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

[Z00L00K]

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.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Maelwryth]

"This is far from over."

Unfortunately that may be true. This looks like one of those cases where if they don't win they will try again, all the while trying to change the rules to make it impossible to lose. It is starting to look like media sharing is the cannabis of the new millennium (or at least the first part :)).

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[scientus]

IN THE CONTEXT OF SWEDEN

law in one country does not automatically decome law in another country!

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[timmarhy]

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

i'm yet to see a good defense for this. your an accessory to a crime if you knowingly aid it.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[wisty]

And if that fails, they will come back with an armada of gunships, a kraken, an undead monkey, and the accursed souls who were lost at sea. These guys just won't give up.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

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

[Brian Gordon]

That's preposterous, copyright infringement is illegal but "aiding" people in copyright infringement is not. It's that simple.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[blahplusplus]

"i'm yet to see a good defense for this."

Like there's a good defense of endless copyright extension and patent trolling?

Like there's a good defense of sweatshops in the third world?

Like there's a good defense for an illegal war in IRAQ?

I could go on, but lets face it. When has anyone fought what the majority of people want and won?

Trying to act like a resource is scarce when it is not is part of the whole problem to begin with, once made, digital works are not scarce and can always fulfill supply. They are the perfect product to fit a socialist/communist economic model, why should we expect people NOT to pirate? There's no good argument considering the resource is not scarce. Physical products and digital products are not on the same level in legal and other terms and the people are voting with their behaviour.

IMHO piracy is fair reaction regardless of whether the people pirating do so for political reasons in addition to the fact that it's possible. Considering to how twisted the law and legal system has become. How the law is bought and sold by those with the most money. And the endless attempts at DRM and trying to licesense everything instead of people actually owning the stuff they buy. I consider it a counter force to the overwhelming concentration of corporate and private power at the expense of the public good and the individuals rights to own what they buy and not trying to be turned into serfs of consumption via legal corruption of the law and peoples rights.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[cliffski]

hurrah. it will be so great when everyone can take all the media they want for free, without compensating the authors a single penny.

So great for people who enjoy content made pre 2009 anyway, Who the fuck is going to work 40 hours a week for free when they have bills to pay?

I hope all you people rooting for your Swedish heroes don't want any new content to be made after your heroes win. Unless you are going to get off your asses and make/fund it yourselves.

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

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That's a pretty weak-ass "linux test" - first off, unless you are using something I don't know about, the search engine at the pirate bay just returns results in LIFO order, nothing about "top 10" So all you've done is show that the most recent 10 items with the word "linux" somewhere in the description box are probably copyright violations. You would have done much better to actually find all the legitimate linux torrents on the site and then make a traffic comparison to torrents of copy-forbidden works.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Brian Gordon]

What? In America we have something called you shouldn't go to jail if you didn't do anything wrong. If you look out your window and someone's being stabbed you can pour a glass of lemonade and set out a lawn chair for all we care, you are not liable. See Duty to rescue. It doesn't go over the reasoning behind it, but this article does. It's pretty dense but I think the issue really boils down to beliefs about our responsibilities to each other. Although we do have welfare tacked on, we're at least supposedly a cold, heartless capitalist regime with no qualms about suppressing and exploiting the poor because that's their place.. unlike more socialist states like the EU. We can hardly feel completely inculpable if a poor person we pass every day starves (that's not to say many people wouldn't intervene) in this dog-eat-dog game of bottom lines without holding these kind of ideas about duty to rescue in more pressing circumstances.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[pipatron]

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.

False.

They are set out to create a list of information that is not censored or removed because some random guy in another country believes it to be illegal.

The reason there are a lot of torrents to content that might be illegal for the original uploader to redistribute, is that for example linux ISOs are already tracked elsewhere, there's no need to put them there.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Jurily]

It's almost like saying "Yeah, he might have handed the guy a hammer and then watched and laughed, but he didn't beat that woman to death. Let him off!"

Keyword: almost. Except one is a crime, and against basically every moral code ever conceived by man.

Copying, on the other hand is absolutely natural. There was no concept of copyright until printing became semi-widely available, and it was originally meant to protect a select few who could afford a printing machine from each other.

