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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."
Isn't that a bit sticky?
...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"
There's a Facebook group for everything. There's even a Facebook group who's whole statement is that there are too many useless groups on Facebook.
My twitter
Someone might appreciate a link to a sample of his work...
Whenever I do something that pisses off my girlfriend (yes, I'm one of the rare slashdotters with a SO), ask random people on the Internet to send her flowers, giving them her address in between.
On a second thought, do I still have the address of my bitch ex-girlfriend? Hmmmm *punders*
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
Wife of Harried Pirate Bay Witness Gets Buried in Internet Love
....makes my eyes bleed.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
When I read the headline, that's not what I pictured. :/
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In this day and age you want to send them free energy? Send them a rotten banana peel. Pretty sure they haven't made Mr. Fusion a reality.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
40000 kr SEK = $4446.68 USD = €3501.32 EUR
It should be noted that the krona is worth about $0.11, so it ends up being like $4,446. For those of us who purchased long stems for our loved ones last Valentines that comes up to about 3 roses and a plush teddy bear or a handful of Gerber daises and a cardboard and macaroni "I luv U" card.
He proposed half an hour after we met and I said maybe. After a day, he had convinced me.
can I send a lump of coal to Danowsky, Pontén and Wadsted?
Sure. Just send it to IFPI.com. For added effect, sprinkle some flour on it.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
The music industry should start selling flowers - you can't download those for free! Of course, they'll have to make sure the flowers can't produce any seeds.
In this day and age you want to send them free energy? Send them a rotten banana peel. Pretty sure they haven't made Mr. Fusion a reality.
Why not? The United States sent Hiroshima & Nagasaki a bunch of free energy once ...
And that, my friends, is how you spur on economic recovery. With one sentence, he managed to save the floral industry in his town.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
In Soviet Russia, heat warms you.
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
Business is a brutal and if you are not willing to do something like Valve's Steam that gives something for giving up something I have no sympathy. Adapt to the market place and quit complaining.
Before someone yells "Oh my, you could compare the rise of aids cases to lost sales and your graph would look the same" just shut up ok? Just shut the fuck up because you're another useless slashdot tool spouting the same "I HAVE A RIGHT TO STEAL OTHERS WORK" retoric that I've read on this fucking site for the last 10 years. There is a direct correlation between piracy and lost sales, I've seen it. Grow up.
I'm now beginning to feel suspicious of the possibility that you may have an agenda.
It's funny, cuz it really doesn't. Not in Russia anyway.
--Edward Dassmesser
I've seen 8 American karaoke labels die in the last 10 years, and as of now there's only like 3 or 4 left.
Yes, piracy has a direct impact on overall sales but in the grand scheme of things (the actual music market, not the tiny niche you want to show a link to) it doesn't make much of a dent especially when the majority of people don't pirate.
And just as an aside, we can all hope that when the last 3 or 4 die that the entire industry will fall into a pit, burn, and rot the death it deserves. I'm sorry but I don't see the necessity to foster an environment where drunken idiots sing worse than the mediocrity displayed by the original singer/songwriter while other drunken retards cheer them on. That entire fad is pointless, painful, and horrendous for the rest of us that want to drown our sorrows in fucking peace and quiet. /rant.
...and it's still increasing.
Maybe you should set up a karaoke download web site, where people can pay a non-exorbitant fee to download the tracks they want and then burn them to their own disks. But no, you want them to order original exorbitantly priced karaoke disks--why?--Because you will make more money.
So I guess the easy answer is: Your business is failing, please pick a different one.
Why is this a problem? If the people interested in karaoke aren't willing to pay for it, then maybe that niche market doesn't need to exist. If they really wanted the karaoke, they'd pay for it. This is the free market at work.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Selling karaoke CDs to DJs is not the same thing as selling CDs to consumers. It's a different market. Those DJs are using the items whose copyright they infringed to earn a profit, through public performance of the work.
As such, you and those in your industry will have a much easier time tracking down and winning suits against them. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, don't the venues where the "KJs" perform have to have the music public performance stickers on their doors or face big fines? Why don't you hook up with that group and have them spot check not only the stickers but that the music being publicly performed is a licensed copy?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Those pirates are spending money on flowers instead of our media! Quick, summon the lawyers!
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
The compensation mentioned wasn't due to the harassment from the prosecutors' side, but rather due to the Swedish legal principle that anyone testifying in court is entitled to compensation for expenses and loss of income.
Lost sales can't be measured, so I'm not sure how you can test for a correlation between them and any other variable.
Here, let me give you some education:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
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.
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.
Did you expect no one to click on your link?
You imply a negative correlation (higher postings, lower sales). However, looking at your graph, a positive correlation exists in 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2006... which leaves only a negative correlation in 2003 and 2005. (And both changes from 2002 to 2003 were insignificant, giving you one data point that supports your conclusion).
Furthermore, instead of charting sales in units, you charted sales in dollars. Given that a trivial reading of your source points out the decreasing prices of CDs, and the decrease of new content (11 new CDs in 2007), this seems to make sense. After all, most karaoke is old songs that, once purchased, don't have to be purchased again.
Also, refuting "correlation is not causation" via shouting is pathetic. There are other ways to do so, try one of them.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Correllation does not imply Causation.
Having seen some of the karaoke subs produced by anime fansubbers, I'm willing to bet that fan made karaoke videos will produce higher quality content than any professional label. In the face of ubiquitous video editing software, your industry has simply succumbed to its own irrelevance.
May the Maths Be with you!
Herserudsvagen 6
181 34 LIDINGO
That is the address if any one wants to send flowers to her
possibly once it has been demonstrated that the law has been broken, the penalty can be related to the financial impact of the crime...?
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.
"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....
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
No, they should not shut up becasue your graph is seriously flawed.
You can't take a seriously flawed graph and defend it by telling them to shut up and the toss an ad hominum out there as well.
It is a POOR study and does no one any good.
Yes, the facts our counter intuitive, but you are letting that cause you to ignore important relevant data.
Yes, there is a corrilaiton, but it is turning out there is not any causation.
Learn why that's important.
Fact: Karaoke is a fad.
Fact: That fad is over.
Sure, some people still do it, but then some people still have pet rocks and mood rings.
Next time don't put you carrier in a fad market. or make a carrier out of moving from fad to fad, but do not think that these markets have any staying power.
If you haven't noticed, the music industry does have big labels and they ahve stopped exactly nothing.
If people just wanted to get there music for free, Apple wouldn't have sold over 2 billion songs. all of which are available for free with almost no addition effort.
You need to step away fro your emotional connection and think rationally.
Also, it's copyright infringement, not stealing. There is a fundamental difference between the two. It's still wrong, but it's not the same thing as stealing.
You Are Provably Wrong, deal. If you ahve some actual facts from a reasonable study, please enlighten me.
All the data put out by the music industry has followed economic trends not, in many cases sales have done better then the overall economic trends. Meaning it didn't drop as much as the average economy drop.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
people steal music on the internet, sales drop for the karaoke labels, we get less karaoke.
So, what you're saying is piracy is a good thing?
I'm sure the wives of the Prosecutors must feel overlooked. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what to send them?
Before someone yells "Oh my, you could compare the rise of aids cases to lost sales and your graph would look the same" just shut up ok? Just shut the fuck up because you're another useless slashdot tool spouting the same "I HAVE A RIGHT TO STEAL OTHERS WORK" retoric that I've read on this fucking site for the last 10 years. There is a direct correlation between piracy and lost sales, I've seen it. Grow up.
No, no. I think you're on to something here. I'm going to plot the rate of "piracy" (heck - even piracy) and the decline of auto sales. Piracy just might be undermining the auto industry as well!
There are plenty of legal ways you can harm someone that should remain legal. If you produce widgets and I invent a process that lets me build widgets much cheaper, I can come in and undercut your business. Then I have harmed you, but I haven't done anything wrong.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
See here:
http://yodo.se/wallis/
I don't know what the fuck 99% of that site says, but the following near the bottom seems pretty clear! -
"Thanks to all of you who have sent flowers to the Wallis. But enough is enough. With flowers, vases, teddybears and chocolate for over $5000 they allready got more than they can handle."
Of course I'm sure dropping a message or something may be a nice gesture to show your support, that or a cheque for a small amount to not buy an RIAA affiliated music CD with or something ;)
Quit trying to pretend that there's stuff outside of the US.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Wanna take bets on how many of those orders were done with stolen credit card numbers?
There is even a web page in english, where people can report what they give. Near the bottom of the page is a list of articles from around the world about this. There has even been written a tribute song to him after his testimony, which Wired covered here.
