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Pirate Bay Trial Ends In Jail Sentences
myvirtualid writes "The Globe and Mail reports that the Pirate Bay defendants were each sentenced Friday to one year in jail. According to the article, 'Judge Tomas Norstrom told reporters that the court took into account that the site was "commercially driven" when it made the ruling. The defendants have denied any commercial motives behind the site.' The defendants said before the verdict that they would appeal if they were found guilty. 'Stay calm — Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just a theater for the media,' Mr. Sunde said Friday in a posting on social networking site Twitter."
Update: 04/17 12:16 GMT by T : Several updates, below.
Thanks to all the readers who have sent in various other links related to this news, including the dozens who noted
the BBC's version of the story. Reader a_n_d_e_r_s submits a link to the verdict itself (large PDF, in Swedish), and writes "The sentencing is not unexpected (max verdict is 2 years in prison) and the damages is about 1/3 of what the companies that has requested damages had requested. Notice that no punitive damages is applicable." Reader yendor writes, "More details are coming and The Pirate Bay will be holding a press conference at 15.00 CET.
HakanRoswallGoatse points out that besides the jail term imposed (and barring the results of planned appeals), "the four men will have to pay $3,6 million in compensation for lost sales to 17 media companies. Among them are: Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision."
HakanRoswallGoatse points out that besides the jail term imposed (and barring the results of planned appeals), "the four men will have to pay $3,6 million in compensation for lost sales to 17 media companies. Among them are: Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision."
... it sucks.
According to Dagens Nyheter the sentence is not only jail as claimed, but also a fine of 30 million euros.
Can someone explain how keeping the site alive would be a good strategy for winning the appeal? Especially the "Nothing will will happen to file sharing" part.
Most people encrypt their bittorrent traffic these days. My client is set to allow only secure connections.
Are they getting a bit delusional? Calling it theatre after being sent to prison for a year doesn't sound like theatre it sounds like hard time and the $2.4m fine doesn't look too much like theatre.
Whether you agree or not with the judgement its very hard to describe imprisonment and multi-million dollar fines as theatre for the media. I worry that they've drunk a little too much of the Kool-Aid.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Finally those pesky kids are in jail! We will have monstrous profit this year!!! No more STEALING of our property! ...
Next we will sue any blog that does spoilers or bad movie reviews as they can harm our buiseness, even more. Bad movie reviews can STEAL from us almost $78.9bn every year!! We must act quickly!!
they'll find it hard when right on the tail of this guilty verdict, there'll be a motion to seize their assets freeze the bank accounts and close the domain down... and they'll have to fight it all from behind bars with very limited access to the external world...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
but expected. A good question is - will this stop anyone from filesharing at all?
OK, now I'm really, really pissed off!!!
But the real question is: what can I do? What can *we* do?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
The first rule of Usenet is: you do not talk about Usenet.
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were sentenced to a year in jail each. They were also ordered to pay 30m kronor total ($3.6m) in damages. The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures. The news was broken early by Peter Sunde aka brokep via twitter, from a "trustworthy source".
A round-up of the arguments in court has already been discussed on slashdot, and the BBC has some thoughts on what happens next.
The site itself is on servers outside Sweden, and has sufficient funds to remain operational for some time. In combination with the appeal against the verdict already pledged by the men, the site itself should remain operational for now.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
loses in the court of public opinion. The entertainment industry is continuing with a policy of thud and blunder. It does not have to be this way. Even for those such as myself who consider that they Pirate Bay crowd is unable to draw the distinction between free speech and free beer, this victory will not go past the court room. As for the file sharing community, this whole idea that changes in technology makes laws obsolete needs to go.
Search in google "filetype:torrent Wolverine" and see what it gets you.
From the article, the guys don't seem worried. Appeals are forthcoming.
Damn! Now all TPB users will have to use Google to find their torrents.
And then Google will fall too and...
The questions that come to mind:
1- Will Google be sued next (filetype:torrent anyone?)
