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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
Arrrrrr!
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?
Can be found here:
http://www.realtid.se/ArticlePages/200801/31/20080131132351_Realtid598/B_13301_06_Aktbil_95.pdf
(In Swedish)
Good thing they didn't copy a CD, otherwise they'd be paying $1.5 million!
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.
Or let them go.
Just have their lawyers show up in court with a laptop (with wireless connection and the appropriate software installed) and go to Google. Search for "Harry Potter Goblet Fire Torrent" and click a link. Viola- bittorrent starts up. Therefore, Google can be used to search for torrents, therefore they should be charged, too. If they are not charged, then it demonstrates selective prosecution. The same goes for ANY search engine.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
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.
...that the damages being sought are less than the RIAA demanded from that woman who downloaded a few songs. I mean, $200K apiece for 4 people? I'll bet if they asked people to make Paypal donations to help them pay their legal fees and/or fines (while keeping the site up), they'd get millions pretty quickly. A lot of people would pay to keep a service like that up.
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
While you seem to be under the impression that the prosecutor, police and whole judicial system are running errands for the recording industry, only 15 cases of copyright infringement via file sharing were investigated in Sweden last year. So bribes or no bribes, it's not exactly a systematic witch hunt.
Do you have any facts - not speculations - supporting that any prosecutor, judge or police took bribes from the recording industry or its lobby groups ? I very much doubt that.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
...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
I'm not done downloading that 17 gb of private MySpace photos yet!!!
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!
Given Swedish law, they don't have a lot of choice except to go after large folks like TPB. They're trying to get a legal precedent set. The accusation of bribe is likely unsubstantiated, but given that a person is a prosecutor do they a) go after folks committing actual evil acts or b) mount a hideously expensive case against folks sharing music and movies?
A moral prosector would of course tell the record companies to find a business model that doesn't depend on supply of expensive physical media for digital content that can be copied for almost no cost. Since sharing actually boosts sales of music the issue is not piracy per se, but rather the fact that open sharing prevents the recording industry from gaining exclusive control of the media. The only way to do this now is to seek to have ISP filtering/spyware/big brother type shenanigans instituted on the government level and to lock folks out of trying to circumvent government mandated via DMCA-like provisions.
The RIAA is playing the long game here to try to become the world's gatekeeper for all entertainment content and the prosecutor for the Swedish government is almost certainly being offered at the very least political influence, if not actual monetary bribes. The lack of a plethora of prior cases should not be taken as lack of an agenda here. When you make a move like this, it is calculated to have the most impact possible, and the RIAA is hoping for Sweden to make another Napster decision. Then you'll see the courts flooded with cases against infringement.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
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.
A lot of people are saying "Why isn't Google in the dock, I can search for infringing torrents!?" Well in the USA, Google and other search engines are protected by the DMCA. Yes, not all of the DMCA is bad, in fact, pretty much only the copy protection anti-circumvention stuff is bad. The rest is pretty good, it indemnifies ISPs when their caches or search indices contain infringing material. All they have to do comply with the takedown protocol.
See, in the US, if you're operating an index like Google or Napster that works on an automated basis or is controlled by your users, you don't have to worry about infringing material, until you have actual knowledge of it. Once you have actual knowledge of infringing material you have to do something about it. Thats the difference between Google and Pirate Bay (besides the fact that TPB is not in the USA.) Once Google has actual knowledge of infringing material they take it down and they are OK.
Furthermore, Google's service just finds torrents. TPBs helps you find torrents, but they also host the torrents. After you've download the torrent from TPB, TPB's tracker helps you connect to the other peers for exchanging the requested infringing material. Combined with the actual knowledge of infringing torrents on their site, that's a lot closer to contributory infringement than anything that Google does.
Back to your regularly scheduled TPB Swedish Legal Follies.
Here's my painting. You'll notice it's 'licensed' under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Copy this painting even in breach of its license (which may be illegal or unlawful in your jurisdiction) and I will still maintain that the major record labels and movie studios are a corrupt cartel, and that the guys behind the Pirate Bay are both visionaries and heroes.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Much like you, I can't believe your statement got such high moderation points.
