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The Circus Widens In Aftermath of Pirate Bay Verdict
MaulerOfEmotards sends along an in-depth followup, from the Swedish press, of our discussion the other day about the biased trial judge in the Pirate Bay case. "The turmoil concerns Tomas Norström, the presiding judge of The Pirate Bay trial, who is suspected of bias after reports surfaced of affiliation with copyright protection organizations. For this he has been reported to the appeals court (in Swedish; translation here). The circus around the judge is currently focused on three points. First, his personal affiliation with at least four copyright protection organizations, a state the potential bias of which he himself fails to see and refuses to admit. Secondly, Swedish trials use a system of several lay assessors to supervise the presiding judge. One of these, a member of an artists' interest organization, was forced by Mr. Norström to resign from the trial for potential bias. The judge's failure to see the obvious contradiction in this (translation) casts doubts on his suitability and competence. Thirdly, according to professor of judicial sociology Håkan Hydén (translation), the judge has inappropriately 'duped and influenced the lay assessors' during the trial: 'a judge that has decided that "this is something we can't allow" has little problem
finding legal arguments that are difficult for assisting lay assessors to counter.'" Click the link below to read further on Professor Hydén's enumeration of "at least three strange things in a strange trial." On a related note, reader Siker adds the factoid that membership in the Pirate Party exploded 150% in the week following the verdict. The Pirate Party now surpasses in size four smaller parties in Sweden, and is closing in on a fifth. Political fallout could ensue as soon as June, when an election for EU parliament will be held.
Professor Hydén continues with enumerating "at least three strange things in a strange trial" (translation): First, that someone can be sentenced for being accessory to a crime for which there is no main culprit: "This assumes someone else having committed the crime, and no such individual exists here... the system cannot charge the real culprits or it would collapse in its entirety." It is unprecedented in Swedish judicial history to sentence only an accessory. Second, that the accessories should pay the fine for a crime committed by the main culprits, "which causes the law to contradict itself." And third, that accessories cannot be sentenced to harsher than the main culprit, which means that every downloader must be sentenced to a year's confinement. Prof. Hydén sums up by saying that to allow this kind of judgement the Swedish Parliament must first pass a bill making this kind of services illegal, which it has not done.
Professor Hydén continues with enumerating "at least three strange things in a strange trial" (translation): First, that someone can be sentenced for being accessory to a crime for which there is no main culprit: "This assumes someone else having committed the crime, and no such individual exists here... the system cannot charge the real culprits or it would collapse in its entirety." It is unprecedented in Swedish judicial history to sentence only an accessory. Second, that the accessories should pay the fine for a crime committed by the main culprits, "which causes the law to contradict itself." And third, that accessories cannot be sentenced to harsher than the main culprit, which means that every downloader must be sentenced to a year's confinement. Prof. Hydén sums up by saying that to allow this kind of judgement the Swedish Parliament must first pass a bill making this kind of services illegal, which it has not done.
Arghh!!!
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Cause political chaos by throwing sudden, and massive support behind a new political party. Wish Americans were capable of picking some other party aside from Republicans or Democrats.
I think this is somewhat of an exaggeration. Probably Mr. Norström discussed it with him and he hade his own decision to resign.
Had the judge been an active member of the Swedish Pirate Party, worked closely with the defendants in the past, not disclosed it and handed a not guilty verdict, you can be sure the *AAs would of been all over it like flies on a pile. Mistrial, end of story.
Personally, I'd vote for a Pirate Party! Politically speaking, perhaps it's about time to take on the anti-fair-use industry?
If the Pirate Party really has that many people, and every downloader must be sentenced to at least a year's confinement, then everybody should turn themselves in and overcrowd the jails.
In some countries, their right to inspect a customer's system may be on par with the "right" of the public to make copies of DVD (here it is explicitly allowed unless the disk is protected, which is of course in almost all cases. :-)).
Ezekiel 23:20
What a load of crap.