2- Where can we donate to help pay the fine?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8003799.stm
Laughed hard at this:
"Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.
"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets."
Oh yeah, and he isn't?
So, let's say I run a website on which users could provide a link to copyrighted material, and then a user goes ahead and copies that material in a way that violates that copyright. Furthermore, I make it easy for users to search for those links or associated information describing them, and I make some money from the site by having advertisements on it. At that point I could be charged and face potential jail time?
Wow. Will there be any websites hosted in Sweden after this?
Anybody wanting to start a petition to the european parliement to revert the decision/(make linking legal) ?
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/public/staticDisplay.do?id=49
"One of the fundamental rights of European citizens: Any citizen, acting individually or jointly with others, may at any time exercise his right of petition to the European Parliament under Article 194 of the EC Treaty."
During the trial it was pretty clear the prosecution had no idea about what they were actually accusing the defendants of because they simply didn't understand the technology. Effectively throughout the trial they were unable to prove their case at all. What I'm interested to know is why - despite the prosecution failing to really prove their case, only to speculate on various things - this decision was reached.
In a way I kind of expected them to lose before the trial began because I presumed big media had spent the time and effort to find countless valid legal arguments, evidence and technicalities to get them on, but once the trial started it seemed much less likely as the prosecution was clueless and provided neither of these three things which is again why I'm baffled about the outcome. The decision doesn't appear to have been made based upon the court case at all hence why I'm interested to know if there is any further information from the court to explain how they came to this conclusion based on the court case.
I think I know what the answer probably is, that it really was about political pressure or bribery, but I'd like to give Swedish courts the benefit of the doubt first and see the reasoning behind the decision. Does the Swedish legal system make this sort of thing available?
They'll appeal, and they should win an appeal.
The trial itself was very bad, the prosecutors were ridiculous, they couldn't prove anything and they just showed they don't know anything about the technology.
Either way, this "assisting or facilitating copyright infringement" is ridiculous and if can hurt a lot of legitimate business.
For example, a music company could sue Twitter because they let people type lyrics on it or links to rapidshare files with music. Same for any other website that allows user submitted content.
If the don't win the appeal they still have the European Court Of Human Rights (http://www.echr.coe.int/echr/) to complain to, if they feel the trial and decision were not fair.
I know at least my country loses trials there and gets fined millions of euros all the time, because the judges pressured politically and some even corrupt.
In the worst case, that 1 year sentence will probably converted into probabation or something, because it's their first offense - I doubt they'd do more than 30 days in jail in the worst case.
You know, it's great that those people, who commit illegal acts because they are commercially driven, are always brought to justice, no matter what their country of origin is.
Of-course there is a small matter of agreeing what exactly it means for something to be 'illegal'. There also should be an exact description of what 'commercially driven' is, after all, if you download something instead of buying a paid version, you are commercially driven - you want to avoid paying money. There is also this small matter that a corporation based in one country, can force changes upon the law of that country, which seems to propagate itself almost magically to all these other countries, this seems odd.
It's great to see that politicians are not commercially driven at all, when they pass laws that somehow seem to benefit commercial entities much more than private individuals. Citizens they used to call them, now they are all consumers, not citizens. Term 'citizen' has an implication that you have obligations and rights at least within your country. Consumers have 'rights' but really it's mostly obligations, and it has nothing to do with countries. The obligations are to the commercial entities - large firms.
It is nice to see that those politicians, who are violating the trust of citizens to act in their best interest, those politicians that are really just fronts for commercial enterprise end up paying dearly for their transgressions. You know - jail sentences, fines...
It is nice to see that commercial enterprise and their leaders are always brought to justice when they are found in breach of any laws, especially when the breach is 'commercially driven'.
It is nice that governments don't start commercially driven wars and that if they do, they end up in jail.
