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The Pirate Bay Seeks Interesting Route To "Pay" Fine
Drivintin is one of many who have written to tell us about how The Pirate Bay has taken an interesting approach to the 30 million SEK fine levied in their recent court case (which they said they wont pay). "The bill inspired anakata to devise a plan involving sending money to Danowsky's law firm, but not to pay the fine of course which they say will never be paid. Anakata's clever plan is called internet-avgift, internet-fee in English. Anakata encourages all Internet users to pay extremely small sums around 1 SEK (0.13 USD) to Danowsky's law firm, which represented the music companies at the Pirate Bay trial. The music companies will not benefit from this, instead it will cost them money to handle and process all the money."
I'd say a lot of people are rather contemptuous of the court that 'convicted' the T.P.B. people.
Now there's a flaw in our economy that's waiting to be exploited. Handling fees that are higher than the amount received, effectively draining the company of cash.
It would also drain resources and create massive amounts of paperwork. Even though the process may be mostly automated I'd hate to revise those books, assuming enough people had done this.
Kind of like a distributed denial of service attack.
Of course it's easily remedied by blocking all cash transfers under a certain amount. I guess you're not obliged to accept money, but still it'd cause some extra work. Probably not enough to bring any given company down, but an interesting thought nonetheless.
computers let you make more mistakes faster, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
^^^ Just my 2 cents.
The summary is incomplete here. They also asked users to request their payment to be reversed as 'false payment', and thats where the extra fees come from, as the swedish law firm is obligated to process them and send back to the payer.
Bad justice or not, I'm contemptuous of people who think taking work product from anyone without compensation is a valid and moral way of correcting a bad business model.
A complete boycott of sales combined with no illegal copying would have a much greater significance.
Well then it's a good thing TPB guys didn't download anything. Maybe you should go after the actual copyright infringers? What's that? This may not be right but is easier? That's fine, just make sure your bribe is big enough to get your personal law enacted since that would be "good" business in your world as that's what's being done here.
This does not scare the unemployed college student :-)
I had a friend in grad school whose credit card company screwed up his billing to the tune of 56 cents. He turned on the TV, poured himself a drink, and sat on the phone talking (wasting the time of) various people for hours over days until they just gave him the 56 cents (they never admitted wrong doing).
I remember this because I visited his apartment on the second day of his quest and thought to myself: "He's still at this?". While he was on the phone, the TV cut to breaking news of OJ Simpson leading police on a chase in a white Bronco. The CC company gave up about the same time as OJ.
I'm contemptuous at everyone and everything. except a tuna sandwich.
Or he could have had, y'know, a landline.
Car analogy: That's like using a bullhorn to tell the cops outside your house that you'll be out shortly to stick a banana in their tail pipe. When you get there, you'll find a 46" diameter tail pipe and you'll only have a one banana.
TPB may have gotten themselves in trouble, and been convicted by a biased court, but playing silly games isn't going to solve any problems. Childish acts, even if committed by thousands of kids on the inernet, will never amount to more than a flea on the war machine that is corporate greed. They have an organized team fueled by money, and you've got pent-up angst fueled by living in your mom's basement.
Who do you think will win?
Pirate Bay Founder Devises DDo$ Attack
Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm (aka anakata) recieved a bill for the 30 million SEK that he, along with Peter Sunde (aka brokep), Fredrik Neij (aka TiAMO), and Carl Lundstrom, was fined in the verdict of the Pirate Bay trial just over three weeks ago. The bill inspired anakata to devise a plan involving sending money to Danowskyâ(TM)s law firm, but not to pay the fine of course which they say will never be payed. Anakataâ(TM)s clever plan is called internet-avgift, internet-fee in English. Anakata encourages all Internet users to pay extremely small sums around 1 SEK (0.13 USD) to Danowskyâ(TM)s law firm, which represented the music companies at the Pirate Bay trial. The music companies will not benefit from this, instead it will cost them money to handle and process all the money.
The plan can be called a Distributed Denial of Dollars attack (DDo$). The plan is an away-from-keyboard DDoS attack. DDoS attacks involve lots of users overloading the victim with internet traffic damaging their ability to provide services. Money, instead of Internet traffic is used in this case. The victim is Danowskyâ(TM)s law firm which represented the IFPI at the Pirate Bay trial.
A friend of anakata told Blog Pirate that the bank account to which the payments are directed has only 1000 free transfers, after which any transfers have a surcharge of 2 SEK for the account holder. Any internet-fee payments made after the first 1000, which includes the law firmâ(TM)s ordinary transfers, will instead of giving 1 SEK, cost 1 SEK to the law firm. Since Danowsky & Partners AdvokatbyrÃ¥ is a small firm, all the transactions are handled by hand. Handling all payments will be time consuming, costing the law firm in productivity. Maybe it will even affect their success in other cases.
Make direct payments to
Danowsky & Partners Advokatbyrå KB. Plusgiro 79 31 21-5.
Additionally if after paying the internet-fee you determine that your payment was erroneous, Swedish law states that you can request the money back, putting an additional load on Danowskyâ(TM)s law firm.
