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The Pirate Bay Is Making a "Spectrial" of It
IDOXLR8 writes "The Harvard Law students defending accused file-swapper Joel Tenenbaum are doing their best to turn his upcoming trial into a media event. But when it comes to pure spectacle, they have nothing on The Pirate Bay. TPB is referring to the event as a 'spectrial,' a cross between a spectacle and a trial. They have set up a site where you can track their current location, complete with journal entries. The trial begins next Monday and features a live audio feed and Twitter translations."
It might make media realise that we have separate countries for a reason, and that many of those reasons have an equal validity.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
I wonder if they do weddings too?
While I agree the lawsuit(s) is(are) bullshit, this is not the attitude to take.
You don't make friends talking like this:
mdcurry: The Pirate Bay: "We reserve the right to choose freely to whom we speak. We do not speak with assholes." #spectrial
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Then they are going to be prosecuted themselves for practicing law without a license. I hope Massachusetts has a certified law student rule, or that we get a better summary.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
on all that media coverage and use that money to pay some of the lawyers fees.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
You mean they are trying to court the same media companies whose content is being shared through Pirate Bay and who are behind the efforts to shut it down in the first place? Nice to see they have good weed in Sweden. If the trial does become a media spectacle (though I haven't seen it even mentioned in any mainstream news outlets in the US, maybe it's different in Europe) I doubt it will be the kind of coverage that is sympathetic to TPB.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Learn to read. The law students are defending Jaul Tennenbaum. NOT the piratebay. It is there in plain english. Granted that might be hard for an american to read but still.
And the law students are just assisting, in law there is an awful lot of hard work and students are the best for this provided you beat them enough. They are doing it under the guidance of their proffesor who is a qualified lawyer.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why are they doing this?
(a) They are very confident of being acquitted, so they want to obtain as much media attention as possible to support their cause (in this case the cause not being to get them acquitted, but rather what they're fighting for)
or
(b) They are trying to get media attention to save their own skins
I doubt this "spectrial" business is to obtain martyrdom. In their current situation, with jail time being a possibility, I doubt their principles of free movies for example would really be worth fighting for.
If I was in their position, I would do whatever it took to be acquitted. They run the risk of pissing the court off with this show, so I don't think it can help. We only have one life after all - it's not worth fighting for pirated content!
Wow, thanks guys. I was rooting for you there for a while, just out of a sense of "hurray for the little guy." Way to make me remember that however theoretically just your cause, you're a bunch of random assholes profiting off the work of others!
The ongoing struggle to procure intelligent, reasonable intellectual property and fair use rights worldwide needs these guys as spokespeople like animal rights needs PETA and parents' groups need Jack Thompson. Like so many before them drunk on the heady mix of righteousness and attention, they've gone full tilt into being walking, talking straw men.
Shouldn't the Joel Tenenbaum link go to something like Associated Press Wants RIAA Case Webcast, and some other text in the summary point to Pirate Bay Operators Stand Trial On Monday?
YARRR.
Neither party in this affair deserves approbation.
.. for making up such a stupid word as "spectrial". doesn't the web have enough retarded pretend words?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
They are not doing this, the ones who had them searched, seized and accused (apparently in an attempt at rather sweeping application of the respective statutes) do, and with an axe to grind have brought this spectrial upon everyone involved in the first place.
It is in the public interest (of the people in whose name the judgement is to be rendered) that criminal proceedings be as public as possible. What greater favour could the accused do to this cause than to help educate potential perpetrators about the legal limits, by organising the broadcast of what might become their own conviction (or acquittal, for that matter - in which case it is every bit as important for everyone to know which of their freedoms have not been restrained by ambiguous rules).
TPB was rumoured to be a tracker (automagically compiled index), not a host to infringing material last time I checked.
Just ponder for a moment on what it might also mean for references and hyperlinks set by everyone else in the country (including search engines of all sorts) if they were convicted...
The future of file-sharing will be just like the old days, only better!
