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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.'"
EU Law, adopted by Sweden, indicates that service providers cannot, and are not expected to be, able to monitor all of the information passing through their site. e.g. I post a link to a copyrighted document on
One of the defendants lawyers pointed out the applicability of the law in this case by theorizing "The person responsible for uploads [of copyrighted files] might as well be a user named King Kong in the jungles of Cambodia" reminding the court that the onus to show a direct link between the defendants and the copyrighted material is on the prosecution.
Now for the important bit.
Similarities of King Kong defense to Chewbacca defense:
Dissimilarities:
I know what you did last summer. Just kidding, I don't work at the NSA.
One could argue that they profit substantially from the copyrighted material, since it brings in revenue from page (and thus ad) views. If that theory flies in court, I hope someone will similarly prosecute the countless news agencies that benefit on a daily basis from the assorted illegal acts on which they report. After all, the crimes that they benefit from are often far more heinous than TPB's alleged copyright infringement.
How is TPB different from those people that sell maps to the stars' homes? As pointed out, they are not doing anything with the content, merely telling people where they might find it... if they were looking for it that is.
How is it different from someone seeing a pile of DVDs in a trash can and telling people where to find the trash can? How is it any different than Google helping people find content on the Internet, even if it is content from copyrighted works? These questions can go on and on. The point is that they have done nothing with the content, nor told anyone what they should do. They simply provide the method for people who are interested in doing so, to find files on the Internet. Remember, TPB and BT are not used exclusively for downloading copyrighted works without permission. The way you are talking, all major ISPs are guilty of facilitating copyright infringement by not preventing users from connecting to TPB. You're heading towards a nanny state when it's the law's responsibility to prevent crime rather than find and prosecute those who commit crimes. In this case, those who actually download or share copyrighted material without permission are the one's who broke the law... and I won't even talk about what I think of these laws. Prosecuting anyone else for the "crime" is ludicrous.
The only thing that TPB is guilty of is helping people to share files. Note, not actually sharing the files, but simply assisting people with the process of sharing files with other people. This is not a crime. If it was, all CEOs of ISPs would also be guilty. The Internet is truly redefining what is a crime and what is not. We've seen more unintended consequences in the past 15 years than we should have because of this, IMO.
Whether you personally like it or not, TPB is not acting criminally. Do you think radar detectors for vehicles are illegal? The makers of such are aiding people in criminal activities. Are those people in jail?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
You're not going to get any traction here. I understand your feelings, but you've chosen your own hardship and it's my hope I can help you choose something else. We're going to talk about the love, the hate, and the life. Then we'll have the talk.
The love:
I really don't think the majority of /.ers have a problem with compensating artists. I sure don't. My kids got iPod Touch for Christmas, and they're allowed (and subsidised) to buy all the music they want. We're over $500 already, and in some places that's a lot of money. Those iPods hold a lot of money. Maybe that's why people are so eager to steal them. My family has only one rule: they're not allowed to buy a track with DRM, ever, for any reason. My family buys several thousand dollars worth of content a year*, and we're not a unique American family. We are perhaps odd in that we require that when we buy content, we get to own our local copy and use it however we like within reason.
The hate:
The RIAA, their international partners, their lobbyists and the lawmakers in their employ are harming us (everybody) in numerous and tangible ways. They are buying representation and buying law in ways that offend even the most passive citizen. They've bought the President of the United States for FSM's sake. The scope of their effort far exceeds the importance of their goods. Because they're solely focused on maximizing their profits, they're unaware of and uncaring of the harm their efforts are doing to our civil liberties, our political system and our longevity as a union. It is not in any American's best interest to fund this effort. Where possible I counter my family's contributions to their funds with small countering offsetting contributions and of course with our votes. That wasn't possible in the last election cycle because there were far more pressing issues, but we haven't forgotten this issue. The friends of the prosecution in this case are not the artists' friend. They exploit the vast majority of artists and give them a pittance. They're in the court to enforce their system of enslaving artists, and that's a bad thing.
The life:
There's no way the pirate bay is going to be convicted of anything here. The whole trial is a show to let the government of Sweden show the US they're trying to comply with the ridiculous demands of their lobbies. It's a theatre of the absurd not only because of the cultural dissonance between the RIAA and Sweden, but because the claims have no support in fact or law.