Having the judge be a member of copyright protection organizations isn't bias. Copyright is the law, and he's a judge...how is this a story? Hell, he might have been put on this case specifically because he knows copyright law very well. You guys need to accept this--Pirate Bay wasn't just a search engine like Google. It was also hosting the torrent tracker server that tracks the file chunks users were trading with each other. They offer the torrents, and they offer the server connecting the users, and they call themselves PirateBay...and you're defending it? You're surprised they were found guilty in court?
Nobody cares about the "Pirate Party." It's just a bunch of morons who signed up online out of spite and probably will never be heard from again.
Pirates will do whatever it takes to get their free ride back. They do as much as possible to avoid admitting guilt. You're ripping people off. You're the bad guy. You'll talk about the RIAA/MPAA until you're out of breath, you'll invent stupid justifications like piracy is "free advertising" or it's a "new business model," but it's all just a psychological justification to avoid admitting that you're guilty of doing something inethical. You never think about the people you're ripping off--the musicians, software developers, screenwriters, and so on.
The fact that Slashdot has become so militantly pro-piracy in the last decade is really disgusting. It was one thing to defend Napster, but now it's just bleedingly obvious that Slashdot is visited by a ton of selfish leeches who want to spend all day and night running Bittorrent apps, never even dreaming of paying somebody for their work. How would you like it if you were a software developer, and your boss didn't give you a paycheck one month because "information wants to be free," or "you can't 'steal' code," or some other stupid reason that pirates always give?
It's like you guys want to dig for oil forever and expect it to never run out. The piracy issue is finally coming to a head. You know it's illegal and wrong. There's no other reason you do it but that you're selfish like all humans and want something for free without paying money to its creator.
Time to make this judge walk the plank!
so like... slashdotting the jail eh? :)
What would happen if the Somalian pirates would learn from this? It probably would be safer though. I can imagine them writing out forms and applying for permits before hijacking a ship. If they really learn to mimic the European Political kind of way, we should have a head-start of about 3 to 4 years every time!
with a little act of solidarity with the Pirate Bay (assisting in the dissemination of copyright infringing material) whilst simultaneously making a wry comment on the dastardly Copyright Cartels and all their nefarious shennanigans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvP0uwl3Q6A
(perhaps their new theme tune?)
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
The judge is a member of copyright organizations. So? Isn't copyright the law? Knowing copyright law is probably why he's on the case.
I fail to see where the "circus" is. Frankly, I'm not sure why Slashdot has become so pro-piracy in the last few years, especially when Slashdot in its past has gone after other sites for copying its content--due to "copyright infringement."
"Sufferin' succotash."
NEVER WAS A SALE TO LOSE
A living breathing RIAA troll. Right here on Slashdot.
HEY GUYS! COME SEE THIS! IT'S A RIAA TROLL WITH A 5-DIGIT UID!
The way RIAA, MPAA, and their international sister organizations throws money and lawyers around, there cannot exist too many who have no affiliation with them...
Another Lawyer who needs to be shot out of a cannon. It seems most Lawyers are a pox on humanity. They are the Mandarins of contemporary western civilization with a lock or death grip on every important facet of existence. We need about ten percent of the number we have now and must break their guild apart.
Civil disobedience isn't near as effective as political lobbying.
seems reasonable in the remedies department, rather than outrageous BSA fines like microshaft adobe insists that you pay for what you were pirating.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Cool, sentenced to a years imprisonment within the national boundaries of Sweden. Beats where I live now.
"The Pirate Party now surpasses in size four smaller parties in Sweden" In other news, reseachers find that bigger mugs can hold more coffee..."
Prof. Hydén sums up by saying that to allow this kind of judgement the Swedish Parliament must first pass a bill making this kind of services illegal, which it has not done.
But this is exactly what the verdict claims, and the verdict does back it up with references to law, which, when read by a layman like me, seems to support the judge. In particular, the law on electronic commerce states quite clearly that a service provider is responsible for illegal data (like torrent files) stored on their system.
I am awaiting for the appeal to present some arguments against the verdict itself, and not just "the judge is biased because we lost".
Everyone claiming that the judge is biased, that the verdict is wrong - can anyone please present some arguments against the verdict itself?
For example: Why is the court wrong in finding that torrent files are accessories of a crime (copyright infringement)? Why is the court wrong in finding that paragraph 18 (services that store information - like torrent files - on behalf of clients and serve it) of the law on e-commerce applies to TPB.
While the comments on the size of Pirate Party are correct, it can also be formulated slightly different: PP is, in the moment of writing, the fourth largest party in sweden (with respect to the number of party members). (source )
By the rate of new members, PP should pass 'Centern' in the coming week or something like that, and thus become the third largest party.
PP's youth organisation is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the largest by far (actually has more members than the second and third combined).
It should however be noted that party membership in Sweden is not widespread, thus the actual voting result in an election will not necessarily reflect the membership records.
If you would like to contribute to the cause (for nothing else than just to spite the big media companies), you can make a donation here.
While I'm not sure they deliver merchandise abroad, they have a small shop where you can buy the obligatory t-shirt. Yes, the revolution accepts Visa.
Damn Swedish legal system - it's always bork, bork, bork!
the judge has inappropriately 'duped and influenced the lay assessors' during the trial: 'a judge that has decided that "this is something we can't allow" has little problem finding legal arguments that are difficult for assisting lay assessors to counter.'"
I thought that's what defense attorneys were for.
You know, countering the accusations.
"Everyone claiming that the judge is biased, that the verdict is wrong - can anyone please present some arguments against the verdict itself?"
No, they can't.
Why do you think there is so much focus on ad hominem attacks?
If there were a sound legal theory behind their points they wouldn't be wasting their time with petty elementary school type characte assasination.
By this you mean, "A bunch of idiots making stupid assertions because they lost and can't stand that the law says they're wrong"?
More like "an idiot on /. who doesn't actually understand the issues at hand, and then lashes out because he's a moron."
Here are he facts:
1. The judge has an *obvious* conflict of interest.
2. The judge refused to admit he has a conflict of interest.
3. After the conflict of interest was pointed out to the judge, he *still* refused to admit he was in conflict.
4. If you don't want people to think you're a clueless moron, you should read the fscking article before ranting about it.
What kind of work do members of the Swedish Pirate Party have to do? I know that members of the US Democratic and Republican parties aren't required to do any work and it would amaze me if Sweden were different. I know that in some countries, in order to join a party you have to pay dues, but whether or not that applies to Sweden, I wouldn't count it as "work".
"More like "an idiot on /. who doesn't actually understand the issues at hand, and then lashes out because he's a moron"
I'm glad you admit it, but it's kind of lame to own up but not log in.
and how much are you getting paid for posting here? That's what I thought.
Seems like some people are willing to write stuff here just because they have something to say. Well, some people are also willing to play music just because they have music in them that they want to let out. There is tons of free music all over the net, put there by the artists themselves for the enjoyment of their fans.
There is also lots of music that isn't given away free but which is sometimes copied without authorization, which is what the lawsuit was about. You know what? If the people making that music simply quit and do something else instead, then the supply of non-free music may dry up, but we will do just fine without it since so much free music will continue to be made.
The question then is whether it is worth having a set of obnoxious and invasive laws just for the purpose of protecting the interests of the nonfree music industry. It is perfectly legitimate to say it's not worth it, if one is willing to accept (or even actively desire) the consequence that the nonfree music industry will shrink or even completely disappear.
Some of us might add, "don't let the door hit your butt on the way out".
That extents EVEN to having no opinion on the law itself. He shouldn't be for or against a law, just rule on it. A judge ruling on a suicide should NOT be a member of the good samaritan help line. Bias.
Judges do more after all then just enforce the law, they judge the law itself. Plenty of laws made by politicians constantly get overturned by judges who not having any agenda but upkeeping the law rule that certain laws just cannot be.
One set of laws that has come under question is copyright law. How is a judge supposed to be able to listen unbiased to the for and againsts of a case if he already made clear what side he is on?
Remember that if this judge had rules the other way, new precedent would have been set, just as this ruling has set new precedent. To have that power, requires a judge not to go into the court with his mind made up. It is becoming clear that in this case, the accused were considered by the judge to be guilty before the trial had started.
if you don't see anything wrong with that, then my god man, you just don't deserve to live in a democracy.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Now is the time to involve some other investigators, like FBI, etc. to find out how much the judge and his entourage got paid by all these organisations to produce the verdict.
Organised crime is bad thing but this case is not organised crime, is it?
But torrent files are *NOT* illegal (yet).
This is precisely the problem. The judge wasn't obeying current law, but instead was distorting it in the direction of his and his friends' agendas.
Copyright law says nothing about tracker-like pointers to the locations of copyrighted materials, and it's extremely clear that the torrent files themselves are not subject to the copyright that covers the things that they point to.
I don't know what the Swedish laws are, but here in the US, a judge is supposed to recuse themselves if there's an appearance of impropriety. Note that word: appearance. There doesn't have to be any actual impropriety, it just has to look bad. Frankly, I think we have empirical evidence (in the form of protests and mass sign-ups to the Pirate Party) which proves that his failure to recuse himself appears improper, even if he's being honest about having made an unbiased judgment.
Anyhow, I'd like to thank him for not recusing himself. With any luck, he just gave the Pirate Party a huge boost right before some important elections in Sweden in which Pirate Party members hope to get a few seats AND the victory will be snatched away from the MAFIAA soon enough.
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
Too bad that approach won't work in the US, I hear they've hardened their servers
I believe someone from Sweden posted in a previous story that their jails were already full up, even without people turning themselves in. Apparently, there's a waiting line for when you do your time, with the exception that violent criminals skip to the front.
I live in Scandinavia, you insensitive clod!
Captcha: authors
If you read past the headlines, Oobama didnt abolish torture, the US will still use it as much as before but they only changed WERE they were going to torture.
But many intelligent people are going around claiming that torture was ended with Obama.
Which is were his great power lies; he does something and people want to believe so much that they dont read the fine print.
"A problem worthy of attack proves its worth by hitting back".
(From a little block puzzle created/inspired by Piet Hein)
Nothing whatever to do with TPB.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Pirate Bay, no matter what judge you got, you'd still be doing the same thing you are doing now...contributing greatly to the distribution of copyrighted materials against the wishes of the owner of the copyright.
The most you could have done would be to skate on a technicality, which would have just lead to the Swedish Parliament changing the law.
Get a clue. You aren't fighting for the freedom of information! You aren't standing up for the little guy! You're helping a bunch of people partake of the works of others without their consent.
And you're selling ad space to do it.
Cry me a river you jerks.
"MaulerOfEmotards sends along an in-depth followup, from the Swedish press, of our discussion the other day about the biased trial judge in the Pirate Bay case."
"The turmoil concerns Tomas NorstrÃm, the presiding judge of The Pirate Bay trial, who is suspected of bias
Can the explanation be as simple as KDawson being an idiot?
Professor Hydén continues with enumerating "at least three strange things in a strange trial" (translation): First, that someone can be sentenced for being accessory to a crime for which there is no main culprit: "This assumes someone else having committed the crime, and no such individual exists here... the system cannot charge the real culprits or it would collapse in its entirety." It is unprecedented in Swedish judicial history to sentence only an accessory. Second, that the accessories should pay the fine for a crime committed by the main culprits, "which causes the law to contradict itself." And third, that accessories cannot be sentenced to harsher than the main culprit, which means that every downloader must be sentenced to a year's confinement. Prof. Hydén sums up by saying that to allow this kind of judgement the Swedish Parliament must first pass a bill making this kind of services illegal, which it has not done.
I'm not certain on the second point, but the first and third definitely don't seem like problems to me: Imagine a guy I can't identify convinces me to help him commit a crime. If I'm caught and he's not, and there is sufficient evidence that the crime occurred and that I helped, I hope that, under any sensible legal system, I can be convicted of being an accessory to a crime. On the third point, at 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, I need only be found accessory to 10,000 individual counts of something punishable by one hour in jail for my accumulated penalty to reach 1 year. If I'm found repeatedly committing the same crime (or aiding in that crime), that's an aggravation, which makes the punishment I'm due end up on the worse end of the range, whereas the "main criminal" might be a first timer and, thus, not have any aggravating circumstances, thus taking the shorter term.