First off, just because something is a matter for civil courts does not mean it's not illegal. Civil court cases are still based on laws and statues. Illegal means "forbidden by law or statute." Also, you used the term "civil crime", which actually is a contradiction in terms. If something is a matter of civil court, it's not a "crime."
But it's kind of a moot point. As you didn't specify the country you are in, I'm going to have to assume the US. Here's a post explaining why downloading copyrighted material IS a criminal offense in the US:
http://innovationlost.org/free-the-lyrics/2006/04/23/copyright-infringement-is-a-criminal-offense/
And while it varies from country to country, in some of those countries it is also a criminal offense.
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
"I don't really think so. Hosting and upkeep of their hardware may not be cheap, but if the $4m figure has any ties to reality, they're probably making an OK living off tpb."
I believe the original poster was being sarcastic, but your point stands.
It's hugely beneficial for the TPB operators paint a picture of break-even financials and motivation by an altruistic desire to stick it to the man. This helps them get sympathy when they get into legal scrapes like this; but more importantly, it helps with their efforts at collecting donations. Plenty of apologists will swear up and down that TPB doesn't make any money because somebody at TPB told them so, but the numbers regarding their bandwidth and ad views just don't add up.
So how much do they make? I read an article which put the wealth of one of the founders at $10MM, but I don't think it's nearly that much. Either way, between their daily revenue stream from ad impressions, the huge pile of cash they collected for their "let's buy an island" campaign, and the donations they've received since (many P2P fans use the donate 10% of the retail price of the media formula), they should have no trouble paying for their legal fees or fines.
For what it's worth, I have no trouble with TBP making a healthy profit. Neither should many P2P fans. After all, the record companies want you to pay for music, while TPB helps you get it for free, so perhaps they deserve compensation for providing this service. If I were a P2P fan I wouldn't have an issue with this, but nonetheless many people bristle at the notion of TBP actually having a profit motive, just like the vast majority of other enterprises.
I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love TPB to organize as a non-profit (where their income and expenses, including compensation, would be public knowledge). If they really did support the artists, they could even announce that they were donating their excess operating income to the most-pirated artists on the site. That would truly show that they don't have a profit motive. But, I really don't think this will happen.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
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.
The RIAA should be careful what they ask for...because they just might get it. The RIAA's entire case and frame-of-reference is that they are providing better entertainment product that anyone else and that all copying of their product is stealing material goods from them. They are then attacking people who download and 'consume' RIAA product. These attacks, they believe, will stop the downloading for free and return to the purchase of individual units of RIAA product on disk media.
This is not true. The distribution of free entertainment product is an established fact now. It's not going to go away. Nor will the RIAA/MPAA ever be able to charge for downloaded product what they charge for the product on disk. The market has changed.
By persecuting people who consume downloaded RIAA/MPAA product, they will not bring these people back to overpriced entertainment product, they will create a secondary market of non-RIAA product that is available through low or no-cost download.
The RIAA is destroying the market for their own product.
They assume that because the RIAA product is better entertainment quality now that it will always be better entertainment product that non-RIAA material. But non-RIAA entertainment will get better over time given the large audience.
The RIAA should refocus on what they do best. They should be taking all the dork music and videos on YouTube and the alt-RIAA music sites and giving recommendations for improvement. Then they should offer contracts to marginal bands for low cost distribution of music and videos. They need to learn to function inside the 'long tail'. If they don't then someone else will and they will lose the opportunity to enter and profit in this new market.
Most likely, the RIAA will split the music business into two basic parts; a mass-media world of a few stars and an 'underground' of no stars, but groups with clusters of devoted fans. This exists today, but what the RIAA will create in the coming years is a market where the people in the musical underground will have no interest in the rock/pop star world . A market situation will arise where large sections of the population will have a 'magnetic like-pole' adversion to RIAA mass pop product. This would be bad for the RIAA (I know, they're just a front company, but I mean all the companies that fund the RIAA) because it will cause them to permanently lose 1/3 to 1/2 of their current market.
If that happens, then it won't matter if they lower their product prices, or remove the DRM. Because a large segment of the musical market will have a fundamental aversion to their product, and won't consume it under any market conditions.
This is the true danger to the RIAA in their current actions.
