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.'"
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".
But then again, you never caught Bo and Luke Duke so you also have no ground to stand on. :)
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Hmm say, out of curiosity, have you ever found the pot of gold?
I did, but the damn leprechaun advised me to invest it all into a diversified portfolio of AIG, Lehman Brothers, Circuit City and General Motors :(
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
I found a Gnome's pot of gold. Or thought I did. When I opened it up, it was just filled with underpants! WTF? >:/
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
So, you robbed the leprechaun and then asked him for investment advice?
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?
"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.
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.
The real question is: how many of the judges download regularly from the Pirate Bay? My guess is at least one...
Haiku for you!
One kills innocent people, the other kills Prince and Madonna. Why would the distinction be so hard to understand?
- These characters were randomly selected.
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.
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.
"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.
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?
This is exactly the reason that some founders did not want a Bill of Rights, because people like you would come along and claim that our only rights under the Constitution are explicitly detailed within the Constitution. This isn't the intent of the Constitution or the Bill of rights. Some rights are assumed. Being a free society means assuming freedom not basing it on a few explicit rights detailed hundreds of years ago.
Time makes more converts than reason
"And there again is where the liberal reading of the Constitution has failed us. The liberal reading of the Constitution is generally the reading that finds things within it that don't exist"
No sir. The fact is that governments (and indeed anyone with power) can read what ever they want in to the Constitution so long as it furthers their agenda. This is not a liberal reading of the Constitution. This is simply a reading that you don't agree with, and since you don't like "liberals" you can equate the two.
This is a logical fallacy.
Government of any stripe, whether liberal or democrat, or conservative or even neo-conservative like the Bush Administration, will always strain at the chains that bind it, in this case, the Constitution.
Sometimes those chains are stretched to breaking point, and the only difference isn't whether the government calls itself liberal or conservative. The only difference is whether the liberal members of the population, or the conservative members of the population, will agree with the change, or find it abhorrent. e.g. The Feds warrantless wiretapping OR The Feds regulating that states cannot make abortion illegal.
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
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.
This is especially true since the Bill of Rights makes it explicit that the Bill of Rights is not meant to be an enumeration of your rights (9th), and that the powers not delegated by the Constitution or prohibited by it are reserved to either the States or the People (10th).
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.