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Swedish Authorities Attempt Pirate Bay Shutdown
Several sources are discussing the recent attempted shutdown of The Pirate Bay by Swedish authorities. It seems that following the recent court defeats and the pending civil actions, Swedish authorities threatened TPB's main bandwidth supplier with a hefty fine in order to get them shut down. Not surprisingly TPB has relocated and is back online although the tracker still seems to be down. As a gesture of their "appreciation" TPB plans on sending a mocking t-shirt to the people believed responsible for the takedown attempt.
How efficient of them.
The piratebay guys keep pulling these idiotic stunts, like not showing-up to their own trial, and pretty soon they will lose. If they would at least TRY to put-up a rational defense instead of acting like teenagers, maybe they can win their cause.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The point being they are clearly breaking the law
Are you a legal expert? Decision is still pending, and you're spreading weasel words trying to make a point that what they are doing is illegal? I smell a troll somewhere....
Maybe, but they put up a damn good fight compared to everybody else in that situation.
It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside to seeing a gang of hooligans consistently thumb their nose at the system while the entertainment goons continue to waste their resources playing whack-a-mole with The Pirate Bay and p2p in general.
TPB knew what they were up against and they are fighting it to the very end. It's debatable whether they have big balls of if they're just stupid -- or both -- but since when have big media's rabid lawyers respected the spirit of the law? They don't even respect the letter of it and they are fast making a mockery of the US judicial system and the executive branch. At least TPB are honest enough to openly mock the system rather than throw enough money at it to pervert it.
Besides, and some of you may not know this, there are other torrent trackers besides TPB. Just fucking Google it, or ask somebody here. They'd gladly tell you.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Just a simple observations:
- From the beginning of ARPAnet, through BBS and 2400bps modems to today, material, restricted or not, has become exponentially easier to access. This is despite napster shutdown, DRM, and pirate bay verdicts.
- Even China and Iran that tries to censor the internet with draconian measures have been largely unsuccessful.
- Intellectual property lobbyists have won every battle, and have succeeded against fair use consistently.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
I don't think of it as "But we just want free warez and dont want to pay for entertainment!", but as "Your silly model based on restricting distribution is a total fail, get another one!".
Ultimately the models that restrict distribution reward distributors more than creators anyway. I say good riddance to them. This isn't about getting paid, but who's in control of what you see and hear and when you see or hear it.
The getting paid part is just the convenient justification of the moment because stating the real reason wouldn't get them anywhere.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Oh crap, I should have RTFA.
You just got troll'd!
I don't think of it as "But we just want free warez and dont want to pay for entertainment!", but as "Your silly model based on restricting distribution is a total fail, get another one!".
Yeah because all the users of the site would totally stick around if they were no longer getting all the content for free. *rolls eyes* Why must everyone make up bullshit excuses instead of just admitting that they were downloading stuff because they wanted to get it for free? No one is falling for these bullshit excuses anyway.
The short: People pirate because they can. The long: Pirating is so easy and does so little damage to the media companies that people don't even feel remorse for doing it. Most people think that the prices for media today is far too high and if they were lowered they would likely buy more. I doubt the media companies are really losing much business because the movies people truly want to see still get bought. In other words, if media prices were dropped the companies revenues would likely be similar to what they are now. People would buy more but at a lower price. Most pirates are not exclusive pirates. They still go out to the movies, buy new releases, and buy their favorite bands music. They pirate things that they were less likely to buy.
I don't think the average pirate is trying to prove a point or communicate a message. I think they do it because they want something but not enough to pay the asking price.
Stewart Brand was close. He almost understood.
You can't make someone pay for information unless you're the only one that can provide it. Everyone. Every single person reading this... you are a potential content provider. You could make every bit of information on your computer available, right now.
Sue us.
All of us. ...because that's the only way you can stop the tidal wave that will crush your monopoly of distribution.
You're idea of how to define property are antiquated and you're about to become extinct unless you mutate. The only people making money now are your lawyers.
And when you've lost. When you've bled yourself dry and lost all support from the public you think you pander to, the dust will settle and we will still be here distributing information. Not because we are cheap. Not because we don't want creativity to win... but because information is free.
Hint: creating information is a service people will gladly pay for...
I fully support any foreign governments that choose to ignore the draconian DMCA. The law is nothing more than a legislative grant to content owners to use criminal laws to preserve their own profit.