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 my post in another sub-thread is very relevant:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=436904&cid=22248796
Actually, it's because it would be impossible to find someone guilty of infringement because of mere downloading.
When a person uploads, he or she gets caught by uploading to an enforcement agency. The agency is given permission to download the file from you, but because you didn't have distribution rights your act of uploading is still illegal.
However, the only way to catch a downloader would be for an enforcement agency to host a file themselves. Downloaders could easily defend themselves by pointing out that, because the agency was given permission to place it up on a publicly-accessible network, then the downloader was inherently given permission to download a copy from them to his or her computer.
1) File sharing in Sweden is legal, therefore legal considerations are an aside. What is left if not moral selection. This prosecutor is attempting to show that TPB is violating the law specifically with the intent to cause file sharing to be illegal through court decision, which it is currently *not*. Prosecutors prosecuting people for *not* breaking the law are the ones that should be thrown out of the legal profession. Shall we also discuss the prosecutor harassing the members of TPB?
2) I never claimed that choosing to tell the RIAA to pick a new business model was because they were better or worse than anybody else. You may make that claim if you like, but it is largely irrelevant. My statement was meant to show that the government, specifically a member of the judiciary, should have no stake in securing business models that are clearly flawed. If they do have a stake in that, then it would be prudent to question their motives, and by association their morals.
3) I want everybody to decide what is moral, provided they don't mind me disagreeing with them. Going through life without a moral compass, even if that compass points south south east, is not really an ideal thing. In the context of my prior post, I believe that this prosecutor knows that he is doing this at the behest of an industry, which is clearly a conflict of interest with the will of the people, and that he is doing this with the full knowledge that he is being naughty in doing so. Immorality does not require absolutes of morality. You just have to do what you think is bad.
And... moral stand in favor of freedom with totalitarian bias? I have not the slightest idea what you're saying with that one... come see the violence inherent in the system? Help help I'm being repressed?
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Not that I think that justice is being done in this case. But it's good to keep the facts straight.
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.
No, it's selectively enforced in the US too.
Google has deep pockets and a lot of mainstream clout.
Torrentspy does not. Torrentspy, a torrent search engine was compelled by court order to snoop on their visitors, while google was not.
It's outright hypocrisy borne of greedy execs, a mix of equally greedy and horribly incompetent politicians, and even more incompetent judges.
Of course one thing they haven't been hypocritical about: as usual, the people with the biggest wallet win, regardless of the law, the constitution, or the morality involved.
That said, this thread is not about US law, can a SWEDISH LAWYER please give us an EDUCATED RUNDOWN please?!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
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.
http://www.theweekdaily.com/news_opinion/they_see/33066/how_they_see_us_picking_on_canadian_pot_dealers.html
"That's the key question, said the Toronto Star in an editorial. Emery is a victim of Canada's failure to enforce its own laws. Under extradition law, a Canadian can be sent to the U.S. for trial only if the offense he is charged with there is also a crime in Canada and if he has not been charged in Canada. Selling marijuana seeds is, technically, illegal here."
So, when you say "He broke no Canadian laws" you are wrong. Your entire argument is based on your own flawed understanding of the law, nothing more.
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?
"And some movies completely Bomb, are you now blaming the public for not "supporting the little guy" because they don't watch every movie made? I surely hope not because that would be ludicrous.... If I NEVER was going to PAY for the priviledge then how does it harm revenue?"
I'm not talking about the the movies that bomb, nor the movies that are blockbusters. I'm talking about the ones where the amount of piracy determines whether of not the movie reaches its break-even point. You can play dumb and pretend that none of the pirates would see a particular movie at the theaters anyway, and that their downloading it on the net makes no difference to the overall revenue of the movie, but you know that even if 10% of the pirates paid for the movie then that could make or break a movies profitability.
The subtext to your argument is "I want it, and I can get it without paying for it, so I'm going to take it." All the pedantic pretzel logic in the world will not shake that underlying premise.
"SO... be honest, do you work for the studios or just get paid to shill out their propaganda?"
Nice try, but no, I don't work for any media/movie companies, nor am I paid to shill propaganda. So now it is your turn to be honest (and I get to fling an insult as well) - are you under 30? Because your style of debate sounds a lot like the reasoning of a teenager.
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.