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Judge Reviewing Pirate Bay Trial Bias Is Removed
oh-my-god sends word that the Swedish judge assigned to review whether the trial judge in the Pirate Bay trial was biased has now been removed — for bias. Here's a local news account in Swedish, which Google fails to translate. We've discussed the convolutions of this case on more than one occasion.
when I first post.
I think we all saw this one coming. I'm suprised though that it happened so fast.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
he should have recused himself.
Good. That was a flagrant distortion of natural justice, whether it was legal or not.
Pretty smart judicial decision. And that's all I have to say about that.
Especially when you consider how public the conflict of interest was made.
Bork Bork Bork !!!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Are they trying to make their legal system look like a circus? If they are, they're succeeding, in spades.
Kind of wish you guys had waited for an article to be translated.
This is, after all, an English-language site. And submitters are not always the best judges of TFA.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
This doesn't even tell us how the judge was biased.
If anyone's wondering, both the original judge and the reviewing judge were part of the same copyright-supporting organizations.
Those poor bastards, they have us surrounded. Now we can fire at them in all directions!
I'm sorry but did slashdot just admit, on the frontpage, that they really do NOT want us to read the article? Who the hell says this is legit? The submitter? For all I know the frigen article says "Bwa hahaha, jack ass. You fell for it!". Seriously slashdot.. way to fail at even basic journalism.
Is it just me, or do he Pirates seem to be more virtuous than the Judges?
That was the funniest thing I've read on /. in a while. Ty!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Google fails to automatically translate the page, but not the content. Translation follows:
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
We apologise again for the fault with the judges. Those
responsible for sacking the judges who have just been sacked
have been sacked.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
...and the trial will be completed at the very last minute and at great expense. (cue llamas)
New judge in Pirate Bay case
Published: May 20, 2009, 10.11. Last changed: May 20, 2009, 17.04
The Court of Appeal replace the newly appointed judge in Pirate Bay case. The question of the district court was biased now determined by three judges from another department.
- The information may be mentioned that none of these are or have been members of any of the compounds are present in the case, write the court of appeal in a press release.
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Following reports that the newly appointed Court of Appeal judge in Pirate BaymÃ¥let previously been a member of the same compound as the copyright jÃvsanklagade District Court judge, asked the Court of Appeal president yesterday to hear unless another law departments should determine jÃvsfrÃ¥gan.
Today came the decision: Designated hovrÃtt Council Ulrika Ihrfelt, who works for the department which has a special focus on copyright and intellectual property goals, may not adjudicate the issue of the district court was biased.
Instead, jÃvsfrÃ¥gan be moved to another court of appeal of the departments and review by the department head, hovrÃtt lagmannen Anders Eka together with the Court of Appeal councils Christina Jacobsson and Ulrika Beer Grehn.
"The reasons for this is to jÃvsfrÃ¥gan to be reviewed by other judges than those which may subsequently come to try the case and that, having regard to the contents of jÃvs-opposition, deemed appropriate to jÃvsfrÃ¥gan be determined on a department that has not specialized on copyright, "writes the court of appeal in the press release.
JÃvsfrÃ¥gan should be treated with priority. Court of Appeal president Fredrik WersÃll expect that decision may come "in a maximum of a few weeks", states the TT.
The Court of Appeal will not go ahead with the Pirate Bay case until jÃvsfrÃ¥gan settlement. If NorstrÃm would be judged as biased, the goal can be sent back to district court and the ruling reopened.
Several of the condemned pirates defense lawyers argue that NorstrÃm been biased, particularly because he is a member of several compounds related to copyright. The four were sentenced to one year's imprisonment and to pay damages of 30 million.
While ideologically, I agree with you, reality often disagrees. Some people just can't separate their personal views from what they are supposed to be doing.
The Court of Appeals is replacing the newly appointed appelate court judge in the Pirate Bay-case. The issue of whether the local court Tingsrätten had a inappropriate bias will now be decided by three judges from a different department.
- It can be noted that none of these three are, or have been, members of any of the groups that are relevant in this case, the Court of Appeals write in a press release.
After learning that the newly appointed Court of Appeals judge in the Pirate Bay case has been a member of the same Intellectual property industry group as the local judge accused of bias, the president of the Court of Appeals was asked yesterday to try whether another department should rule on the issue of bias.
Today the decision was made: The appointed "Hovrättsrådet" Ulrika Ihrfelt, who works in the department specialized in cases on copyright/creators' rights and intangible assets, is not allowed to judge whether the local court had inappropriate bias when judging the case -"varit jävig".
Instead, the issue of bias will be moved to another department of the Appelate Court and be tried by the manager of that department, Anders Eka, and judges Christina Jacobsson and Ulrika Beergrehn.
"The reasons for this is partly that the issue of bias ought to be tried by other judges than those who could be asked to later judge in the actual case, and partly in consideration of the objection to the bias, it has been deemed appropriate that the issue of bias is decided by another department not specialized in copyright", the court writes in the press release.
Then issue will be decided with priority. The president of the Court of Appeals, Fredrik Wersäll, is counting on the decision coming "within some weeks at most", according to the news agency TT.
The Court of Appeals will not start handling the Pirate bay-case until the issue of bias has been decided. If Norström is considered biased the case can be sent back to the local court and the verdict will be torn up.
The defense lawyers of several of the convicted pirates claim that Norström had a bias, i.e through being a member of several industry groups connected to copyright. The four were sentenced to one year in prison and damages of 30 million SEK (ca $4 million).
(end of article)
Note that in Swedish, having had bias is almost the same as having been a dickhead. "varit jävig" vs. "varit jävlig".
I got bad news: According to the Spectrial (trial.thepiratebay.org), the Pirate Bay crew's inmate uniforms have fairly large holes in "the nether lands" and that the judge will forced them to wear them throughout the year. That's right, all their junk and anuses will be in danger of being - ironically - pillaged by other inmates.
No word yet on whether their suits will displayed on the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology.
The empire strikes back. In other news: The ITU recommends that network filters should be installed which prevent access to websites with child abuse material. It should not surprise anyone that such filters would be technically content neutral.
Maybe this has come up before, and I apologize for being off topic, but has anyone proposed the idea of a p2p network where the clients are licensed under a relatively open licensing, but have caveats in there denying that they can be used by specific groups? Not a lawyer and not very knowledgeable on how this stuff works, but it seems like if you could explicitly define what the **AA does to find the infringers is not permitted as acceptable use of the software, then I would think you might be able to hit them with DMCA complaints / C&D letters when they do.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
In this particular case he has worked with a group who has already shown a particular bias. You'd probably let an accountant count votes because he can count, but you wouldn't let that same accountant count the votes if he was also a campaign manager.
Are these people professionals or not?
Come on, man, they're literally people first and foremost! Look at all the so-called "professionals" working in the American financial industry and tell me that they were working for the good of their companies. Being bailed out by the gubmint is not a bullet point on any company's resume!
Brought to you by KT the Wonder Llama.
For clarity: the judge that is no longer judging the TPB-judge is a woman. Also, one of the three judges that are to take her place is a member of the same research group as two of the prosecutors lawyers. The show must go on!
BadAnalogyGuy is an old-school troll.
It's irritating, he's still a troll, but it's also refreshing to see this kind of craftsmanship again after years of freshman pseudo-libertarian bullshit.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
I have a question. Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay? You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right? That they were providing the torrent trackers that facilitated the distribution of copyrighted materials?
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore? Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work. The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses, who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about how evil they think capitalism is.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement. And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code. Apparently, piracy isn't theft and copyrights don't matter except when it benefits you.
TingsrÃtten is the lowest court, all cases go before a judge and three lay assistants that judge the case on the evidence.
HovrÃtten is the next level, its the district appeals courts of Sweden. A large number of cases end up here and are judged by three judges. Pirate Bay was always going to end up there since its such a difficult case.
HÃgsta Domstolen is the Supreme Court of Sweden, it only handles very sticky cases and those that set precedents.
What has happened is that the lawyers for the Pirate Bay people have appealed to HovrÃtten and also put forward a claim that the original judge in TingsrÃtten is biased due to his membership in an association for copyright interests. The HovrÃtts-judge that was going to assess this claim has previously been a member of such an association and has because of this been recused. A panel of three senior judges in the HovrÃtt is now going to first assess the TingsrÃtten judges possible bias and then make a determination if the trial needs to be remade in TingsrÃtten with a new judge, or if it should be redone in HovrÃtten. These three have no affiliations with special interest groups on copyright and do not practice that kind of law.
Im quite pleased actually that our Judicial system is so carefully dealing with the whole Pirate Bay mess.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
I side with PirateBay in this particular instance because there **was** a biased judge hearing their case, no more, no less.
In the interest of justice and fairness that a judicial system is supposed to have, I can only think that you would side with PirateBay also.
If not, then there must be some other agenda.
I guess, a killer of one of your relatives would be a good judge in your case, afterall, in the courtroom it is an impartial judge, not a killer, right?
This whole pirate bay thing is starting to read like the sacked moose in Monty Python credits. :\
> in Swedish, which Google fails to translate.
WHY NOT? With all the stuff that Google is throwing against the wall,
where is the SwedishEnglish translator? With all the stuff from
Star Trek that is really getting built, I think they will get a warp
drive and transporter working before the universal translator.
How am I supposed to flirt with the hot Swedish blondes without a
translator? And how do I get this lame US keyboard to make that
cool O with the slash through it? My keyboard is defective! Who
do I sue? "mOOse bites" just doesn't look right without the slashes.
Unfortunately it looks like you're going to get buried when you made a legitimate point.
Some activities that are considered wrong in some cultures are perfectly fine in others. What's wrong is for huge powerful cultures to pressure everyone else to adopt their moral code.
Copyright infringement is OK as long as it not a GPL violation. I'm allowed to download stuff for free because I don't want to pay the MAFIAA for stuff that I don't want. They can't stop me. Fuck the MAFIAA and fuck BSD.
That activity is not considered wrong in my culture.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Because we're geeks, and we understand geek issues before the average non-geek begins to grasp it.
Or, in other words... because they're right.
New judges in the Piratebay-case
The supreme court replaces the new judge in the Piratebay-case. The bias question is now being decided by three other judges from another department. - For your information i'll mention that none of these three judges are currently nor has been members of any of the associations topical in this case, writes the surpeme court in a press release.
After information regarding the new supreme court judge in the Piratebay-case previously was a member of the same copyrightassociation as the bias accused judge, the supreme court president yesterday to try if it's not up to another department to decide the bias accusation.
Today came the decision: Appointed supreme court adviser Ulrika Ihrfelt, who works at the department that specializes in copyright and immaterial cases, aren't allowed to judge about whether the court are guilty of bias.
Instead the bias case will be moved to another of the supreme courts departments and there to be tried by the departments chief (supreme court lawman?) Anders Eka, together with supreme court advisers Christina Jacobsson and Ulrika Beergrehn.
"The reasons for this are both that the bias question should be tried by other judges then those who late will judge the case and considered the content of the bias-objection, it's being decided appropriate that the bias-case is being concluded in a department other than the one who specializes in copyright", writes the supreme court in it's press release.
The bias case is a priority. Supreme court president Henrik Wersäll count on a decision "within a few weeks tops", states TT.
The supreme court won't handle the Piratebay-case until the bias question is settled. If Nordström would be judged biased the case could be sent back to district court and the sentence would be withdrawn.
