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."

Comments

I hope P.B. win this trial

[Maelwryth]

It might make media realise that we have separate countries for a reason, and that many of those reasons have an equal validity.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[timmarhy]

intent is where TPB crosses this line imho. google bot just index's everything, where these guys purposely set out to create a list of infringing downloads.

i'm sure you could muddy the waters plenty, but at the end of the day illegal downloads are what TPB is all about.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Renegade88]

He did not say that. Obviously the street-seller engaged actively in copyright infringement, either copying it himself or distributing physical copies.

If you cross me on the street asking about bootlegs, and I point you in the direction of the street-seller, am I guilty of aiding copyright infringement? Most reasonable people don't think so.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Ed Avis]

1. Copyright infringement by itself is a civil wrong, not a crime. (Many jurisdictions have criminalized things like distributing pirated DVDs or bypassing access controls, but still it is not usually a crime to put a file on a server.) So you cannot be an accessory to a crime here.

2. The content of pages at a given address can change.

3. What is legal in one jurisdiction may be infringing copyright in another.

4. The site is not linking to content they 'know' is illegal. The process is fully automatic and the computer does not know what is illegal and what isn't. The people who 'know' are those who upload the links in the first place.

5. If a page linking to illegal material is itself illegal, then so is a page linking to that page, and so on. Almost the whole Web would be illegal.

6. Surely the RIAA and others send emails and make internal web pages with links to sites that infringe copyright. By your measure, this would also be illegal since it's linking.

7. Linking to a page is simply mentioning its address. If that were illegal, it would effectively be illegal to disclose the existence of certain web pages.

8. It would be an unmanageable burden for search engines, site operators and just about everybody if they had to check every link (or satisfy themselves that they do not 'know' it contains illegal material) before adding it. Better that the legal responsibility for content on a particular server is held by the owner of that server alone.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Znork]

from heavily biased sources

Considering the owners of traditional media often has certain parts of their business model dependent on copyright it's hard to find any sources that aren't biased. Which is, of course, the problem with holding a serious discussion on the future of various intellectual property rights.

you go back to the old patronage model of yestercentury

That's a strawman argument. There are many other possible models.

For example, you could put a sales-tax on any material or revenue derived from sales or reproduction of works, with the proceeds going directly to the creators and artists. That would be somewhat similar to the radio model, but structured to include physical duplication as well as internet based replication. Further, such a model would direct much more of the customers money directly to the artists and creators, leading to a much better cost efficiency than the current system.

It would also have the huge advantage of allowing a multitude of new business models ranging from print-your-cd kiosks to libraries of all music ever made.

It would also have the advantage of saving artists and creators from the painfully subservient situation of trying to negotiate a contract while having basically no negotiating power at all; if their products generate revenue for someone, they'd get their share automatically.

lacking in perspective on the significance of this whole issue

If the question was merely one of payment, perhaps. But as it ties into everything from cultural legacy to freedom of communications to western economic competitive ability to the future evolution of society, I'd say the issue has a lot of significance. Well within the range where civil disobedience is acceptable, if not outright a moral obligation.

I mean, can you imagine what we're losing in the current system? How many artists we could pay if it was structured so more of the revenue went directly to them?

Can you even imagine having all art of humankind available at your fingertips? Cross-referenced as wikipedia, social-networked taste indexed to suggest material for you? Can you imagine the value lost to society due to the current model making this impossible?

Without a complete rewrite of copyright from an exclusive system to a monetary inventive system it's not going to happen; the owners of modern material don't want old or unmarketed material competing with the new to any greater extent than it already is.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Haeleth]

It's called "The Pirate Bay". That is a clear expression of an intent to index material related to piracy.

Since most of the torrents on TPB have nothing to do with buccaneers, they are clearly using the word in the "copyright infringement" sense.

It is positively mind-boggling that you can take such a clear statement of intent to aid and abet copyright infringement, and somehow conclude that they had a noble goal of protecting freedom of speech or some such.

TPB is about piracy. It's nothing to do with avoiding censorship; the sole purpose of the site is to help people infringe copyright. There may well be a loophole in Swedish law that makes this activity legal there, but that's a separate question, and will shortly be answered by the court hearing this case.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Juippi]

why is there this preconception that linking to content that you know full well is illegal, is acceptable?

Because most people accept it.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[bob.appleyard]

"I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living."

-- Thomas Macaulay, House of Commons 1841, debating whether copyright should be extended to 60 years after an author's death.

How close do you think he got? I'd say pretty much on the money.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[ultranova]

It's called "The Pirate Bay". That is a clear expression of an intent to index material related to piracy.

Of course, just like the Pirate Party is fighting to reduce the scope of copyright.

It is positively mind-boggling that you can take such a clear statement of intent to aid and abet copyright infringement, and somehow conclude that they had a noble goal of protecting freedom of speech or some such.

Aiding people to circumvent unjust laws is a noble goal.

TPB is about piracy. It's nothing to do with avoiding censorship; the sole purpose of the site is to help people infringe copyright.

Copyright is about censorship. The MPAA's campaign to keep the so-called "illegal integer", 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0, off the Net is a clear example of that. The whole DeCSS mess was even better.

There may well be a loophole in Swedish law that makes this activity legal there, but that's a separate question, and will shortly be answered by the court hearing this case.

Not all features of law which benefit the people rather than the corporations are loopholes. Some of them might actually exist because of the quaint notion that governments exist to serve all of their living, breathing citizens, rather than the few billionaires and their companies. I know, I know, it's unthinkably idealistic, and will undoubtedly be fixed as part of the inevitable slide towards another Dark Age and World War III we are currently experiencing, but for now, it exists.

Re:Why?

[uffe_nordholm]

Unfortunately, I agree with you: this trial is more about international politics than whether or not the guys have actually done something illegal.

Just the fact that there will _be_ a trial is slightly bizarre, since the prosecutor had, just a few months before the police raid, written an official document where he claims TPB are doing nothing wrong.

Enter then the minister of Justice, who had been on a trip to the USA, to meet his counterpart there. When the minister was back home it didn't take long for the police to raid TPB and seize everything in sight (including many servers belonging to other companies and totally unrelated to TPB).

To the general public, it looks very much like TPB got raided as a result of the minister of Justice applying pressure on the prosecutor to get something done. If this is really what happened, someone is likely to find himself in trouble, since it is against the constitution for the government to decide what the authorities should do in specific cases.