It is nice that governments don't take bribes and don't change the rules, so that large commercial structures benefit and private citizens suffer. Like the US federal reserve that was created by government officials so that private commercial enterprises would benefit so much (the JP Morgan, the John D Rockefeller, who then can take cheap loans at lowered interest rates and which eventually lead to the current economic disaster after the monopolies built with these cheap money destroyed the small business and moved to the cheaper manufacturing lands), it is nice that Nelson Aldrich was found guilty of conspiring against the citizens of the US and was sent to jail for his role in devaluing the US currency.
It is nice that people responsible for profitable wars in Vietnam, African countries, Middle East, Asia, South and Central America, that all those people paid heavy prices for their crimes. .......
Wait, wait, are you telling me that all these things didn't really happen? So what is happening here then?
You can't handle the truth.
...but we support them mostly just because we don't like fucked-up law and industry around it. We can't fight the industry (every year income in bilions), so we play pirates game. Sooner or later, 'pirates' gets cought. But powerless feeling remains. So, where we going from here? When people will stop screwing with law and instead fight lobbies and industries? When people will stop being politically ignorant? When they will understand that more they want to avoid to be connected with all it, the more they feel powerless and it kills them slowly.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
From Letters from a Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King, Jr:
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
"Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."
"One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."
Stay strong, guys.
Yeah so we've known for some time that running a file sharing site for illegally redistributed content is bad news from a legal liability standpoint ... but I am still surprised by what kinds of activities in our modern age get you jail time.
Is the fundamental issue "loss of money"? Well, the executives of the big banks in the world -- men like Charles Prince (Citigroup), Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide - collapsed), Alan Schwartz (Bear Stearns - collapsed) -- have lost far more money. They have lost money for investors, customers, and more recently taxpayers and even your children and your children's children. The damage caused by the systems they were responsible for is far greater han any of these file sharing misdemeanors. This is like comparing an out of control leaf fire in someone's backyard to the carpet bombing of a city.
But what happens to investment bank executives who lost ridiculous sums (we're talking trillions) and ruined the lives of many? Probably nothing... hell, the previous Goldman Sachs CEO was put in charge of the US Treasury Department (Paulson) where he proceeded to redistribute public money to colleagues. Some may argue that men like Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke are committing acts of treason by taking money out of the national treasury and diverting it into the hands of the wealthiest elite, the top 1% of society.
But don't expect to see any of these men in jail any time soon. Because in this world, the people who commit the grandest acts of financial theft and destruction are rewarded with lavish salaries and pensions, while the jails are filled with pot smokers, shoplifters, and guys who run file sharing web sites.
The people who run the Pirate Bay have been jailed for "assisting making available copyrighted content", meaning that they linked to copyrighted material? Fuck. That's the very basis of the internet. How can this judgement stand? If this is upheld, none of us are safe. Not Youtube, not Google, not anyone. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of file sharing, how can people be jailed for just linking to material? This is about the worst decision the courts could have made. Fuck you Sweden. Fuck you IFPI and fuck you all the recording artists that are signed to the companies who belong to you. I hope you all rot. It hurts but I'll never give you another unit of my hard earned currency again. I had no issue with paying for music I liked as long as you didn't make me pay for music I didn't. The internet allowed me to do that with greater freedom than ever before and now you jail people who facilitate my search for good music. You've already shut down the OLGA resource, denying thousands of would be guitarists a valuable resource for learning, you've already ripped thousands of music videos from youtube, and now you do this. Well thankyou. A better illustration of the way corporate whores set the legal policy of elected governments I could not find. Not that you'll care because you've brainwashed an entire generation into thinking your reality is the only reality. A generation who grow up believing sharing is wrong. Well. Good luck with that. Eventually you and all your kind will bleed yourself dry and when that happens, I'll make a point of playing poor quality MP3s of popular chart music over your graves and laugh at the irony of the damage you've wrought to the internet in order to protect the artistic integrity of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Jesus. I made a joke on here a few days ago using a line from an Alanis Morrisette song. I'll probably be next up for a stint in the big house.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
And that achieves what exactly?
The MPAA/RIAA/Police can still join the filesharing swarm you're connected to and see that you're sharing the copyrighted materials.
At best encrypting it just stops your ISP from easily seeing what exactly you're transferring.
SSL USENET allows you to connect to a trusted source and no one else (and that's the key difference, P2P software means you're connecting to untrusted sources) whilst allowing your connection to be encrypted and hence the contents invisible to your ISP too.
The only weakness with USENET is whether the MPAA/RIAA are successful in going after long established USENET providers like Giganews too like they have The Pirate Bay but at least whilst they don't you're safe as an individual whereas with P2P on public swarms you are not safe as an individual.
So, what are all the users of TPB considering doing to support
the folks behind TPB, who have supported them, in some way, in
past?
I don't think it's enough to celebrate the continuation of TPB
while forgetting the hassle, that its makers & operators have
to go through, now that they've been taken to task for TBP.
What? Consider them just happy martyrs, as you go on using the
legacy they've left you (as if they were dead)?
Well...? :-/
They've just released a press conference:
http://thepiratebay.org/special/2009epicwinanyhow.php
You have to click on the "archive" button.
Y
You miss the point.
It was a generally held belief (and may well still turn out to be so) that what Pirate Bay did was NOT illegal in their country. It's yet to be (convincingly) proved otherwise, because the "evidence" was sparse and technically-incorrect at best. It was that unsure that it took a court to decide it, even after police raids that couldn't find anything "illegal". And it has yet to be appealed against.
What you name a place has NOTHING to do with the law behind it. You can't be convicted based on what you called something, unless the name itself is somehow illegal.
And as for "hitting the supply chain", maybe the best analogy then would be to stop camera-recording and/or screener leaks rather than chase down people who downloaded it? In actual fact if you want to eliminate something then you have to take out ALL forms of contact with it - drug dealers, drug pushers, drug takers, etc. This is the equivalent of suing not just the site owners, but the people who leaked your DVD and the people downloading it. By extension of the intentions of this case, that would also imply suing anyone who ever links to those torrents, anywhere, and anyone who carries the links to those torrents (e.g. Google) - it's like arresting people because they had a discussion about drugs, or told someone not to go to a particularly drug-ridden part of town late at night - you're trying to convict people who had only incidental connection with the crime but have performed no criminal act.
Remember - it's still not established law that what the Pirate Bay did was illegal. That's not true until all Swedish court appeals are finished and no more are allowed to be brought (and even after that, there's the possibility of an EU appeal/intervention).
for putting these men into jail. I'll start by not buying that Wall-E special edition DVD I was eyeing for some time. Also, the Bolt DVD will get a pass.
And I think my GF and I will spend more afternoons at various restaurants rather than at the cinema.
Thanks MPAA for providing me the motivation..... to poop on you.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
They have 30 days to appeal to higher court(Hovrätten). The chance of the appeal being denied here is pretty low in this case AFAIK.
If the appeal is successful they have to wait for their day in court and the verdict there.
Verdicts where the lower courts verdict is confirmed aren't appealed.
Then that can be appealed to the highest court(Högsta domstolen). The chance of the appeal being denied here is pretty high in general but depends on how important the case is and how much new evidience are in play.
If the appeal is successful they have to wait until their day in court and the verdict there.
Then its over. It can take years from now if it goes all the way. But if it just go to the next instance this case is over in 2010.
Just saying it like it are.
No the real bummer is that so many people like you think that they are not criminals. Last time I checked, its illegal to take something that is not yours and you didn't pay for.
You make a copy. You don't take something.
And it has been that way for thousands of years.
No, it isn't. You could copy the Mona Lisa until you're green in the face, no problem.
You fully well know what they are trying to accomplish with their site. Don't pretend like its something its not.
They are providing torrent files. Plain text files. On which no copyright lies, or at least nobody minds that they copy those.
It is for encouraging piracy plain and simple.
Piracy happens in the coastal waters of Somalia. What you mean is called "copyright infringement".
Right now, they _are_ criminals. That was decided by the court, which has the power to make that decision.
