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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.
Prince, Village People, ABBA to Sue The Pirate Bay: The suit is seeking "millions of dollars" in damages
Correction: They're seeking "millions of dollars" in fabulous damages.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
...I hope someone sues the Village People for the damage they've done to popular music :-P
Not because they'll be charged with illegal file sharing, but because it will go on record that they in fact downloaded music by The Village People. Revealing that to the world should be enough punishment. :)
... The Pirate Bay in the past. With a really hilarious response from TPB:
White Stripes / WEB SHERIFF: email our response 2nd mail and response our fax (invoice) 3rd mail attached document We tell Faxxsheriff about our new site 4th mail our response.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
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.
You mean the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as prince?
Why only Web Sheriff? Why not Web Indian and Web Construction Worker, too?
This post is displayed with recycled electrons
Suing a torrent site for copyright infringement is something akin to suing a map-maker because a thief used the information to find a bank that was robbed (and yes, I know that with copyright infringement nothing is physically stolen), or suing a telephone company because two criminals used the network to plan a heist.
If all someone is doing is using information from a torrent site to find another party, and is not actively connecting the two copyright infringers Napster-style, then surely they can defend the accusations.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
Partially right. There is a civil law section of the law (which I call a formal distinction), but there are no special courts or anything like that.
The bigger difference though, is that Swedish law has no concept of using fines as a form of punishment in it self, just as compensation for losses or emotional/physical suffering.
Since a business entity can't claim to be "hurt" TPB can only be made to reimburse the losses suffered through their actions, and these losses has to be substantiated.
Sounds exactly like the old Napster. The RIAA struck it down, and it has returned as BitTorrent, more powerful than the RIAA could possibly imagine.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Young man, I was once in your shoes,
:)
I said, I was.. downloading torrent files too,
But it's stealing, and there is licensing due,
So you've got.. to.. know.. this.. one thing:
DUN DUN DUN DUNNUN
It's fun to sue with the D.M.C.A.,
It's fun to sue with the D.M.C.A.,
They have everything there for lawyers to enjoy,
Ain't no safe harbor for Pirate Bay, boys!
P.S. Sorry, I had to..
Prince, the Village People, and ABBA are not the most torrented artists on TPB right now. They're old and the people who know enough about computers to torrent don't care enough about them to download. This is more of a "I'M STILL AROUND PAY ATTENTION TO ME" move, just like Janet Jackson's wardrobe "malfunction."
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
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.
I beg to differ. The attitude of "what have you done for me lately" isn't bullshit.
In most lines of work, you do your work that you're paid to do, get your paycheck and that's all the compensation you'll ever get or should get. You don't expect to be paid throughout the endurance of said work. Imagine turning up at a former place of work in say 10 years and telling them, "hey, I see you're still using that data center I designed for you 10 years ago, give me more money", you'd be laughed out of there.
Now, the current model of selling music recordings doesn't quite work like that. You record your music, then you sell it hoping to get some or all of that money back. Even make a profit if you're lucky.
Finally, just because there's a market for nostalgia doesn't mean that copyrights should automatically span so that artists can cash in on it. What you'd call nostalgia, I'd call history, or cultural heritage, and should not be locked up to be only sold on the whim of the copyright holder.
I guess the difference between us is not one of principle, but of degree. You want something like 25 years. I want something closer to 5 years, and to make clear that copyright protection preventing duplication should only cover *commercial* duplication of said work. Older works are valuable, yes. That's precisely why commercial distribution of such works shouldn't be bottled up longer than neccessary. 5 years is plenty of time to have a monopoly on a work, to have an opportunity to turn a profit on it.
However, calling this kind of behavior "theft" is not new terminology.
I remember when I was kid (40 years ago), people who sneaked onto trains, buses, ski lifts, etc. without a ticket could be convicted of "theft of service". In fact, in law, "theft" just means obtaining something illegally, regardless of whether you are depriving someone else of it. What you are calling "theft" (i.e. taking something away from someone else) is actually called "larceny". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft.
It's like the term "assault": in common usage, it means "to strike someone". But in legal jargon, that's called "battery", while "assault" just means to threaten.