Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

A Short Summary Following the Pirate Bay Trial

Posted by kdawson on from the all-over-but-the-sawdust dept.

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.'"

16 of 500 comments (clear)

  1. No swaggering... by gnasher719 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Surprisingly, when the defendants hit the stand they didn't bash copyright or take a libertarian approach...

    Why surprisingly? This happened in a court room. That kind of behavior in the court room will just upset the judge who will think you are a nutcase, and gets the case decided against you. Even if the judge completely agreed with you, being a copyright-bashing libertarian or whatever, he or she would apply the law as it is to judge.

    The only sensible approach if you don't want to lose your case is to do exactly what the defendants did: Explain that they didn't do what they are accused of, or find reasons _within the existing law_, why they were allowed to do what they did.

    1. Re:No swaggering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Isn't this a criminal case? Do you not have the right to a jury trial in Sweden?

      I was wondering about this myself. I tried finding out a few weeks ago but apparently my Google-fu was weak that day.

      Either way, even in a jury system, I would hope the end result would be the same. "Yeah I did X, but X shouldn't be a crime" is a fine political statement, but obviously not a defense in a court of law, while X is still a crime by current law.

    2. Re:No swaggering... by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not using a jury means, mostly, that you don't get the drama/rhetoric content from a US trial

      It also means that the state can deprive you of your liberty without the necessity of convincing your fellow citizens why that is a good idea. I much prefer the concept of the jury system.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    3. Re:No swaggering... by Jurily · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You could also interpret it as admitting the guilt of their users.

      I don't see how they're in a position to admit someone else's guilt. Whether there is such a thing, this lawsuit does not cover that.

      This is a coward's defence.

      No, it's an innocent's defence, who's being charged with the actions of their users, because the accusers can't catch the users. What they did was technically legal, and they know it. They also know that this is the only thing that counts.

      It also makes any victory or defeat in this case entirely hollow. This case will not change what is legal in relation to copyright law, but merely what you get to weasel out of.

      Duh. It's a courtroom, not the parliament. You don't make law there, you enforce it. Imagine if any random murder trial could legalize murder.

      If you want to change law, you don't do it on the defentants' seat.

    4. Re:No swaggering... by Meneguzzi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Some years ago it also meant that a jury composed of racist white people could convict a non-white person of a crime without any solid evidence to that conclusion, and based entirely on irrational preconceptions about behaviour being associated with the levels of melanine in one's skin...

      --
      www.meneguzzi.eu/felipe
    5. Re:No swaggering... by Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Theoretically, maybe. In practice, the systems are not so much different, as juries are not "perfect" either, are often biased, easily convinced through rhetorics, not truth, and so on.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    6. Re:No swaggering... by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Some years ago it also meant that a jury composed of racist white people could convict a non-white person of a crime without any solid evidence to that conclusion, and based entirely on irrational preconceptions about behaviour being associated with the levels of melanine in one's skin...

      And that wouldn't have happened with a racist judge just as easily as it happened with a racist jury? I'd still rather have the jury, if for no other reason than the fact that it's (hopefully) harder to wind up with 12 racists sitting on a jury than one racist sitting on the bench......

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    7. Re:No swaggering... by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd rather have justice carried out by qualified professionals without political agendas.

      Let me know when you find some ;)

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  2. "Surprisingly?" by headLITE · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bleh, it's not surprising the defendants didn't bash copyrights. *Nobody* stands up in court and says "yes I did it, but this stuff shoulda been free in the first place".

    1. Re:"Surprisingly?" by cperciva · · Score: 5, Insightful

      *Nobody* stands up in court and says "yes I did it, but this stuff shoulda been free in the first place".

      Maybe not in exactly those words, but many important constitutional cases have been decided after the individuals charged said "I did X, but X shouldn't be illegal". In Loving v. Virginia, for example, Mr. and Mrs. Loving never denied being married -- rather, they argued that interracial marriage shouldn't have been illegal.