While it's nice with torrent sites and all, it enables anyone to see who's downloading and uploading what on a single torrent. This clearly is the approach copyright holders are going to take in Sweden.
Now, I agree that the artists should be able to make money. Just not these silly amounts they dream of! The cost of creative works is declining every day with the availability of the heaps of content already available from many decades and even centuries. "New" is a thing fewer and fewer appreciate when faced with all this other older, great, music.
In the older days, we could not lay our hands on that content. Come Internet, the market completely changed. (Thinking of the "Long tail"-concept. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Long-Tail-Revised-Updated-Business/dp/1401309666/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234693596&sr=8-1)
Hey, we've got at least 16 gigabytes of USB thumb drives! It will be just like passing dope in the hallways. It's insane, the amounts of data easily transferable from friend to friend. Kill Internet file-sharing and see the music market stagnate because no one is buying shit they didn't even hear about. New single-album-artists will take decades to market!
Meanwhile, real artists with real skill will sell as they always has been. They won't be making millions off records or digital copies, but will have to lift their asses to go touring and give the consumers something they are willing to pay for.
Bye bye Karma
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
http://www.salon.com/tech/giga_om/online_video/2009/02/15/the_definitive_primer_to_the_pirate_bay_trial/index.html?source=rss&aim=/tech/giga_om/online_video
Janko Roettgers for Salon.com wrote an excellent summary of previous events and a preview of what to expect regarding the trial of the Pirate Bay. Should bring anyone up to speed on the trial.
This is why I hate yanks you get fucked off about being over shadowed by Australians. Americas time has been and gone and now its Aussies turn so shut up you stupid fat wanker.
I don't see the problem with piracy to be honest. Any commodity that can be copied freely is (monetarily) worthless. They just need to realize there is going to be no money in album sales, etc. and this might mean that there are less bands, movies, etc. but I think that is better than a future of heavy DRM and giving Free money to the **AA (see blank media taxes).
Ãstre Landsret har ved kendelse af 26. november 2008 stadfæstet fogedrettens kendelse af 29. januar 2008, hvorefter Sonofon A/S er blevet pÃ¥lagt at hindre sine kunders adgang til www.thepiratebay.org.
PÃ¥ baggrund af kendelsen fra Ãstre Landsret har TDC besluttet at spærre for adgangen til siden.
TDC har ikke foretaget nogen registrering af dit besÃg pÃ¥ denne side.
That's pretty good, though it should probably be pointed out that this case will go through all three levels of the Swedish courts, and it's likely to take years for the final decision to come about.
A guilty verdict would require proof of intent, which isn't impossible. The amounts they are suing for are likely irrelevant, however, as Swedish law only allows to sue for actual damages. The lawsuit lists specific albums, movies, games and so on, and it's unlikely (to say the least) that the prosecution will be able to produce proof that their losses from those add up to the amount they're suing for.
Anyone interested in Swedish law as relating to this case should check out this, btw: the former Swedish minister of justice is believed to have ordered the raid on TPB under pressure from the US/media industry. This would be, under Swedish law, highly unconstitutional.
[emphasis mine]
Keep your Roman Catholic canon law out of the discussion.
Why do you all* have to insist on this crap?
BTW, I have already taken sides, ostrich boy...keep hiding your head in the sand with your ass in the air! It will keep me entertained.
*religious nut-jobs
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
The same that do so now. Get over the fact that not everyone subscribes to your world view.
Go away, troll...you are not wanted or appreciated here. Your Jurassic Park business model is on the 'endangered list'. Get over it, and move on...and STFU- no one is interested!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Just as the growth in Open Source Software created a growth to Out Sourcing [wikipedia link to reference] this could have unknown consequences. The world economy and the worlds trade laws were based around physical goods. Where in order copy and break say American Copywrite/Patent laws it still required a fair amount of work. Having to purchase the original, reverse engineering, then reengineering build it work out how to optimize the manufacturing proces... While it was still frowned at it was mostly let alone, because it took a determined individual or group to get this done and it is usually just cheaper and easier to purchase the product anyways. Now with Digital Media people have a hard time understanding value in it. As they don't have a physical device they can hold (Like back when I was a kid I saved up for months to get a Copy of DesqView (A program that allowed DOS to multi-task), When I got it and opened it up it was on 1, 3 1/2 floppy, oddly enough I felt rather disappointed in that, although it was a good program for its day, and it did what I wanted it to do the fact that I spent all this money for 1 floppy was kinda disappointing.) But just because people have a hard time understanding the Value a information it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or should be shared freely, freedom of speech is the freedom of Ideas and views. However freedom of data and precise replications are much different, the original data does take take and effort from person/people in which they should be compensated for their work. Even if it is a faceless corporation you need to realize most of the money ends up to a bunch of faces. Companies don't need money or have money... People do, money is not a raw material but a an abstract idea where people agree on value.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Pirate Bay is not located in Sweden any more. If the people behind it are convicted they will be a couple million dollars in debt, but nothing will actually happen to the website.
May I recommend taking a look at http://www.thejesperbay.dk/ then?
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
Hey, does anybody think that The Pirate Bay is so successful because it's actually doing what the media companies should be doing? That is, letting people watch a couple of shows almost in real time and not six months later, or listening to a CD before deciding whether to buy or not?
Media companies have spent all their energies in actually NOT giving to consumers what they want that consumers are fighting back and having things their own way.
This is good. This is democratic. Defending a company over their consumers is idiotic and short sighted.
My Stack Overflow user
I don't know Sweden base of laws at all -- but I would suggest you don't assume that "ex post facto" is unavailable to their law makers. Its supposed to be impossible here in the United States, but over the last several years several laws have gone into effect with retroactive components. I've never understood how that is possible here at all. Yet, we all sort of agree that it is and so it is. Someone mixed up law with philosophy and reintroduced religion. It hasn't been good.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Beyond the debate of "the media companies are abusive and use DRM" verses "You are stealing the livelihood of hard working content creators", I would like to present an alternative way of looking at copyrights and piracy. While most p2p users most likely primarily use p2p because it's convenient and free; using p2p to infringe on copyrights can also be seen as a rejection of the institution of copyrights. The institution of property is one approach for allocating scarce resources. Property attempts to avoid the "tragedy of the commons" by utilizing markets to ensure the property ends in the hands of the highest value user. Applying property rights to intangible goods, however, is highly dubious. The assumption is that many of these goods will not be produced absent the ability to extract monopoly rent for a prolonged period of time. However, in an age where marginal cost of copying is close to zero, applying property rights is actually creating scarcity where it wouldn't otherwise exist. The claim that, without the ability to extract monopoly rent, many copyrighted works would never be produced, bears only limited merit. Some types of copyrighted works, with production budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, may not be produced without some method of funding. Yet large scale collaborative projects, such as Linux or Wikipedia, demonstrate that large scale production can take place without exercising property rights to create scarcity. Thus, my argument is that production of culture and information will not cease, and has the potential to thrive absent intellectual property rights.
So, the absolute worst case scenario for ongoing unrestricted file-sharing is that all content providers go out of business and the only entertainment left is amateur stuff that people make for the sheer love of it, news and current affairs, sports and live events. I'm probably in a very very small minority, but that sounds perfectly acceptable to me. People are sure to grumble, but nobody's going to suffer too much if they can't have movies and television shows. Hell, it's not like we're talking about life saving drugs or anything.
But hasn't he already been let of the hook by Justitieombudsmannen and Konstitutionsutskottet?
you think the correct solution is to revert to anarchy where anyone can do anything they like regardless of the law, rather than simply not using products from suppliers you don't like
What suppliers should I like instead? And how do I encourage other members of the family to like them? And how do I "not use" the background music piped into every grocery store?
