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Prince, Village People to Sue The Pirate Bay
castrox writes to tell us that The Pirate Bay's legal concerns are continuing to grow. Prince and the Village People are planning to sue the popular torrent site with the help of the Web Sheriff law firm. John Giacobbi of Web Sheriff has also asked Swedish band ABBA to join the cause. The suit is seeking "millions of dollars" in damages, although it's still uncertain to whom the charges will be directed. The likely targets are the four Pirate Bay founders who were indicted a few weeks ago on charges of breaking copyright law. Prince has taken investigative action against The Pirate Bay in the past.
I know that in the US, there's a very big difference between the civil courts and the criminal courts. While it seems that under Swedish law, the hosting of torrent files doesn't appear to be a crime, does anyone know if they have the same sort of distinctions between civil and criminal courts? Could they be found innocent in criminal court, yet still be forced to pay thousands/millions of damages in civil court?
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
Using well known but old artists who don't sell much nowadays could be a smart move. The danger of a boycott campaign from fans is less likely to happen because those who were their most loyal fans are now in their 40s or more.
I'm not sure about Prince, but Village People and Abba certainly don't sell much these days.
I totally agree. Weve said for years that web hotels who are making millions, even billions, by renting out web space to file-sharing websites should take more responsibility and control these websites, Giacobbi said.
What the? This firm is called web sherrif, you would think they would have a slightly better grasp of the terms of the trade. It makes me almost instantly classify this suit as totally without merit and just a case of some stupid musicians being conned by a lawyer who smells a fat check (and not coming from the direction the musicians think).
Claims of millions of whatever currency are already laughable enough, does this guy really think that thepiratebay its isp or in fact anyone even remotely connected to P2P makes billions? Does he even understand how much money that is wether you measure it in dollars, euro's or kronen?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Seriously, they're sending in this clueless company "Web Sherrif"?
I'm sure thepiratebay is getting scared now - see the links about halfway on that page to read the fine letters mailed between "the white stripes/Web sherrif" and thepiratebay admins.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Will Prince sue over his "Planet Earth" album he gave away for free in the Daily Mail 'newspaper'?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
The parent is right you know. Prince's main audience is 40+ year-old women. I know, I bought his newest album for my mother. She was ecstatic.... she loved him when she was younger.
As far as I know, Prince is not capturing a wide younger audience. He's just recapturing a part of his old one. He needs to do what Madonna does - rather than just make new music, he should change his image to attract the younger more dominant audience.
Notice how the lawyer claims that "the source code for Windows 1998, Windows NT, and/or Windows 2000
http://tracker.piratbyran.org/torrents-details.php?id=2614,"
and further on they state that "The information in this notification is accurate. I swear under penalty of perjury
The information in that email is NOT accurate, since no part of the source code has ever been in the location they mention. Wouldn't that be ground for a countersuit for defamation, or whatever it's called?
Dear Prince,
I imagine you don't sell many records these days and receive little royalties.
Dear Fellow AC,
According to Wikipedia, the last album Prince for which they have sales info (the album "3121", from 2006) sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. The album before that sold 2.5 million. Also, Prince played the Superbowl last year and won two Grammys this year.
Well, technically speaking; there were many networks between Napster and bittorrent -- AudioGalaxy; Gnutella and its various clients, Morpheus, Kazaa... They keep getting struck down; and keep getting more savvy and functional. bittorrent has value as an actual distribution channel (I'd argue that AudioGalaxy had the potential to be the solution for bridging P2P filesharing and a profit model for bands, but that's another rant).
So even if bittorrent somehow gets compromised (too many bad seeds, spying, lawsuits, etc.), there will be another evolution in the sharing tools. It's a cat-and-mouse game that will continue until the Industry realizes that it's business model is gone and that it must (wait for it) innovate!
But I dream.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
This is just a moneygrab.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode, probably. How about this? (okay, the .org registry probably doesn't support that, and /.'s [link-warning] thing makes it look less cool, but some DNS might).
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Anyone who steps in the way of progress should be punished I wish the piratebay could counter sue these idiots.
~Dan
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Another head shaking day. I have *points* the village people on vinyl. Yes I actually do. I have CD's and vinyl ranging from The Pet Shop Boys, to Average Lavigne, The Village People to Pantera. When I go to thepiratebay dawt arrrrg, I search up stuff like that because I leave torrents running over night, and it's just simpler for me to download that stuff and put it on my iPod/cell phone/psp/chip player/wtfeverthing when it's in a compact little mp3 format. I'm not downloading stuff I don't already own, especially when it's THAT old. I have even bought *shock and horror* songs off of iTunes when it suits me to do so. This, however, is the last of the straws.
I can't understand why they don't just give it up. Prince's 1999, Purple Rain, etc. are ubiquitous enough, that thepiratebay is not going to hurt anyone giving it away for free. And if as many of us as have already done so can recite (or rewrite) the words to YMCA, then I would have to say the same thing goes for The Village People (whom until moments ago, I had assumed all dead). At some point in our lives, or the lives our parents, siblings, or beloved gay friend, we have owned, had in our posession, or have been given a copy (not copied, but a retail copy) of this ubiquitous music. I am going on a music strike. I will purchase no more music. Period. At this point I have enough music to listen to continuously for over 3 months, without repeating the same song twice (not counting remixes and covers). I don't require any more music and I have too much loathing for the main stream companies to want to purchase anymore music. I will break out my record player, and don my mp3 device, and I will enjoy the music I have until I hear that this nonsense has ceased. What else can we do besides bitch? Just stop buying it.
The point was they are orders of magnitude less important than they were, except for the last.
There's even a kids TV programme in the UK called Blue Peter, named after the flag that was used when a ship leaves port.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Sorry, that sort of 'artist' has missed the boat if they want remuneration for their efforts - the world has passed them by.
Live performances nowadays are the only way to make money, and just because recordings made money last century doesn't mean that there's an automatic right to make money from recordings in this century.
It's technological progress - get over it.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
If you take like .8 seconds to click the link and look at the related article, you'll probably be more disturbed than amused. The pirate Bay being sued is no longer a big deal. They have shown time after time that they will not shut down, what they are doing isn't exactly illegal, and it CANNOT be stopped.
The artists involved want your ISPs to TRACK YOUR INTERNET ACTIVITY..... how is this not a bigger deal. The pirate bay is a fringe organization that is currently a juggernaut, fueled by broke college students and their will to change the world. But ISPs, not so fringe, not so independent, and definitely not fueled by broke college students or any will to make the world more livable. In America we should have seen this coming, patriot act and all, but Big American Douche corporations stretch overseas, so you dirty-assed foreign motherfuckers have to deal with this too.
Why is what 2 washed out artists do to piss off four Swedish kids more important than 1984-esque corporate espionage on your personal activity?
I'll not dispute that Prince comes off as greedy, but I'll mention that he gives his CDs away for free at his concerts (at least the last couple of major concerts he's done) and his general excuse for acting like an ass is actually simply control of his own music. He tends to think he's the only person capable of making his music sound good and doesn't want it diluted with a lot of bad remixes.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."