Several of the sentenced pirates lawyers means that Nordström has been biased, partly according to the fact that he is a member of several associations connected to copyright issues. The four was sentenced to one year in prison and fined 30 million Swedish kronor ($3 841 671).
Emma Johannisson +46 8 13 59 24 emma.johannisson@svd.se
Should be a bit better than Google Translate:
Following information that the newly appointed courts of appeal [1] judge in the Pirate Bay trial has been a member of the same copyright association as the district court [2] judge currently accused of bias, the president of the court of appeal was yesterday asked to investigate whether or not another department within the court should settle the issue of bias.
Today came the decision: The appointed Justice of the court of appeal [3], Ulrika Ihrfelt, who works in the department specializing in copyright and immaterial rights, is not allowed to judge in the question of whether there was bias in the district court's decision.
Instead, the question of bias will be moved to another department within the court, and there be judged by the head of the department, lawspeaker [4] Anders Eka, together with the Justices of the court of appeal Christina Jacobsson and Ulrika Beergrehn.
"The reasons for this is partly that the issue of bias should be determined by other judges than those who might later be called upon to preside in the case, and partly that it, considering the nature of the bias-objection has been found appropriate that the issue of bias is determined in a department not specializing in copyright", the court of appeal writes in the press release.
The issue of bias should be prioritized. President of the court of appeal Fredrik Wersäll, is expecting a ruling "in a few weeks, maximum", TT reports [5].
The court of appeal will not start the Pirate Bay trial until the until the issue of bias has been settled. If Norström would be ruled as biased, the case might be sent back to the district court and the ruling there declared invalid.
and I will say it again, the entertainment industry's thud and blunder litigation tactics have transformed a gang of thieves into folk heroes.
Seriously. I'm sure the media lobby there is powerful, and I know that Sweden also has a significantly sized Pirate Party... but there has to be plenty of judges that are members of neither, and have no special reason to especially support either side.
I have a question. Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay? You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right? That they were providing the torrent trackers that facilitated the distribution of copyrighted materials?
Because they're like our modern day Robin Hood. They rob from the rich and corrupt, and give to the poor, in a sense.
In reality, they've abided by Swedish law. They do not give people illegal files. They do not host illegal files. They do not even link to illegal files. What they do is link to links that will link a computer to what could be illegal files (or legitimate files). They're just total bastards about it because someone who doesn't like their stuff being distributed by people who their links linking linking to is in a big huff and can't legally do anything about it, so they're breaking greater laws to bring these Robin Hoods to justice (through federal corruption).
So in a sense, you're watching two guys fighting it out. One is neutral (not good or bad, technically, as they facilitate both with their hands off the watch) and the other is evil. It's allowable for us to boo and hiss the villain when he's brought a gun to a knife fight. It's also allowed for us to cheer the morally-neutral anti-hero as he brazenly swashbuckles and insults the villain's poor taste of dress (all the while winking at the crowd with a smile that says "It's ok guys, I got this!").
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
You know, "-1 Flamebait" is no substitute for "-1 Disagree and wish to censor". I don't agree with bonch either, but his post is certainly no flamebait.
I can't answer your question regarding why Slashdot sides with TPB, but I can tell you why *I* side with TPB. I believe that when copyright is no longer primarily used to protect the artist but to protect the publisher, something's really, really wrong with it. And when publishers use this to their advantage and charge people prices they cannot afford, it's just reasonable for them to illegally download stuff. I do not think it is ok to rip off the devs of software or musicians, but I also disagree with it being ok to rip off customers. I download music which is either not available in my country or not available without paying craploads of money for it (sorry, but I refuse to pay ~30â for a CD, especially when the artist which I want to support only gets, say, a third of that cash anyways). I download games because I do not want to support a publisher which uses extremely restrictive DRM and installs rootkits on your PCs (and also because these games are not available in my preferred language in my country and importing is extremely expensive thanks to taxes).
Also, re:GPL...while stealing both GPL code and stealing closed source code is wrong, there is a significant difference. People who release their code under a GPL license want that other people learn from it, evolve it, etc, but also wants that other people can learn from the evolved code as well. Using code from the GPL is fine, but other people should be able to learn from *your* code as well.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
One Sentence: Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright. The man has been dead more than half a century and his FIRST work, made when cars were started with cranks and antibiotics were but a dream, are STILL under copyright. Thanks to the blatant and illegal bribery of our elected officials copyright terms have been extended to virtual eternity and the public domain gets raped of content that should already be ours. US copyright law was a contract-nothing more. In return for a LIMITED monopoly on a work you gave up the rights to that work to a public domain that ALL could benefit from. Now the rights of BOTH the artists and the citizens have been taken by greedy multinational middle men.
So do most folks give a flying fuck if you rip those thieves off? Not really. Hey, we'll just call it Hollywood accounting.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Obviously, in /. universe, a judge who respects the law of copyright is biased. In other, alternative, universes judges who respect the law are respected.
He didn't respect the law of copyright. He respected the copyright holders more than the law. That was the claim of bias. The Pirate Bay is operating under the letter of Swedish law and this judge allowed the twisting of the law enough so these fellows could be convicted. That's not respect, that's abhorrence.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Major piracy ring? They ran a search engine that provided links to torrents which accessed trackers which then gathered information on thousands of computers. No copyrighted material was hosted by them, nor produced by them.
Thus the fight against Pirate Bay is more against an ideology rather then any actual law.
The people on slashdot are not downloading JUST TV Shows and Movies, some of us turn to piratebay like sites for documentaries, tutorials and all sorts of things that in no way relate to SONY or MGM.
I for one am happy that Slashdot has fairly reported the clear biased and corrupted trials against these individuals. If not in the name of free and open information, but in the name if justice.
> Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay?
Because many of us think private, non-commercial filesharing is not wrong, so it shouldnt be illegal, _regardless_ of the fact that authors of the shared stuff think otherwise.
> Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here
> anymore?
Because they prefer to live in denial in their ivory tower and dont like to be constantly reminded by slashdot how real life out there looks like? (Oh irony.)
> that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work.
Copying, sharing culture is _not_ wrong. Everybody not OK with the fact that free people fileshare freely should _STOP WORKING_ in a job where he hast to constantly bitch about filesharing. Or he can keep on, but has to come up with a business model other than "selling copies" because it's 2009, and everybody of us can manufacture their own copies themselves, we do not need any "official" copies any more, thank you. Adapt or fucking perish. We wont abstain from using new technology in order to make your business model still work like it did in the 50's.
> clicking and posting about how evil they think capitalism is.
We would not have to do this if you and your likes wouldnt keep clicking and posting about how evil you think a free culture is, and how harder the for-profit censorship called copyright should be.
> And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code.
So? You forget that the only point of comming up with the GPL was to "effectively remove copyright" in the GPLsphere. Although the GPL is enforced by copyright, the underlying goal of "free software" is to effectively destroy copyright.
> Apparently, piracy isn't theft and copyrights don't matter except when it benefits you.
When a company "steals" GPL code, it gets it out of copyright-free GPLsphere, so yes, from the point of view of the GPL, thats fundamentally bad.
I have a question. Why do you side with the RIAA? You are aware that they are running a major frivolous lawsuit campaign, right? That they are extorting settlement money by threatening to sue the weakest and poorest, those least able to defend themselves, irrespective of any evidence? It's one thing to side with copyright, quite another to side with the MAFIAA.
How do you know whether big names post here anymore? The MAFIAA has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work. Hollywood accounting has burned a lot of artists. The MAFIAA thinks capitalism is evil, and has worked very hard to eliminate all competition. Nor have they restrained themselves from driving up ad revenues by trying to force DVD owners to watch commercials before being allowed to view the main feature.
The MAFIAA continues to falsely push claims that piracy is theft. The only copyrights that matter to MAFIAA members are the ones they can control. They will violate others' copyrights, and if caught, will refuse to pay until they're at least threatened with a lawsuit. What's that, you want to see the evidence they have indeed done that? Well, where's your evidence that Slashdot has done what you say?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Actually, there is a very good reason to support The Pirate Bay. It hurts the *AA.
And we need to get those reduced to oblivion so copyright can once again be a reasonable tradeof between the authors and the consumers.
Because when laws get passed on behalf of single companies (Disney, I'm looking at you), then there is something deeply rotten. And bankruptcy of those media companies would be a good thing. So anything along that path is a good idea.
There is also this thing that laws which are stupid or inapplicable need to be exposed. In the hope that those who passed them get voted out of office (yeah, I'm an optimist).
Unfortunately, TPB also helps pirate software, which in turn helps the likes of Microsoft, because of the network effect. So nothing is perfect, I guess.
I would say many Slashdotters usually side with Pirate Bay because they are in most cases geeks, and geeks by nature tend to be pro-individual to the point of being anti-establishment.
However, in this case your characterization is inaccurate. The Pirate Bay was not "running a major piracy ring." They were providing a technology that enabled the masses to run their own piracy ring(s), but that is different. To rework an old analogy: It would be inaccurate to say that handgun manufacturers were robbing gas stations. It can be argued that they enable illegal activities, but if they were held legally responsible for the actions of the users of their product and forced to shut down, the 2nd Amendment would effectively be right out the window.
The xxAA groups found they had too much trouble catching and prosecuting the innumerable points of copyright infringers, so they decided to aim at a larger target and pray they could take it down. They are holding The Pirate Bay responsible for what their users did with the technology, and in the first pass they seem to be getting away with it so far.
Were they doing something wrong? I don't think so, but that's not really up to me to make the final decision. Certainly they weren't "running a piracy ring" as you claimed.
I have a question. Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay? You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right? That they were providing the torrent trackers that facilitated the distribution of copyrighted materials?
You sir are a troll, and you are completely ignorant if you believe this! The true crux of the case is the fact they have done nothing illegal. Sure, maybe American law says they have (incorrectly), but in their country everything they have done is 100% legal *WHETHER OR NOT YOU LIKE IT, OR WHETHER YOU DEFINE IT AS 'PIRACY'*.
TFA is directly addressing the fact that the Judges have been removed because they are a part of the organization who wants TPB prosecuted-- in itself a conflict of interest at best, at worst illegal.
We need to remember that despite the way America and the European Union would like it to pan out, we do not have the authority to force other autonomous countries to abide by our own interpretations of OUR OWN laws; and even if we did, I would hope to god that it would be over something more important than shared mp3's and movies... say how about prosecuting war crimes on behalf of the Bush/Cheney administration? Surely taking a few-hundred-thousand lives is illegal too?
I am open source, and Linux baby!
use of that made-up word proves you are not and therefore you have no standing to sue.
... to stop Finland and Sweden from looking like a big cock and balls on the 2 euro coin.
I have a question. Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay?
Slashdot is a community made up of thousands of people. I doubt there is any subject, including whether or not slashdot sucks, that the community has a consensus on.
You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right?
I'm not aware of that at all. Considering they do not handle any copyrighted information and no copyrighted information flows through any servers they control, i'd say it's a pretty big stretch to say they are running a major piracy ring.
That they were providing the torrent trackers that facilitated the distribution of copyrighted materials?
They provided text files that told people where people were providing files to download. Some of those people were providing copyrighted content.
Telling someone that someone else is selling or giving away content is not illegal, at least not where i am. Nor should it be illegal in my opinion.
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore?
Because he's busy building space ships?
Have you had specific conversations with Mr. Carmack about his posting habits or are you just making shit up? My suspicion is that you are making shit up.
Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work. The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses, who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about how evil they think capitalism is.