Not being able to listen to a bit of music without coughing up less than a dollar for it at an online download service
Which online download service charges "less than a dollar for" a Beatles song?
All other arguments aside. . , and please, ALL of them, the bottom line here is the whole "bread and circuses" thing.
Movies and television entertainment programming will only die when the empire falls.
Mind control via media is simply too important to lose, and the media owners know this. --And the most powerful advertising has nothing to do with overt station breaks. If the main character in a show is sipping a coke, or beating up a 'terrorist' then that's just as effective, if not more so, than placing a traditional ad spot. You can't really put up full-on propaganda ads and get away with it nearly so easily.
The entire file-sharing alarm is a four-part combination of. . .
1. Stupid hubris on the part of the pirate, (My downloading actually matters).
2. Greed from low-level management who don't understand the system they're employed by, (Self-explanatory).
3. Clever distraction, (What REAL story will be going down during TPB nonsense?)
4. A wonderful excuse to make sure everybody is guilty. (If the offense is globally condemned, which it will be, then you get to put pretty much anybody in jail except the most conservative wankers who would probably support your flag even if it is planted in a pile of burning homeless people. You know who you are.)
-FL
A dream that one day every man, woman and child can read, listen, watch and create derivative works from, this great cultural engine that we call the Internet.
I have a dream that one day children will watch cartoons, take the audio out of them and make music videos from them.
I have a dream that one day college students will take video from news sources of corrupt politicians and lambaste them with whatever culturally relevant changes they see fit.
I have a dream that one day adults will download movies, watch them with their friends who may or may not be in the same room and write about what they thought about it afterwards, with clips from the parts they see as important.
I have a dream that every poor child in the world who can get to a library with Internet access will be able to download every book they need to learn, not just to be more economically productive, but so that they can expand their minds wherever they wish to take them.
I have a dream today.
Why do I have this dream today? Because I have been to this place. I have grown up in it. I have seen the attempts to stifle it with the law, with lawyers and with money. But not just information wants to be free, people want to be free too. I see people trying to build this, share this, today. The technology we need to do this is here right now and just as people forsook the chains of the quill and ink for the printing press, so will people forsake the chains of the printing press for the Internet.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of humanity, black men and white men, Jews and Palestinians, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
You miss the target by focusing your anger against "Americans." Sweden's sovereignty isn't being tested against America -- it's being tested against the power of multinational corporations that owe no one nation any allegiance.
The average uneducated man in Saudi Arabia will tell you he hates America, because he's been taught so by his leaders. "America" makes a handy scapegoat. You could replace "America" with any other string, and the situation wouldn't change. The average uneducated American will tell you he hates Commies and Terrorists, but the situation is the same. They're just parroting what they've been taught.
You're caught in the same trap. You think that Disney, et al, care about and represent "America" because those corporations were born here.
They don't. They could care less about this country. They could care less about ANY country. Sony and NEC don't care about the average salaryman. Wipro doesn't care about the misery in India. Nokia couldn't care less about the average Finn. BMW doesn't think their primary responsibility lies with Mutti and Sauerkraut. IBM and Goodyear sold to both sides DURING the war.
The men who run these companies love money, and only that. They dump their children on hirelings to raise. They run through women like fashion accessories. They don't respect the past. They don't worry about any future beyond their own. Their one concern, their only interest, is the accumulation of wealth, even when they've gathered so much that an increase of it would pretty much only be a theoretical concern. They look at masterpieces and admire only the price tags. They see athletes set records and think only of the endorsement dollars. They have no appreciation for science whatsoever beyond patent royalties. They idolize Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They've never heard of Steve Wozniak and Paul Allen.
The threats against your sovereignty don't come from "America," though the US government might currently be the lever used against you. When the US is a ruined husk -- and we're well on our way, mind you -- the men who threaten you will move on to another place and threaten you from there. When you eliminate the "American" threat, they'll find another cat's paw in China, in India, in Europe -- anywhere politicians can be bought and sold like cattle, which is pretty much anywhere on the whole damn planet.