You make "willingly aiding copyright infringement" sound like they're a bunch of pedophiles. Now go ahead and tell me that all the music to listen to came from a store.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[pipatron]

TPB is not a business, it's a couple of guys with a lot of servers that do what they want.

The linux test is also quite retarded, since almost all linux distributions have their own trackers, there's no need to put them on TPB. It doesn't matter how much illegal content there is, the fact that you even found one "legal download" (remember, nothing is stored on TPB, they do not perform any infringement) shows that it's not meant for breaking the law, it's meant for sharing information, no matter if sharing it happens to be illegal in some country or morality.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Like there's a good defense of endless copyright extension and patent trolling?

Hardly any of the content being traded over P2P and attracting the attention of Big Media is anywhere near running out of copyright, even on the original terms of just a few years. Patents have nothing to do with this at all.

I could go on, but lets face it. When has anyone fought what the majority of people want and won?

What few studies there have been that might realistically indicate the views of a whole population mostly don't support your implied position about what the majority of people support. Of course, if you get all your news on a controversial subject like this from heavily biased sources like Slashdot, you probably place a lot of weight on the one or two headline-grabbing stories about exceptions to this, and overlook everything else.

Even then, you're ignoring the fact that a lot of people don't really understand the issues surrounding copyright or the arguments for and against it. The important question if you're looking at the ethics is what the majority of people would want if fully informed. (I suspect the answer is for governments to penalise Big Media for price gouging; for smaller, independent artists to have better opportunities; and for legitimate sources of content that offer fair prices to be more easily identifiable.)

Trying to act like a resource is scarce when it is not is part of the whole problem to begin with, once made, digital works are not scarce and can always fulfill supply.

Sure, it's just those little words "once made" that you seem to be completely ignoring in your argument.

There's no good argument considering the resource is not scarce.

The good argument is that if you can't amortize the cost of making the work in the first place over a large number of sales, you go back to the old patronage model of yestercentury, where a lot of things only get made if one very rich patron chooses to fund them, and then that patron is the only person who gets to choose who can enjoy them.

IMHO piracy is fair reaction regardless of whether the people pirating do so for political reasons in addition to the fact that it's possible. Considering to how twisted the law and legal system has become. How the law is bought and sold by those with the most money. And the endless attempts at DRM and trying to licesense everything instead of people actually owning the stuff they buy. I consider it a counter force to the overwhelming concentration of corporate and private power at the expense of the public good and the individuals rights to own what they buy and not trying to be turned into serfs of consumption via legal corruption of the law and peoples rights.

So because some aspects of the legal system are not working as well as they could in some countries, and some suppliers are offering deliberately crippled products to the market, 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 and letting market forces educate them? If that is the case, then I submit that you are completely lacking in perspective on the significance of this whole issue compared to the general principles of law in a civilised society. Not being able to listen to a bit of music without coughing up less than a dollar for it at an online download service is some way short of justifying civil disobedience — not that ripping music in the hope that you won't get caught is really civil disobedience anyway.

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]

it's called The Pirate Bay!

On the other hand, it's not called 'the copyright infringement bay', nor are they accused of boarding ships on the high seas, so I'm not sure it's appropriate to draw any conclusions from that.

I'd say it's more a tongue-in-cheek naming poking fun at expected users and preempting expected name-calling.

shows fairly clearly what the intended purpose of TPB really is.

Providing and indexing links to the material the users want? It is, perhaps, a bit saddening that not more links were pointing to legitimate linux torrents (altho I suspect that is more because linux torrents have specific release sites that are well known to users, and the vast majority of linux programs are fed through packaging systems rather than random download sites).

I have no doubt that were the majority of the users of TPB mainly interested in Linux distributions, that's what you'd see. Which indicates that the material found is not so much a reflection of intent on the part of the site, but rather a reflection of the desire of the users.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[pipatron]

1) People have been pirating computer games on a large scale since the early 80ies. If you haven't been able to make a buck before, you never will.

2) No one is forcing you to make games. Please stop doing it. There are a lot of people ready do do it for free. If you only do it for the money, and your business model requires you to get paid every time someone copies your game and demand censorship of the internet because of this idea, then I think you're crazy.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[pipatron]

http://www.learningmovabletype.com/files/cute-kitten-picture-in-the-grass-thumb.jpg

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[91degrees]

I think Google can reasonably argue that they try to link to legal content. The evidence for this is that the majority of the content appears to be legal, and if someone provides evidence that a link is illegal they will typically remove it.

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.

INTENT MATTERS!!!!!!

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

[Kijori]

it's not meant for breaking the law, it's meant for sharing information

The overwhelming majority of their content consists of links whose only use is downloading non-free software for free. If you don't like my "linux test" try some other tests. Look at the "top 100". Every single download is a copyright violation. Look at their top 100 applications - every single one is a copyright violation. Look at their top 100 UNIX applications - a category in which plenty of free software is legitimitely distributed by bittorrent - and still over 50% of it is links to free downloads of paid software.

Whatever you think of the attitudes of copyright holders or the morality of copyright itself, it's clear that TPB are not innocent here. We aren't talking about some general-purpose site that happens to link to some questionable material. I would hazard a guess that 90% of traffic to TPB is people wanting to avoid paying for what they want. They don't just host a few links, they celebrate the idea of "illegal" downloads. They mock law enforcement. They're called "The Pirate Bay". They link - on the front page - to hand-picked lists of copyrighted material for you to download. Go and look at their music pages; they have compiled lists of hundreds of artists - whose material is not free - to facilitate the illegal downloading! They have categories like "Wii" that hold nothing but non-free material.
You wrote

"It doesn't matter how much illegal content there is, the fact that you even found one "legal download" [...] shows that it's not meant for breaking the law"

It doesn't. There is virtually nothing of note there that is free to download. Maybe they aren't actually breaking the law, because they don't host the material, but to laud them as an innocent victim, to try to claim that they have any intention other than helping people to avoid paying for what they want is laughable.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Haeleth]

Like there's a good defense of endless copyright extension and patent trolling?

No, there's no good defence of that. But I don't quite see how two wrongs make a right.

Like there's a good defense of sweatshops in the third world?

No, but how the hell is that even vaguely relevant to anything?

Like there's a good defense for an illegal war in IRAQ?

What illegal war? And what relevance does Iraq (it's not an acronym, BTW) have to this?

Trying to act like a resource is scarce when it is not is part of the whole problem to begin with, once made, digital works are not scarce and can always fulfill supply.

This is a fallacy. Sure, each individual work of art is infinitely reproducible, but that doesn't mean there is no scarce resource! The scarce resource is the creative talent that produces the art in the first place. The key point here is that people don't just want a continuous supply of digital content; they want a continuous supply of new digital content. Yes, you can make as many copies of a given movie as you want -- but people don't just want to watch the same movie over and over again, they want to watch a different one every time. And the number of different movies available is limited, and the supply of new movies is very limited. The real resource is very scarce, and if it is not paid for, ultimately the quality and/or quantity will decrease.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Ravon Rodriguez]

For some of us moral justification just isn't necessary; intellectual property isn't real property. There are ways to monetize your IP without resorting to imaginary scarcity.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find Linux distros, *BSDs and OpenOffice there too. What gives?

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[N1AK]

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 doesn't change the fact that the view on copyright and media sharing presented on /. is massively biased, and doesn't reflect the general consensus of the wider population, which is exactly what the OP was saying.

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.

Which would pay artists for cases of internet piracy where there is no sale how? Any solution that revolves around a tax on reproduction would require methods like DRM to stop reproduction that doesn't pay the tax, or are we going on the basis that people will not subvert a mandatory tax (even though they choose to ignore a mandatory cost of purchase)?

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?

Why do you expect we would pay for more artists, when the reason for the majority of piracy at the moment is to either to avoid paying, to get a digital copy of something you already own or at best "to trial material that you may buy if you like it"? The % of piracy which is committed due to idealistic concerns is almost certainly statistically insignificant.


For years people have argued the reasons for breaking the current system of media distribution, and although I agree with many of the points made during this entire time the arguments are almost always founded on the basic premise that people 'want' to pay, and any argument based on such a naive foundation isn't going to cut it.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[meringuoid]

I think Google can reasonably argue that they try to link to legal content. The evidence for this is that the majority of the content appears to be legal, and if someone provides evidence that a link is illegal they will typically remove it.