The law is widely misused and doesn't do anything to protect citizens fair use rights. It's just a bad law that won't go away.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Sorry, but you are incorrect in your assertion the TPB is engaging in illegal activity, unless you are prepared to argue that any purveyor of a particular technology is guilty of a crime if someone uses that technology to commit a crime.
Yes, yes, we needn't exchange winks. We all know that a huge portion of the traffic that TPB facilitates is illegal file-sharing, but TPB is no more guilty of file sharing than any of the technology providers along the entire path over which those files are shared, which is to say, "not at all". It is the user who employed the technology for illegal purposes that committed the crime, not his ISP, their bandwidth providers, and certainly not TPB.
You cannot get around that with technical reasonings like "but we dont host the files, we just provide .torrent files".
Why not? The law is replete with examples like that.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
nope.. it's about ensuring that value is actually transferred. for example, I buy a game and the drm bs doesn't let me play it properly. I can download a cracked copy. Sure, most people just dl, but as long as content providers feel entitled to my money, my rights, and even the product I BUY from them post sale, safety valves like this will exist. Fuck 'em.
I think that it's important to point out that "rights holders" are perfectly willing to break the law. Sony rootkits, RIAA's illegal "investigations", and more. Worse, the "rights holders" are intent on bending, folding, mutilating, and spindling the law. Today's copyright law is a horrid mutilation of the spirit of the law. I dare say that if the law were fair and equitable, there would be very few people actually ripping off the content found on the web. In fact, if the law were truly "just", I suspect that thieves would be turned in by parents, freinds, and associates. People actually respond to crimestoppers requests for information, after all.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You cannot get around that with technical reasonings like "but we dont host the files, we just provide .torrent files".
You can not get around that with technical reasonings like "but I did not stab anyone, I just sold him the knife".
She made the willows dance
I personnaly don't steal anything, but I do share those things.
It's quite obvious the corruption involved in the initial raids on TPB in 2k6 was/is much more widespread than previously thought.
They are appealing, and from all accounts the initial lower court ruling does not get applied until their appeal is decided a year plus from now.
This is persecution plain and simple, a textbook case of political harassment by plutocrats intent on keeping their hegemony.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Your credit card number and associated details, please.
You gotta start somewhere, right?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Derp derp.
I stole something from the store, and now they don't have it anymore.
I stole it.
Derp derp.
I downloaded something from the intertubes and now they still have it.
Did I steal something?
Derp.
I'd say it's more like this:
"I didn't stab him. A guy came in wanting to stab someone, so I told him where to get a knife. He then put the knife on the counter so other people could go stabbing with the knife."
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
How efficient of them.
The piratebay guys keep pulling these idiotic stunts, like not showing-up to their own trial, and pretty soon they will lose. If they would at least TRY to put-up a rational defense instead of acting like teenagers, maybe they can win their cause.
You don't fight Goliath by playing by his rules.
The entire point is that they are helping others to infringe on copyright: this is simply demonstrating how stupid the current laws and business models are. The fact that the Goliath is trying to shut them down, and it's turning into a complete farce is helping to show that trying to run things with the current laws is pointless. Things need to be reformed to reflect the new reality of easy distribution.
Apple has shown that people are willing to purchase music online if it's convenient and not too expensive; the various copyright cartels need to change their distribution model for movies, etc.
There will also always be some people who will download something for free if they can, just like they dubbed their own audio cassette tapes, but will never pay pay for anything: there's no sense going after them.
You know, I don't have any pirated material on my computer. Every song, every video, every piece of software, every file of any kind is something I either bought, downloaded legally for free, or wrote myself.
And yet I support TPB, and oppose the MAFIAA and their toadies in the US and (increasingly) around the world.
You can believe me or not, I don't care. Just be aware that there are a substantial number of people who strongly dislike the current insane state of copyright law and the Draconian enforcement thereof, not because it's personally inconvenient for them, but simply and solely because it is wrong.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Better brush up on your intertube memes, young man.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
>everyone can see the difference between TPB and Google.
If you say so, but you'll need to explain it in terms that can be applied when the parties are not TPB and Google, in particular.
How certain are you that "everyone" has an unbiased view of the "difference?"
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Pirating is so easy and does so little damage to the media companies that people don't even feel remorse for doing it.
I think it's a little deeper than that.
See, there used to be a notion of a "social contract" underlying copyright. The idea was that by enforcing copyright restrictions for a limited (fairly short) period of time, we could encourage the production and publication of works which would soon enrich us all by falling into the public domain. The existence of a rich public domain both acted as a constraint on the price of new works by giving people a less costly alternative and as a reminder to everyone of the benefits of honoring the social contract.