Of course, those arguments suppose that TPB is actually involved in a crime, which is a different argument altogether.
We picked a Socialist this time.
The most fun part is that since the anouncement.
The organisations have remade their webpage.
they rewrote the part where they describe the organisations. Before it sounded like they where a lobby group and now it sound like they are only discussing the issues. also the judge did make some speeches and has ben removed from the speakers list of a few event that he went to as a speaker.
if they have nothing to be ashamed over why would they need to edit the info
In 100 years, things will have settled into a two-party system.
If a judge is a member of a group that is against murder (for example the catholic church), he can still preside over a murder case. Of course on a murder case you have a dead person, and the person who is suspected of the killing is put on trial, and not the maker of the knife used for the murder.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
the only way to right these wrongs is to pirate physical objects... like ships off of Somalia. -Hold them ransom until our pirate heros are freed. right? .torrents everywhere!
http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/220764
in the name of repressed
Kill your TV
I know many people say the same thing, but just why should someone be "proud" of coming from a particular area?
Us versus them-ism?
Well one problem it's like trying to slashdot goat.cx. Nobody would volunteer to be to be 'first' before the server goes down ;-)
Not even close. Google indexes keywords and points you to relevant sites. The Pirate Bay hosts and distributes torrent files and provides trackers so they can function.
Google pointing to torrents is simply an incidental consequence of its legitimate uses and wouldn't even exist if bittorrent indexing sites like The Pirate Bay weren't operating.
I mean, literally impossible. Sweden is a socialist country, as much as any country in the world is Socialist. My libertarian friends assure me that socialists are people who have no initiative, and do not care about their rights. Therefore, these reports of a popular movement concerning civil liberties must certainly be lies. Protect your bodily fluids!
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
God, if that isn't a literal prisoner's dilemma then nothing is.
If everyone cooperates (turns themselves in), then they all win by having successfully blockaded (DoS'd) the attempt to criminalize what TPB is doing.
If only a few do, they get screwed.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Let's keep in mind that the fringe isn't always crazy, sometimes it's just ahead or behind the curve of opinion. Other times, the different small/fringe groups incorporate parts several "mainstream" ideologies.
The false dichotomy between "Democrats" and "Republicans" is actually damaging, because that itself is what can promote "extremists" to either lash out violently, or end up as powerful elected officials.
With some representation and need for coalitions, we actually might see some sanity in policy, rather than just constant ad-hominum attacks, unfounded "ethics investigations", and nobody would care about Hannity.
As is, the system is feeding a level of polarization that is not healthy, nor conducive to good policy.
Plus, the constant extreme swings of a 2-party-only system condemns us to such a mismash of existing law that entire statutes become self-contradictory.
Right now, we live in relatively stable times, but history shows that politics is subject to tsunamis of opinion shift. These usually happen when a major stress to the existing system occurs, and that is when you see revolution instead of evolution.
Even the appearance of a potential impropriety is itself an impropriety. Those are the rules that I had to deal with as an enlisted person in the USAF, and I would hope that a judge were held to at least that standard.
I say toss the case, and have a retrial before a verifiably unbiased judge.
Personally, I think the pirates deserved the sentence, but the trial is now tainted in my eyes. There's no way that I can respect this verdict because the trial itself appears to have been a "railroad job". Which means that no Swedish court ruling should be treated as credible if the ruling stands.
In American courts, IIRC, a judge who doesn't disclose a conflict of interest and recuse themselves faces impeachment (or removal) for this very reason.
Since you posted AC and I can't assess your linguistic skills via a profile, I'll just say we can agree to disagree on how to spell "there". Otherwise, you make a solid point.
But I think this guy goes one better. He's legislating from the bench, and not like the normal accusations, this is like putting innocent people in jail. If you are accused of being an idiot, you go to jail in my courtroom. Accused of wearing plaid, no warrant needed you're in Bubba's room.