Again, Slashdot, as a community, doesn't really have a consensus about anything, including if Microsoft is evil and if the GPL is a good thing.
Also, if the goal is to drive up page views, the best way to do that is to post articles that are at odds with the consensus as that will cause flame wars. Nothing generates page views and comments like a contrarian point of view stated as if it were a fact.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement.
Do you have a citation for this? I do not recall that ever happening, which is not to say it didn't, but that i don't know what you are talking about.
And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code. Apparently, piracy isn't theft and copyrights don't matter except when it benefits you.
In some slashdotters that apparent dichotomy does exist. I would guess it has to do with intent. People who favour the GPL see it as an important tool for protecting the freedoms of the users of software. Some of these people probably also view the behaviour of the record and movie industries as an abuse of the users of their products and consider the nullification of their copyrights as an appropriate punishment for their actions.
Of course some people also just want stuff for free.
But to try to make sweeping conclusions about the thousands of people who read slashdot based on the one or two hundred people who post on these stories is not in any way valid.
For my part, i am on the side of the pirate bay because i don't think they've done anything illegal. The police and copyright holders should be going after the people seeding the files, not the people saying "those guys are seeding files". If getting the seeders is too technically hard for them, that's too bad. They shouldn't get to go after innocent people just because it's easier.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
That helps one hell of a lot.
You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.
That said, if the Swedes wish to deal with only their own intellectual property, they're welcome to do so.
Here's the clue though...most of what's being downloaded off PirateBay is not from Sweden, and the most Swedish thing about it is the occasional Volvo.
The difference between handgun manufacturers and the Pirate Bay is one of immediacy. There's no company named "The Robber's Den" that has sales reps selling guns right next to every gas station, and which winkingly alludes to the fact they're facilitating others in criminal activity. Such a company almost certainly would be held financially, if not criminally, liable.
If your intent is to get away with something like this, you shouldn't be so stupidly blatant in advertising that you're facilitating so-called piracy. Given their antics, one of the few good things to come out of a judgment against them would be for people to be a bit more intelligent in how they work against IP laws. (This reminds me of Scrabulous and how they thought they could rip off Scrabble, but the twits actually used the term Scrabble in their website. That's just not the brightest thing to do, folks.)
The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses, who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about how evil they think capitalism is.
Capitalism is about competition. Intellectual Property is about suppressing competition by granting monopolies. IP laws are inherently anti-capitalistic. It seems the modern definition of capitalism is government ensuring companies profit despite their successes or failures. That really is corporatism.
1) The people who are pro-piracy are not necessarily the ones who are pro-GPL enforcement, and are not the same ones who try to enforce copyright on Slashdot's stories.
2) Many times the GPL violators were themselves in the copyright mafia. Even if you don't agree with a law, that doesn't mean you can't laugh at corporations that can't follow their own rules.
If you create a farce out of it, you are making it more likely that the people get what they want, which is freedom for TPB, while still giving the Americans the sort of justice they're demanding (which is to say, secretly (but then not-so-secretly) biased judgement and a sneaky underhanded attempt to manipulate the justice system in their own favour.)
I love it. I think, if it was done on purpose for that reason, it's genius, which I suppose wouldn't be a first for the Swedes. :)
Well yes "they" might be breaking a US law but "they" where well within "their" rights in "their" own country and because of pressure from the US.of. asses (i live in NC, USA btw) "their" own country decided to set aside the "rule of law" on several different occasions to try and ruin them.
Instead of doing the standard thing and going and hiding in the corner they have been fighting back.
Regardless if you agree with what "they" are doing you have to give them props for standing up for "their" rights under "their" countries laws which are not being "honored" in "their" own country.
As far as someone not posting here anymore that is "their" right... So let them go eat cake.... Yellow cake...
ae
There's no company named "The Robber's Den" that has sales reps selling guns right next to every gas station, and which winkingly alludes to the fact they're facilitating others in criminal activity. Such a company almost certainly would be held financially, if not criminally, liable.
Not yet there isn't...but I smell BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY! Who wants to go in with my on my robbery-based business?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
just a note: by 1928 cars were mostly being started with an electric starter. cadillac had the first succesful one in 1912 and i hav a 1916 hudson that i've never had to crank in 14+ years of ownership (i can't vouch for my great great grandfather though.. the car has been in my family since new)
Piracy doesn't matter when copyright no longer supports the public interest.
Personally, I enjoy the forward looking nature of their sketches so much more than Nostramadus :-)
Insert
Hi there.
I'm an indie developer who makes games from his spare bedroom. I earn less than most software developers do, and have fuck all pension plan or work benefits,
The piratebay make it possible for people to rip me off and take a game that takes me 10 hours a day a year to make... for free.
The piratebay is funded by a right wing millionaire businessman closely connected to fascist and racist organisations in Sweden. Google 'carl lundstrom' for details. TPB has many adverts and is one of the most popular sites on the whole web. It also has minimal bandwidth costs because it makes a big fuss out of not hosting anything.
In short, it makes a mega-fuckton of ad money from other peoples work.
Explain to me again how thepiratebay earning money from ads whilst giving away my work for free, and lining the pockets of its millionaire founder is anything like a fucking robin hood?
They are thieves with an awesome PR dept. Its sad to see so many otherwise reasonable and nice people fall for the blatant bullshit about them being heroes. This is PR spin. How much of that money they collected in donations to buy an island did they stick in their bank accounts?
Where is the prominent spot on TPB to promote non-riaa bands and indie film producers? where is the 'free speech and pro-democracy' section on their homepage?
Face facts, TPB is about getting ad impressions for distributing the same mass-market shit everyone pretends to hate.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Y'know, calling them the MAFIAA doesn't make your case for you, as it tends to lend doubt to your claims about them.
Oh my fucking god.
You mean if I want to make a cartoon now, i might have to have an original idea?
Fuck. I can see that it really would enrich our culture if we could just regurgitate Disney cartoons rather than coming up with South Park, The Simpsons and Ren and Stimpy.
They would all have been much better with a fucking cartoon mouse in them.
Evil copyright bastards.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
There are certain things though to be fair that they say is too valuable to the people to be copyrighted.
Such things as combine wheat harvesters when they first became motorized and it was no longer cut by man, the machines were deemed too important and valuable to the people of America to be copyrighted by one man.
I think the patent was between Gleaner Manufacturing Company and Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co., it was revolutionary at the time as it increased crop production.
That is total bullshit! If a guy brings a gun to a knife fight he is smart not evil. :p
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Walt Disney Co. has asked the Los Angeles Superior Court to dismiss a lawsuit raised almost 12 years ago by a family-owned firm that owns the rights to Winnie the Pooh which alleges that Disney owes it merchandising royalties of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Disney has been mainly losing but has managed to draw this out, as far as I can tell, to this very day (18 years). On Monday, June 26, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thus sustaining the Appeals Court ruling. (cited reference)
Or maybe not. Disney managed to drag out the proceedings long enough that eventually they won the proceedings in the state of California, in the end. It seems that the other side had hired the wrong P.I. after starting to get crazy about Disney's creative accounting (there was a claim that Disney had been destroying evidence in this case, also).
And as far as I can see, the Federal lawsuit which was threatened by the rights owners isn't going to finish in the near future, even as the big D continues to rake it in, year after year.
If you really hated the RIAA you would just not listen to music made by its members.
If TPB really hated the RIAA it could do massive damage to them right this very second.
They would just remove all RIAA music from their site today, and make the top 100 on the most popular music website on earth be a list of non-riaa music.
Instant marketing dynamite for being a non-riaa band.
Something tells me they don't give a fuck though. They will do whatever gets them ad-impressions.
If piracy was all about sticking it to the RIAA, why do you all continue to perpetuate their music as the most popular and sought-after?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Why would you download stuff you don't want?
Some additions to the translation:
"jÃvsanklagade" --- "jäv" means bias, "anklage" means accuse, "anklagede" means accused (i.e. defendant).
"jÃvsfrÃ¥gan" --- "frågan" is derived from question; "the question of bias"
"Today came beslutet:" --- today it was decided.
"immaterialrÃttsliga" --- immaterial rights or immaterial law. That is, intellectual property.
"jÃvs-invÃndningen" --- complaint, objection (regarding bias).
"specialinriktning" --- special interest? Unsure about this one.
(I'm Danish, Danish and Swedish are somewhat similar languages. I'm not 100% sure, but quite close.)
Just as long as he's not killing BadAnalogyGuy's brother during the trial, BadAnalogyGuy is probably ok with it!
The judge must be limited to offing BadAnalogyGuy's relatives to time periods before or after the trial. During is not professional.
Didn't this Judge still recognize membership in the organization during the trial? You sir, BadAnalogyGuy, have managed to make a bad analogy on many different levels! Truly a well crafted troll indeed.
I sided with the PirateBay because:
1. It was the users sharing the files that should be at fault
2. The case was overseen by a biased judge
I think that point 1 is a really big deal for many reasons. What if I created a site in order to allow people in oppressive nations to share political videos and files that would be too dangerous to do themselves? What if a bunch of copyright violators decided to start using it also? In order to protect the privacy of my oppressed clients, I do not store logs, and will not allow anyone to monitor the site. However, say I respond to take down notices, but do to the sheer volume, it takes me a long time to respond to them.
Should I be held accountable?
If you say, "well no, if you are trying to 'keep it clean' it is the users fault not yours.", I think most people, not all, would agree with you. Now, what if I change the title of my site from "Helping Opressed People" to "Sticking it to the RIAA". Everything is the same, just the title changed. Should I be held accountable now, because it appears that my intent is different, despite still complying (slowly) to take down notices?
Now you'll probably respond by saying, "The Pirate Bay did not comply with take down notices" which was true. However, this is a slippery slope in my opinion. I forget which one, but a torrent site is being sued right now, despite complying, and despite not even providing the tracker. They just provide a search mechanism...
I guess what I'm getting at, is how can we ever share information anonymously if every service provider is held accountable for all actions by all users on their service?
If a bought a open lot in a city, cleaned it up, and named it "Fun Park - Open to the public" and a bunch of crack dealers started hanging out in it, am I responsible for the crack dealing? How is that different than a normal public park? The police don't arrest city officials for "facilitating drug selling/use", why would the arrest me? The would though. If it was private land with a bunch of drug dealing going on, I'd get in trouble.
So thinking about the public versus private park analogy again, the solution seems to be, the only way to allow a free, anonymous exchange of information would be a public funded server/service for sharing files and information. Do you really think that will ever happen? And would you feel comfortable as a dissenter/protester publishing to a federally sponsored government server?
There just has to be a legal way to share files without the owner of the service being responsible. So far, very few organizations have been able to pull it off. The only ones that can, have had to devote massive resources to responding to take down notices. And the negative aspect of being so large, is that those organizations often end up complying with other government take down notices, for reasons beyond copyright (such as google/youtube or others removing information, like complying with china's request to filter the ten. square google results).
No, they do quite a bit more than that. They run tracking software which is responsible for collating those pieces and advertising them, enforcing rules about who can do what with them, all those little bits of the torrent protocol.
And then they make money off of the use and download of them.
Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay?
Read the +5 Comments.
You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right?
They weren't breaking the law.
That they were providing the torrent trackers that facilitated the distribution of copyrighted materials?
In effect, so does Google.
Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work
No, it hasn't.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement.
Yes, it's absurd when the details in your mind are muddy.