In a world where copyright expired after 14 years, the average college student would be very familiar with the theory underlying copyright, and why it's morally wrong to ignore it -- because the average college student would already have seen works fall into the public domain in his or her lifetime. A favorite childhood movie would have been freed, and others would be close.
But now, copyright has become perpetual, and the social contract broken.
Oh, sure, technically copyrights still expire, but that's only if they don't get retroactively extended again, and they already last longer than most lifetimes. The result is that Joe Sixpack thinks it's a legitimate (if obscure and trivial) question to ask "Who owns the copyright on Shakespeare's plays?". Most people don't realize that copyrights are even supposed to expire, and feel that the only moral force behind copyright is that an author, musician, etc., has a moral "right" to control his or her work. Even the ones who don't bother wondering why this is true for authors but not true for, say, plumbers, still recognize that this is a weak moral force, especially when it's clear that the creator is already very well paid for his or her work.
Thus, the extension of copyright terms has sucked all moral force out of copyright. People don't feel remorse because there's really no significant reason to feel remorse.
And the sad and delicious irony here, is that the very people who decry piracy the loudest are the same people who lobbied for term extension.
They did it to themselves. As far as I'm concerned, that removes what remaining moral force there might be. I don't pirate stuff myself, but I don't really consider it a moral issue. I do want to see that creators of good stuff get paid, not so much to pay for the work they have done as to encourage them to do some more, but that's it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If you can provide something virtually for free to billions of people, it's obviously the right thing to do.
What about herpes?
Yep, same here. I have cabinets full of games yet I have had to crack every single fricking one. Why? Because I have 8Gb of RAM and 1Gb on the GPU so I naturally went to XP X64. The games, even the old ones all work fine, but guess what? Their &^%$%#%^# DRM don't! Thanks DRM designers!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If it has come down to be only a matter of what the ratio of legal/illegal content is then I would suggest TPB to start auto-adding 1000 .torrent-files pointing to linux-dists for every torrent uploaded.
Problem solved.
Prosp long and liver.
Yes, I am perfectly serious. Let us compare a downloaded game or movie to sneaking into a theatre to watch a movie. Let us compare the Sony rootkit to wiretapping a huge segment of the population, chosen at random. Which is the greater crime? If you have to think for more than a second to answer that, then there is no point in discussing morality with you. A fitting punishment for the former would be a week of community service. A fitting punishment for the latter would be a decade in prison, and millions of dollars in fines.
Perhaps you object to my claims of extortion? What else can we call it? How about we look at DirectTV's tactics first. Anyone who purchased a doo-diddy to program a card was sent a notice that they were liable for hacking DTV's broadcast content. DTV collected MILLIONS of dollars from people who couldn't afford to a: hire legal representation b: travel to court c: take time off of work to travel to court d: spend significant time in court
RIAA used the exact same tactics to extort money from people who may or may not have been "guilty" of copyright infringement.
I am quite serious, in that the current laws are skewed, and that those skewed laws are being atrociously abused by corporate bigshots. That doesn't even address the fact that current copyright laws were bought and paid for with campaign contributions.
Fraud and corruption drives the profitability of a huge portion of the media providers. As long as that fraud and corruption is winked at by the government (all three branches of government) then I can justify Joe Sixpack stealing movies, music, or whatever the hell else he wants to steal.
If/when the laws are made just and rational, THEN I may get a little bit excited that some kid downloads (and uploads) some recording of yet another mediocre pair of mammary glands moaning about unrequited love.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Are you a legal expert? Decision is still pending, and you're spreading weasel words trying to make a point that what they are doing is illegal? I smell a troll somewhere....
Even though the vocal majority of slashdot does not agree with it, they have actually been found guilty and they have been sentenced for it.
Thus, they broke the law (the Swedish law at least) and are guilty. The next reasonable step would be to change that law that we find morally wrong (similarly to alcohol-prohibition, drugs-prohibition, etc), but while the law says what they do is illegal, there is no excuse.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
>> I fully support any foreign governments that choose to ignore the draconian DMCA.
I fully support any foreign government that chooses to acknowledge that US law is only pertinent within US jurisdiction, including and especially the draconian DMCA. I have nothing but total contempt for any foreign (or US) government which thinks that its laws apply globally.
DT
Remember, Fair Use isn't a right, it's a legal defense.
What?
It means that claiming fair use won't keep you out of court, you have to actually go to court and use that as your defense.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer