Facebook Cuts Off Pirate Bay Links

narramissic writes "Citing legal reasons, Facebook has ended its brief relationship with The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay added a 'Share on Facebook' button around two weeks ago to its site that allowed its users to post links to small information files on Facebook that are used to download audio, video, etc. via BitTorrent. Facebook is now blocking those 'bookmarklets' as well as any links from The Pirate Bay, said Peter Sunde, of The Pirate Bay. Sunde said he received an e-mail from Facebook justifying the action because of the legal proceedings against Sunde and three others. The men are awaiting return of a verdict on April 17 from a trial that concluded early last month in Stockholm. They are charged with helping to make available material under copyright."

Comments

They can do that?

[BabyDuckHat]

But they can't get rid of all the crap quizzes? I call shenanigans.

Sounds fair

[houghi]

Our company blocks facebook. :-D

And what if they used tinyurl.com or any other that does the same?

Re:They haven't ended the relationship...

[cellurl]

Thats like banning craigslist because its nasty.
I encourage people to put legitimate stuff on TPB.
I put good church sermons (occasionally) on TPB.
(I would provide a link, but TPB is blocked at work...)

The rise of redirect links

[davidwr]

I predict a sudden increase in "redirect" links like TinyURL and the like and in "human-readable" links that can't be clicked on and can't be automatically scanned for but which humans have no trouble turning into a real link.

What about Google?

[kimvette]

Let's compare:

Piratebay:

  * links to public domain content
  * links to legal "copyrighted content"
  * links to unauthorised "copyrighted content"
  * links to open source content
  * links to creative commons-licensed content

Google:

  * links to public domain content
  * links to legal "copyrighted content"
  * links to unauthorised "copyrighted content"
  * links to open source content
  * links to creative commons-licensed content

Yahoo:

  * links to public domain content
  * links to legal "copyrighted content"
  * links to unauthorised "copyrighted content"
  * links to open source content
  * links to creative commons-licensed content

So, facebook ought to ban both Google and Yahoo.

As an aside: if you draw, photograph, type, speak & record, or write it, it's copyrighted automatically so "linking to copyrighted material" is a BS cop-out, not to mention an attempt at social engineering to get people to accept that sharing "copyrighted material" is bad. It's not. In fact many forms of copying is legal - AND COMPENSATED. Ever download an .mp3 and burn it to an audio CD disk? Years ago, did you ever record radio to an audiocassette? Do you ever store ANYTHING on DAT? If so, the RIAA has been compensated the price they agreed to for those works, because those media have levies associated with them.

Re:What about Google?

[stuckinarut]

Years ago, did you ever record radio to an audiocassette? Do you ever store ANYTHING on DAT? If so, the RIAA has been compensated the price they agreed to for those works, because those media have levies associated with them.

Home Taping was apparently killing music back in the days of the vinyl LP 20 years ago. I distinctly remember the skull and cross bones tape logo. I'm not sure the RIAA has already been compensated except by the licence fee the broadcasters pay. Canada has a blank media tax aimed at compensating the RIAA for CDs burnt but I doubt they think it's sufficient.

Both these mechanisms for copying are limited by the ammount of blank media you can obtain and the time involved in creating copies with the media.

What scares the beejeebus out of the RIAA is that bits and bytes have an almost limitless supply for everyone aside from the almost negligble initial cost (approx £70 for 1 terrabyte == 1000's albums, way more than you can listen to in a whole years listening). The other thing is our fat internet connections can fill this limitless storage while we sleep with the products they used to be able to strictly control the supply of.

Once they wake up and realise the days of skimming a fat profit out the music industry by simply playing the middle man are over and get back to promoting artists and recouping costs by finding good acts that sell out big tours and flog merchandise that can't easily be replicated, say T-Shirts the better.

The genie is already out the bottle and isn't going back in however much they keep their corporate heads in the sand.

Re:slashdot topics these days

[drinkypoo]

Surely there must be something going on in the wide world that is both topical to Slashdot and not related to file sharing or global warming?

Perhaps you should submit some of those stories, and perhaps visit the Firehose and vote up some of the kind of stories you want to see, and vote down some of the things you don't?