraft series. I think World of Warcraft has been a success in no small part due to the extensibility of its interface.
So actually the difference is that people getting upset about GPL violations are getting upset because the people violating the GPL are acting like the Movie studios in restricting the freedom of information. There's no inconsistency in these two beliefs and if you think there is then I don't think you understand the GPL.
Ill have to point out that people inherently know when they are doing things wrong. Just because there is a law on the books that says you cant make copies without the right holders permission doesn't make it right. It just means a bunch of people who support the that law THINK its wrong. Copyright is way out of step with the times and people are aware of this. In this case the reason why people choose to not pay for copyrighted works is because its easier to do now with the Internet. had it been easier before without it, I think people would be doing the same thing. Some of the main reasons are, not having enough money to by a product, wanting to try before you buy, not worth the money that the product is charging, but wanting to have a copy for the sake of having it.
Make no mistake, this is about people in power trying to impose their set of ideals on the world, when clearly the majority of public DO NOT AGREE that it is wrong to download copyrighted works. making a copy of something does NOT deprive people of the property. So I think its complete bullshit for you even imply that its about moral issues. This is about CONTROL and who has the CONTROL makes the decisions about what people can and cannot have. IF you want the music industry to have CONTROL over how you live your life, then go ahead and subscribe to their ideals. But I don't buy it for one minute that copying peoples works is wrong. If you put something out their, expect that it will be taken and used without permission, thats part of life, part of being creative. The only time copyright law should be used is on someone that is small and not making enough money and depends on his work to survive. he needs copyright protection from groups of people that have no vested interest other than trying to profit on his work. how the hell does that apply to the small guy thats makes a copy of a song? or someone that runs a server that points to material, some of them copyrighted works that needs money to keep the server going?
What you do with your web site and file sharing is clearly irrelevant. What TPB does is currently legal in Sweden, at least until the courts of Sweden say otherwise. While, if they were doing this in the United States they would just as clearly be violating the law, they are not violating the law in Sweden.
A moral prosecutor does not work for the government and do the bidding of corporations. Your reference to a "potential client" is therefore moot. The RIAA is not a client of a government prosecutor. What do you call it when a corporation tries to get a government employee to strong arm a person/company they don't like? Corruption maybe? As far as whether it's sensible to support the RIAAs failing business model the government should ideally have no say whatsoever. The market will support profitable models and unprofitable models will fail, there is no need for the government to mandate that we must get our music from Warner or Sony. Will civilization grind to a halt if Sony tanks because they can't sell their latest crap CD? No? Then why should the government care? Should Sony, instead of pushing out crap CDs, find a way to remain profitable by selling decent music to customers without DRM and encourage sharing, since that seems to boost actual sales? Hmm, now there's a thought.
As to whether I know and represent the will of the people, I'll allow some leeway there. I think it's unlikely that the majority believe TPB should be shut down but I could be wrong. Given that what they do is currently legal though, I think I may have a solid leg to stand on. Your mileage may vary.
Repeating that I have a "totalitarian bias" by the way really doesn't make much of an impact on me. I make no attempt to impose my will upon others. My opinions, on the other hand, I'm quite free with. I fail to see how that makes me a totalitarian, but perhaps that word has a different meaning where you're from, since where I'm from it's sort of the opposite of my stance, that governments should leave consumers to decide what markets succeed or fail instead of making it illegal not to support failing markets that line the pockets of the government.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
What if we're willing to tolerate a reduced volume and quality of work since we regard what we get in exchange (no copyrights, apparently) to be of greater value? Just because it's a big piece of a small pie, that doesn't necessarily mean you're better off with a small piece of a big pie.
I'd be perfectly happy to shrink copyright terms to no more than 20-25 years, perhaps less, eliminate copyright on some classes of work (e.g. architecture), require strict formalities such as registration and deposit, and make it legal for natural persons to do whatever they like with works, so long as they act non-commercially. Would the number of works and their quality decline? Maybe a little bit, but I don't think it would go down very far, and we would have gained a lot of freedom that more than makes up for it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Webster's
appropriate -
1 : to take exclusive possession of : annex [no one should appropriate a common benefit]
2 : to set apart for or assign to a particular purpose or use [appropriate money for the research program]
3 : to take or make use of without authority or right
I look at the primary definition and wonder who is exercising linguistic ignorance, but I'm sure you like that last one, don't you? But wait, look what we've discovered: Using [something] without a right to is stealing, therefore all crime is stealing, because you don't have a right to commit the crime and you invariably used something while committing it. Sneaking into a museum at night is stealing -- you have no right to use the museum when it's closed. Jaywalking and all traffic offenses are stealing -- you don't have the right to use the road in violation of the law. Murder is stealing -- you don't have a right to make use of your own axe to murder someone. (Note that what you're stealing is the axe, which is yours -- not the person's life, which isn't.) Using a fake badge to impersonate a police officer is stealing because you're making use of the badge without authority -- and once again, note that what you're stealing is the badge, which you perfectly well may own.
Clearly, everything is stealing. Either that or dictionaries contain extraordinarily broad definitions of things that greatly exceed the common scope of their meaning when contorted in particular ways, hmm?