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.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Znork]

Some words have more than one meaning.

Yes, I see you do get the point. 'Pirate' has been used and abused in so many ways that you cannot infer any specific meaning of the word anymore. It can mean anything from actual illegal acts to people doing things we don't like to people opposed to copyright on principle, it's been adopted by political movements, it's used with pride, and it's used as a derogative.

To claim, like the grand-grandparent did, that the name suggests intent requires an unambiguous name, or a unambiguous context. As neither name or context is in one of the possible unambiguous forms, no conclusion can be drawn as to the actual meaning or intent.

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

[drinkypoo]

Hardly any of the content being traded over P2P and attracting the attention of Big Media is anywhere near running out of copyright, even on the original terms of just a few years.

Most of it never will run out in our lifetimes because of the perversion of copyright. Any media which does not come with a license releasing it into the public domain at the point of the original expiration of copyright is abusive to the system and I do not elect to behave as if it were covered by copyright at all.

The legal ability to do a thing is not justification to do it. Taking advantage of the copyright extensions bought and paid for by other media moguls is not an acceptable behavior.

The important question if you're looking at the ethics is what the majority of people would want if fully informed.

That suggests the question, what does "fully informed" mean? I think most customers don't believe that the companies really deserve any profit any more. They think the band gets money when they buy an album. People will copy music at the least provocation, so I suspect that most people don't think copying music is wrong, or at least, any more wrong than what the record companies do.

The good argument is that if you can't amortize the cost of making the work in the first place over a large number of sales, you go back to the old patronage model of yestercentury, where a lot of things only get made if one very rich patron chooses to fund them, and then that patron is the only person who gets to choose who can enjoy them.

That is not a good argument because it hasn't happened yet, and yet it has. People still make media for the pure joy of it and - shock amazement - it tends to be of higher quality than that which is made for commercial purposes. The commercial stuff often has more complexity especially in video and video games, but usually they are overconvoluted where they should be simple. At the same time, you ALREADY can't easily get your work into the mass media without selling your soul to some patron (e.g. a music label, games distributor, et cetera) and where your work is only seen if some rich patron believes they an make money on it. And they become the only person who gets to choose who can enjoy them (i.e. whoever pays their price in fatass dirty dollars.)

In other words, copyright has a chilling effect on the production of media made for the sake of art, yet it has not halted its production. Your chosen vision of copyright law does nothing to induce the production of genuinely valuable art which advances our society, yet instead produces more backstreet boys and christina aguilera albums.

So because some aspects of the legal system are not working as well as they could in some countries, and some suppliers are offering deliberately crippled products to the market, 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 and letting market forces educate them?

It's called civil disobedience and it is well recognized as a valid tactic of last resort. The prohibition of the consumption of alcohol was defeated through civil disobedience.

You can feel free to call this belief bullshit, but I believe that the covenant of copyright between big media and the people was broken when copyright was extended, defeating its purpose. In fact terms should have been reduced if anything, because there are more people, progress has accelerated, and more media is being created. A shorter copyright term may actually induce the creation of additional media since the same stuff can't be milked so long! As long as they choose to take advantage of legislation which the American people did not want and which they purchased, I don't feel like observing their copyrights.

Ultimately, copying th

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Overzeetop]

Which doesn't change the fact that the view on copyright and media sharing presented on /. is massively biased, and doesn't reflect the general consensus of the wider population, which is exactly what the OP was saying.

Really? If you surveyed a million consumers in the target demographic for mainstream media (the 14-35 group, iirc), would you really find that greater than 50% prefer paying for music over free distribution.

I'd like to see that survey. I have this odd suspicion that if you asked that question, "Would you prefer to pay for music and movies, or would you rather download them for free?" you would have a pretty lopsided result and it would not bear out your statement.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[91degrees]

Only if it's criminally illegal,

I'm not sure exactly what Google Sweden's policy is. I'd be surprised if it was the same as TPB's. Is there a list of mocking responses that Google has written in response to copyright infringement complaints?

That's why TPB don't make that argument.

