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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.'"
Torrents want to be free, all pointing to the goodies, like a rainbow to a pot of gold. Don't blame rainbows for pirating.
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.
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".
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
"when new technology appears it can be difficult to 'see the wood for the trees'. He said that just because something may have been used by people for illicit purposes, should that mean that there should be an attack on the infrastructure as a result? It's like taking legal action against car manufacturers for the problems experienced on the roads, he said."
Didn't waste a second with that one.
While I'm not sure where to stand, here are some of the things I've "pirated":
* Last nights survivor episode.
* Anime fansubs I can't buy anyway.
* Professional software I've been curious to try at home for fun and/or education. (Ended up saying Photoshop indeed is worth the money at work...)
* The entire Friends series. After concluding it's worth it I ended up buying the DVD's.
* Ditto with Sex and the City.
So who lost money? I'm not saying what I did was right, but I don't think I should be put in jail for it either. These are not simple matters.
Disclaimer: The wife mostly watches Sex and the City and Friends.
.: Max Romantschuk
The really interesting thing about this trial is that the record companies seem not to have done their homework at all (although part of that could be bias from TorrentFreak, which seems to be the major English news source about this trial). They seem to have failed in pretty much every front: they failed to show any real statistics on the effects of file sharing or the amount of copyright infringing material on the Pirate Bay, their "evidence" of illegally downloading things from the Pirate Bay didn't hold water (because they could not show that the Pirate Bay tracker was actually used in their downloads), and they couldn't even show that what the Pirate Bay is doing is illegal in Sweden.
I can't really understand why they failed so hard. They had time to do their homework and I'm sure that they are not lacking in funds or other resources either. They could have collected some actual statistics on the amount of copyright infringing torrents or they could have done much better research on downloading copyright infringing stuff through the Pirate Bay -- disable DHT and all the other trackers beside the Pirate Bay, and you can be sure that the Pirate Bay tracker is used for the download.
Are the record companies really this inept at grasping the Internet (and hiring people that do understand it) or did they just think that they would win by default? Either one seems unlikely to me, but who knows?
Unless he's a liberal, then he'll invent some new rights and say the Constitution "evolved" ;)
Hold on, is this that "activist judge" thing again? I thought that went out with Bush. What a blast from the past. Could you incorporate the phrase "litmus test" into this discussion please?
"Samuelson opened by saying that during the case the Prosecution missed the main key point - Is The Pirate Bay legal or not? He said that all four defendants should be acquitted since the Prosecution failed to issue individual charges as is required in a criminal case." Tt appears that throughout the whole "trial" that there was very little if any reference to any laws that may have been broken. Not sure how Sweden has their court system setup, but this whole thing just seemed very unprofessional from both sides.
The overlap between people agreeing with "The Pirate Bay" (as they earlier agreed with Napster), and disagreeing with gun-makers and retailers using the exact same defense, is, probably, above 90%... And most gun-buyers buy them for legitimate purpose, I might add, whereas only a tiny fraction of TPB-facilitated P2P traffic is legitimate.
TPB's service does not violate copyrights, people violate copyrights, right?
The hypocrisy is sad — both of my links have to do with New York, but try asking NewYorkCountyLawyer, for example, whether he dislikes Mike Bloomberg's harassment of gun-retailers as much as he dislikes RIAA's harassment of copyright violators, or even whether he dislikes it at all...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
From the TorrentFreak article:
Two car analogies in the same day, yay! :)
The real question is: how many of the judges download regularly from the Pirate Bay? My guess is at least one...
Haiku for you!
if torrent files were used (and often times specifically designed) to murder other people.
The whole point of a legal system/justice dept. is to handle exceptional cases of law...where a set of rules cannot cover every potential circumstance and instance in a way that provides safety and productivity to society.
That being said, I have no stance whatsoever on Bloomberg and I am not anti-gun...just making a point. If there are people out there who want stricter gun control, the legal system has a variety of avenues to pursue this. If those people succeed where the the RIAA/MPAA has failed, it does not mean the government is now somehow in contradiction with itself or flawed.
It means that society saw fit to make an exception...exceptions are in fact what laws and lawsuits and judges and governmental rulings are often about.
I especially liked when he suggested it was the Pirate Bay's DUTY to assist the media companies in identifying links to copyrighted material.
is EFNet, and you Be in a scene and of challenges that achievements that Proble8s with the channel to sign for the project.
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.
What a contrived parallel! The Pirate Bay is not offering any material in violation of copyright. If they were then their defense would fall flat on its face. The only way a gun retailer could use the same defense is if they weren't involved at all in the manufacturing or distribution of guns - i.e. they aren't a gun retailer.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/iain_martin/blog/2009/03/04/president_barack_obama_just_plain_rude_to_britain_dont_call_us_in_future
http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2009/03/03/20090303_141940_flashro.htm
Honestly, is anyone surprised that Russia just b*tch-slapped Obama? But hey, I guess Obama's too busy responding to every little slight against him uttered by radio & TV personalities to actually bother with diplomacy. Very Presidential. It's going to be a looooong 4 years, folks.
Dude. if you ever get crippled by a hit and run driver, I wont bother telling the cops the number plate if I saw it. Why would I? it's nobodies duty to help law enforcement do their job right?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
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?
http://www.thelocal.se/piratebay/
This is a Swedish site with an English translation that has been following things. Since 'Freak is blocked at work this has been my news site for trial news :-)
Perhaps they didn't try so hard because they didn't have to. Maybe the recording industry's funds went towards a better way of ensuring a favorable verdict.
Even if a libertarian approach would work it would set a bad precedent that says search engines can be blamed for the content they index, its imperative that this suit fails.
But... the future refused to change.
Very pertinent point.
But surely jury nullification "applies" wherever you have a jury system. It's not like you need to have it written down anywhere. It's not something a jury needs to be "allowed" to do: if a jury refuses to convict, what can the judge do but acquit?
Their defense is solid - there is no difference between them and something like google image search...
But I can't help thinking that such a vital tenant of the internet is at risk from them having named themselves The Pirate Bay.
'Pirate' being a word the recording industry has tirelessly popularised as a banner under which to demonize copyright infringers.
It'd be like finding microsoft not guilty of anti-competitive behaviour had they been called monopolysoft.
This UID is 7651 digits too high to subjectively infer IQ from.
And I really believe in 'reasonable doubt'.
I was just checking Wikipedia (I know, I know, just roll with it, I'm sure it's at least partially correct for this part) on this trial, and saw the following:
The hearings ended on March 3 and the verdict will be announced at 11:00 AM on Friday 17 April.
Why in the world is it taking them over a month to announce the verdict? The fact that they're give it a specific time, down to the minute, would imply that all things are already decided. Why not just... say the results, instead of waiting a month and a half?
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
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.
A harmful piece of glass in the food the media's been serving us has been the propagation of the falsehood that it is always illegal to freely distribute copyrighted material and that only illegal material is available via P2P. Both are wrong. It's perfectly legal to distribute copyrighted material, if it is done in according to the copyright holder's requirements. See GPL, AGPL, LGPL, BSD, ISC, CC, MPL, Aritistic and other licenses.
There is lots of material, from programs to songs, where the copyright holder has granted permission for re-distribution. Sometimes there are constraints, other times with a do-what-thou-will carte blanche. One need look no further than the Creative Commons and the various Free and Open Source Software packages to find examples. A lot of musicians realize the marketing value of free downloads.
Anyway, it has to be said again, loudly, that it is up to the copyright holder to decide who can and can't re-distribute, not the RIAA, MPAA or any other branch of MS. There are an awful lot of people who should know better, who have recently started parroting the falsehoods.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
So... you're saying it IS perfectly legal for the USERS to download copyrighted material against the terms set by the copyright holders, in Sweden?
I'm not sure I get where your analogy's going. In your scenario, you're in Germany, and having a beer when you're 19 there is legal. You're on German soil, you're subject to German laws. When did copyright violation suddenly become legal in international law?
No what he is saying is that you can't arrest him, just because some other user break the law.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think we're all bozos on this bus...
The DMCA is a US law. The Pirate Bay is under no obligation, neither moral nor legal, to respect DMCA takedown notices. The Pirate Bay is not subject to US law.
As for the copyright violation, the basis of the defense is that Pirate Bay is not responsible in the case that copyright violation is occurring. They aren't guilty themselves of the violation and they certainly don't need to assist any "law enforcement" in either supporting the DMCA or tracking down the actual culprits.
Lawyers aren't dumb. Everyone involved would have known this case couldn't be won two years ago. This whole thing was intended to provide evidence for the need for new laws.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
This is probably the best analogy to summarize what's going on.
The drinking age in the US is 21, head up to Canada it's what, 18? 19? I don't remember. If you look under 30 you get carded. If you are served a drink while you're in canada being 20, the bar will still serve it to you, even if you show them your American ID.
