Pirate Bay P2P Trial Begins In Sweden

Many readers are writing to tell us that The Pirate Bay trial is now in full swing in Sweden. Looking at a possible two years in prison and $150,000 in fines (plus another $14.3 million if the record companies get their way), the battle of infringement is sure to be one of the most watched p2p trials. "The International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) which is representing the case of music and film producers, made a statement about the case on Friday. Stating, For people who make a living out of creativity or in a creative business, there is scarcely anything more important than to have your rights protected by the law. Copyright exists to ensure that everyone in the creative world from the artist to the record label, from the independent film producer to the TV program maker - can choose how their creations are distributed and get fairly rewarded for their work. The operators of The Pirate Bay have violated those rights and, as the evidence in Court will show, they did so to make substantial revenues for themselves. That kind of abuse of the rights of others cannot be allowed to continue, and that is why these criminal proceedings are so important for the health of the creative community."

Comments

A Strawman for the Symptom

[eldavojohn]

I'm saddened by this not because I think the Pirate Bay operators are innocent but because I feel they're an easy target to set precedence on.

Meanwhile, the real issues at hand continue to get worse and go unaddressed. Like the fact that the EU just extended music copyright to 95 years (maybe in an effort to catch up with the United States?). Or the fact that people who collect digital music en masse couldn't possibly have bought it all in the first place. Or the important differences between illegal digital distribution and traditional theft of goods or money.

No, unfortunately, the IFPI/RIAA isn't going to figure out a way to cope with new awe-inducing technologies. The court system isn't going to earn any respect from its citizens. Musicians aren't going to be rewarded anymore than they already are. The free market will suffer from DRM. And people who depended on seeds and traffic for legal reasons from these sites are going to be left shit outta luck.

I feel like we're stuck with a bunch of dinosaurs concerned only with their self preservation when the fact is that they leach so much money from the system that they simply can no longer be a part of it. Songs cost $1 to download when they should cost 11 cents with ten cents going to the artist and one cent going to the host/distributor.

This trial isn't a solution and we all know how it's going to end. Work out solutions that really plague the system and piracy will go away.

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear music/movie/TV shows corporations/companies/whatever:

The only way to make piracy go away is to make your goods available to everyone (1), at a fair price (2) without the DRM (3) and in standard formats (4).

1: drop the damn "only available to countries x,y and z" crap
2: 1$ for a tune and 2$ for a single episode of a TV show is a rip-off
3: the music industry finally understood that part, though they increased the price of new tunes by 30 cents
4: hopefully, MP4 (AAC and H.264) are becoming the norm instead of that hack of a format that is DivX (fucking AVI container from hell).

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[K.os023]

The Pirate Bay is about theft, plain and simple. [...] but the propaganda is propaganda on both sides.

It would appear that one side's propaganda is working. There is no theft in piracy. Unauthorized copying, yes, but no theft. This has been explained countless times here. I find it saddening that even here on slashdot, we hear people who bought the "theft" propagands from the *IAAs.

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[rudeboy1]

I couldn't agree more. The last 3 movies I've seen in a theater were without exception ruined by either other movie-goers, or another factor like idiotic theater staff or sticky floors. I LOVE movies, but I'm almost to the point of swearing off going to the cinema.

I might or might not pirate movies from time to time, but if I did, the vast majority of them would be movies I've seen before, usually in the theater. While I wouldn't be paying for these hypothetical movies, it is a matter of convenient acquisition of movies, so that I can access them anytime I want and watch them at my convenience.

I DO pay for a Netflix subscription. Which, when combined with my XBox, allows me to access a lot of movies at almost the same convenience factor of the ones sitting on my hard drive. This is an example of turning someone who might or might not have pilfered the occasional torrented movie into someone paying a fair price for a fair shake. Netflix does include a measure of DRM, essentially making it impossible (that I am aware of) to copy the streamed moves to disc- or if you can, it would equate to copying a song off the radio-post stream and all that. However, Netflix applies this DRM without making me feel like a criminal for trying to access my content in a normal manner.

This is the ONLY example of a major media outlet actually taking advantage of new technologies to expand their offerings. But I think that has a large part to do with the fact that Netflix IS the new technology. I'm sure Blockbuster would love to claim the part of the victim of new technology of they had a foot to stand on. From what I hear, they are circling the drain these days as a direct result of Netflix' market share.