It doesn't make sense because you don't understand the other side. Seriously, that is the entire source of all your confusion. Try asking questions instead of posturing for a +5.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You're not sweden are you? Because you actually miss a very major point there. In here judges think about the actual purpose aswell and I dont think its a secret to anyone what The PIRATE Bay was doing. So if you intentionally assist with something, you will be charged for it no matter if you circumvent the law with some stupid way. The intention here counts a lot more than what I've heard it counts in USA, and you have to take that into consideration aswell. I dont think the pirate bay guys did..
What?
How is it capitalism if you don't have to compete with my product, but just give my product away and claim it is yours?
This is what abolishing IP does.
In fact it is the complete antithesis of creativity and culture, because it enables everyone to re-use other peoples creative works rather than make their own.
If I could get people to buy the Sims from me, without having to bother making it, that sounds like an easy life. As it goes, that's illegal, so when fooling around with game ideas I came up with a life-sim game that is completely different, which I then sell for money as a competing product.
Is the world a better place because there are now 2 competing products? or would we be better off if everyone just copies the first one?
I'm glad CCP had to make eve on-line rather than just making Elite Online. I'm glad that I have the choice between world of warcraft and lord of the rings on-line.
Killing off intellectual property is the best way imaginable to totally kill off competition. Nobody can compete with free and their is zero incentive to innovate if you can just carbon-copy the market-leader without penalty.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Sweden don't have copyright, we have "upphovsmannarätt", "the creators rights", or droit d'auteur as it is usually translated to within international organisations. It's mostly based on French legal tradition, not that Anglo-Saxian mumbo jumbo. Pressure from international communities against US in the 80' s made American copyright laws more like droit d'auteur and US pressure in the 90's and 00's have made droit d'auteur more like copyright in many countries, but it is still two different beasts.
What you do not understand is that here in Sweden (and other nordic area) intention counts a lot in court aswell. If you happened to follow how they acted on stuff, and what their name (just fyi The PIRATE Bay) was, I'll bet you see the intention aswell. As much as the 'nerds' here like to think, we dont follow everything 'technically' 100% but the intention counts aswell.
And let me state, I hope everything will be okay for the tpb guys. But these pro-piracy comments seem to have little to no idea how it actually works.
google and TPB and entirely hugely clearly and demonstrably different.
Google obey the rights and wishes of copyright-holders. You can have google search results and blog pages and other links removed easily just by sending a DMCA complaint to google.
TPB openly mock people who even request that files be removed.
To claim the two are the same is either ill-informed, or an attempt to blind people to the way TPB and google operate in order to justify TPB's actions.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
What you do not understand is that here in Sweden (and other nordic area) intention counts a lot in court aswell. If you happened to follow how they acted on stuff, and what their name (just fyi The PIRATE Bay) was, I'll bet you see the intention aswell. As much as the 'nerds' here like to think, we dont follow everything 'technically' 100% but the intention counts aswell.
What you do not understand is that here in Sweden (and other nordic area) intention counts a lot in court aswell. If you happened to follow how they acted on stuff, and what their name (just fyi The PIRATE Bay) was, I'll bet you see the intention aswell. As much as the 'nerds' here like to think, we dont follow everything 'technically' 100% but the intention counts aswell.
You seem to the thinking of Sweden being 'bittorrent' haven because its been in news so many times. Well, now they're actually taken action about it and because of their intention, it doesnt seem good.
ah cool. as usual, slashdot mods me flamebait rather than try and explain why I'm wrong by replying. Some people REALLY don't like carl lundstrom's name being mentioned. Does the 'keep sweden white' politician somewhat embarrass the left-wing supporters of 'free content' maybe?
Some background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Lundstr%C3%B6m
"According to the Swedish leftist magazine Expo, LundstrÃm is a financier of various right wing organizations and was a member of the nationalist organization Bevara Sverige Svenskt ("Keep Sweden Swedish"). Some years later he was noted as a financier of the Swedish Progress Party. He left the Progress Party in 1992 for the newly founded New Democracy.
However, when LundstrÃm's membership in New Democracy was brought to attention by the media the party's leadership demanded his expulsion. In March 1992, LundstrÃm left the party and, according to himself, politics. However, according to Expo, LundstrÃm has later donated money to the National Democrats and other "far right parties" and also ordered "national socialist and revisionist material from white power companies"."
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Nobody can compete with free...
Tell Apple that.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The difference between handgun manufacturers and the Pirate Bay is one of immediacy. There's no company named "The Robber's Den" that has sales reps selling guns right next to every gas station, and which winkingly alludes to the fact they're facilitating others in criminal activity.
Except they're not selling the guns. They're telling you where you can find individuals willing to provide guns like any good B-Arkian Golgafrinchan and their dark overcoats resemble the jackets of NASCAR drivers with promotional logos plastered over them.
And they're telling anyone who comes by, even law enforcement if they were so inclined to ask.
So they're called "The Pirate Bay". What is in a name? A Google by any other name would search the web for filetype:torrent just as well.
Like Craigslist, it appears one's Right to Peaceably Assemble is being denied on-line when whosoever provides the venue can be made liable for doing so.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Google obey the rights and wishes of copyright-holders. You can have google search results and blog pages and other links removed easily just by sending a DMCA complaint to google.
Blog pages are actual content. Torrent trackers and links to those torrents are not. Google caches still point to torrent files.
To claim the two are the same is either ill-informed, or an attempt to blind people to the way TPB and google operate in order to justify TPB's actions.
Actually it's niether. TPB wasn't hosting any copyrighted content. They weren't even breaking any laws. If that sets a precedent, Google's exposed. Really this was about them having the word 'Pirate' in the name.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, like Disney has ever made a film that was an original idea. Well, ok, they are a big company that makes lots of films, but still, actual original ideas are probably at less than 30 percent for them. Case in point, _Steamboat Willie_ vs. the Buster Keaton flick it stole its name from _Steamboat Bill Jr._.
I just read a novel wherein one of the main characters said to himself while arguing a lost cause: "I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees." It was rather poignant in the context.
If this novel were in the visual medium of animation, it would probably not be possible (or financially reasonable) to make such a reference. That is at least a little bit sad, and part of the "hidden tax" that comes along with so-called intellectual property.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I must disagree with the person who modded you as "Flamebait" as you state a good case. The issue is, though, that The Pirate Bay are not the guys distributing your files. The guys who post it on The Pirate Bay are the ones that are responsible for that.
I, personally, find The Pirate Bay's neglectful attitude to be morally deviant, but I find the RIAA to be morally abject. I figured my comparison to Robin Hood to be quite accurate -- since he, too, was but a thief (even a robber) with good PR. Perhaps you'd be more apt to agree on comparing the Pirate Bay to Godzilla? He's lumbering along, breathing thermonuclear breath and smashing buildings on innocent people... but the guy he's up against is looking to completely eradicate mankind. I find myself cheering for Godzilla when the two fight. I don't condone Godzilla's destruction, but like I said: in the battle between neutral and evil, I'll choose neutral.
In the meantime, I do wish you the best of luck in your business endeavors.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Then you must be American?
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
not enough mod points in the world to show how important this statement is.
Ah, the joys of inconsistency! It's universally wrong to make claims about universal wrongs!
...the presiding judge was a member of The Pirate Bay (political) party? That's an organization that specializes in immaterial rights.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The countries featured on the Euro coins are Sweden and Finland because Norway does not want to become a member of the EU.
the Swedish judge assigned to review whether the trial judge in the Pirate Bay trial was biased has now been removed - for bias.
We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
> The piratebay make it possible for people to rip me off and take a game that takes me 10
> hours a day a year to make... for free.
If you can not bring your current business model in line with the information-sharing-reality, stop it and go do something that cant be easily copied and reproduced at zero cost, with a tool anybody can afford.
> In short, it makes a mega-fuckton of ad money from other peoples work.
Proof other than your own claim?
> Explain to me again how thepiratebay earning money from ads whilst giving away my work
> for free,
They arent giving your work for free, they built an content-agnostic infrastructure people can use to easily connect and share stuff. They may profit from those people, but so do their ISPs.
To be honest us Norwegians think Sweden is a load of cock and bull...
First, there is such thing as "piracy rings", and thepiratebay is not one of them. I'm talking about groups that get copies of the media before it's released, rip them, package them, distribute them (usually underground FTP servers). There's also the people who profit from this (by mass-burning CDs/DVDs with pirated media). These guys are just hosting a bunch of torrent files.
Second, the media companies are using a business model where only they control the way information is copied. But on the internet, anyone can copy information everywhere. So the 2 options are: they drop the business model, or we give them control over all the information that is published, so that they can decide if it's valid or not. I'd rather break the law than having to ask permission to someone else every time I want to publish something on the internet. This is why I oppose their position.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
What's wrong is for huge powerful cultures to pressure everyone else to adopt their moral code.
Umm, Isn't this how its been done for 1000s of years? I guess I don't entirely know what kind of 'pressure' was put on this 'culture'. I would assume economic pressure of some sort. This is how society works, always has and always will. All the way from your corperate job to the government.
I agree with bonch's post completely. What I do find comical is how the judge is 'flagged' as guilty of bias without being proven and that the pirates are inoscent even after being convicted. This is more about slackers that are used to getting everything for free, now loosing that ability.
If he is guilty of bias, then absolutely a new trial is warrented. Will it change the outcome? I sincerely doubt it.
Without a doubt, what they were doing was wrong or 'biased' toward ripping people off, choose your term. They made the conscience choice to do what they did. The owners of the stolen material simply asked the legal system of that country to help put an end to it. Clearly it was in their interest to do so.
lmao. This should have been modded insightful. Think about it..
We really need a car analogy here to see what's going on clearly.
... or something.
Say that I sat on some street corner telling people where to get cars for free so they wouldn't have to pay for them. Except everytime someone takes a car, another car takes its place so we never run out of cars to take. Sometimes it takes a long time to get a car, sometimes only a few minutes. It depends on the make of the car, how big it is and how popular it is.
But let's say that whoever made the first car said that everyone who wanted to get a car had to pay him. And I said that people could take one for free. And some people gave me money because they liked me and I put their pictures on my t-shirt
And then the dude who said that everyone who wanted a car had to pay him came to me and told me to give him money.
And then I didn't want to give him money.
Okay this was not a very good analogy despite it being a car analogy. I don't understand it, it works so good for Apple.
How is it capitalism if you don't have to compete with my product, but just give my product away and claim it is yours?
You are begging the question. You assume that so-called Intellectual Property is a product. That's exactly what is being disputed. It's only a "product" because the government says it is. In true capitalism, the government wouldn't create a false monopoly.
I'm glad CCP had to make eve on-line rather than just making Elite Online.
Pick a better example next time. Since most of the time the money made from an MMORPG is from selling the service (the server where you play), rather than the game itself, your example is a counterpoint to your argument.
Red Hat is able to "give away" their product with Fedora and even have it "stolen" by the distributors of CentOS, yet they keep on making money because they sell a service, not an imaginary product.
The Pirate Bay's neglectful attitude to be morally deviant, but I find the RIAA to be morally abject
Yes, I agree to an extent. The RIAA was not the only place that was applying pressure. What about all the software companies? Do they fall into the same morally abject group as the RIAA?
For some reason it always seems to end up RIAA vs TPB.
Because many of us think private, non-commercial filesharing is not wrong
Now that is funny. How is TPB even remotely private or non-commercial?