The talk:
More to the point: The RIAA and the MPAA are harming us. The harm is real. It's tangible. If you choose them as your hero, you'll find no friends anywhere except in the camp of your artist friends who have for now also bought into the idea that your exploiters are your representatives and that's a losing proposition. Their problem is that there's a lot of turnover in that group, for obvious reasons.
There's a middle ground here. You can choose different representation. If your art is marketable you can sell it to someone less offensive - someone who exploits artists less and aims to harm the rest of us less. You can do that. Do it and we'll prefer your art -- if it's good. The choice is yours. We can't force you to choose that, but we can make fun of you when you scream "Waaaaaaah! I'm retarded! Give money to somebody that isn't going to give it to me!" After all - that's fair.
* - Somebody's going to hate on me for this - starving children in Somalia and all that. Yeah, we give too - in amounts appropriate for our income both locally and globally, in both organized and personal ways, in amounts that meet the demands of our conscience, and encourage others to do the same. This isn't about that, so burn your torch somewhere else, ok? We're talking about something else.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I remember a time when "legal" meant "law abiding". Today it means more like something along the lines of "finding a loophole in the law books".
Aside from me sounding like something a fortune cookie program spits out every now and then, laws in copyright have nothing to do with being guilty or innocent. Or even common sense, or decency. It's about greed, money and the right to dictate what you may do with content you "buy" (yeah, yeah, "license", whatever. Me give money. Me take content. Call it what you like).
So please, don't talk about guilty or innocent when copyright is involved. It makes you look kinda silly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Carl LunstrÃm is not really the kind of person that most people want to be associated with. He is well known for his connections to extreme right-wing groups. Apparently he donated money to Nationaldemokraterna, an extreme right-wing organization with connection to the Nazi movement. Several of there leaders have been convicted for various crimes. He was also a member of the racist organization Bevara Sverige Svenskt, BBS (Keep Sweden Swedish). There is more. Oh, and according to the prosecution he owns 40% of TPB.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
I won't say it's stealing, but the actions are definitely immoral.
I understand where you're coming from, but to put things in perspective, imagine how hard selling that point will become once universal constructors are produced. I seriously doubt (though it is possible) that you'd argue that food shouldn't be copied to feed starving people, so your line of reasoning would necessitate some sort of list that dictated what items could be copied, and which could not. This is a nasty kludge (read: social hack) in order to prop up a system that is no longer necessary for society at the time.
I can only think of one solution compatible with our current market system, and that is content producers putting their works in escrow upon completion, with some monetary value attached for it's release. For example, a new movie comes out and the ads say "once 250M U.S.D. get deposited to this account, we will release this movie". Arrange a payment scheme where people can put money into a linked escrow account and withdraw it after a certain time frame, since the movie may never actually be released. Problem solved. It may not be the most efficient way to get the movie out, but it creates no artificial scarcity, doesn't restrict cultural participation to the moneyed, and keeps cash going into the pockets of those involved in producing the film. It does have the nasty side effect of removing a need for channel-specialized distributors, but hey, that's how progress works.
We don't learn to live with it. We prosper from it. The old fallacy that machines replace human labour has been debunked over and over again to the point that it's really absurd that it keeps showing up again.
Yes, some industries go under and those workers find themselves displaced. No one is saying it's fair or that we shouldn't consider their losses and consider ways to help them out (although the methods employed to help them out need to be VERY carefully considered for their long-term effects on the population as a whole). Yet in the long run these machines increase production, increases employment and greater prosperity on the whole.
While it may be tempting for some to ask: "sure but the Internet is different. How does it create increased production in the music industry?", we have to consider the benefits to the entire world's production that the Internet has provided. Entire on-line industries have sprung up. Other industries have increased efficiency as a result of faster / more efficient communication and ordering processes etc. Not to mention the boost to the "independent artist industry" (for lack of a better term).
Machines are not a sacrifice. They are the ultimate achievement of the division of labour. They increase production and greater prosperity for all, for the short-term sacrifice of a few industries and jobs. We should be focusing on retraining people who have lost their jobs for vocations in new, thriving industries. Rather than trying to "save" dying industries that the market is now rejecting, which only results in a decrease of production and prosperity.