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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."
Well it was pretty predictable. This is what judicial systems are made for! Putting people the state does not like in jail.
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
No, it's 30 million Swedish Kroner, that's just under 3 million Euros.
but expected. A good question is - will this stop anyone from filesharing at all?
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.
If you take the site down then your admitting you did something wrong. I don't know much about the case, but thats how i see it.
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
Both parties have already made statements that they will appeal if lost, even before the verdict came. This was the first level of Swedish legal system, now it will progress upp to "HovrÃtten", and from that very likely to the Supreme Court.
This case really has to go all the way given that it is the first case of its type, and that a prejudicating ruling must be available for the future.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
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."
Doesn't work that way. Even if they didn't appeal, the Swedish prisons are full -- you actually have to queue to serve your sentence, and violent criminals always skip ahead of the queue.
Besides, they're going to appeal. During that time the sentence cannot be implemented as this wasn't something like murder or treason where immediate implementation would be appropriate. And as you say yourself: putting someone in jail severely hinders their chances of appealing.
Come down from your stupid-ass trip. It makes you look silly.
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?
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.
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.
One could imagine a trial in New York, 90 years ago that would probably find a similar crew guilty of directing tourists to speakeasy clubs, i.e. assisting in the sale of liquor.
Prohibition was abolished 14 years later.
Not long now...
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.
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...? :-/
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).
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".
The difference is, and it was stated in the trial, that google actively works with the music and movies companys and removes offending files. Quite a bit different from how the pirate bay operate ;)
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
You said it yourself:
"I wanted to find and beat the crap out of the guy who made it available."
The guy who made it available != TPB
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
Bullshit.
There is nothing Swedish about the companies pushing this case both through money and political pressure. This is very much a decision that has been forced upon the defendants through foreign commercial influence and as soon as foreign commercial influence has pushed it's influence we are equally within our rights to push our views too.
By showing our distaste and by acting against those foreign companies in boycotting their products in our own countries, by pressuring our governments to also stop catering to these companies there is still a lot we can do.
The court may be Swedish, the defendants may be Swedish, the site may even be Swedish, but the companies and groups pushing the prosecution as well as the result of the prosecution most certainly are not purely Swedish and it is against these that we can act.
I'm not sure where I saw/heard/read this, but I seem to recall an article awhile back that was talking about Adobes perspective on the unlicensed use of Adobe Photoshop. In a nutshell the article said that even though they didn't approve of it, they didn't want to take all possible means to clamp down on it due to the fact that the majority of unlicensed copies were being used by amateurs who either didn't use the software that much, or would eventually learn the ins and outs and would get any company they worked for to buy a legitimate version for them for use at the office. Also, the article noted that most people who used Photoshop on a serious basis (e.g. artists) tended to get the money together to buy it as well even if they had an unlicensed version at some point. However, don't quote me on any of that as I can't recall where I saw it.
One thing that I do know for a fact though is that Adobe tends to have some pretty nice clauses in their license agreements that work well with the end users. For example, in the Lightroom 2.0 license there is a clause that allows you to have it installed on two different machines as long as you didn't use both copies at the same time. For a photographer this works out well because it means you can have it installed on your main workstation as well as a laptop that you use on site.
But I'm talking about the ethics of intentionally helping the person who made it available. I mean, TPB obviously knows the site facilitates the copying of copyrighted materials. It is called The PIRATE Bay.
It seems like that argument is ducking the ethical question.
The English name for the Swedish currency is "krona" in singular and "kronor" in plural. The fine in this case is therefore 30 million kronor.
There are only a few swedish crowns in existence, and you have to visit the Swedish Royal Armoury museum to see them.
I'm sorry. Where do we have a right to copy others' work? Although I download a lot of stuff, I don't try to delude myself into thinking what I'm doing is acceptable. If I had spent 2-3 years creating a novel, I certainly don't want somebody taking my labor without pay... it can go into the public domain after I'm dead, but not before.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I certainly feel free in redistributing many of the files that I have obtained from others who felt like sharing them in the first place. Fortunately, I haven't yet experienced any limitations to that freedom, at least from any government. I've been taught how to copy records, tapes, and software from a very early age, and have grown up in an environment where this was encouraged. It saddens me to hear about people who are jailed for such activity, as it goes against the values that I was raised on.
Perhaps drinking coffee isn't worth going to jail for. It's not like fighting for freedom or anything. What happens if it's outlawed tomorrow? Does that make it worth going to jail for. Is the fact that it's likely that it won't be outlawed due to the fact that a large number of people drink it? Maybe instead of using coffee as an example, I could try using tea from dandelion leaves. What if it was outlawed tomorrow? Outlawing that would be a lot less likely to cause the same sort of disruption. Would that be worth going to jail over? It's not like drinking it is like fighting for freedom or anything.
How many insignificant freedoms have to be whittled away until they break the skin and strike a nerve?
Sigh.
It wasn't that she was too tired. It wasn't even happenstance. She got on the bus with the intention of sitting in the "whites only" part of it and getting arrested. It was the fact that she didn't back down and appealed to a higher court that made it civil disobedience. Unfortunately the whole message of civil rights never moved beyond the racism issue. Civil rights isn't just about racism.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So it can all be solved by renaming it to "The Non-Pirate Bay"? Of course not.
The ethical question is quite easy. Long term copyright is not in the best interest of the people. Therefore it is unethical.
I'm looking for a well written and researched piece that can tell me why TPB and other such sites are good for society, not some crap "I just want stuff for free" argument.
Will, IMHO the arguments are pretty straightforward:
Perhaps the simplest way to make this clear is to consider that existing copyright law is hopelessly outdated and irrelevant to the digital age. Notice that we don't 'copyright' jokes. Why not? Well, people retell jokes, have been doing so for millenia, and nobody has even thought to 'tax' each retelling of a joke - it would be futile and silly. And yet the exact same thing has happened to digital media - people can share files very easily and are naturally motivated to do so. Preventing this - through DRM or the law - is tantamount to trying to change the natural order of things, like a comedian trying to charge people whenever they tell his joke. It's laughable. And yet we have just seen people sentenced to jail in a parallel situation.
Yes, TPB are also childish in how they do this, but at least they do it. So even older Slashdotters like myself have some fondness for TPB, even while at the same time we are somewhat embarrassed by their antics.
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.
Copyright is what makes the GPL work, so please do NOT "end copyright now." Eliminate software patents, repeal the DMCA, shorten the LIFETIME of copyrights, but don't END them.
If there are no copyrights whatsoever, then people will have a much harder time getting the things that are BEING copied right now, as without the financial incentive, there will be much less interest in making things people WANT to copy.
If ABC can't control the merchandising of the show Lost -- like, if they were to produce it, and someone downloaded it and started selling DVD's of it at Target -- ABC wouldn't produce TV shows, and I happen to like Lost, thank you very much.
I hate DRM and the various media industries' attempt to limit our time and format shifting as much as the next guy, but ethos like "information wants to be free, man" just cheapens the argument for all of us.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
This is a pretty common outcome here in Asia. Everyone partakes in it from street sweepers through to politicians, it's going to be an uphill battle to eradicate from the home. That said, Indesign and Photoshop are applications that we were using on a regular basis for business. Pirated of course. We started to use it pretty seriously so we ended up buying a few copies of it. Not cheap either, we dropped about 2,500 USD on it all.
Now I was happy to do this, bring the business up to speed with software licenses, fully piracy free these days, but.... Adobe... Seriously, please don't ask your resellers to 'remind' me that piracy is illegal. I know that it is, we all do. And when you want copies of my drivers licenses and other government ID just to buy your stuff, I feel like you assumption is that I, the customer, am going to rip the CD out of the plastic and torrent it 15 minutes later. (I refused, they wanted the money so they waived the requirement) Did you not just see the receipt, over 2 grand my friend. I ain't giving that away to anyone, even have the serial numbers locked in the safe!
it's the rights of the creator of that work to have a say in how and when its reproduced that are being preserved.
Copyright law is actually a relatively recent invention. So no, I would argue that copyright law took away something that was already an inherent freedom, if not a right.
You could argue that it's similar to murder -- no one argues that we have a right to kill people. I would argue that this is a case where the government is stepping in to preserve a particular business model. Whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate, but I don't think the right to control an idea you had is anywhere near as inherent as the right to live.
If you don't like the fact that an artist or other creator wants to be in charge of their own work, then just walk away.
That is a good idea.
But I would think, as a content creator, I'd much rather see people pirate my work than see them walk away. Better to be famous and unpaid than just unpaid.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"Evil will always win because Good is dumb." -Dark Helmet
"Don't feel bad for me child; I'm the monster that hides under your bed."
I will give you several arguments I have heard that go beyond "we should get free stuff":
1) Originally, copyrights were intended to inspire creative work (a public good) by protecting the creators rights to their produce and providing a financial incentive to create. However, in exchange for that protection, the idea was that the work would come into the public domain at the end of the copyright term - so the public was, in essence, buying the work and setting it free in exchange for those protections.
But then people who are not creators started buying up copyrights from people who create, and these purchasers used their money to push to have the laws changed. Previously, where a work could eventually join the public domain, the term had been extended (and extended) so that it seems like no work will ever enter the public domain again unless the copyright holder *explicitly* puts it into the public domain.
Suddenly the original equation - we protect you so you can create and make a profit and we then get the work after some time - has now changed to you hold a copyright and you can sue into oblivion anyone who infringes on it, and the work will never, ever become public because the copyright duration will keep on being increased.