However, in this case your characterization is inaccurate. The Pirate Bay was not "running a major piracy ring." They were providing a technology that enabled the masses to run their own piracy ring(s), but that is different. To rework an old analogy: It would be inaccurate to say that handgun manufacturers were robbing gas stations. It can be argued that they enable illegal activities, but if they were held legally responsible for the actions of the users of their product and forced to shut down, the 2nd Amendment would effectively be right out the window.
If I may use your hand gun analogy.. TPB was a hand gun shop sitting in in the middle of a large shopping mall. They handing out free handguns then told people its ok to rob any store they feel like at gun point.
Was TPB guilty of distributing copyrighted material? Nope. They were found guilty in facilitating the theft.
Who said anything with siding with the RIAA?
What's really funny is I find the same people that support TPB will swarm like sharks on anyone that violates the GPL. Its funny how individuals tend to protect with they think is theirs....
Where has Slashdot stated that they side with TPB?
If you actually mean "readers", then I suggest you take note that the opinions of individuals are not those of Slashdot, and drop the libellous claims.
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore?
Do you have a citation for your allegation that JC doesn't post here, because people here have views on copyright law - or in this case, legality of torrent search engines - that differ from you?
Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work.
No, that's unfounded libel. And even if you mean the individuals, that's a straw man.
The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses,
I'll bite - find me two pro-piracy articles from today?
who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about
So? Do you have a problem with ads?
how evil they think capitalism is.
What on earth does being anti-capitalist have to do with this? And if anything, alternatives such as socialism were more likely to be unpopular here on Slashdot.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement.
So this time you actually mean Slashdot, and not readers, right? Make up your mind.
And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code.
If someone believes that (a) companies profiting from piracy is wrong, but individuals downloading something they weren't going to buy, and torrent search engines, are no big deal, there is no inconsistency.
If there was a story about a company who profited from non-GPL copyright violation, you can bet there'd be little sympathy.
OTOH, if it was discovered that an individual gave away a binary of Linux to his friend without offering the source, or that TPB linked to a torrent of a Linux binary, I doubt anyone would give a fuck.
But hey, let's not let facts and reason get in the way of your tired old straw man rant!
Not to mention that there exists more than one viewpoint on Slashdot. Not everyone loves the GPL. Not everyone thinks that piracy should be abolished. As an example, you and I have widly different views. But according to you, this means "Slashdot both thinks that Slashdot is pro-piracy, and that it isn't pro-piracy! How inconsistent of it!"
Here's my copyright reform idea, for balancing the needs of creators with the rights of the public:
Copyright terms are ten years, repeatedly renewable for five years.
The initial term is free and does not require registration with the copyright office.
The fee for renewal will be minimal at first (perhaps $100), but will double at each renewal.
Basically it then becomes an economic decision whether or not it is worth it to keep renewing. If you didn't sell $100 worth in the first ten years, it's probably not worth it to renew. If you didn't make $400 between years 15 and 20, it's probably not worth it to renew for years 20-25. You can if you want to, you have every right to run a loss, but at some point, even Disney has to answer to the stockholders. Would they agree with a decision to renew a copyright on Steamboat Willie if it costs $25,600 for years 50 to 55? Probably. What about when it costs $16,384,000 for years 80 to 85? That would have to be seriously considered by management. Eventually all the money on the planet won't pay for a renewal.
If you think $100 for the first renewal is too onerous, make it $50 or $25. That will only delay the expiration of Steamboat Willie by two more doublings, or ten years, and that may be a reasonable price to pay to keep the little guy from getting squeezed. 95 years of protection is excessive (even at a cost of $16 million), but it should only happen in edge cases. The vast majority of material would simply not be worth covering that long.
Only one renewal can be pending for a single work or item at any given time, but there is no other restriction on when a renewal request can be made. Renewal requests for multiple items can be batched to keep paperwork to a minimum, though a separate fee applies to each request. A renewal is good for five years from the end of the current term, regardless of when the request is made.
There is no penalty for filing as early as possible. It is in the public's best interest to know whether or not copyright will be renewed, so penalizing early notice would be counterproductive. If someone wants to pony up $100 for years 11-15 the day they create something, they would have the right to do so, and we'd all be able to determine the copyright status that much sooner. They would NOT be able to buy years 16-20 until the beginning of year 11, however.
One of the original creator(s) may request a renewal whether work or item is still available or not, so long as they remain a copyright holder.
You can sit on your own work as long as you like, if you're willing to pay. The creator(s) must be declared when the work is registered, or at first renewal if it was not initially registered, and a reasonable maximum number of creators does need to be established and defined. I'm thinking three, but it's certainly a debatable point.
Otherwise, the item copyrighted must be published, sold, available for viewing, or otherwise not an abandoned work at the time of renewal.
This keeps things from getting locked up forever, so long as there is at least one surviving copy that is not under the direct control of the copyright holder. (If the copyright holder had all the copies, they could claim trade secrets protection anyhow.)
Re-workings, re-masterings, and the like are grounds for fresh copyright protection. However, if an older version is no longer under protection and infringement is claimed, the burden is on the claimant to demonstrate that the infringing material came from the new version and not one for which it has lapsed.
This means old copies can eventually be legally ripped, re-mastered, remixed, and redistributed by the public, even if Disney released a remastered "Steamboat Willie 2K9" of their own to avoid the ever-doubling renewal costs. If they wanted to make a stink about someone distributing it, it would be Disney's responsibility to show that the claimed infringing copy comes from the 2009 release, and not the original copyright
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I agree with your post, but I'd also say:
You know, "-1 Flamebait" is no substitute for "-1 Disagree and wish to censor". I don't agree with bonch either, but his post is certainly no flamebait.
Flamebait is justified in my opinion, as it was one great big straw man. It wasn't starting an actual debate, it was attacking a made up view (that there exists someone - "Slashdot" - with inconsistent viewpoints) just to stir up an argument. Making up a straw man to criticise, in order to stir up controversy, is a classic example of flamebait.
It's not about disagreeing with it - indeed, if anything I would agree with him, if such a viewpoint actually existed, but the issue is that the point of view he argues against doesn't exist.
It's not even an original argument - I feel the "But how can Slashdot dare criticise copyright law, when Slashdot release source code as GPL!" is getting tiring.
Don't get me wrong - in general I hate it when negative mods are used merely for disagreement. But here I feel it was justified, because there was no actual valid argument to disagree with. I'm surprised it got modded up so high to be honest - but that's the problem: it's easy to look insightful when you make up an easy straw man as your opponent...
> Because they're like our modern day Robin Hood. They rob from the rich and corrupt, and give to the poor, in a sense.
What a crock!
As a small independent software developer, my work is 'featured' on/via/whatever Pirate Bay - does that make me somehow by definition rich and/or corrupt?
Or am I just collateral damage in this almighty battle between good (sorry, neutral) and evil?
Pirate Bay may or may not be 'sticking it to the man' (and that's not something I'm at all against!), but they're certainly indiscriminately sticking it to a whole lot of little guys in the process.
Sorry but capitalism is NOT imaginary property. I fully support capitalism, The Pirate Bay, and bankruptcy for the major music labels.
Kill all hipsters.
You know, "-1 Flamebait" is no substitute for "-1 Disagree and wish to censor". I don't agree with bonch either, but his post is certainly no flamebait.
Not clear. He endlessly spams the same propaganda, completely ignores responses (I have never seen him once acknowledge that any alternative point of view might be valid), and is in general just a mouthpiece. Just because it's worded nicely doesn't mean that it's not flamebait.
Very likely he's a sock puppet or astroturfer. The RIAA is spending many millions on anti-piracy propaganda and has the ethics of alley cats, you think they're not going to spend some of it on spamming social networking sites to drown out alternative points of view?
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
Yes, I agree to an extent. The RIAA was not the only place that was applying pressure. What about all the software companies? Do they fall into the same morally abject group as the RIAA?
Only if they're buying judges and legislators, demanding extradition from countries that don't offer extradition, committing perjury, monopolistic business practices, and making me listen to "Love Hurts" by Linkin Park every [bloody] time I turn on the radio in my car. Let them seek reimbursement if they can find the legal grounds to do so -- especially when they've made the trade between producer and consumer as accomodating as possible toward the consumer... but it would be more fair if they were able to find the jerkoffs who placed the pirated content on The Pirate Bay to begin with and prosecute them instead.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Get off your high horse ... google, yahoo, and all the other search engines are just as "guilty" under your narrow viewpoint, but I don't see you condemning them.
And WHY do people like YOU constantly IGNORE that FACT that many of the search engines on the web provide the SAME "service" as the Pirate Bay, yet none of you condemn Google, or Yahoo, or ...
All you are is an R.I.A.A. shill.
My problem (and the problem many others have) is not that I support The Pirate Bay, but that the judge is horrifically biased. If you were on trial for possession of pot, and the judge was a member of a large number of "hard on drugs" think tanks, would you expect a fair trial?
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
It's one thing to side with copyright, quite another to side with the MAFIAA.
In fact the two seem somewhat mutually exclusive.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
This has nothing to do with siding with PirateBay. In a legal system in a democratic country, you're supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty". Guilt is supposed to be proven in court. The judge is not supposed to have made up their mind before the trial.
A biased judge kinda kills this concept.
I thought one of the arguments for the Pirate Bay was that it didn't hurt the entertainment industries. The guy who got load of flower from pirates made this claim during the trials (from TorrentFreak):
So the entertainment industries had a legitimate argument in the first place? Christ, no wonder TPB lost the case. Hell, even a judge associated with Republicans voted in favor for evolution when Dover School Board went to court for the "evolution is just a theory" disclaimer, so anything is (or was) possible.
Unfortunately, TPB also helps pirate software, which in turn helps the likes of Microsoft, because of the network effect. So nothing is perfect, I guess.
Why is this "unfortunate" while downloading music or movies for free is OK?
I think you are modded off-topic rather than wrong. Plus reiterating that nutty rant from The Register. At the end of the day, how does donating money to an online directory, pretty much the equivalent of Google but with less censorship, like TPB "keep sweden white"? It doesn't make any sense.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Exactly. Remember how Disney's fortune was built on the original ideas of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, the Jungle Book, Robin Hood, Winnie-the-Pooh, the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, and Tarzan?
That's how animators should do things. Original characters and settings. Not just ripping off the work of others because they're long dead and can't complain about it.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Incorrect. Google are a US based company and have to play safe as they answer to their shareholders, and they are faced with the DCMA. TPB are a private company, and are hosted in a country with no DCMA. That explains supplication to lobby groups of one and not the other. However technologically they are both just search engines. TPB are quite right to mock those that apply non-applicable US laws to a foreign sovereign nation. Not sure why I'm writing this as cliffski is a RIAA troll spamming with anti-TPB memes that have already been refuted.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Don't confuse copyrights and patents.
That's all well and good, but Google massively violates copyright with the Google cache. They also are quite effective at finding .torrent links, and if what TPB did is a crime, then every dollar Google makes is criminal.
The reason TPB mocks people sending them DMCA takedown notices is because the DMCA is a US law.
The piratebay is funded by a right wing millionaire businessman closely connected to fascist and racist organisations in Sweden. Google 'carl lundstrom' for details.
Wow, that I did not know. I don't understand how that could possibly be flamebait. That is straight-up "informative" goodness.
Furthermore, your post reiterates an important point: Piracy steals from everyone; not just the rich.
Everyone around here likes to believe in the goofy dot-com, Web 2.0, long-tail, free economics model of "new capitialism," but really, it's the same crazy bullshit as the credit crisis--a lot of people living high on the hog without any actual value being created.