Then the question: what is copy protection?
In case of DVDs, the original copy protection was CSS. But this has been broken so much that it is not much more than a protocol, just like encoding a video to mpeg or to wmv, this is just a little more data mangling that has to be done to get back the original image. After all copy protection (CSS, Bluray's system, whatever) is a mere protocol, an algorithm that has to be followed to be able to display the original image/movie/music.
Nowadays when popping a DVD in my computer, be it Linux or Windows, I expect it to play, not seeing anything about this "copy protection". I also kinda expect to be able to read the raw data, and with that to copy the DVD. Without noticing copy protection.
How do you (as consumer) know it's copy protected, thus illegal, or not copy protected, thus legal? Because it is written on the disk? Then just writing it on the disk would be enough to "copy protect" it?
Could be a nasty can of worms if the copy protection lobby would really want to bring this to court.
Someone who has deep knowledge of a group or place where they live should form an opinion about it. If the people have admirable qualities, the location has appealing vistas*, or the community has a proud history, then that should engender pride. People should tend to try to live where they find the most satisfaction in the most areas because to do so gives them a more pleasurable daily life.
If you therefore encounter someone who likes their area and speaks well of it, then you are encountering someone who shows the qualities that make them a person you are likely to enjoy knowing. If you meet someone who shows the opposite qualities, then they are not doing the things that are most likely to make them happy and that sort of thing is also contagious. In a nutshell, a person who doesn't like the home team is more likely to make your life unpleasant than someone who does.
* - Note the lowercase V, I don't know if there is anywhere that has appealing Vistas
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Your argument is essentially how the bittorrent protocol could be used while ignoring the standard way TPB does use it.
The intellectual dishonesty in this debate is absolutely staggering. If the fact that the site is named The Pirate Bay isn't enough to illustrate its purpose in unauthorized redistribution of copyrighted works, a browse through the top 100 torrents and their mocking I.P. owners should.
That is in fact quite a deep question. My own position on it would be that copy protection is in fact impossible for the general case:
Suppose we have a machine that reads information off a given type of media, like say a CD or a DVD, or even a floppy. Now, we will define an original as being a commercially provided disk, which may be played with in any way they like to make it harder to copy. Whatever they do, the disk must still be readable by the target system in order to be useful. This leads to two possible outcomes:
Firstly, if my system can read the disk, then it can save the contents internally and then make a copy to another media in a form that any machine can read.
Secondly, my system will be unable to distinguish between the original disk and a copy made by an exact duplicating process.
Now, the only way that the suppliers can prevent the first one happening is by having control of my machine to at least some degree. There is no reason why they should be allowed that, although of course the DMCA tries to give it to them. However I think we can say that this approach has not been particularly successful.
The second case corresponds more to commercial scale duplication and distribution....there are in fact machines that can produce identical copies of a given CD or DVD. But in fact this sort of copying is not really a major problem to anyone anyway, since the very scale needed makes it easy to detect and prosecute.
Really waht I am coming to is that copy protection is not a technical concept, it is a legal concept. Technically anything can be copied, so for the DMCA to talk about an "effective means of protection" is mere waffle...nothing is actually effective against a determined copier, as has been well demonstrated. The only real protection is the legal one, eg if we catch you with a copy we will prosecute you. That of course is only as effective as the means for finding people with copies.
We do have two rounds in our presidential voting. Compare Hillary Clinton to Dennis Kucinich--very different candidates, and both had an equal shot at the Democratic nomination. On the GOP side, compare John McCain to Ron Paul.
Outsiders don't stand a chance in elections because they are outsiders. If they were wildly popular they wouldn't be outsiders would they? I would say that a political system that keeps outsiders on the outside is not broken. Democracy does not mean lottery--not every candidate has an equal chance in elections. Failure of your (or my) favorite candidate to carry the day does not mean that the system is broken. It might just mean we don't have popular ideas.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
or... perhaps this gem...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUe-Ebe8dWU