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Wife of Harried Pirate Bay Witness Gets Buried in Internet Love

treqie writes "During the trial of pirate bay yesterday, a professor (Roger Wallis) took the witness stand. He told the court things that the prosecutors did not want to hear. The prosecutors then tried to discredit both him and his team's work in the area, as well as his title, it was a real spectacle. In the end, the judge asked if he wanted compensation for being there — he replied that he did not want anything, but they could send flowers to his wife. Many listening online heard, and began sending her flowers, from all over the world. As of this submission, the sum is over 40,000 SEK worth of flowers. There's even a Facebook group for it."

9 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. Gives a new meaning... by s0litaire · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...to the phrase "Flower Power" :D

    --
    Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
    1. Re:Gives a new meaning... by flonker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They look like an amazingly sweet couple.

      When I told her they received too many flowers, my girlfriend suggested they give the flowers to a local hospital instead of the neighbors.

  2. No connection between lost revenue and Torrents by Mr.Fork · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of my papers for my MBA was the study of piracy. My study recommended that there is ZERO link between lost revenue and torrent downloads BECAUSE they are from people they would never have done business in the first place. If someone downloads it for free, it's not lost revenue because they were never a customer to begin with. Yet these companies try to stop the 'thieves' who are not even going to become their customer.

    My paper also showed that the issue was pirates selling full-priced products as the real-deal, not lost sales from never-would-be-a-customer. Even a bigger issue - these free downloads ALMOST 100% garner interest in these products - so that when they had money, or felt they wished to support a product, the former free-bee turned them into a paying customer to get a new version.

    With that kind of data out there, these industry giants are forgetting the #1 tactic of product placement - give it away free, later a client they will be. That's Biz-101. It's obvious these giants are out of touch with reality.

    --
    Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
  3. Re:When are slash readers going to own up to pirac by Vancorps · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's a lovely troll ya got going there.

    Unfortunately there is evidence that shows that the necline of Napster directly contributed to the decline in CD sales and visa versa when Napster was in it's glory days. CD sales were skyrocketing during the time of Napster so your "data" doesn't even attempt to make a counter claim.

    Don't expect people to just shut up when you present your argument in the manner in which you have. Now we have the days of XM and Pandora, last.fm, magnatunes, and a slew of others to provide us with free music or nearly free music so CD sales aren't as compelling as they once were. Now the only time we buy CDs is when an artist puts out something truly worth while. The days of buying one or two discs a week are simply gone.

    Now let's look at your graph again and conclude that people have once again lost interest in Karaoke which I can attest to in all the bars I frequent, people that do it are few and far between these days. Instead I'm seeing guitar hero taking up the music at a number of bars in addition to regular DJ work.

    Sorry, there is absolutely nothing compelling about your data. Compare the same numbers against gross per-capita spending during those times and look at a similar decline as the economy slid into where it is today.

  4. Re:When are slash readers going to own up to pirac by ledow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Shout as much as you want, mate, those stats mean *nothing*. Two lines vaguely in inverse "correlation" for only half the graph (and correlation for the other half, because you "took the sales numbers (like 191.1 mill) and multiplied each of them by 1000 so the line graph would start out somewhat even.", so the actual correlation is between one line and one THOUSANDTH of the other line, which means that the "curve" on sales is barely a blip and perfectly within the error margin of such pathetically collected data) without some sort of context do NOT mean they are linked, in any way, shape or form.

    This is why we have professors of mathematics and statistics and why *they* are the ones who are tested in court and found to be reliable and accurate, because they *can* pick out a million faults with your data collection, plotting, analysis, etc. without even having to think about it, prove why you're wrong, and show you the *real* figure. Unfortunately, even most lawyers have no concept of mathematics which is why there are such things as case-law describing how DNA "matches" MUST be worded, tested, analysed and interpreted, because depending on what you measure and how you word the answer you can go from a "one in a billion" match to a "90%" match with the same two sets of DNA data. Look into things like the birthday problem (how many people do you need in a room for there to be a 50% chance of two having the same birthday?) to see how utterly careful you have to be and how atrociously bad humans are at judging probability and statistics.

    Your figures (if I *were* to take them as accurate, and replotted them as they should be plotted without arbitrary fiddling) actually show me that there is probably NO correlation at all. I don't know if I believe whether there is a correlation in real life or not, I've not analysed it and I'd be a fool to say I definitely believe either possible outcome in advance, but this man has stood up to a court's test without the opposition managing to debunk his statistics - that holds more than enough water with me.

  5. Re:Relevance? by mlwmohawk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't understand how this fellows testimony as to the relationship between album sales and file sharing is relevant. If they broke the law, they broke the law whether or not the record industry lost money. If they didn't break the law, then they did nothing wrong, even if it did cost the record industry money. Does it not work this way in Sweden?

    Copyright is an interesting thing. Making a copy isn't actually "theft." The notion of "copyright" is to protect the revenue and value of a work. In fact, in the U.S. one of the limiters of "fair use" is a profit motive and/or a diminished value of the work.

    If it can be argued that no harm comes to the value or marketability of a work from mere p2p sharing, then the "spirit" of copyright is not broken, and, in fact, may fall easily into the realm of "fair use" because it is distributed without commercial interest.

    So, if two people sharing a work electronically falls under the umbrella of "fair use" in Sweden, then there can be no contribution to a crime by the TPB guys.

  6. What a happy story by elashish14 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "She was very worried before the trial. They questioned my competence and that made her very sad. She hadnâ(TM)t slept for two days," Roger said.

    Just goes to show that courage, morality and determination are rewarded. And with that, my faith is restored....

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    I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
  7. But what to send to the Prosecution? by owlnation · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sure the wives of the Prosecutors must feel overlooked. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what to send them?

  8. STFU with "piracy" and "stealing" by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Interesting

    steal (yes it is appropriate, because it means taking something without paying, regardless of the lack of a physical item taken).

    No, it is not appropriate because you are NOT taking something away from someone.

    When my old cassette from a movie soundtrack got chewed up by the tape deck and I couldn't buy the CD because it was out of print and there was 0% chance that it would come back in print, finding those songs through "piracy" was not stealing, because they won't take my money even when I drive downtown and try to give it to them.

    They are stealing from me by denying me access to the cultural elements that interest me.

    And I don't want to buy the crap I keep hearing on the radio every time I walk into a shop, I demand reparation for the mental anguish caused by having their crappy tunes stuck in my head! A thousand US dollar per iteration of that suffering... I figure I'm owed a few millions, to say the least.

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    You can't take the sky from me...