Add to that the strong FOSS bias--the idea that a bunch of people in their spare time can create something better than something a bunch of people paid to do the same can, and reality just goes right out the window.
People don't have the time or inclination to work for free; they really do need to be paid for their time and effort so that they can do their best work. The fact that, these days, you actually have to posit that as a revolutionary concept is frightening. When you use the fruits of others' labor; you need to pay them. If we don't do that, we fall apart.
Finally, I think the "screw the big middleman corporations" is just an excuse. The truth is that its cheaper and easier to get what you want, and that's why people do it. Why do I know? Because here I have to admit that I download a lot of American TV (I live in Japan). Much of it is available on DVD. However, the DVDs have to be purchased and shipped from the US, and I have to have a multiregion DVD player (I do--by cracking one). By the time all of that is said and done, it's a very expensive prospect to watch something that I would be able to see for virtually free in the US. I could also get them from iTMS, in violation of their EULA, but... I think their prices are crazy for video. When shows have made it into the Japanese market, I prefer renting the DVDs (I get the Japanese subtitles that way, so I don't have to pause it every 3 minutes to explain details my wife--Japanese--missed in English), but even when they do make it in, they are years behind (I'm coming up on finishing the second season of BSG--do you know how hard it has been to avoid hearing any spoilers???). So what's this tell me? Pirates are just like me: They have a weird sense of entitlement and they are too cheap to pay the actual costs.
And this, when I'm honest with myself, is nothing to be proud of.
I have never pirated music on a large scale (just to sample something before buying--not necessary anymore with Last.fm, etc.), because I used to be a musician and know how much time, effort, and expense goes into making a record. I have never pirated video games because the best ones are always from the smallest developers, and all of them are phenomenally expensive to make. Probably the reason I make an exception for TV (not movies, but that's just because I've never seen the point--you can rent those and you get a better experience anyway) is that I don't have any experience or knowledge about how all that works. Probably if I or any of my friends were involved in that industry, I'd be more responsible about it. And that is the problem--a bunch of people who have no appreciation of the real-world costs--in time, money, and effort--of producing the media they enjoy somehow feel like it is their "right" to have it and share it with absolutely nothing going to the poor bastards who poured their lives into making it.
For every Cory Doctorow--who has made a little one-man cottage industry of encouraging everyone to screw over his peers, which has translated into lucrative column-writing, public speaking, blogging, and "activism" gigs--there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of guys like you getting the shaft.
Can we stop pretending that theft is okay now?
Well that is all well and good and I can respect that intent matters in Sweden. And yes the pirate bay people act like total asses toward people who disagree with them, no argument there.
But when the government of any country doesn't follow it's own laws and/or doesn't provide defendants with fair trial's, regardless of their alleged crime I have a problem with that and so I support these people in their cause even if they are just in it for the fame or money or whatever. That doesn't really mater to me, it just maters that someone somewhere is willing to stand up and fight. Something I think we lost in this country a long time ago, examples; AIG, big business bailouts, etc... Everyone I know is pissed but it doesn't mean they would ever DO anything about it...
I mostly use isohunt by-the-way...
I think anyone who is smart knows why the USA is putting mad presure on the rest of the world over copyright... The only thing we really make anymore is movies and music...It's just sad really... Not to mention how many people here in this country are in jail...
"land of the free as long as you do what you're told..."
ae
Except that the amount of pirated copies is proportional to the amount of purchased copies. If a game or application is very popular, it will be pirated more, but more copies will be sold also, because everyone likes/wants/needs it. Some people download, some buy.
If almost nobody knows about your product or wants it (since you are a small company, you probably do not advertise much), then it stands to reason that it will sell less copies. Also, only a small number of people will download it (or it may not be available for download anywhere). I know how hard it is to find some not-so-popular application.
So, you're saying, because slashdot says so, it's OK to side with the pirate bay, and try to force companies to stop trying to minimise piracy, while at the same time, scream blue murder if anyone, especially big bad GPL code-stealing companies, rip them off.
Nothing personal, but I think I'll stick with logic and relative objectivity rather than "going with the flow" and lynch mobs.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The piratebay make it possible for people to rip me off ...
Actually the Torrent tracker makes it possible. TPB's just linking to it, they're no more liable for it happening than Google is. TPB didn't do anything new to make your software available.
... that takes me 10 hours a day a year to make... for free.
Did software piracy start occuring after you started selling games on-line? Seriously, dude. I have software for sale on-line right now. I knew going in that it'd likely be cracked and made available on-line. I knew there was only so much I was going to make on it. I cannot believe you went into this too naieve to have the same line of thought. Given that you had DRM on your software early on, I am forced to believe that you have. I would really really really like to know why you think you'd suddenly have more money landing in your account if TPB went out of business. If you've got hard data, you'll be helping out a fellow developer by sharing it.
Explain to me again how thepiratebay earning money from ads whilst giving away my work for free, and lining the pockets of its millionaire founder is anything like a fucking robin hood?
I agree, they're nothing like Robin Hood. For starters, they haven't taken anything of yours. The guy you wanna scream at is the guy who put the tracker up. Secondly, they're making money off of selling information, as opposed to shifting goods/products from one person to another. Nothing at all like Robin Hood. Actually, they're a lot like Google. They're making a metric fuckton of money off content you put on the web, too. Those scumbag jerks.
Your anger is misdirected. You really should have another gander at the arguments and listen to them more objectively. I'm not saying this to insult you or to put you in your place, I honestly and truely think you've gotten so wrapped up in the idea that you're missing money that you haven't put serious consideration into what people are saying, here. I should be in the position to be just as angry as you are, but I'm not. If you wonder why, just feel free to ask. I'd much rather discuss than argue, here.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Huh. I always viewed them as more of a pyramid schemer with diplomatic immunity; growing fat off the greed of others in an unsustainable way, while being granted protection by poorly thought out laws.
I'm sorry, but I don't really have a hero in this scenario, since the "police" aren't much better. I guess life isn't always like the movies.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
And yet the intentions of RIAA and other copyright abusers, and intention behind copyright law itself somehow do not matter -- just make sure that publishers can milk everyone else because they can use copyright law in a way that contradicts its original purpose.
Right?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
He said "intention". At least Google (I'm not sure about other search engines) help remove copyrighted content upon request.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Let's not get cause and effect mixed up here. If the game or application is very popular, then it will be pirated more, which is to be expected, since the tastes of the average customer will be in line with the tastes of the average pirate. This doesn't stop this being a burden on artists and copyright holders, big and small alike. It just means the percentage of sales cannibalised by piracy will be constant throughout, and the system is (roughly) equally detrimental and unfair to the big guys as the little guys.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Broken analogy: TPB was not a hand gun shop. TPB handed out maps of where to get guns, letting you know which shops were still in business and had guns you could get.
Did TPB facilitate copyright infringement? As I attempted to indicate in my original comment, probably so. I'm not saying they're completely blameless. I was largely trying to combat the unfair characterization that they were the ones responsible for the copyright infringement. The MPAA, RIAA, and their ilk want to paint TPB as THE "bad guys" - as in, "if they weren't doing what they're doing, people wouldn't be stealing our stuff", which is BS. Any rational person would readily see that dedicated pirates would simply find another method; as the saying goes, you can't stop a sufficiently motivated thief.
I simply want to see TPB held to an appropriate level of responsibility, but most people seem to want to draw "all or nothing" lines in the sand.
I definitely agree that TPB's arrogance and attitude preceding this trial, right up to entering the courtroom, was pretty stupid. That definitely damaged any respectability they might have had as a legitimate business.
And that means, that piracy does not "hurt" small developers more. If big companies "lose" millions of imaginary dollars, the small developer will "lose" tens or hundreds or thousands (depending on how small).
If your company hangs on the edge of bankruptcy because you "lost" $300 then you could go out of business even without piracy, because not all pirates would have bought your program (for example me - if I do not find it for download, I search for an alternative, sometimes because the developers want ~$1000 for a traffic shaping program - I built my router for way less and if I had $1000 I could get a better connection and not need the shaper at all).
How is it capitalism if you don't have to compete with my product, but just give my product away and claim it is yours?
Information isn't a product. Secondly capitalism requires informed consumers, so claiming it's mine should be fraud. See Moral Rights which is a separate issue from copyright. Note the US doesn't recognize Moral Rights.
In fact it is the complete antithesis of creativity and culture, because it enables everyone to re-use other peoples creative works rather than make their own.
Culture and creativity aren't only expressed through original works. By using elements of others work, an artist can make an arrangement that is far superior to the sum of its parts.
If I could get people to buy the Sims from me, without having to bother making it, that sounds like an easy life.
That does sound like an easy life.. but it doesn't work that way. The "getting people to buy" isn't magic, you have to give them reason to pay you.
Is the world a better place because there are now 2 competing products? or would we be better off if everyone just copies the first one?
I find it interesting you think that there'd be less products in a world where people can re-use elements of others arts. I find it far more likely that there's a Sims Sopranos, Sims Lost, Sims X-Men and many other derivative works that just are to risky in current climate.
I'm glad CCP had to make eve on-line rather than just making Elite Online. I'm glad that I have the choice between world of warcraft and lord of the rings on-line.
Games rarely advance from original ideas. World of Warcraft reused and polished elements of earlier games. Don't kid yourself into thinking these were great works of creativity, it's exactly what I'm arguing, recycling and incremental improvements of ideas. Had CCP made Elite Online, they'd have gone out of business for failing to advance. There have been competing Warcraft servers for years, and it hasn't stopped Blizzard from making expansions. In fact by adding content Blizzard is keeping those rogue servers obsolete. That's competition, and Blizzard has the advantage by the nature of their position.
Killing off intellectual property is the best way imaginable to totally kill off competition. Nobody can compete with free and their is zero incentive to innovate if you can just carbon-copy the market-leader without penalty.
Of course people can compete with free, by providing better service and timely updates. I never argued for killing IP. I believe in expanded fair use and drastically shorter terms. Do you expect to be making money off five year old games? Do your current games make your games from 5 years ago appear obsolete? With a five year copyright, you'd have a five year head-start on the competition. You update your software, then that's 5 more years for the updated version.
Quake 1 was released in 1996, Quake 3 was released in 1999. Also in 1999, Quake 1 was released GPL, giving others the legal ability to make derivative games that could potentially compete with Q3. (And that's giving the source away instead of keeping it hidden like most games do)
So what work of yours is going to be relevant 50 years after your death? What work do you expect to still be selling copies from 5 years from it's release. Certainly not Kudos, why would I buy that with Kudos 2 out. I've purchased a couple of your games, and they're fine games, but they'll all be forgotten in 5 years... except maybe the influence they may have on other games.
OK, your point is taken. It's only constant in terms of money alone. A big publisher can take a hit in profits, and still survive, but indie developers can't. The cost in creation and maintenance planes out after a certain point. In that way, the damage is less for the big guy, but more for the little guy, even if the percentage lost is the same. I guess that's the idea behind progressive tax.
BTW, the millions of "imaginary" dollars are not imaginary. They're the dollars that people hand over to alcohol companies, or book publishers, or travel agents that would have spent on music/movies/games if they didn't have a constant supply of free entertainment. They seem pretty real to me.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Sorry to reply twice to the same post, but I just thought of nicely analogous situation to the predicament copyright holders are in, and just how "imaginary" their losses are.