And sure, the name itself implies that they want the site to be used to "pirate" things. But the interesting thing is that the court apparently dont understand the consequences of this ruling.
Who do you think has made the most money out of sites like these? The site owners, or the broadband providers? Sweden has one of the worlds highest broadband penetration rates in the world, and financial analysts have deemed that the ISP industry will collapse because people wont pay 600SEK / month for 20Mbit/20Mbit, but rather take the 99SEK for 512/256 or something.
Essentially, the whole broadband industry has been making money on this for years now, and now they must be fair game. They _obviously_ knows what is sent over their linese (since they sometimes even throttle bittorrent traffic etc).
Maybe this was the best that could happen, because now the laws have to be rewritten so that they make sense again. If you cannot prosecute a phone company for someone making a "bad" phone call, or the postal service for someone sending a "bad" packet, why should broadband providers be responsible? And if they are not to be, this is becoming very fishy...
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
No the real bummer is that so many people like you think that they are not criminals. Last time I checked, its illegal to take something that is not yours and you didn't pay for. And it has been that way for thousands of years.
And to any response saying "But they are only providing the links". Give me a fucking break. You fully well know what they are trying to accomplish with their site. Don't pretend like its something its not. It is for encouraging piracy plain and simple.
I don't use TPB or illegal torrents myself, but from my understanding TPB is effectively a torrent search engine. This sets a bad president, what's next suing Google because their image search has got thumbnails of copyrighted pictures, and points to places where you can acquire said unlawful material. It's the individual copyright infringers that are the problem*, if there was no demand for TPB it wouldn't exist.
*IMO the bigger problem is unreasonable copyright laws, but how many people are going to TPB to download out of print works that they can't get hold of in any other way, or works that any sane person thinks should have been made public domain a decade ago?
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
And what, exactly did the guys from TPB "take", douchebag?
"Encouraging" something is about the weakest threshold there is for prosecution, and only used by prosecutors who having someone powerful whispering in their ear.
Tell you what, I'd like to encourage you to dunk your head in a toilet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Amerikaneren Bruce Perens er veteran paa aapen teknologi, men oppfatter Pirate Bay som kriminelle."
"The American Bruce Perens is a veteran in open technology, but sees The Pirate Bay as criminals."
http://www.tu.no/it/article207171.ece
Because if they're smart enough to use secure connections, they're probably smart enough to take other precautions.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Last time I checked, its illegal to take something that is not yours and you didn't pay for.
What, exactly, have TPB actually taken? They haven't taken anything. They haven't even copied anything themselves - they have only facilitated that copying. If you tell me a joke that you created, and I tell that joke to somebody else, have I "taken" your joke? Have I "stolen" your joke, even if I tell people you are the original author? Of course I fucking haven't. You give me a fucking break.
And it has been that way for thousands of years.
Theft might have been illegal in certain nations and cultures for thousands of years, but this case has nothing to do with theft so your statement is irrelevant. The lawyers in this case know that theft and copyright infringement are distinctly different issues, even the bloody plaintiffs, so I don't know why you choose to ignore this distinction. People have freely shared the works of others without breaking the law until very recently in terms of human civilisation. Don't act as though 80+ year copyrights are an age-old invention. Not that the length of a practice is in any way relevant to its legitimacy - people have believed in God for thousands of years, and this fact does not lend any credence to his existence.
Don't pretend like its something its not.
Haha, that's funny, you should heed your own advice there, pal.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
There are clear laws against drug 'safehouses' and the like.
The internet hosts all kinds of links in all kinds of places. A law has to be unambiguous or it gets mis-interpreted. So while I agree with you in principle that they were perhaps morally guilty, they don't seem to have been convicted of an established crime.
Courts can introduce new laws, but this one has far ranging implications for the net as a whole. If you can't see the danger in such a law then you're not thinking long term.