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[rzei]

I do not think TPB is about theft.. Or at least that's not what made it so popular, here's the real deal:

1. People, in this case, young people who know how to use the Internet got a thought they want to watch the same movies/tv-shows premiering in the USA allaround the world
2. People search for a legal alternative, which in this case was and still is: wait. There's a chance you can in next N months:
   • Go watch the movie in theaters, if movie is a blockbuster (N < 12)
   • Go rent the movie, if movie is a blockbuster (Ntheater + [1, 6])
   • Hope that your local TV-channel airs the show (N > 12)
   • Hope that you can one day buy the show on your region DVD (N > 18), region 1 (N > 24)*

With this new cool Internet, where news about everything travels at lightspeed, and stuff gets old faster than yesterdays newspaper, people want to see their films now, not in 12 months.

* It's not legal to watch Region 1 DVD's where I live, as I live in Europe. Alas, not even watching DVD's under linux is legal here anymore.

I at least, have contacted for example Fox, on how to view some of their series legally from here, but they didn't even bother. That sends a clear message to me that it's ok to download 24 from bittorrent, hell they do not even want my money, I doubt they are going to sue me if they do not want to make a deal in the first place.

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[jollyreaper]

People pirate movies because they want to watch movies without paying for them. If you're one of the unique snowflakes that pirates movies because you bought every DVD on earth and just want a nicer and non-DRM format, that's cute. But you are not the majority. The majority are thieves.

Absolutely. That's the reason why the iTunes store failed all those years back. Same thing happened with Steam.

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[Hordeking]

Don't forget, it's the only way to get a lot of foreign films, or out of print stuff that the studios simply aren't releasing. Want to watch The Phantom Hourglass or the new Outer Limits programs? Good luck finding them on DVD. You have to resort to p2p for TV/VHS rips.

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[mcrbids]

If you invested your life savings as stock in a company, and the CEO did stupids that resulted in a rapid shrinkage of your life savings, you'd want to lynch him, wouldn't you?

If you wrote software that you intended to sell to a client, and somebody else stole the source by cracking your computer and selling it to your client at a greatly reduced cost, you'd want blood, wouldn't you?

If you bought a shiny new car, and six months later, a dirty congress-critter conspired with the evil car company CEOs to make gasoline illegal in favor of diesel, you'd be damned pissed, wouldn't you?

In all these cases, things of value to you were devalued by acts of others. In all these cases, you still hold the "thing" in question containing the value that was stolen from you. You still have the stock from the company, you still have the source code on your computer, and you still have a (worthless) car. And yet, you've still been robbed.

As a copyright holder, copyright infringement is analogous to all of these acts. You still have your original, but the value of that original has been taken from you. Whether you call it "theft" or "piracy" or "copyright infringement" doesn't change the underlying fact. You are still the loser.

I still agree: the RIAA are behaving like a bunch of drunk, stoned, brain-damaged monkeys. They are fighting for their existence while opportunities to profit out the ass are all around them. It's just idiocy, and they don't have the leadership to face the paradisaical, insanely profitable world around them.

But that doesn't mean that "copyright infringement" is ok, it's not. The marketplace works on supply/demand, and bootlegging music destroys the demand side of the marketplace, and it's to the interest of the marketplace (including its consumers) to see that the demand side of the equation is preserved so that the engine of the free market can still operate.

Copyright infringement is still theft.

Want to fix the problem? Fight to have sane copyright laws re-introduced. Having 100+ years to own a copyright (with unlimited future extension) is stupid. In the United States, it's unconstitutional to pass an "ex post-facto" law - how is it that the terms of copyright are being retroactively renegotiated? How is it reasonable to benefit from a copyright from somebody who's been dead for decades? This is Disney, et al. and Congress colluding to rape, pillage, and "lock down" our social culture for profit. They are trying to own who we are, and sell our own culture back to us rather than innovate said culture.

Copyrights should last 20 years, just as the original designers intended. That's reasonable. Copyright holders have a chance to profit from their works, driving the supply/demand marketplace engine, while older works become what they should be: part of our culture itself.

That's what we should fight about. Any time we spend trying to justify piracy/theft/copyright-infringement is time we spend digging a deeper hole for ourselves, with the end result that this trial's outcome IS pretty much a given.

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[relguj9]

Whatever happened to the days when musicians made money by PERFORMING LIVE. Not by EXTORTING MILLIONS for themselves and the recording industry through recordings?

It's not the musicians just trying to get by that really care about piracy anyways. It's the filthy rich ones and the recording industry grasping for branches on their way off the cliff.

Sorry, the recording industry as we knew it back when the only way to distribute music recordings was through records or CD's made by big corporations extorting both the artists and the customers is DYING.

I, for one, will be grateful for its demise and musicians making the majority of their incoming through LIVE performances or through the countless distributions readily available on the internet. Recording industries will still have a place in promotion, but it won't be nearly as profitable.

Until then... LONG LIVE THE PIRATES!

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[morgan_greywolf]

Except if it is Digg stylesheets or other bits geeks care about, like GPL violation (the whole notion of GPL rests on copyright law btw.)

Nope. Free software people don't give a rats ass about copyright law. The GPL is actually a hack to circumvent copyright law. Think about it.

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[dave562]

2: 1$ for a tune and 2$ for a single episode of a TV show is a rip-off

I realize I'm in the wrong crowd to be making comments like I'm about to make, but come on now, seriously?! $1 for a song that you can listen to over and over again is too much? Last I checked, a king sized candy bar costs more than that, and you can only eat the thing once. A can of soda costs almost that much, and you can't drink it more than once. A lot of things that people consume regularly, things that they consume ONCE, cost more than a song that can be replayed for years.

Re:A Strawman for the Symptom

[Hatta]

As a copyright holder, copyright infringement is analogous to all of these acts. You still have your original, but the value of that original has been taken from you. Whether you call it "theft" or "piracy" or "copyright infringement" doesn't change the underlying fact. You are still the loser.

Hold on a second. Are you really arguing that if my actions cause the value of your property to decrease, that is equivalent to theft? That is obviously nonsense. If you control the world's only known naturally occurring source of unobtanium, and I invent a process that produces artificial unobtanium your property has been devalued. If you buy a meal, and I'm sitting next to you with noisy and annoying friends, your purchase has been devalued. If you buy a HumVee and I write a book about how awful HumVees are, you might find it harder to sell your SUV.

In each of these cases your property has been devalued by my actions. But this is not theft.

The marketplace works on supply/demand, and bootlegging music destroys the demand side of the marketplace, and it's to the interest of the marketplace (including its consumers) to see that the demand side of the equation is preserved so that the engine of the free market can still operate.

As a consumer, I will decide what is in my best interest Thank You Very Much. If my unwillingness to purchase certain media leads to the failure of that market, I'm quite ok with that. Of course, if you need hired thugs to convince people to buy your product, "market" doesn't really apply. "Racket" is the word you're looking for.

Free Lunch

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

For people who make a living out of creativity or in a creative business, there is scarcely anything more important than to have your rights protected by the law.

Absolutely! I mean it's either that or, horror of horrors, finding salaried employment.

I'm a mathematician. Many Slashdotters are programmers, engineers, etc. Isn't our work creative? How come we don;t get a lifetime +90 years gravy train? Is what we do simply not worth as much to society as movies about comic book superheroes and books about high school for witches and wizards? We don't seem to need protection, so why should artists?

Re:Free Lunch

[Kell Bengal]

You obviously haven't applied for a patent recently. Copyright vests automatically with any creative work you produce. To get a patent on the other hand requires lawyers (money), applications (money), review (money), sometimes contestation (money), probation (no money actually), and, if you want a useful term or global scope for it, extension (lots and lots of money). The two are vastly different protections; the barrier to entry for copyright is so low that even this post qualifies for protection (even says so at the bottom of this webpage). I've invented a few valuable things in my time as a research engineer, but the cost of getting protection is so prohibitive that unless I invent the Philosopher's Stone it's not worth it.

Re:Not a surprise.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

responding to IP holders requests, not telling them to fuck off as TPB did.

Give me one good moral reason why one shouldn't respond in that way to a cease and desist letter.

Re:Sorry, they do deserve to be prosecuted...

[BlueStrat]

The Pirate Bay hurts creators of many different kinds of works, from music to film, from books to TV.

Actually, I *am* a musician in a band, and I've put our original recordings up on TPB. Recordings have become a promotional tool, not a main means of income. It doesn't matter what anyone's opinion regarding it is, it's the reality that computers, digital technology, and the internet has brought into existence. Unless governments all over the world decide simultaneously to unplug all the networks, confiscate all the PCs, and remove all rights and all privacy for normal citizens, this will continue to be the case.

Attempting to use legal means to change this is akin to passing laws against gravity, and both will enjoy equal success.

Cheers!

Strat