Imagine you are offered a good job at higher pay, and you naturally take it. You work for about a couple of weeks, but your employer refuses to deliver a paycheck. You talk to him, and he says he was only trying you out. You tell him it's not fair (which it isn't), especially since you already worked, and you quit your old job. He tells you that he would never have hired you if he couldn't have tried you out first, and that you would never have gotten the money anyway, so all the losses were imaginary. People on the internet side with him, because you're criminalising your customers, i.e. the people you sell your labour to.
Well, perhaps not quite analogous, since it's actually possible to catch the employer.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
They are imaginary because you cannot be 100% certain that if there was no internet piracy, people would have bought everything they have pirated. There are a lot of reasons for it, some being:
1. I want to buy that movie, but it is not available in my country or at all (e.g. star wars holiday special).
2. I want to watch that movie, but not so much so as to pay the amount of money it costs.
3. I do not have enough money.
4. I could have copied the movie from my friend, who copied it from his friend who...
5. I could have rented the movie for less money and copied it.
It does not mean, that 1 download = 1 lost sale = $x lost. And that's why those companies lose only imaginary money. Also, it's hard to lose something you did not have before.
As for the small developers - did you really plan your business that, say, you needed to sell 100 copies, but sold 99 and went out of business. Do you know that that one guy who downloaded wasn't me (since I wouldn't have bought it anyway) or somebody like me?
And this is actually backwards:
1. I was offered a job. The employer promised to pay me before I started working, otherwise I wouldn't have.
2. I really lost those two weeks, because I worked during that time, so I couldn't work in another job (that would have paid).
If I steal a CD/DVD from a store:
1. The store paid money for that CD, they cannot sell it to others.
2. Real materials were used in making that CD. They cannot be reused to make another copy.
With piracy:
1. I did not promise to pay anybody. They still made the movie.
2. The movie has been made, if I download it or don't (and don't watch it) does not change the fact that they made it. The fact that I downloaded it, does not cost them more money, since they used no real materials to make my copy.
3. They can still sell the movie to others.
*And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code. Apparently, piracy isn't theft and copyrights don't matter except when it benefits you.*
Yup pretty much, the GPL hugely benefits society, where as traditional copyright only benefits a small group.
I myself when it comes to music generally only listen to stuff that is licensed with a license that gives me the right to freely download and share the music.
Also, maybe Carmack has more interesting things like do, like his aerospace stuff.
I think you lost me when you said that more traffic from people who are pro-piracy result in higher ad revenues.
I'm not sure that "people who don't like to pay for things" is a high-dollar target demographic, except maybe for blank recordable media.
You realise copyright was never about artist?
The first copyright laws were implemented at the request of the first publishers - the printing press owners. This was rather odd at the time, because earlier they had campaigned long and hard to get restrictions on printing presses put in place by their feudal overlords lifted. The Kings and Queens viewed the presses as a threat to their monopoly on news (think China and the Internet) and thus tried to restrict who could own them.
But the technology escaped, as technology tends do to. The laws were repealed, the publishers got their freedom at last. Then many went broke. Turned out a free for all didn't make economic sense. Printing presses cost at lot, which the owners tried to recover by finding a popular book to print. Finding a popular one involved first loosing money printing duds. But without some law to prevent other publishers from pinching their golden goose, it was all for nought. So the printing press owners petitioned the King for new restrictions on printing. They had thrashed out an agreement between themselves - they would not pinch each others books, and then asked the King to give it the force of law. This copyright was born.
And its been that way ever since. Every time a new technology comes along that copies things a new fight breaks out. The new publishers and old publishers eventually thrash out some compromise, which is then presented to King / Parliament to enact into law.
It is has never been about the artists. That is why the RIAA - the publishers industry group, who is suing all and sundry, not some artist group.
Perhaps the internet means the artists will ditch the RIAA members and publish their own work, in which case they will become publishers. Then perhaps it will be about the artists.
If I didn't CARE about RIAA, I would avoid them.
If I hate them, I should fight them.
When most of the world hated Naziism, they didn't decide to ignore them, did they.
If you believe the judge was truly biased (and not simply being an expert in his field) then you should side with no side, because the question of guilt is still open. Siding with the Pirate Bay because they claim the judge is biased makes no sense ... the judge may or may not have been biased by his affiliations, but the Pirate Bay are definitely biased.
so how do single player games work in this amazing new economy that everyone preaches about?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I don't get this... are you being serious?
All of the characters you list above are old stories that Disney has corrupted.
To be fair, most of those movies mangled excellent stories to make them more family-friendly, so it did take some original ideas to make them
[q]And then they make money off of the use and download of them.[/q]
Citation needed.
Oh my fucking god.
You mean if I want to make a cartoon now, i might have to have an original idea?
Fuck. I can see that it really would enrich our culture [...]
Evil copyright bastards.
And which culture is it exactly that you're enriching by selling a computer Risk ripoff on your website? 'Kudos' for the original idea indeed...
I suppose the question begs, "Intention" is basicly "thought". I was unaware Sweden had developped the technology to read a persons thought.
I thought I had that safely locked away in the attack.
Have you BEEN IN MY ATTIC????
Without the ability to know what they were thinking, you cannot know their intentions.
It's better to try the case on facts, rather than supposition.
You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right?
No, I'm not. Proof, please. We'll be waiting.
No, I'm saying that people at the forefront of a technological revolution often "get" the issues involved in that revolution better than people who are armchair critics of change, luddites, or worse, sheep.
Anyway, you obviously have a different view, and we'll never agree. A question was asked, and I gave my own personal view on the answer. You're under no obligation to agree, so let's leave it there.
If you think typing "PIRATE" in all caps constitutes any proof of wrongdoing on the behalf of The Pirate Bay, I hope I don't need to explicitly tell you that your statement has no credibility. But heck, I'll do it anyway: Your statement has no credibility.
The name means nothing, and it shouldn't.
Focus on what they do and their policies for doing so. You're right in that there's no secret to anyone what The Pirate Bay is doing (you wrote "was" but the verdicts has had zero effect on The Pirate Bay - I hope you knew that and just mistyped) but there are obvious and widespread misunderstandings about it. Just because something isn't kept secret doesn't mean everyone will understand it, or in this case, not misunderstand it.
You, as well as parts of the legal system in Sweden, appear to have misunderstood what The Pirate Bay does.
Yes, I am a Swede. Born, raised and living here. And I'm appalled at the direction our laws and legal system are heading at the moment. It's frankly rather disgusting.
Anti-DRM does not mean pro-"piracy", and also, a lot of people don't follow the claim that a download is a stolen sale. Sure this is true for the crowd that only buy the latest pop albums, but a lot of people who download a lot of music, explore lot of music and as a consequence also spend more money on music.
As for the /. anti-DRM stance, it comes down to the question who gets screwed over most by those DRM measures. Sadly, that's always the client who bought the software, because he/she is limited in ways of using the product. OTOH there only has to be one group to crack the copy protection for a convenient installable download to be available for everyone in the world. That the reason people thing DRM is bullshit, not because they're (necessarily) pro-"pirate".
And we're not even talking about the creation and changing of laws, loss of basic rights we used to have (fair use anyone?), and so on; all so the music merchants can keep making money of people at unreasonable rates. Yeah, completely reasonable. (You must be one of them if you agree)
I hope that explains the mixed people here most people have against so called "anti-piracy". In an ideal world, an artist would get paid for every song, but you'd be suprised how little of that money flows back to the actual artist(s).
I hope you, and people like you of course, can learn to see things less black-white (you must an adult with that reasoning capability, looking at your UID) and so maybe we will get to a solution to all this eventually.
Posting anonymous because I don't have an account, since 1995 :)
The Internet make (sic) it possible for people to rip me off and take a game that takes me 10 hours a day a year to make... for free.
Fixed that for you, not that I don't agree you or anyone should not be rewarded for your work.
A lot of "Indie" developer make huge amounts of money on the App Store, DS store and stuff like that, maybe you should look into a DRM'd distribution mechanism like that for your software? (Damn, never thought I'd suggest DRM to anyone)
Good luck.
"A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses."
The soul of man under socialism, Oscar Wilde
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore?
Apparently, you do, but wondering about isn't the same as knowing the reasons. It could just as well be that "back in the days" the /. crowd was essentially half of his customers (or at least the early adopters), whereas nowadays that's no longer true.
Or he's simply taking a break. Look at my UID. Do you really think I've been constantly active all that time? No, there were years where I visited this place maybe twice in the whole year.
Fact is, you don't know and bringing him into the discussion is a fairly obvious rhetorical trick, nothing more.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's like your hair is grass, and the joke is a helicopter flying over..
Citation? Do a search for anything on TPB. I count 5 separate ads on each results page.
Pirate Bay being biased is completely irrelevant. IFPI is also biased. That's the very definition of sides in a trial.
They are not judging anything. Now, the Judge being biased ... If you fail to see such a simple thing, I don't think your other ideas deserve credit.
I side with pirate bay because corruption is an even bigger crime than copyright violation and the music industry has shown just how rife corruption is and is encouraging much more of it.
It's sarcasm. All those "original ideas" are not original. Meringuoid is using them as examples of Disney's hypocrisy.
And those movies never could have existed if the source material was under the extensive copyright schemes we have today. So your point about being fair actually supports the opposite argument.
how many times do I have to type this:
google take down copyrighted content on request. TPB do not.
That is a BIG FUCKING difference.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
That is a BIG FUCKING difference.
Not big enough. They're still indexing torrent sites. Why? Because torrent trackers are not copyrighted data.
how many times do I have to type this:
Read the other replies.
On another note: there's still a huge part of my post you missed. Misdirected anger. Google's making money off of your hard work. Etc etc.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
No, that is not a reason to call them "imaginary" dollars/losses. Perhaps "projected", "theoretical", or "potential" would be better substitutes. "Imaginary" is simply pollution of language to further a point.
But, on the same token, 1 download != 0 lost sales = $0 lost. There's middle ground somewhere there. And people who have become accustomed to constant streams of free entertainment are in no position to judge how much they would purchase if they had no access to said entertainment, so expect the true cost to be considerably higher than they estimate. Often you see them adding up how many artworks they "respect" (rather than simply "like"), which neglects to consider how someone with such an obvious taste for entertainment would do when they had only those artworks purchased, and nothing else to listen to or watch.
Like the paycheck from my example that you replied to?
a) Your estimates are grossly understated,
b) That's not really anyone else's business but their own,
c) They have to bear the financial responsibility of their sales being stunted, even if they don't go directly out of business,
d) That responsibility is subsequently passed to paying customers, and
e) We as a society promised them content control for a bunch of complex reasons, and reneging on that promise for personal gratification is wrong.
I'm also going to reply to your other comment.
Absolutely. We promise to pay copyright holders what their products are worth in exchange for their weeks/months/years of work. So far, my analogy holds.
OK, that's a little off-topic, but what the hey.
As a matter of fact, you did. As a society, you implicitly approved that if you wanted to watch that movie, you would either pay them what they asked, or go without. You can try to campaign to have copyright removed if you care about the $15 that much, but you might find that future movies that you want to watch and not pay for may not exist. But hey, we can't feel loss if we never had it, right?
And the fact that you've already worked for your employer, and he didn't pay you, shows that there is absolutely, 100% no harm in the situation whatsoever. Am I reading this right?
