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The Pirate Bay Comes To Facebook
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a report I just read in Mashable, Pirate Bay is coming to Facebook. Writer Ben Parr says that The Pirate Bay site now includes links under torrents to 'Share on Facebook.' Once posted to a profile, the Facebook member's friends can click the link on Facebook to begin the download right away, provided he or she already has a torrenting client installed. I just hope people do not use this feature to download copyrighted materials which are not authorized to be downloaded, or at least not materials copyrighted to litigation-happy RIAA Big 4 record labels. No doubt, if their song files were downloaded through this method, the record companies would sit back for awhile, derive profit from the promotional excitement generated for their dying industry, and then — armed with Facebook's data — sue the pants off all the hapless Facebook users who fell for it."
I'm not against pirating, just against the drama that goes with it. I really don't want the RIAA on my ass; I'm sure facebook doesn't either.
What the *AAs are losing through piracy, more than sales and such, is control. The buzz "center" is moving from the old media into the piratebay's top100. Essentially. Such a development will eventually kill off the content-for-money industry (though a content-with-sponsoring may rise to take it's place, you'll notice that the TV industry is much more laid back).
This is a step in that direction, so look for a quick and angry reprisal, legally warranted or not.
If I downloaded every .torrent on TPB for archival purposes, I would be doing nothing wrong.
That doesn't mean that you wouldn't be doing something that the court feels is illegal.
We need to come to grips with the fact that our court system doesn't work based on facts, it works based on feelings.
Yes, but downloading a .torrent file, you haven't done anything to contribute to the piracy of any copyrighted materials.
But the courts feel like you did, so you can be convicted for it.
Its sad, and I think it speaks to the way that geek-minds work...we're analytical.
We look at a box and when somebody asks us to describe it, we say things like "It is royal-blue, it is 14cm tall and a perfect cube."
Sadly, the judges would respond by
"Well...I think the box is kindof squarish, it looks like it was probably used as a doorstop for a few years".
Facts vs. Feelings. This is the problem behind nearly every major legal battle that geeks are fighting. The facts support us, people's emotions do not.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
I don't get it. The Pirate Bay launches a cheap, unlogged VPN in order to provide a more private service, but now they're encouraging sharing via Facebook?
You'd think that Facebook is the last place they'd want to be, since it just seems to be the complete antithesis of what I understood the Pirate Bay to be about.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
are you enabling someone to download or find pirated content? Then the RIAA might have something to say about that. I'm not sure what the current legal stance on that is, but that's an argument that a layer would probably make.
I know that Sweden != US, but this is the crux of the TPB case. Even if this were the case, if all that they could prove was that you downloaded the .torrent, it would be Facebook that is in trouble.
"'Enabling' downloading of copyright material is a highly dubious..."
If I post a piece of paper on a telephone pole with the addresses of all banks in the city in which it is posted and someone uses that information to rob one of the banks on that list, am I guilty of 'facilitating' said robbery?
If I leave a stack of CDs in a box by the sidewalk in front of my house with a sign that says' "Take one, leave one."; does that make me guilty of copyright infringement?
Sig this!
Making Facebook a target of the RIAA may actually be a brilliant stroke for TPB, bringing to bear their extensive resources to the fight.
It is inevitable that the RIAA is going to bump heads with some huge corporations that won't push over as easily as the small-town senior citizens and college students that have been the RIAA's current targets. After all, one could say that AT&T and Verizon also "enable" people to download copyright-"protected" material. You could say that Cisco "enables" people to do the same. You could say that Microsoft and Apple are also culpable.
All this does is hasten the day when the RIAA is forced to realize they can't win.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because it doesn't make any sense to keep library books. Because, by keeping a library book you are depriving someone else of that book. On the other hand, if I share somesong.mp3 and 400 people download it, me and those 400 people have a full, working copy of somesong.mp3, we can all listen to it at once. If I have Harry Potter checked out of the library, 400 people will have to wait for me to finish or return Harry Potter before they can read it. USA copyright law was based on that. In the 1700-1800s when it was written, to make a copy of a work under copyright I would have to have a printing press (or spend an absurd amount of time with paper and pen). When the photocopier was invented, people tried to apply the same law to it, it didn't really work, however, because copiers are not networked, enforcement was low, so the public didn't suffer much. Today though, we have the same ancient laws attempting to be applied to digital works while strictly enforcing them. This does not work, and today the artists who create works are suffering from it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
FYI, if you find yourself agreeing with the parent post, you probably have not ever read a Supreme Court or Appeals Court opinion, or decent law review article.
There are of course a number of frankly idiotic opinions, but on the whole judges (or at least good judges, i.e., the ones whose opinions you read in classes) are a fairly analytical bunch. You kind of have to be.
The impression I get when I ponder the relationship between the judiciary and the legislative branches is that we have a lot of well-educated, well-spoken judges trying to make sense of laws that have been cobbled together by a bunch of monkeys flinging poo at one another. It's a little depressing.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
good work NYCL
Thanks, pha3r0. Now here's the question I'm kind of afraid to ask, for fear of being laughed out of the room:
Is it paranoid of me to wonder whether The Pirate Bay is actually an agent provocateur, working with, not against, the record companies?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful