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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.
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.
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."
I would like to call Pirate #4 to the witness stand Your Honor...
Pirate 4: Yaaarrrr?
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.
Ok
[it] is pointless, like suing the gun companies if a murderer killed some one [in a car] with one of their guns.
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?
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 can't find any rape or pillaging! :(
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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]."
I would like to call Pirate #4 to the witness stand Your Honor...
Pirate 4: Yaaarrrr?
Swedish judge: bork bork bork!
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.
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.
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.