2) DRM, which is fairly widely used, has become a tax on legitimate users of the software and does nothing to curtail illegal use. I paid for a copy of Spore (I know, I know, but I had hopes) and was completely unable to use it on my system because of the DRM. So I downloaded a pirated copy that, ironically, worked better than the one I had paid money for. A few years ago, I bought a CD, put it in my player and... it didn't work. Tried another player - no luck. A third - nope. I took the disc back, exchanged it, and the new one didn't work either. Turns out it was DRM that made it not workable on any of my players. Last CD I ever bought. Obviously, not everyone (not most, or even a real portion) of the people using sites like TPB own the stuff legitimately, but the general concept of sites like that being available as a way to address that because the publishers don't want to is not a bad one - just poorly implemented.
3) Times change, and businesses need to change with them. It used to be that it was somewhat difficult to find pirated software/movies/whatever. Then peer-to-peer came out and it became trivial to find anything you want. Rather than look for ways to make peer-to-peer work for them, most companies tried to squash p2p. Rather than accept that their business model needs to be updated, copyright holders (or their agencies) sought ways to throw the fear of god into people who dated to infringe on their IP, to the point of absurd lawsuits alleging hundreds of thousands in damages because some teenybopper downloaded Oops, I did it again... So, we have a situation where corporations are fighting to keep an outdated model, one that is not good for consumers (same high prices while production and distribution costs have gone down a lot, etc).
TPB is an example of how the marketplace will fight back against archaic ways of doing business. If a company offers the user a value-proposition that is better than TPB can offer, then the users will buy from the company. Right now, paying $50 for a game that doesn't work because the company is treating me like a criminal, that came with a meh manual and absolutely nothing special in the box, is not exactly tempting when I can go to a website and download something for free. Yet, oddly, I have absolutely no problem paying $20 for the client and $15 a month (and the occasional $50 for an expansion) for an MMO. I don't want to have to go to a store, buy a CD that is $20, has 3 songs I'll like on it and 10 that are horrifically overproduced shit, and have a CD that may not work on any of my players - but I have absolutely no problem dropping $100 on iTunes to mix and match songs from various artists that I can download immediately.
TPB and sites like it are forcing businesses to change their models to ones t
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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.
Why is a creative writing more important than actual inventions? Do you really think that your "Great American Novel" is more important than the Heart/Lung Machine or a cure for AIDS?
As an inventor, I can get a max of 20 years out of a patent, and it costs me close to 40K to do that. Copyright is currently set at your lifetime plus 70 years, for free. Why should an artists work be valued so much higher than an inventors? Let's not forget that as a scientist, I can't get any form of protection for my work - raw science is neither patentable nor copywriteable.
So, why exactly is your story or painting so important to the world that you can demand payment for it for the rest of your life - and the life of your children most likely - with no added effort or cost while scientists aren't allowed to demand any payment and inventors are limited to 20 years for which they have to pay substantial sums of money?
I have never heard a good answer to that one. If you can't answer it, then you might want to reconsider your position. If copyright was structured like patents you would see 90% of the material going to public domain within 10 years because it's not profitable to pay to keep the copyright viable. Because it's free as in beer, people hang on to the copyright because it might make them a nickel some day down the line.
I don't download music, but it annoys the fuck out of me when people like you prattle on about some mystical god given right to profit forever for writing some drivel while people that actually make significant contributions to society are either denied any protection or are forced to pay repeatedly for the right that usually ends just as the demand for it peaks.
Why don't we have a right to copy some other's work?
If I come over to your house and see a table that you bought, do I not have a right to measure it, go home, buy some wood and a saw and build my own? Am I infringing on the work of the carpenter who designed and built yours?
If I go to a restaurant and buy an entree, then go home and attempt to recreate it with my own supplies and utensils, have I infringed on the rights of the chef? What if I then publish the recipe I reverse engineered on my blog? Would the chef sue me for "making available" his creation? Would he win?
If I borrow a CD you purchased and after enjoying it, make a reasonably accurate copy with my own polycarbonate, dye, and laser engraver, how is that any different than the above examples?
Music "piracy" is about consumers competing with a distribution business model based on scarcity of physical goods. It used to be very expensive to duplicate CDs ($50k for a writer in 1989 IIRC) and at 600MB, they held more information than people were willing to burn on HDD storage. Times have changed. Now it's virtually free. But the labels still want you to pay the same costs.
Music piracy cannot steal from the artist the labor they spent on creating their art. There is no way I can recreate the live performance of my favorite band. I would still have to pay for the privilege of enjoying that. And no one would pay me for my facsimile cover performance of their music. Money can still be made in music, but distribution for all purposes is now virtually free. The labels need to adapt or die, but prefer to seek government protectionism by suing their customers.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.