I'm not pretending I have a solution for this. Libraries around the world are filled with books screaming that unrestrained greed is killing us. It's a cancer that has ruined untold societies, be it Rome collapsing under its own weight or the Rapanui destroying their own agriculture. We never seem to learn.
Just don't kid yourself that it's just the Americans causing the problem. The world was wrecking itself well before 1776 and it'll still be wrecking itself long after we're gone, which at the rate we're going should be sometime early next week...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Since I'm on one of those ISP who are blocking access to the piratebay I can't see the site TFA is linking to, anybody got an IP?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Gottfrid Svartholm is now on twitter:
http://twitter.com/anakata
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"I am going to make a spectacular protest....a protestacular" -GOB BLUTH
I love that show... maybe just a little too much
When you have six million people breaking the law, it's the law that needs changing, not the people
A radio is open behind me. The reporter just said that the real criminals are the ones who created the technique to share files in a decentralized manner (ie. torrents). What an ignorant baffoon.
Wow. what drivel
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I download files through thepiratebay.org but ultimately from other persons' computers all the time. What they are doing is linking to other files. This is not illegal. Search engines do the same thing. They are linking to someone else. They know that illegal activities happen but they are unable to do much about it, like how microsoft can't and how mac can't. And intel can't. Why is it thepiratebay.org's fault I download things? If they went away I would just go to yet another of the THOUSANDS of torrent sites out there. Perhaps the person we should be suing is intel for making my motherboard. They knew that some people who purchase their hardware would commit illegal acts with it, yet they still sold them! Or perhaps the electric company. They are 100% positive at any given time somewhere, someone is committing an illegal act using something electric. BUST THEM BEFORE THEY COMBINE WITH WATER WORKS AND THEN WE'RE REALLY IN FOR IT.
The pirate bay is probably the least useful tool in downloading torrents from their site. I'd say the computer is more of the accessory to illegal downloads.
If they are convicted, their country is saying basically you can't link to a website or data which you know contains unauthorized copyrighted material. Do you know what would happen to the internet if this view became prevalent?
Guess what I'm suing google.com because they came up with a link to a site that has a video with my copyrighted song in it! Goodbye youtube and myspace and facebook and every other site in the world that allows anyone to upload anything, because it could be a picture from a tv show or have a picture where you're wearing a t-shirt that you bought but didn't license for redistribution.
PS, do we have any larger more important issues on earth than 'accessory' to copying someone else's ideas without paying for them? Oh wait I forgot we don't have real crime anymore right?
I'm a realist. I see things how they are, and not how people would 'like' them to be. The reality of it is, and I don't care what your argument is of 'copyrights' need to be protected. The point is mute when it comes to music and video. A two year old child can rip or copy a cd or dvd or mp3. It takes no skill and is readily available to virtually anyone with a computer, which are more available now than ever before.
The reality is... this outdated media copyright 'rule', simply cannot be enforced anymore. So you can kick and scream and complain and sue all you want. It simply doesn't matter anymore. It can't be enforced. Doesn't matter how hard you try... DRM, lobby for what ever law, sue everyone you know.. it can't be enforced.. Your trying to stop computers from duplicating data.. and well. that is its very nature.
Many bands 'still' make money, only thru different revenues. A 'law' is not a law. It's rule given the power of law, as LONG as the majority of the public decides to abide by it. And in this case like many others (marijuana laws come in mind), that a majority now choose to not abide by. It's power is taken away. That is the reality of it.
Take the emerald triangle in California... the DEA still tries to enforce a law that has no real power anymore. And they fight a battle they can't win and has no effect no matter how hard they try. The public decided, it is not a law anymore.. and that's that. It doesn't matter if a particular organization thinks otherwise. The reality of it is, it can't be enforced. Wake up and face it.
Lets hope that the so called copyright laws will soon be derogated and all the people that supports them will be severely punished.
Copyright is a crime against humanity, it is a violation of fundamental human rights.