Promting piracy isn't a crime, most of us are free to either promote it or decry it. Naming a site with 'Piracy' in the title isn't a crime. They didn't share any copyrighted material. They only supported a file sharing operation. It was the users who chose to use it in they way they wanted it. You can't sue a knife manufacturer for all the stabbings in the world.
I know you want to sidestep the legal issue and convict them of a 'moral wrongdoing', but you can't just make up your own laws based on your own moral compass.
Hey. Let's flood the judge with links to google and other search engines, that link to torrents. ;)
And an occasional goatse / shitting dick-nipple / tubgirl / lemonparty / meatspin montage.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
And I think the verdict stinks and here's why...
Standard reading list:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1.html "MP3s are not the Devil"
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-14-1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting "Hollywood Accounting"
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/01/17327 "Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act"
These guys have been stealing your rights for ages, thanks to cash hungry congressmen and presidential candidates. Make that presidents. Obama has stacked the Justice department with his RIAA donors. And as Orson Scott Card points out, these guys suck.
For those who posted that they wouldn't be found guilty and are now bleating on about them being acquitted at appeal, remember that appeals do go two ways. It could actually end up that the appeals court or the high court finds that they weren't actually handed out a severe enough sentence and increases the jailtime and/or fine.
With such an offence having a 2 year maximum sentence in Sweden and with TPB basically being the world no.1 site, there's a possibility that they could actually see a sentence increase.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Somalians are just exercising their freedom too.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
So let's say I build a bar:
- Knowing that killing people is illegal.
- Call it "Killers Bar".
- Publicly say that I'm in favour of killing every single human being on earth as long as it's for money and that I don't care if contract killers use my bar to make their deals.
- Keep saying "nah, nah, nah, can't catch me".
I should be accused of promoting murder and sent to jail?
If as a result of your bar there are several hundred deaths then yes you should indeed be done for promoting and facilitating murder. The cases of assisting terrorists for instance are a real world example of exactly the sort of mentality you are talking about and the defences of "I didn't know about that specific act of murder" haven't done well in court at all.
You, my friend, live in a pretty strange world.
It is strange indeed, unfortunately it is also reality.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
For thousands of years people have been copying each others' creative works - music, words, inventions... without reimbursement. It's only within the last blink of an eye of human society that this has been referred to as "piracy" and "copyright" or "patent infrigement."
Previously it was referred to as "language" and "culture."
This space available.
Ok, we all hate the RIAA etc. But fact is, audiovisual art costs real money. So how can we support the artists and make sure good movies are still made? How would you like to pay?
What do you mean?
Let's take Sony as an example since it's one of the companies:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/07q4/slide/image/03_image.jpg
As you can see, 8871 billion yen or $89 billion in revenue. That's for Sony alone.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Google is not next. What everybody seems to be missing here is that the torrents with copyrighted material were not a small minority easily lost in a large amount of torrents. Just look at the top 100 list at TPB - seriouly, how many non-copyrighted works have you ever seen on that list? Copyrighted material is what TPB lives off. The owners of TPB should once in a while check out what is being transmitted on their site (perhaps by looking at the top 100 list). If it turns out that the majority of transfers are illegal (which they are in Sweden), then the site owners actually have a responsibility to do something about it. It's like I'm renting stalls in a marketplace: if one or two sellers have drugs behind the counter, nobody can blame me. However, if the majority of the sellers openly sell drugs, then it is my responsibility as owner to do something about it. And in the case of google, the large majority of material is completely legal. That's why they don't have to worry about this issue.
In a word, yes. This is the same as linking to infringing web pages, etc. If you do not host infringing material, you are not doing anything illegal.
If I'm a pimp, I'm guilty, if I point you in the direction of a pimp, I'm not.
If I'm holding drugs, I'm guilty, if I tell you where you can get them, I'm not.
If you give me cash for the info, I'm still not guilty. If I get a kickback from the pimp or the dealer only THEN am I in trouble.
So lets summarise: INNOCENT
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
That's it, in a nutshell.
The RIAA has sued people it knows to be innocent, engaged in barratry, has tried to stifle long-term technology to preserve dying business models.
