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Pirate Bay Day 3 — Defense Requests Dismissal
Hodejo1 writes "Yesterday was a big day for the Pirate Bay when half of the charges against them were dropped leaving only the lesser charges of assisting making copyrighted material available in place. TorrentFreak is following the English twitter feed of the trial in the wee hours of the night, documenting more missteps by the prosecution. 'The Pirate Bay trial is moving forward rapidly and again the day in court has ended early. On the third day the prosecution presented the amended charges. The defendants all called for acquittal while Carl Lundström's lawyer scored points with the already legendary "King Kong" defense.'"
Whoa, you think that the US has that much pull on the Swedish courts? I doubt it. TBP is clearly winning the case thus far. I expect them to win, regardless of the United States not liking it.
It's quite simple. In the king kong defense, it relies on the law they are subject to making a distinction that two or more people act together requiring intentional interaction. The defense is that we put A up, and some use did B. A isn't connected to B outside of some user using A's informational service. There is no intentional interaction. These users can be seen with screen names like King Kong.
The Chewbacca defense more or less distracted people with star wars idioms and then pulled those rhythmically towards an acquittal for the defense.
A car anology might be, the king kong defense require two people to get into the same car and go to the place the law was broken. If that didn't happen, the person not in the car cannot be charged for breaking that law. The chewbacca defense is like watching a movie about horse racing to convince the jury that the two people were never in the cars together.
The counter is that asside from the ability to make money one of the key rights offered by copyright is the ability of the artist to control their work if they so chose.
The ability to control the work has never been part of copyright. In fact, Congress has acted repeatedly to *limit* the control of the work, if that control interferes with public's access to the work. Some examples are the statutory licensing requirements for mechanical reproduction, performance and other uses. Per the law, the copyright holder MAY NOT refuse to license his or her work, as long as the user is willing to pay the statutory rate.
Your theory of a "right to control" derives from an extremely common misunderstanding of the purpose and origin of copyright, the idea that creators have some inherent right to own or control their work, even when they choose to give it to others. The natural state of affairs is that the only way to control an idea or an expression is to keep it secret. Copyright sets up an artificial infrastructure for control -- at great public expense! -- in order to generate public value, to motivate creators to publish their work so that it enriches the public domain.
With a proper understanding of the purpose of copyright, it's clear that any attempt by the copyright holder to limit dissemination, except for the purpose of making money which would facilitate greater dissemination, goes against the intent of the law, and should not be allowed. Until Disney bought them, our legislators actually understood all of this, and demonstrated that understanding repeatedly.
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This is in Sweden, not the USA. The US constitution does not apply.
Not a sentence!