Since the Pirate Bay crew was provided with such clear, logical, and well explained methods for calculating the damages in the trial, an explanation on how the internet-fee was calculated is provided. Use the formula below, substituting anything anywhere, to check that the internet-fee really is 1 SEK.formel
[MATH DIAGRAM GOES HERE]
The name internet-avgift, as well as the layout of the site is based on tv-avgift and they layout of its site. Radiojanst, a state owned company, is responsible for collecting TV license fees in Sweden.
Sounds like fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. My guess is the TPB guys are asking for more fines and jail time.
I'd also be interested how it is that someone sending me some kind of wire transfer would obligate me paying the costs of that transfer. I could understand if I was running some kind of online service where you gave me your credit card info and my software then turned around submitted that information for billing. I can't imagine a law firm providing that kind of billing service.
There is that priest-radical in Poland, who is known as Father Rydzyk, and all young people hate him and his movement. So they decided support him by sending 0.01 PLN (about 0.003 USD) each. Lots of students did just that, each one paying 0.01 PLN.
The case was that Father Rydzyk's movement was having special deal with banks, that they were paying all fees for incoming money. So, for each 0.01 PLN paid in, they had to pay about 1 USD - now this where Swedish guys had the idea from!
I'm a tuna sandwich, you contemptuous clod!
He wasn't just a member he was on the board of directors of one of the copyright lobby groups.
It's not a wire transfer. It's internet banking, and in North America, the majority of banks charge businesses for transactions above whatever number they've paid to be able to accept, akin to going over your minutes on a cell phone. apparently, Sweden has a similar banking system. But I do agree, it sounds like fraud on the part of the people who give the payments and ask for them back. However, based on TPB trial, TPB people would be the one held accountable for the actions of others.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
No, a judge who was potentially biased, and had a previous professional relationship with a procescutor applied law in a way not previously applied before. That is why people believe it unfair. Frankly, I'd accept it if it had been a judge without those issues who'd given the verdict.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Well, this will probably work just as well as that other loophole TPB found - you know, the one that made TPB legal and untouchable in Sweden...
The more I read about the PB guys, the more they appear to be a bunch of arrogant bastards who want a blank check to do whatever they want. There is certainly enough wrong with copyright law in Sweden as it stands now, but this Internet mob mentality is not the way to go about it.
To sum it up, the law firm has been DDOS:ed, the lead lawyer have received threats, as has the head of Sweden's anti-piracy board - and now this. This may be just the stunt for TPB's fans, but if you're trying to reach out to the "other side", and I have, shit like this just makes it harder.
Thanks anakata, or whatever the fuck you want to call yourself, thanks for being a childish dork and fucking everything up.
That depends on why they request that the payment be returned. If they wait until the conviction and fine are (hopefully) overturned, then the payment was indeed in error and they have every right to request a refund.
I do agree that this is a rather underhanded thing to do, but at the same time the contrarian in me thinks it's ingenious :)
Interesting, how so? Not even clever by a mile. As I see it there are several flaws present.
First of, the firm and the bank can see that the transactions are not normal and can probably work out a deal to minimise the finacial impact.
Secondly, the bank (after being contacted by the laywers) can cancel/reverse all 1 dollar/sek/... payments to the account.
In both the above cases, assuming it is possible to do, it won't really affect the lawyers, but instead office workers at the firm and bank(s). So they are hassling people that have nothing to do directly with the MPAA/RIAA/etc.
And why should the firm even accept these payments anyway, they are not even from TPB. It seems very far fetched that they would even spend the time to process any of them. Most likely they will just box them up and store them away. Who knows, maybe they can even use it to show the character of the people running/using TPB in future cases.
All in all if you want revenge, go after the right target and in a fitting manner. This just makes Gottfrid Svartholm look like a giant douche bag to me, the MPAA/RIAA/... will not be affected by this at all.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
It's fraud in the US if you do it for gain. Example: You go to Walmart, buy a TV and call your credit card company telling them the TV was broken and walmart wouldn't take it back. They would do a chargeback on Walmart and that would constitute fraud.
It's not quite that simple in this case. If you contribute 1 SEK towards TPB's fine and then have to ask for it back later when(if) a retrial finds them innocent, that's hardly fraud. Not sure if it will work the way they're expecting though.
I know in the US, my understanding(IANAL) is that retailers are only required to accept $50 in coins for any debt. Sweden may have similar laws precluding this law firm from being required to accept payments below a certain amount.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I don't use P2P but for everyone else I say go for it. Rob those bastards blind. Why? One sentence: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. Think about that for a minute. That man has been worm food (or a Popsicle depending on who you believe) for a half a fricking century and yet his first work, one made when cars were started with a crank and antibiotics were just a crazy dream, is STILL under copyright.
Copyrights were a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED copyright We, The People got a richer Public Domain. Instead they used outright bribery to corrupt our politicians and buy our laws away from us. So I say screw the thieving bastards. Let them rot. They used their money to steal our public domain away from us so if someone wants to steal from the thieves I say more power to them. I just can't be bothered because I honestly think their product is shit and isn't even worth stealing. But frankly expecting us to feel so sorry for those thieving bastards is just pushing it too far. Put the copyrights back to the way they were for over a century and quit robbing our public domain!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.