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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."
http://trial.thepiratebay.org/ Is the "official"(if there is such a thing) blog about the trial.
Good for them for finally taking down these scumbags.
I guess it would be ok for me to take Open Source code and to close it to make it proprietary, release it on Bit-torrent with ads inserted in the program and not suffer an consequences.
I would like to call Pirate #4 to the witness stand Your Honor... Pirates on trial -- news at 6:00...in Somalia... -
damaged by dogma
When a law does more harm than good it needs to be abolished.
Similarly, please end drug prohibition laws.
ktnxbye.
How we know is more important than what we know.
TPB is just a torrent hosting site. Torrents are tools, just like guns - they can be used for piracy or downloading copies of a game a person lost. And the whole issue of being "accessories" of copyright infringement is pointless, like suing the gun companies if a murderer killed some one with one of their guns.
>>> It will be broadcast without editing or translation." .. because for a second there, I thought you were going to give me some watered down version compared to what I could get if I took a crash course in ruddy SWEDISH!
From TFA: "Premises connected to The Pirate Bay were first raided in 2006. The complexity of the case led to delays in charges being filed and the case being bought to court."
It will be broadcast without editing
YAY!!!
or translation.
Oh:( I do hope some Swedish and English speaking geeks take on making a transcript and translating it. To describe my Swedish as bad would be an understatement. Non-existent is closer. I might as well be watching the Muppets (Swedish Chef).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Some Swedish translators should add subtitles and put it up on The Pirate Bay.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
Just five easy payments of...
$0.00! http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3419901
The scary thing is that because most judges and courts don't have a clue about what a tracker is or does they might well find them guilty of something they aren't actually doing. What's next? Google and Yahoo being sued for copyright infringement?
Don't listen to the free streaming!! Everyone knows the Internets aren't free! And pirated content always comes with installers in weird languages. If you listen to this you are pirating the Internets, and FBI agents will come to you. Buy cable TV and get your news straight please.
This trial is guaranteed to be unfair even from the start. The EU has released the so called Medina report, already judging the defendants as guilty. The report was issued several weeks ago. This way the judges already know how to judge these individuals, so things are kept simple!
I guess this trial will mean that linking to copyright infringing material will be illegal. Possibly they will make it so it will be illegal if there's an intent which of course will be all the battle.
It's time to vote for the Pirate Party.
More info:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/MedinaOrtega_INI-report-Copyright_JURI-consolidated
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/copyright-dogmatism-ridiculously-strikes-european-parliament
Greetings from a sad Swede
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
to the true spirit of freedom. This is the actual front for liberty today. What guts. Lots of talk, but not many are willing to take a stand like these guys.
I translated the "application for summons" a while ago. It charges the four defendants with two different crimes. (It may have been adjusted by the prosecutor since it was released, but this is the last version I've seen.)
The accusatory part (or "crime description") of the application reads (unofficial translation):
1) Complicity to copyright infringement
"The Pirate Bay is one of the worlds largest Internet filesharing services. The service utilizes the BitTorrent-protocol to achieve an efficient use of the available bandwidth. The Pirate Bay consists of three components, an index portal in the form of a web page with a search function, a database with a catalogue of torrent-files and a tracker function. Through the tracker function, a peer-to-peer network is created by the users interested in sharing the same file. All components are necessary to enable the users to share files between them. The greater part of the files which are made available for file sharing through The Pirate Bay contain copyrighted works.
The operations of The Pirate Bay are financed by advertising. Hereby, there is a commercial use of copyrighted works.
[The defendants] have together and in mutual understanding with each other and together with one other individual during 1 July 2005 - 31 May 2006 [at locations] been responsible for the organisation, administration, systematisation, programming, financing and operations of the file sharing service The Pirate Bay. In connection with these activities they have aided other persons' copyright infringements as follows:
The defendants have wilfully [during time period] [at locations] aided others in the transferring of a file over the Internet containing [name of copyrighted work], thereby making a copyrighted work available to the public and also aided other persons in manufacturing copies of the work. [Explanation why this is a copyright infringement.]