      --
      Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
  3. Of course by ratboy666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From TFA:

    "They all presented much the same points, the main ones being that the Pirate Bay site didn't hold any copyright films or music -- it merely acted as a search engine -- and that no copyrighted content passed through it anyway. The prosecution had failed to produce any uploaders or downloaders, and had not shown their actions were illegal where they happened to live."

    which, of course, has been TPBs stance all along. Consistent, and simple. Why would TPB attack copyright law? T

    --
    Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
  4. Re:It's truly not black and white by h4rm0ny · · Score: 5, Insightful

    * The entire Friends series. After concluding it's worth it I ended up buying the DVD's.
    * Ditto with Sex and the City.

    So... an insanity plea, then? ;) :p

    --

    Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
  5. As the old adage has it . . . by Varitek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the facts are against you, bang on the law. If the law is against you, bang on the facts. If both are against you, bang on the table.

    Making an anti-copyright statement in court would be the equivalent of banging on the table, which Pirate Bay don't appear to need to do.

  6. Entitlement Mentality, again by Migraineman · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Here again, we see the Entitlement Mentality that's pervasive in the Big-Music industry:

    In its report, Billboard quotes Kjell-Ã...ke Hamrén, chairman of SMFF, the Swedish Music Publishers Association:

    "Without compensation the creators' livelihood is unsustainable. It is therefore of utmost importance that licensing schemes and new legal services can emerge in the digital environment, while at the same time legislation says firmly no to grand scale businesses that are built on copyright infringement."

    You, me, and everyone else are not guaranteed a living in *any* profession we choose. You have to earn a living. Additional legislation results in either welfare or socialism. (Let's just say I'm not a big fan of either.) If you want to be a musician, great, find a way to make it happen. If it's not economically sustainable on it's own, get a job to support yourself. You can still be a musician. However, you are not entitled to be a full-time musician just because you want to.

    If musicians get lifetime royalties for their songs, then software engineers should get lifetime royalties for their code. Electrical engineers should get lifetime royalties for their schematics. Plumbers should get lifetime royalties for the toilets they installed in your house (proper plumbing is an art, after all.)

    If this sounds extreme, consider the opposite side. A musician/artist/whoever has a backed-by-force-of-law monopoly on some work he did. Copyright is intended to benefit society by encouraging development of creative works (says so in the US Constitution, I can't say about it elsewhere.) So at some point, society is supposed to benefit. Exactly when does that happen if the originator of the work can camp on it for his entire lifetime plus 75 years? You and I have been swindled out of our part of the bargain - the work is supposed to drop into the community for use by others. Extension of copyright has stolen that from us, and yes, you have been deprived of access to something, so "stealing" is appropriately used.

  7. Re:Activist Judges? by VShael · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I don't think a right to privacy is a bad concept, I just think we should actually amend it into the Constitution and not decree that it exists....."

    Well, you're just blatantly wrong.
    The Constitution of the United States sets out and limits the powers of government. You cannot assume that if it isn't explicitly forbidden, then the Government has the right to do it.

    Rather the opposite is true. If it isn't explicitly allowed, then the government does not have the right to do it.

    Any basic reading of the text will show this, and studying the text more deeply will only confirm it.

    The fact that a right to privacy isn't explicit in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, cannot be evidence prima facie that a right to privacy does not exist. It takes a particular type of right-wing nuttery to get to that assumption.

  8. Re:More importantly, what does cliffski have to sa by Renegade88 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's say I were a 19 year old american and I visit Germany and enjoy a beer in a Bavarian beer garden. The girl at the next table speaks good english learned from her school year abroad in the USA and very well knows our federal drinking age limit. She witnesses me, a 19 year-old, violate US law by consuming a beer in Munich.

    According to your logic, Dagmar should assist my home state police in arresting me for breaking US law.

    Oh wait, I was in Germany where it is not against the law for 19 year olds to consume alcohol.

    Do you see the analogy?