I look forward to reading about TPB's legal defence. I expect it to have some interesting legal theory behind it. But all I want to address is the argument that if TPB is illegal then all search engines are illegal. This is clearly not the case.

Does it? Show us the Swedish law that says so.

Well, given that intent to commit a crime is generally considered an important point in a number of jurisdictions, it seems odd that you would be expecting me to demonstrate this is also the case in Sweden. But here's an example of some learned professionals treating this as an established fact in at least some aspect of Swedish law, and here's another article where intent is considered important. Perhaps this is different for criminal copyright infringement, but I think really it's up to you to demonstrate that copyright infringement is a strict liability crime in Sweden.

Why are you asking me for references to back up my lack of certainty? My position is that I don't know whether their behaviour is legal but that demonstrating search engines are legal is not sufficient. If we don't know whether intent matters then it seems disingenuous to assume that it does when forming an opinion. You'll end up with a guess.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[PopeRatzo]

intent is where TPB crosses this line imho

Bullshit. Sports gambling is illegal in many places, but the newspapers still publish the betting line, point spreads and horse race results. You know how they get away with it? With these words: "For entertainment purposes only".

You can't bust someone for publishing a web site telling people the weed the guy in the red jacket in the park is selling is kickass and giving a google maps mashup to his location, unless you're getting a cut of the profits. Even if you have advertising. You do understand that, right?

The nice thing about the criminal laws in Europe and the US is that they're written in the native language of the country in which they are enforced. It doesn't matter if YANAL.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[berend botje]

Nonsense.

I'm a carpenter. Among other things, I make decorated wooded doors. For each door I create, I get payed. If you make pictures of these doors and give them to anyone you know, I really don't care.

If I was a musician, I would get payed to perform. Each time I perform, I get payed, great! And if someone gives away recordings from this, I certainly wouldn't care. In fact, I would welcome it, because it would get more people into my concerts.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[PopeRatzo]

really so that guy selling bootlegs on the street is legit? give me a break.

Notice how you used the word "selling"?

That's important. It makes a difference. Outside of selling t-shirts and other swag to help with their legal costs, the last time I noticed, I didn't have to give a credit card number to use TPB.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[PopeRatzo]

It's all or nothing

No where on Earth is it "all or nothing" my friend.

without effective copyright laws the effort large corporations put into content would diminish

We should only be so lucky.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[PopeRatzo]

it's called The Pirate Bay!

They also called the batting order for the 1930's New York Yankees "Murderers' Row" but as far as I know, none of them stood trial for capital crimes.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Znork]

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.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. One of the publishing houses in Sweden, which btw publishes several of the major authors in Sweden is called "Piratförlaget". For your information that translates roughly as "The pirate publishing house". Clearly, inferring from the name they specialize i selling stolen books, right?

Now, who modded the parent posters drivel "Insightful"!?

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[The Yuckinator]

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

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

[Wrath0fb0b]

Unfortunately that may be true. This looks like one of those cases where if they don't win they will try again, all the while trying to change the rules to make it impossible to lose. It is starting to look like media sharing is the cannabis of the new millennium (or at least the first part :)).

Just a quibble, the elected government of Sweden has every right to "change the rules", pretty much whenever they want. They can't make the new rules retroactive to old conduct (ex post facto), but we all have to follow the new rules once they are made. Democratic government surely do make mistakes (they all do), but until we devise a better system of governance, I will continue to believe in the legitimacy of our current political process.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[superskippy]

1) People have been pirating computer games on a large scale since the early 80ies. If you haven't been able to make a buck before, you never will.

This is true. There has always been piracy to a greater or lesser extent. To talk about music, when tapes first came out, piracy went up, then when CDs arrived there was a short golden age for the record companies of very low piracy. Then CD burners came along, and piracy went up again.

The equation has always been about how much effort it takes to pirate and how good the pirate copy is, versus how much money it costs to buy the stuff legitimately. Traditionally, buying the stuff is good for people with lots of money, but no spare time (i.e. working people), whereas piracy has always appealed to people without a lot of money but a lot of time on their hands (typically students, and the unemployed). Taping a song from the radio in the 80s takes dedication- if your a kid in your bedroom that can't afford the $2, but you've got the time to wait for your song to appear on the radio, then you'll tape it. The kid's parents who have been at work all day will just go down the shop.

