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Pirate Bay Operators Stand Trial On Monday
Anonymous Pirate writes "Operators of The Pirate Bay stand trial on Monday in Stockholm. The four defendants from the popular file-sharing web site are charged with being accessories to breaking copyright law and may face fines or up to two years in prison if found guilty. The four defendants have run the site since 2004 after it was started in 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån. The Swedish public service television announced that they are going to send a live audio stream from the trial. It will be broadcast without editing or translation."
I thought that they had long ago tested the laws (and won) on whether the site was legal and how they couldn't end up in the slammer for this?
Even in interviews in mags and the like, they certainly came across as super-positive about potential legal issues?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Yet they keep trying. (Just like the anti-gun nuts) I'm certainly getting sick and tired of it all, myself. You can find some nice out-of-print things on torrents, and with no DRM at the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3 store anymore, there's little incentive to get most music via torrents.
:)
But, whatever your view on torrents and filesharing in general, it will happen even with draconian witch-hunts and overzealous (and in the US Unconstitutional) legislation and police action. And yes, I'm going to say it... the world has more pressing matters than to persecute filesharers. When you (collective government and media cartels) have solved ALL OTHER PROBLEMS in the world, maybe we'll let you finish off the whole copyright witch hunt. (I said MAYBE, asswads.) But until then, stop it.
If there's something someone wants (think China, South America, etc) and it's overpriced even for the US, it's going to be bootlegged and sold on the streets. China's not doing anything (in spite of the good show they put on last year) to combat this sort of thing because they don't give two ape-shits about American and European "copyrights". But they persist, like the war on Drugs, trying to eradicate something that will never go away. It's like putting toothpaste back in the tube, but they insist on wasting money. Hey, if it were all their money, I'd probably not be so irritated... but the money belongs to the creators, yet it's going to this political bullshit (like the "traffic monitoring" provisions snuck into the stimulus bill here in the States). I guess the 4th Amendment is really dead now. "Because it's for the children."
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
IANAL.
This trial is not something that will be resolved quickly, I expect it to take around 5 years atleast since it will almost certainly appealed up to and including the Supreme Court and possibly even further going over to the EU court.
Nothing of significance is ever resolved at the 'Tingsrätten'(approximate equivalent to a district court) since the only individual in the court with a law degree(except for the lawyers on each side ofcourse) is the judge, the other members of the court are selected citizens of good standing.
The legal grounds in this case is shaky at best but should they be found guilty the fines and reparations will be nowhere near the requested amounts because The Pirate Bay founders are not beeing charged with accessory to commercial scale infringement but with several specific infringements and there's a roof as to high the fines for each infringement can go.
Swedish newspapers are saying either PB wins the trial and are free, or they lose and become martyrs.
After the raid on the PB servers (which led to this trial) memberships of the Pirate Party trippled.
A conviction (especially a prison sentence) will lead to an outrage that would completely erase the precious little good will the music and movie industry have with young people today. At least in Sweden.
It'd be interesting to see your working there. I can't imagine that the porn sites pay much for their advertising. After all, they're advertising to pirates; why pay for porn when you can just grab a torrent of the stuff? And that's before you ask whether the ads are seen at all. It's not as if a pirate is going to think 'Oh my - if I visit this ad-supported website with Adblock Plus switched on, that's like stealing' now, is it?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.