If you later go outside with your buddy and the cops harass you, again, as long as you were over the legal drinking age, they have nothing on you.
You could even drag the analogy further and say you went accross the border for a drink. Don't tell the border guard that part, but come back 4 hours later sober, they still don't have anything on you, because the drink was consumed in Canada.
Just until the day some bureaucrat decides you kinda look funny and off to Gitmo^H^H^H^H^HBagram you go. Do not pass court, do not collect lawyer.
Sorry to break this to you, but the Bill of Rights ain't what it used to be.
I was in Germany where it is not against the law for 19 year olds to consume alcohol.
This is my big issue with some laws that are held in certain countries, my own for one, that legislate your behaviour while abroad. The specific one here is child exploitation, generally for those east Asian countries where child prostitutes are commonplace, and the legality is ambiguous or on the side of the john. While I don't disagree with laws against child exploitation, I DO have a problem with laws that follow you when you leave the jurisdiction of the lawmakers.
The really ugly part about these laws are when they conflict, such as what happened with Dimitri Skylarov and his DMCA-based arrest for breaking Adobe's ultra-modern ROT13 pdf encryption, among other things. A Russian law requires that it be possible to unencrypt files, an American one criminalizes the act. And he gets charged for doing it by the Americans while he did it on Russian soil.
This leaves people in the quandary of not only not knowing if they're breaking the law somewhere, but possibly having to choose which law they're going to break in a given circumstance.
At least the Canadians only charge their own citizens with breaking the child exploitations laws of their country while abroad, and not foreigners who happen to pass through. I think. I hope.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Most musicians don't expect to make a living from their trade. Most musicians supplement their income with music or do it for free. Only a tiny minority make a real good living at music. Your whole argument is based on the statement that "a musician *expects* to be able to make a living from his chosen trade." That statement is simply not true.
Musicians, and movie producers, and pharmaceutical companies, and genetic researchers don't seek an entitlement to make a living at their trade--they seek the entitlement of the law protecting them from people who would leech off of them.
Copyright law is protection against leeches for a limited period of time (far too long in my opinion). If you want to argue with that, you want to argue for changing the copyright law.
In some jurisdictions that follow the french tradition of copyright law and see copyrighted works as culture whose access should not be constrained through lack of funds, it's not illegal to access copyrighted works without any authorization from the copyright holder if the copyrighted work is accessed exclusively for personal use, it wasn't paid for and the access hadn't had any significant measurable impact in the commercialization of the said work. It's only in the US, with it's "everything is a product and the corporations are Gods on earth" mentality is any unauthorized copyright access seen as somehow an evil thing.
At the restaurant, you have a contract:
. 1: The restaurant presented an offer in the form of a menu with prices.
. 2: You accepted the offer by placing an order.
. 3: Consideration was exchanged by the restaurant providing you with the meal.
By walking out on the restaurant, you are in material breach of contract by not paying. There is no "entitlement" on either side.
You could even drag the analogy further and say you went accross the border for a drink. Don't tell the border guard that part, but come back 4 hours later sober, they still don't have anything on you, because the drink was consumed in Canada.
Pretty sure even if you did tell the border guard there'd be nothing he could do about it. You aren't breaking Canadian law, and U.S. drinking laws don't apply. Just make sure you're sober when you drive back.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
the powers not delegated by the Constitution or prohibited by it are reserved to either the States or the People (10th)
That worked until the Supreme Court ruled in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), that regulating commerce in general was a power delegated by the Constitution to Congress.
You feel that something is your "right", ok, but who is the person that must give it to you?
If it your right to be safe, whose responsibility is it to save you from a danger?
If we talked about responsibilities it would be more honest.
This is all just my personal opinion.
... for certain goods. Lets face this fact please, in a capitalist world where physical resources are scarce, we shouldn't be surprised at piracy at all. Since people justify the oppression of classes of people beneath them all the time, life isn't fair, and if physical goods ever reach a level of non scarcity digital works have, many propertarian aspects of the socio-economic system is going to fade away.
The pirate bay is about the culture of propertarianism and scarcity based capitalism, and the territorial and greedy mentality of the people themselves
Ahhh, I see the bike shed has many colors.
So in Constitutional Monarchial Sweden, the Supreme Court precedes you!
I the same vein I have never understood how it ispossible to keep U.S. citizens from entering Cuba. A law that prohibits you to visit a country I cant even start to imagine any reasoning for that. I always wondered why they never extended that list. Maybe Canada, so you can't go there to drink underage maybe.
In Germany you can drink beer legally with 16 :)