[This is repeated in a list of 21 phonograms (i.e. records/CDs), 9 films and 4 computer games shared and downloaded.]
and
2) Preparation for copyright infringement
[The defendants] have together and in mutual understanding with each other and together with one other individual during 1 July 2005 - 31 May 2006 [at locations] been responsible for the organisation, administration, systematisation, programming, financing and operations of the file sharing service The Pirate Bay.
In connection with these activities they have, by the functionality of the file sharing service, in a purpose build database with ancillary catalogue, received and stored the torrentfiles referred to [in the above list of copyrighted works]. The torrent files have been especially adapted to be used as means of assistance in the violation of the [Swedish Copyright Act]."
The Committee on Legal Affairs says in the report labeled "REPORT on the outlook for copyright in the EU":
48. Approves the action taken by various national judicial systems against internet sites that
illegally disseminate works on line (e.g. "The Pirate Bay");
This is from (PDF-warning) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A6-2009-0017+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN
Which in my view is equivalent to judge The Pirate Bay without any legal trial. It's not some hippie committee on agriculture or whatever. Writing like this just shows they've already made up their mind before trial. Mind you, I realize this is an EU committee, but in case you haven't noticed, Sweden has been following the EU's advice quite throroughly lately.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
They go by bus from Belgrade to Stockholm.
They cross Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, a bit of Czech Republic and Poland..
Of those countries only Slovakia uses Euro as currency.
Still, the PB team is sooo surprised that they can't pay in Euro... they obviously also don't know that you can exchange Euro for local currency in bank or foreign exchange shop.
Today we have been travelling through [...] Poland we discovered didn't accept euros.
Then a bit later:
Stuck in a gas station. They don't accept euros
And once again:
We had to shift the booking around a bit since they didn't accept euro so three of us are now looking forward to 18 hours on the [...] boat with nowhere to sleep.
Welcome to the real world ;-)
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.
My isp have blocked the ip for http://trial.thepiratebay.org/
does anyone know what it is?
They have, as I understand the local law (I live in Sweden), not broken any local laws. I am not entirely sure if they have violated some EU law or not. The international pressure to find them guilty seems to be huge, so they may be convicted regardless of there being no violation of any local law. I find it really disturbing that they will probably be found guilty due to immense international pressure from governments and corporations, it sets a very dangerous precedence if you can get tried and convicted without having done anything illegal if enough powerful entities think that what you are doing should be illegal in your country.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
HOW TO GET FALLOUT 3: OPERATION ANCHORAGE LEGALLY
1: Go to a website called XBox Live to download software for your PC. Spend some time trying to find it in among all the information about how wonderful the XBox 360 is.
2: Install this software.
3: Install updates for Fallout 3.
4: Install updates for Windows XP.
5: Reboot.
6: Create Windows Live gamer ID.
7: Enter your card details to buy Microsoft points (the download costs 800 of these, so naturally they're sold in blocks of 1000).
8: Fill in most of your address and find that it thinks you're in the USA for no apparent reason and you can't change that. (Was it because my Hotmail account had 'USA' as my region because I've never bothered to fill that stuff in since I created it eleven years ago?)
9: Give the fuck up (presumably there would have been (9) Buy points, (10) Agree to bloodthirsty EULA, (11) Download expansion, (12) Play, to go after that, but I never got that far.)
HOW TO GET FALLOUT 3: OPERATION ANCHORAGE ILLEGALLY
1: Type 'operation anchorage megaupload' into Google and pick the first result /data/ directory
2: Download it
3: Copy files into Fallout
4: Play and realise that the expansion pack actually takes less time to finish than you've just spent fucking around with Microsoft's bullshit.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
You know what? Most people are honest. Most people accept that they should pay money for things they use/want.
This is the problem with the *IAA mafia types. They assume everyone is dishonest and treat them as such.
You know what I love? The $5.00 bin of DVDs at kmart, best buy, or walmart. Some older movies, sure, but some that I've wanted to watch and never did.
Now, this is the absolute truth and I'm sure 99% of the people will agree with me.
I want a way to get a movie or some music, in a format I want, I don't want it locked with DRM, and I want it at a reasonable price.
I sometimes watch a movie on my computer, sometimes on my TV, sometimes I stop it on one and continue on another. Sometimes, I want to watch it a few months later.
In the case of kids movies, I want to be able to put it on my iPod to keep her quiet on long drives.