And this court case has really helped the Pirate Party of Sweden. During the last week they have gotten over 1000 new members, which makes them the second-largest opposition party (in member count) in Sweden. Their youth organisation has also grown to become the second-largest political youth organization in Sewden.
I can see it now! If Pirate Bay wins, every one will start sending the Music bosses "A bunch of pansies" with a note saying "Sorry! for stealing your music. Hugs and kisses The Pirates" :D:D
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
EmptyFlowerBed.rar -- Please seed. thx!
True. That's why they invented vodka.
Redundancy is good And also good.
Valve's Steam has DRM but they've slowly earned the trust they have. I go through computers at quite a high rate, and just with my username and password have managed to have my bought games up and running within minutes on every PC I have ever used, whether on Windows or Linux. I've been running Counterstrike off there for a decade, and never once have I been restricted in how many installs, or what operating system I can install on. The prices are reasonable on there too. Steam is the only instance that springs to mind of DRM done right.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
You are so in the industrial age. Thanks for sharing your POV, though.
Seriously - you may not agree with what the prosecutors are doing, you may not even like them. But it's nothing to do with their wives and families. Leave them out of it.
This is an academic that is being *asked* to give up his valuable time to help the State in a case. Trying to destroy his reputation is completely unacceptable. To the professor, giving evidence in this trial is just a brief inconvenience whilst he pursues his career. Instead it turns out he was very brave to take on an organisation that acts like the mafia. His wife deserve those flowers, and the Pirate Bay have scored a massive victory in swinging public opinion in their favour.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Those that just out and out steal (yes it is appropriate, because it means taking something without paying, regardless of the lack of a physical item taken).
It is still inappropriate, because it is not taking. It is copying. Physical item or not (I agree that is immaterial, pun intended) the important difference is whether or not the original owner is left with or without his original.
Stealing is actually legally defined (at least in my country) not as taking, but as "taking away" (precisely, "taking away with the intent to make your own", but that's nitpicking). If you are not "taking away", then it is not stealing in the legal sense.
Here's the legal reference, if you can read german: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__242.html
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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
Understand this: The law is not a Boolean value.
IF they illegally caused damage:
How much damage did they cause?
1 to 1000 dollars?
1001 to 5000?
etc.
You can't take the sky from me...
There is a direct correlation between piracy and lost sales, I've seen it. Grow up.
There is also a direct correlation between the lack of pirates and global warming.
All of this piracy is saving the planet So grow up and get over it.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
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.
You can't take the sky from me...
Those that just out and out steal (yes it is appropriate, because it means taking something without paying
In copyright infringement nothing is "taken," something is "copied." If you're trying to sell a painting, and I sit down next to it and paint an exact copy and walk away, I have done something that is illegal, but I have not stolen your painting. The same concept applies if I copy your painting through easy technological means, such as taking a very high resolution picture of it.
A requirement for theft is that the victim no longer has the product. And no, you can't argue that I've "stolen the money from the sale" because that's not money you had which you no longer have. When I copy your painting in the example above, I may decide not to buy your painting, but I'm not being charged with theft of your sale, you'd sue me for copyright infringement.
I'm not going to get into the ethics of pirating, because there are obvious philosophical differences at hand and it comes down to your beliefs. However, there's no gray area on the theft thing, no room for discussion. Many things are wrong and many things are illegal, and most of things are not theft. You don't call fraud theft, you can't call copyright infringement theft either.
Well I moved back to my parents basement. Actually I quite like it here. I did have girlfriends, nearly a wife, but not too bothered about that now I can spend my money on computers and stuff.
You Insensitive Clod.
Before someone yells "Oh my, you could compare the rise of aids cases to lost sales and your graph would look the same" just shut up ok? Just shut the fuck up because you're another useless slashdot tool spouting the same "I HAVE A RIGHT TO STEAL OTHERS WORK" retoric that I've read on this fucking site for the last 10 years. There is a direct correlation between piracy and lost sales, I've seen it. Grow up.
I'm now beginning to feel suspicious of the possibility that you may have an agenda.
He probably doesn't, but I'll bet his employers do.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Actually that's the lamest excuse/rationalization yet. If you sit down and listen to my music and then play the exact same tune yourself for your own amusement, no you have done nothing wrong. What a lame attempt.
"Wrongness" is a matter of definition, is not an absolute in most cases, and in any event is not open to your personal interpretation in these matters.
