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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."
This trial is in itself important for the net, since TPB didn't carry the content themselves, just references to it.
This means that if they are convicted it may be illegal to have links to questionable content.
If they aren't convicted it will require a different approach by authorities, the record and movie industry to figure out a way to manage their income.
This is far from over.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
i'm yet to see a good defense for this. your an accessory to a crime if you knowingly aid it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
There is a fantastic defense for this.
In Sweden, the link isn't the illegal content, and is therefore legal.
Besides, if it weren't, any sort of search engine would then be liable unless they had a 100% effective filter. (That's as likely as finding out that aspirin is a cure for syphilis.)
That's preposterous, copyright infringement is illegal but "aiding" people in copyright infringement is not. It's that simple.
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!
While I think that TPB operators are wrong in linking to illegal content, I do no see this trial as a trial of their wrongdoing. I see this trial as a trial of Sweden's sovereignty. These people did nothing illegal _in_Sweden_. Why should the the Swedes sacrifice their sovereignty, to appease American businessmen?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Do you really find it that hard to believe that the guys behind TPB don't believe in copyright restrictions on private individuals?
I think it is very easy to believe that copyrights should not restrict individuals, in fact, I am doing so right now.
Only if it's criminally illegal, like cp - you'll get linked to the chillingeffects record explaining what has been censored and why. Google is still a perfectly good search engine for pirate material on Rapidshare and such. Search on 'Fishman Affidavit' and you'll find Google linking direct to copyrighted material belonging to the most litigious organisation around - all the dirty Scientology secrets. And anyway I gather TPB will also remove cp.
I think the pirate bay cannot reasonably make this argument. The majority of the content appears illegal and if someone provides incontravertible proof that the link is illegal they'll send a smug insulting response.
That's why TPB don't make that argument. They argue that linking to material without the copyright holder's permission is not illegal in Sweden - only the act of copying it is illegal. So far, they've been right, hence their entertaining page of ineffectual legal threats. Hopefully this court will agree.
INTENT MATTERS!!!!!!
Does it? Show us the Swedish law that says so.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
No where on Earth is it "all or nothing" my friend.
We should only be so lucky.
You are welcome on my lawn.
doesn't reflect the general consensus of the wider population
I think that depends very much on what demographic you survey and exactly what questions you ask.
Which would pay artists for cases of internet piracy where there is no sale how?
Most of the time there is some revenue collected; even in the TPB case, with ads. If it was moved to a levy/sales-tax system I'd expect the available channels to morph into analogues of radio/cable TV. Commercial financed or subscription based systems.
There is also price point where the illegitimate systems simply aren't worth it and with a mandatory licensing/fee system the professional sites could easily offer services such as selection, availability, guaranteed quality and formats, freedom from infections, etc, that would simply make it a better deal to pay for it. Like someone noted, torrent sites are often crap when it comes to less widely popular material.
At that point DRM becomes unnecessary; it's easier to pay for and get what you want from a legitimate site than to mess around with dubious sites.
Why do you expect we would pay for more artists
Because 50% of end-sales revenue is still more than they're getting today from legitimate sales through channels, even if prices on end-sales were cut by 80%. And that's below what I think would be the inflection point where legitimate services would be of more value than free as in beer. Compare with program cost of cable or radio to get an estimate of the low-end of a possible revenue stream.
basic premise that people 'want' to pay
People will pay more than enough to support artists and creators, but not, perhaps, enough to support the current cost structures. They'll pay for convenience, but they won't pay because they're told to. Personally I pay for Emusic, which is a good price/value/convenience proposition for me, although I suspect it may be a bit expensive for the average radio listener, and not very useful if they listen to mainstream music. It also means I'm paying more than 6 times what I did when I was buying a few cd's per year, yet each track gets less money. It wont pay for huge marketing campaigns for every track, it wont pay for executives, release parties, payola, etc, but those things aren't necessarily something that should be paid for by what is a public incentive system.
I'd prefer to see such a resolution as it at least makes it possible to solve the initial investment problem, and it makes it possible to balance non-exclusive revenue incentives between interest groups, to maximize the value generated for society.
Either way tho, the current system is dead; the next-gen networks will be anonymous, encrypted and f2f cell based, making them impervious to monitoring.
It is called the Pirate Bay because it was started by the Piracy Bureau, whose name is meant to parody the Anti-Piracy Bureau (the Swedish equivalent of the MPAA).
Legally it's currently a gray area. Some people want a harsher copyright legislation and framed the debate as "anti-piracy" to gain support. Of course the other side, arguing for a more pro-consumer copyright legislation, will call themselves "pirates" if they have a sense of humor.