Slashdot Mirror
A Short Summary Following the Pirate Bay Trial
Dan B. writes "The Guardian has a nice piece wrapping up the trial in Sweden for the co-defendants in the P2P trial-of-the-decade, that of The Pirate Bay. 'Today, the defense lawyers summed up. It was a short trial and not a particularly merry one, but it could have far-reaching effects.' Surprisingly, when the defendants hit the stand they didn't bash copyright or take a libertarian approach; it all came back to the tried and tested formula for criminal defense, 'I am not responsible.'"
I heard it was 4 judges and no jury. One presiding judge and 3 others who are laymen. The three will decide the outcome. In case of indecision, then the presiding judge will decide.
It's both a criminal and civil case all in one.
And as the Swedes like to mention over and over, this is not the US.
Also, the prosecution never mentioned any details about the specific persons who committed the original crime that the TPB is supposedly assisting. Without an original crime, you cannot assist it. This is what I'm interested in hearing about with respect to the decision.
Sweden does not use juries in trials (with one exception: freedom of press). The verdict is decided by a judge and three laymen (ie not necessarily legally schooled people). The laymen usually serve the same court in four years periods, but can be appointed over and over.
Not using a jury means, mostly, that you don't get the drama/rhetoric content from a US trial, since any experienced layman will quickly see through the drama/rhetoric.
Precendent can in Sweden only be set by the Supreme Court.
Libertarians are for Liberty. (cute how the names work out like that) Personal Liberty. What goes along with this idea is things like limits on the power and responsibilities of government. Super simplified - your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.
Libertarian visions of government get more complicated, as all ideologies do when they meet reality. They range from ideological anarchists to a wing of the (US) conservative republicans to (US) liberal democrats.
Maybe it is easier to demarcate what they are not. Libertarians are not socialists. They are not Communists. They are not Theocrats (like US republican social conservatives). They are definitely not "Progressives", whatever that means. However, all of these groups have something that they can feel Libertarian about. Conservative Republicans like the small government, hands off ideas. Liberal democrats and Progressives like the social freedoms. They all hate the "let people do stuff that I don't like" part, but that is the foundation of liberty, so Libertarians are relegated to a weird minority (3%) party mostly centered around drug legalization in the minds of the public.
So, to the question at hand... the Libertarian position on copyright. I think you could start a pretty good fight by lobbing that hand grenade in a room full of Libertarians. Libertarians are definitely for property rights and personal property ownership, which would argue for a perpetual copyright - if you created it, you own it. Libertarians are also definitely for freedom of thought and freedom of ideas. Since the only things that can be copyrighted are fundamentally just expressions of ideas, you could never control, own or limit an idea, or therefore copyright a work.
So unfortunately no, you cannot look to Libertarian philosophy to give a concrete, iron-clad position on copyright. You'd have to balance competing interests, just as our current copyright laws attempt to do.
AFAIK the only political philosophy that would lay the matter to rest is communism. Everything belongs to the state, so everything is copyright to the state in perpetuity. Simple.