If the movie and music industry actually kept up with the times, they would realize that all the terrible "downloaders" are actually potential customers. Analyze the market, adapt, and capitalize on the opportunity. Don't just try to sue and legislate!
Novels are more difficult, but not impossible. You can go with the subscription base model, where you sell in installments to an aggregator (i.e. magazine with a subscription base). Or you can make custom novels like some chick selling the custom Valentines Day romance novels.
Then again, physical copies of books are a premium item - difficult to digitize (well), and many people prefer the physical form. Writing prose to sell paper does seem odd.
I'm not for abolishing copyright; I happen to rely on it in my own work (I'm a professional engineer and when I create a plan, it's for a single installation of a building unless I have a contractual relationship saying otherwise). There are speculative building designers too - you see them in all the home stores as "plan books." I would like to see it drastically curtailed; 5 to 10 years should be the limit, imho. If you can't make your money in that time, you should do something else. Of course, I'm also for compulsory licensing of patents at fixed/sliding rates so that any patent can be freely reproduced. The monopoly production then is not a barrier to competition, but the developer gets value for their work - it just may not be the lottery-windfall they are hoping for.
IP laws are supposed to be for the public good, not for the wild enrichment of the creators. If it takes you 20 years to develop and produce a single patentable item that requires another 20 year monopoly on production, maybe you're really not good enough at that particular craft to warrant using it for your entire means of support.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Thoreau wrote, "When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow." It is not only our right, but our duty to disobey and unjust law. Making a law irrelevant and useless due to the sheer number of people disobeying it is one of the key factors in eliminating that law.
See the separate-but-equal laws, alcohol prohibition (juries nullified over 60% of prohibition cases toward the end), slavery (ever hear of the underground railroad?), and so on. Disobedience of the law has a long and dignified history, and so-called pirates are the latest in a long line of people working toward changing bad laws.
That's one of the reasons I don't have such a problem with copyright infringement is that copyright has become so stupid.
Remember that in the US copyright was originally 14 years or rather 7 + 7 (7 when you registered, extensible by another 7). Now this was seen as good enough back when the world was large. By that I mean it took a long time for information to move. If one wrote and published a book in New York, it could be a long time, years perhaps, before someone on the west coast got to buy it.
Now the world is very small. Information moves instantly across the globe. It is trivial to release something to the whole world at the same time. IT is easy to reach all your potential audience very quickly.
Well if anything, you'd think this would mean shorter copyrights. However it hasn't. Copyright is now life plus 50 years. Apparently just being able to sell your work for your entire life isn't good enough, you need to be able to keep collecting money after you are dead.
Now that's retarded especially since the Constitution doesn't grant unlimited right for copyright. Congress is allowed to create copy right law to "To promote the progress of science and useful arts." The whole reason they are allowed to do it is because we want to promote science and art. So that means you give someone exclusive rights for a time so they can make money, and thus have an economic incentive to create. However it does not mean they should have rights for an unlimited time for three reasons:
1) If someone can release one thing and use that as a gravy train for life, what is the economic incentive to keep creating? In other fields, people must keep working to keep making money, why should art be different?
2) It stands in the way of progress. Part of the progress of the arts (and science) is building off of that which came before you. Disney is a great example, some of their most beloved movies are based off of old fables. Well if people can't do that, it stands in the way of progress.
3) It runs contrary to the Constitution which says "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;" Note the "limited times" part. It doesn't say forever. The idea here is you get to have exclusive rights for a little bit, then everyone gets it, like with patents.
So given the absurd state of copyright law, I have trouble thinking that those that break it are all that bad. Copyright law has reached a totally bullshit state, and a bad law really shouldn't be a law at all. If copyright was more reasonable, well then maybe I'd be more willing to condemn those that break it. However as far as I'm concerned current copyright law is downright unconstitutional and thus should be struck down.
"Google and every other search engine would be equally culpable."
No, they wouldn't.
Courts take intent heavily into account when rendering judgement on a defendant. Google is a general purpose search engine... they index everything, with no other intent than to make money by pulling the public in to use a superior method of search. They don't condone criminal activity, nor directly assist in it.