Torrents have now got to the point where the effort is so low (everyone knows about the Pirate Bay) that pretty much everyone has enough time on their hands to bother. If the rights holders are to reverse piracy, they don't need to drive out all piracy, they merely need to make it more effort than buying the stuff for the majority of people. And that's what's different now.

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:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Failed Physicist]

Exactly. As language should be dynamic and represent common use by the people of a given period, the law should do its best to adapt to itself to the morality of the day. An overwhelming majority of people - not only slashdot techies, but pretty much every average person I know - have no qualms about violating copyright; this means that it should be acceptable, and we should collectively find a new way to reward content creators of all kinds.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[orasio]

You make "willingly aiding copyright infringement" sound like they're a bunch of pedophiles.

I mostly agree with your point, but I just wanted to point out that most pedophiles are not criminals. Pederasty is a crime. Pedophilia is just an ugly sexual preference, but doesn't involve actually having sex with children. It's not the same to have sexual attraction for children, than to actually do it, or take pictures of naked kids. The _doing_ part is important.

Lots of people like seeing people kill each other in movies. That doesn't make them criminals. If they actually did it, or made people kill each other for their enjoyment, they would be criminals.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[orasio]

If you believe in capitalism, then music will never cease existing. There might come a time when most people just won't pay for music, and I could imagine a very unlikely scenario where artists take other jobs because making music doesn't pay enough. If the amount of creative works already made, plus the ones made for free are not enough, and people have the need for newer music, they will pay for it, somehow. Even if after paying for the new music it becomes free.
If people really want new music, someone will finance it.

In my opinion, it's all nonsense. Copyright is not good for people, so it just should not exist.
And all my works are "protected" by copyright, but I would rather not have copyright at all. There are lots of ways I can make a living, without copyright, and I think all producers of copyrightable works can, also.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[Kijori]

Legality isn't about demonizing - it isn't about morality at all, although morals undoubtedly play a part in the creation of laws. The law is about having an agreed minimum standard that people must adhere to. While there are stupid laws on the books, the basic idea is pure: there are certain behavious that we must prohibit in order to maintain the sort of society we want to live in.

The downloads are illegal (and I put that in quotation marks the first time because legality obviously depends on your location) because the law supports a system of copyrights and makes it a crime to bypass them. It has nothing to do with "atrocities committed by dictators", and to be perfectly honest I don't really follow your train of thought on that one. "Illegal downloads" are illegal because of a recognition that if someone has created a work of art and put it up for sale, making yourself a free copy because you don't want to pay for it is unjust.

And to be perfectly honest, the whole question of defining illegality is really a distraction from the question at hand. Whatever your objection is to my use of the word "illegal" (and I would be interested, by the way, in knowing what it is), the fact remains that the downloads are illegal in most countries, including Sweden, where TPB is based. Your combative challenge is, at best, one of lexicon, since at the end of the day the downloads are illegal, whether you like it or not.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[jnork]

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.

Balderdash. It's an indexing service; TPB provides the service, and the clients decide how to use it. You cannot conclude TPB's intent from how its clients use it. Well, YOU obviously can, since you have, but it's a highly suspect conclusion.

It may be a correct one, but you should find another logic chain to support it, because that one is missing a few links. Like, all the links between the premise and the conclusion.

Likewise if you want to argue that bittorrent itself was intended for stealing software.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[PopeRatzo]

is inarguably involved in copyright infringement

No, it's not.

TPB is involved in copyright infringement the same way that the US Post Office is "involved" in letter bombings.

Re:I hope P.B. win this trial

[cliffski]

what planet are you on?

How is entertainment made then? by space aliens?

I for one am glad led zeppelin recorded as much stuff as they did, as did the beatles, rather than them squeezing in the odd album inbetween working as plumbers.

Your philosophy of hating the commercial world is that of a child. Its a silly rationalisation ton justify being a tight ass and leeching off the honest people who pay for content to be produced. At least have the balls to admit it.