There are costs which are not for raw materials. It's naive and, frankly, incredibly stupid to believe that costs come simply from things you can hold in your hand. Downloading causes decreases in demand, which affect the sales negatively. Had this illegal behaviour been properly enforced, or had people had the moral decency to just stop, the sales would have been higher. Anyone with an elementary understanding of economi
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Probably.
Geeks are great for technology matters. They know better than anyone exactly how suited new technologies (such as The Pirate Bay) are to artwork distribution, and their intelligence, on average, is nothing to shake a stick at. But when geeks start assuming they know everything from the business world, to the legal world, to what is best for everyone in their country, that's when things start to get awkward.
I do a lot of arguing about copyrights (and other stuff) on slashdot. Not so much because I'm such a big fan of copyrights (at least, as they currently stand), but because the people I argue against have such narrow viewpoints of the world. Some geeks, otherwise very intelligent, simply see The Pirate Bay as a new technology that is technologically superior, and therefore (here's the fallacious step) should be rolled out for main use. They don't see the whole picture, or they dismiss it.
So, yeah, as someone who argues against these geeks you're trumping up (despite being one of them), I took a little bit of umbrage at what I read to be a complacent and arrogant reply to a valid question. But you seem like an intelligent and reasonable guy. Even if we never agree, perhaps you could see some truth in my point.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
No, that is not a reason to call them "imaginary" dollars/losses. Perhaps "projected", "theoretical", or "potential" would be better substitutes. "Imaginary" is simply pollution of language to further a point.
OK, my bad. Still, there is a difference between these losses and the loss if, say, a building burned down.
But, on the same token, 1 download != 0 lost sales = $0 lost ...snip... which neglects to consider how someone with such an obvious taste for entertainment would do when they had only those artworks purchased, and nothing else to listen to or watch.
Yes, if downloads were not available, some number of people would have bought it, however, it is probably impossible to determine how many. As for your other point, I can record movies and music from TV and radio (internet or AM/FM). I would like to buy records or CDs of some songs, but they are not available any more. At best I could find a scratched record at some flea market, but that wold have bad audio quality. I sometimes search for these records though. I can find a lot of music on ebay, but not the music from my country. So I record the music from TV, paying money to VHS tape makers, I could record series/movies too.
Earlier I recorded a lot of music from radio. Also, if online piracy never happened, I wouldn't have "such an obvious taste for entertainment", I wouldn't have seen a large part of the series I have, because I wouldn't even know about them (since they were never shown on TV in my country AFAIK).
Now if piracy would just vanish, I would probably stop searching for new series/movies to watch and instead concentrate at what the TV offers. And would use more tapes, too.
Absolutely. We promise to pay copyright holders what their products are worth in exchange for their weeks/months/years of work. So far, my analogy holds.
Well, I didn't promise anything. Nobody asked me "if I make this movie and you like it, will you pay me?". Also, even if I posted on the internet saying "Even if they made movie x, I would never pay for it" there is a very good chance that the movie would still be made.
As a society, you implicitly approved that if you wanted to watch that movie, you would either pay them what they asked, or go without.
As coming from a country where piracy is above 50% I would say different. On the other hand, music CDs sell here quite well, even if software piracy is huge (well, almost everyone uses Windows and usually not the version/edition their their PC came with).
You can try to campaign to have copyright removed if you care about the $15 that much, but you might find that future movies that you want to watch and not pay for may not exist.
$15 for the disk, $15 for shipping, it adds up... Also, some people can watch series for free just because they live in a certain country...
As for new movies/series. Well, I probably wouldn't feel the loss. I could catch up on old movies and series.
And the fact that you've already worked for your employer, and he didn't pay you, shows that there is absolutely, 100% no harm in the situation whatsoever. Am I reading this right?
If I came to your house, painted it (without being asked to do so) and then asked for money, you would be right if you didn't pay me.
There are costs which are not for raw materials. It's naive and, frankly, incredibly stupid to believe that costs come simply from things you can hold in your hand.
Of course. Costs come from raw materials and services (like bandwidth).
And you can go work for another employer.
Sure. If the first employer asked me to write a program or design a webpage and then didn't pay me I would sell the program or the design to another company. I wouldn't have to make it from scratch though.
What I am different from t
Colour me impressed! That's a very reasonable response to my statement. Lesser men would have pointed to the use of the word "piracy" as justification for their choice of words.
You're right, there is a distinction, just not a significant one. We can easily, and very reasonably, define "loss" to cover intangible things like "financial value" and to include money that was promised but not delivered (like your paycheck).
Look, maybe downloading helps them, maybe it doesn't; it doesn't really matter. The point is, it's not your call. It's up to the copyright holder to determine how they distribute their work. If they want to undercut their own potential by limiting to a certain market or geographical region, then that's their prerogative. If they want help from P2P networks to advertise their works, then they'll allow sharing. If the new world of art distribution invariably includes P2P, as it's proponents shout from the rooftops, then they will be forced to allow sharing or die. But we'll never know while people insist that it's perfectly OK to download.
Oh, and by the way, I don't know about where you live, but keeping taped records of copyrighted materials is also considered piracy where I come from.
It's implicitly promised by you and the people around you, because the law is a reflection of society. People want a culture first and foremost, and then, as a secondary concern, they want it for free. Since the two largely contradict one another, the law swings toward the former.
If you disagree, well, you have two choices. You can either grin and bear it, or you can start lobbying your politicians and fellow man for change (while grinning and bearing it). You could also stage a protest where you publicly announce that your downloading and use the courts as a platform for your opinions. You'd show that, despite the harsh penalties, free access to culture is important to you. Anything other than simply downloading in anonymity, or posting on slashdot, calling for change, in relative anonymity, would be better.
Until, it is a promise made by you, that you will treat copyrighted works like physical goods, that is, either buy it and own it, or don't buy it and don't own it. You don't have to pay, but in return, you have no entitlement over the work you didn't buy.
$15 if you buy from physical stores. Again, if the copyright holder wanted to allow you to watch the series for free in your country, they would have. Also, it should be mentioned that those "free" viewings often con
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
How did I promise to pay for a movie, if it was made before I was born?
keeping taped records of copyrighted materials is also considered piracy where I come from.
I don't know, before we joined the EU, it was legal to share, but was illegal to make money from piracy (i.e. sell pirated CDs). Now this changed, but I don't know about the legality of keeping tapes. Well, at least I don't digitize them and make a torrent out of them (if I ever get a connection with better upload speed, I might start, since the shows I record are not usually available for download on any trackers).
Until, it is a promise made by you, that you will treat copyrighted works like physical goods, that is, either buy it and own it, or don't buy it and don't own it.
And you can share physical goods. In some cases you can modify physical goods (if it's a device for example) and sell the result (I can make a business buying TVs from abroad, modifying so they work in my country and selling them). You can copy physical goods (say my friend bought an amplifier, lent it to me, I took it apart, saw how it was made and made one for myself).
Also, I can buy physical goods in other countries and bring them back (or have them shipped) home. There is no unnatural "region locking" (the worst would be that I would have to buy a frequency changer if the device only operated on 60Hz or a transformer to step down from 220V to 110V for that device). On the other hand, Valve deactivated some accounts that have bought a game in another country and brought it back home, DVDs have region codes (that, if worked as intended, would prevent me from playing a DVD that I bought in another region).
They'll still be paying for the same wires underground. It won't magically increase maintenance costs.
Bandwidth of those wires is limited. So, if I wasn't using it, they could sell my part to other customers. Also, I pay the same amount of money if I download or not, so sometimes my friends ask me to download something for them (because they have a bad connection/no connection at all) and I do it. I still pay the same amount of money...
Money is also limited, well, things money can buy are limited, well, and the prices wouldn't change just because the guy printed some money, he has to use it first (assuming he didn't announce "Hey everybody, I printed some money, adjust your prices accordingly"). Also, it means that other people can buy less using that money (even if they have the same amount of printed paper).
Copies of a movie are not limited. While you can saturate even the fattest wire (or pipe), you can always make another copy of a movie. Since you are not selling your copies (which would actually bring the price down to cost of a blank CD - finite demand, infinite supply), other people can sell their copies for the same amount of money as if piracy didn't exist.
Also, when does the artist lose money? When I start searching for a torrent? When I download said torrent? When it starts to download? When it finishes the download? When I start to watch the movie? When I finish to start the movie? When I archive it? At what point the "loss" happens?
The copyright holders should start selling a "right to download" for a price that is smaller then the price of buying it in a store (since they do not have to press the CD/DVD, ship it to the store etc). You pay the money, get the right and then download the product using bittorrent or some FTP server.
WHOOOOSH
I have a question. Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay? You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right? That they were providing the torrent trackers that facilitated the distribution of copyrighted materials?
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore? Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work. The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses, who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about how evil they think capitalism is.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement. And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code. Apparently, piracy isn't theft and copyrights don't matter except when it benefits you.
Actually they were running a web site and if you read their side of the story, they were as legal as Google is.
Speaking of which, have you tried lately to download mp3's or movies using Google as your search engine?
Works better than P2P IMO. You don't have to worry about sharing anything and it's usually pretty quick in finding what you are looking for.
Google ftw :D
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
You didn't personally; it was a decision made by the people before you, of which you now bear the consequences (or, in this case, benefits).
Well, to be fair, it's considerably harder to share physical goods in such a way that both parties end up with permanent copies of acceptable quality, depending on the type of product of course. But, essentially, you're correct; physical goods can, in theory, be treated like non-physical goods. We've never needed copyright for goods because:
a) Until relatively recently copying of physical goods by the common man has been impossible,
b) In recent years, we've had patents for eligible inventions,
c) The cost of manufacturing dwarfs the cost of R&D, and
d) Reverse engineering is a long and expensive process for most things, even for big companies.
But this isn't really a bearing on copyright. The options still stands: buy and own, or don't.
Well duh! The point is that it also happens with piracy! When you pirate (art or bandwidth), the value drops for everyone else, either by rising prices, or falling quality. But, you can also choose to look at it as a victimless crime if you deliberately ignore the indirect consequences of your actions.
Again, a point integral to my argument. Money seems, superficially, unlimited, but it actually isn't. If you create counterfeit money (and use it), everyone else will be able to buy less. You can either choose to ignore the indirect consequences of your action (i.e. the theft of wealth from everyone else in the country), or you can face them and stay out of jail.
Similarly, copyrights are not an unlimited source of value. Copyright derives its value from control (hell, that's all it really is). Every sale is a little concession of control. It loses the copyright holder value, since their demand goes down, and someone outside of their control has unlimited access to that work, and the ability to show it to friends (just not copy and distribute it). However, they turn a profit, because they actually sell that control for money. So, if someone else, for profit or not, starts distributing their copies, then the control simply drains away, and so does demand and value of the copyright.
Which ties very neatly into what I was saying. The loss comes as demand goes down. If you watch a movie once, and you don't want to watch it again, then that's all your demand for that movie out the window. That's, potentially, one ticket to the movies, or one movie rental down. So actually watching the movie, I guess, would be the point of loss. You can also help other people satisfy their demand without p
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
*facepalm*
To clarify: TPB aren't the ones sharing. They are enabling private, non-commercial sharing through the provision of a search engine. He was not claiming that the TPB were private, non-commercial or sharing.
*sigh*
TPB is openly facilitating the said act. And in doing so, share the guilt of the individuals.
And of course using his logic, if the individuals believe that file sharing is not wrong then certainly they will think that TPB is not wrong either.
If you don't understand the concept sharing something that is not yours to begin with is stealing, then this whole conversation is a moot point anyway.