The Pirate Bay is different, because of their stated mission: to undermine copyright law, and to encourage copyright violation, and more importantly, provide direct assistance in doing so. Come on, they have a page on their site dedicated solely to mocking companies that send them cease and desist letters on their piracy. They pretty much openly say "Ha ha, you can't get us, and we're going to continue to do it anyway. Fuck you and your copyright". These guys make no bones about what they stand for and what they're trying to do: eliminate all copyright laws and protections, period.
So, these guys are screwed. What defense can they use? Sweden has weaker copyright laws than most of Europe and the US, but they do have some, and there are penalties for breaking them. What can they use as a defense? Certainly not "we didn't know what we were doing". They've been up front all along about what they were doing, and why. One of the founders, in a television interview, looked directly into the camera and said "we're going to keep on doing this and you can't stop us. We know it's illegal. We don't care".
Not even Swedish judges can overlook that.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The basic premise of the linked posting is that conservativism starts from the idea that aristocracy is a good thing -- not necessarily kings and queens and dukes and duchesses, but rather an upper class, the rich, those that have enough money and power to not have to work. People further down the social ladder that ascribe to this philosophy, despite possibly being actively harmed by it, do so in the hopes that they too might some day climb high enough to be able to sit back and rely on other people to do the work.
Copyright-forever comes out of this same thinking.
I think this article you read is a little lopsided in its thinking.
I believe in a lot of conservative principles myself (old-school conservative, not this new neo-con BS that's taken over the US Republican party in the last couple decades). The main principle is limited government, along with fiscal responsibility. For the economic bit you're talking about, the idea is that it should be possible for you to work hard and become rich through your efforts, without some big government taxing you to death and "redistributing" your wealth to people who don't want to work very hard, or make stupid choices in life. People further down the social ladder that ascribe to this philosophy do so because they want to be able to build themselves up the same way.
Most people would like to be able to accumulate enough money so they don't have to work any more. I know I would: I'd rather work on whatever interests me, regardless of profit potential, rather than constantly worry about money. But for now, I work for an employer because I haven't quite figured out a way to be independently wealthy and I'd like to have food, clothing, and shelter. If I had my choice, I'd certainly be doing something more interesting than my current job. My point here is that you shouldn't condemn someone because they want to reach a point where they don't have to work for a living any more. There's nothing wrong with that: if you can work hard for a while and build up so much money that you can live off that for the rest of your life, then what's the problem? If the government takes that money away, then that removes the incentive for that person to work so hard, and instead do the minimum.
People further down the social ladder that ascribe to this philosophy, despite possibly being actively harmed by it, do so in the hopes that they too might some day climb high enough to be able to sit back and rely on other people to do the work.
Most people would like to retire at some point, when they get older. Do you want to be doing back-breaking work when you're 90 years old so that you can pay your bills? Of course not; when people get that old, they should be retired, and younger people should be doing the work. That's the payback they get for working hard when they were younger. (And remember, not everyone's smart enough or lucky enough to be able to do non-physical work.)
I guess anyone who's not conservative doesn't believe in retirement, and thinks that elderly people should be out digging ditches?
It isn't about creating an aristocracy; it's about allowing people to reap the benefits and rewards of their hard work, without having a bunch of lazy people steal it from them. If everyone worked hard, then theoretically everyone could be "upper class", though not all at the same time: the young people would be forced to work hard, so that they could build themselves up so they could retire relatively young. (However, today's trend where parents with money constantly throw money at their lazy kids, enabling them to be worthless slugs, goes against this ideal.)
Now, the copyright question is a little more difficult, because that's a place where the government grants creators a limited (well, it used to be limited) monopoly over the ability to copy a work, with the idea that it would encourage people to spend more effort creating useful works of art and literature (and now software). After all, if you spend all y
Actually, if you read the paged dedicated to mocking companies that send them c&d orders, you'll see that the majority of the mocking is because lawyers are sending a bunch of Swedish guys C&D orders based on American & UK law. Since they aren't subject to those laws - and last time I checked the page, nobody had sent in a C&D quoting a valid reason using Swedish law - why shouldn't they thumb their noses at them? It's certainly what we would do in the US.
I think their defence will be more like "we're going to keep on doing this and you can't stop us. We know it's legal and don't care how many big companaies wish it weren't."