Put some advertising

[crazybit]

on all that media coverage and use that money to pay some of the lawyers fees.

Re:Put some advertising

[blind biker]

Put some advertising on all that media coverage and use that money to pay some of the lawyers fees.

I'd positively enjoy seeing product placements in a trial!

Re:If Harvard law students are defending TPB

[DeadPixels]

As far as I know, the Harvard students are helping defend an individual accused of file-sharing and have nothing to do with TPB.

If I remember correctly, a semi-famous law professor is defending the individual and his students are helping him.

What the?

[SmallFurryCreature]

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.

Re:What the?

[interkin3tic]

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.

Apparently not as hard as capitalization, or spelling "Joel" correctly ;-)

Re:Media event?

[crazybit]

most of the coverage will be using internet services, traditional media can't compete with this.

Re:If Harvard law students are defending TPB

[interkin3tic]

Then they are going to be prosecuted themselves for practicing law without a license.

Practicing law? No, you misunderstand, they're PHYSICALLY defending him from the RIAA. The RIAA decided legal proceedings weren't giving them the results they'd like (IE beheading people who are "stealing music" and putting those heads on a pike) so they started hiring ninjas.

Why?

[GF678]

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!

Re:Why?

[Ieshan]

If I was in their position, I would do whatever it took to be acquitted.

Would you? Suppose you were the guy who runs the Pirate Bay: Your entire identity and celebrity rests on the fact that this website is still accessible. Do certain things and you are forever known as a sell-out, especially after the ridiculous amount of media attention you have heaped on yourself (even in the days before they started being idiots about the trial).

I think there are certain things you wouldn't sacrifice. I think there are social contracts you would choose not to violate.

Do I think these guys really believe in the freedom of information, in the freedom of speech, in the "free format" garbage that gets spewed all over this and other websites? No, of course not. But, their followers certainly do, and that's all that matters here.

I think this is just one side of the cost-benefit analysis. Risk jail time and large fines, but gain media attention and more devout fans.

I don't think these guys are any more brave or principled or high-minded than the guy who goes to jail for his gang rather than snitch on the leader. You'd think that selfish, personal greed would take over, but at some point, you can't sacrifice your identity.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

They risk at most two years in prison. That is one year in practice - at *maximum*. The investigation since the raid has been longer than that (Since summer of 2006) ! :)

And this is not one year of "pound-me-in-the-ass" american prison. This is Swedish resort-prison. In a Swedish prison you live in a nice room, you have have some normal furnitures, you can have a game console, like PS3, and access to a computer. You can study university courses, if you work you get paid, write some books or whatever for a year. Take a break from life.

Then when jailtime is over they will be famous martyrs. Heroes of the internets. Perhaps have some place in the history books no matter if copyright laws are changed or not. (and also a couple of hundred of millions of USDs in foreign accounts, according to rumors) :)

Best way to act now for them is just continue to push for what they believe in, make a "spectrial" out of it - become as famous as possible, milk it as much as they can. Then reap the rewards. All publicity is good publicity as they say! :)

And they will NEVER EVER have a hard time finding jobs or making money.

Pirates that hide cowardly and are ashamed of what they have done. They loose, because they act like loosers...

Re:Why?

[dotancohen]

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?

Re:Why?

[Peaker]

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.

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.

Re:If Harvard law students are defending TPB

[KenMcM]

Hire ninjas? No. They paid some of their bad-ass artists from the ghetto a reasonable portion of their revenue.

hope they get conficted..

[timmarhy]

.. for making up such a stupid word as "spectrial". doesn't the web have enough retarded pretend words?

The future of file-sharing

[castrox]

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

Well written primer for upcoming Pirate Bay trial

[VinylRecords]

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.

Nothing will come of it

[antiaktiv]

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.

What should be done about piracy

[Sklivvz]

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.

ex post facto

[CFD339]

      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.

Re:ex post facto

[Wrath0fb0b]

Finally (man, i'm just spewing comments today):

In Sweden, retroactive penal sanctions and other retroactive legal effects of criminal acts due the State are prohibited by chapter 2, section 10 of the Instrument of Government (Regeringsformen).

So much for that theory.

Money, if it ever did, knows no nations.

[jeko]

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...