... or somewhere in between. This is not as simple a problem as you would like to have us believe. However, I can say with some certainty that copyright law is out of touch with what the vast majority of music consuming citizens want, and is no longer serving the public interest. That body of law has been changed in recent years so as to dramatically diminish the public domain, and enrich a very few largely foreign-owned corporations. As much as they claim to have been hurt by the Internet and peer-to-peer activity, We the People have suffered a far greater injustice.
The problem with your argument, and that of everyone else who is attempting to make the "sharing = stealing" argument is this: what you, or I, or anyone else believes is irrelevant. In the United States, and any other country which maintains the rule of law, what does matter is how a given legal system defines a specific activity. Under U.S. law, copyright infringement is not automatically equivalent to stealing. It's just not, and regardless of your moral position on the issue, it helps if you get your facts straight so that we may discuss these important issues within the same frame of reference.
By misusing the terms "steal" and "theft", your are simply helping to perpetuate a string of lies and half-truths promulgated by the RIAA, MPAA and similar organizations worldwide. That does not help matters at all, because you're refusing to communicate adequately, and that keeps the rest of us wasting time continually correcting you. That serves no purpose.
Note that I am deliberately not making a statement as to whether wide-scale copyright infringement is right, wrong
Stealing or not, that's not what the United States copyright system was intended to accomplish. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The American generic notion of "fair use" does not exist in Swedish copyright law. The current Copyright Act (which dates from 1960, but has been amended several times since) instead lists a number of exceptions to copyright which may or may not apply in certain situations; here are a few of them:
... the list goes on. Some of these situations may be listed in the U.S. Copyright Act as well (I haven't checked), but for those that aren't, I suppose a defense of fair use could be tried.
As long as we discuss "two people", the relevant exception here would be private use (Article 12 of the Swedish Copyright Act). As has been pointed out by AC above, this is a bit hard to claim when someone makes copies for thousands of recipients. However, as the Bittorrent protocol may just as well involve thousands of people making one copy each for another person, I'd say this defense would actually have some merit, depending on other circumstances. If everybody is allowed to make a single copy, you can't prosecute a thousand people for doing exactly that just because the net result is the same as if one of them had made all the copies. Neither can you prosecute someone else for contributing to a collective act which itself doesn't constitute infringement.
However, this particular defense happens to be moot in the TPB case, because the prosecutor dropped the "contributing to the making of copies" charge already on the second day of the trial. The charge that remains is "contributing to making works available to the public", which is a different kind of infringement, and that does not come with an exception for private use!
This still doesn't mean the TPB guys will be found guilty, because it's the "contributory" part that seems difficult to prove. Making works available to the public, that's traditionally what a radio station may do, and the kind of "contribution" to that which would correspond to the Pirate Bay is to publish lists of radio stations, their frequencies and broadcast schedules free of charge. And one of those radio stations may actually be operated by King Kong in Cambodia, who hasn't even been called to the witness stand. Illegal or not? The court should tell. Will the World Radio & TV Handbook be next?
call a spade a spade!
But that's the point. You're not asking me to call a spade a spade, you're asking me to call a hammer a spade because they're both tools.
Yes, stealing is stealing. A hen is a hen.
But not every act of illegal enrichment is stealing. Not every bird is a hen.
If you don't see the difference and insist it's nitpicking, I'll gladly trade my sparrows for your hens and wait until you realize they don't lay the same kind of eggs.
And that's not a matter of grammar. It's a matter of semantics, if you insist on bringing linguistics into the argument.
Please, do get your facts right.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I was just wondering, could Slashdot become any more biased in the stories it covers on the trial? Every single story is on the side of the Pirate Bay. Now we actually get one where we're supposed to feel sorry for the poor, beleaguered witness whom the prosecutors tried to discredit--the horror, a prosecutor doing what prosecutors do! Those big, mean prosecutors actually caused people to send flowers!
I, for one, hope the people operating the most widely known torrent tracker network in the world get away scott-free so we can continue to rip artists off and not pay them for their work. Let's keep our fingers crossed, eh, Slashdot?
My favorite justification from pirates is the "obsolete business model" argument. It's like you are purposely ignoring that iTunes and other online music stores have existed for years.
Your piracy has nothing to do with business models. It's just a selfish act of getting something without having to pay for it. I know you and other pirates invent entire belief systems trying to justify it, but it's all a flimsy foundation to make you not feel guilty. "I'm not the bad guy--the RIAA is for their, uh, 'obsolete business model!' Yeah, that's it!"
No wonder you posted anonymously.