On the supply side of music, has been the bane of recording artists in music and movies for years - Prince changed his name to that weird symbol not only to be provocative, but also to get out of bad record contracts.
On the demand side of music, it was pretty clear even early on that piracy didn't hurt music sales. In fact, CD sales were going UP until the PR backlash from suing customers, coinciding with legal digital downloads and a down economy. What was happening was that Napster was exposing people to more music - different music - and indie artists.
They hated Napster not because it cut into their sales, but because people no longer relied on the radio to find out what new music was playing, meaning that talented artists didn't have to sign with the RIAA's labels. It was a threat to their cartel, not to their bottom line.
So, long story short, no matter what you think about the Pirate Bay or whether what they were doing was taking money away from artists or whatever -- they were Robin Hood.
They took from the evil and rich, and gave to the poor and smart. They did it while thumbing their nose at the Sheriff of Nottingham.
That's why they're loved and adored on places like Slashdot.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
Even as a recording musician, I must disagree. Promoting the creation of works for the public good is EXACTLY the intent of intellectual property law.
From the U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 8
:
So the logic is: we, the public, want people to create lots of stuff for us to enjoy. Therefore, we will give them an incentive. We will temporarily prevent others from profiting from their work.
The goal of the law is to promote the good of the public, not of the creator. All intellectual property law should be considered by this standard - "how will granting this protection benefit the public?" - not in terms of the "rights" of the creator.
For example, how long should copyright last? The term has been extended several times already. If that temporary monopoly becomes permanent, then the public's resources (for example, the courts) are no longer being used for public good, but for the good of private individuals and corporations.
I am not in favor of piracy. And I believe if you enjoy movies or music or art or literature, you should want to support their creation financially. But we should remember that copyright and patents exist to benefit the people, not the owners of those properties. Which is exactly why they should become public domain after a reasonable time - so the public can fully enjoy the work we have protected and nurtured via our taxpayer-funded legal system.
I see a lot of people showing outrage. First, let me state I use TPB. Im not going to go get all high and mighty and talk about the evils of file sharing. But lets keep things in perspective. TPB was not raising money for kittens with cancer. They are running a web site for the sole purpose of profiting off large scale copyright infringement. Putting aside arguments over wether or not a tracker technically constitutes copyright infringement, they were not raising money for kittens with cancer, they are profiting off large scale copyright infringement.
On page 76 of the verdict it is quite clear that what ultimately killed TPB is the fact that they, even though they knew of infringing material, didn't act to remove it.
The court had quite a good grasp of BitTorrent. What they stated was that:
1. When someone does something illegal (copyright infirngement)...
2. ...anyone involved, however tangentially (the tracker operator), can be held accountable...
3. ...but, and this is the big one, you must have either purposefully aided the illegal act, or acted with willful blindness.
On page 76, the court discusses letting the accused off due to them being "service providers", and while finding them to in fact be service providers, asserts that a service provider that assists in infingement, is notified that they are doing so, and keeps on assisting, is indeed party to the infringement.
Note the the next TPB: Do what YouTube did and have a legal department. Cooperate with rights holders. Take stuff down.
No. Every download creates a new copy of the work in question. Selling a used book, CD, or DVD does not create a new copy. If person A sells a used CD to person C and then wants to own the CD again, he must buy a new copy. If person B provides the same CD for download and person C downloads the CD, C has a copy of the CD and B still has a copy of the CD.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Everyone knows what The Pirate Bay is all about. The creators of the website CLEARLY knew what it was going to be used for, infact they moved their servers to Sweden specifically to avoid the risk of copyright infringement charges being brought against them.
There are cases where copyright legislation is clearly out of line, or where it's used against genuinely innocent people this for example. Defending people like The Pirate Bay portrays the 'free' culture as a bunch of criminals.
And honestly, if there was a scumbag at the end of your street telling passers by where they could find a pimp, you are saying you wouldn't expect the cops to get rid of them? Give me a break.
You just want shit for free :D