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New Threats Against Pirate Bay Owners

Posted by timothy on from the this-time-we're-really-warning-you dept.

angry tapir writes "The Pirate Bay should be closed, and if it isn't, two of the founders will each have to pay a fine of 500,000 Swedish kronor (US$71,500), according to a verdict in the Stockholm District Court. This time it's Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg who are in the court's crosshairs. They have been forced to shut down the site or pay the fine. The court has stated that the site will have to remain closed unless Neij and Warg are exonerated on another similar case they're involved in, which is now on appeal."

5 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Meanwhile... by nacturation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As long as they all host Linux ISOs and Project Gutenberg files, which is the only thing Slashdot users would download from them.

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  2. This is a significant breakdown in the law by erroneus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The crux of The Pirate Bay's existence is that it is not explicitly illegal under Swedish law to do what they do. We know what torrent technology is and how it works and how it is used. There is no need to go into that. The pirate bay tracks, indexes and serves up torrent file. It is not copyrighted data or information.

    The new spin is that they have been convicted of being an accessory to copyright infringement but there is no specific instance of copyright infringement having been associated with the charge. It seems to me that you would first have to prove an offence occurred before someone can be charged with being an accessory to an offence. Can someone be charged with accessory to murder without proof that a murder took place? I understand there is a general and accepted fact that The Pirate Bay does indeed contribute to copyright infringement, but in a court of law where proof and evidence are important, it seems pretty dangerous to convict someone on established presumptions rather than fact based on evidence and that there should be an original offence, based on fact based evidence, to associate with an accessory charge.

    Sweden showed that they have integrity of their judicial process by not charging TPB with copyright infringement as their laws do not identify their activities as copyright infringement. Good. But charging them as an accessory to an unidentified offence is a departure from that judicial integrity.

    I worry for the rule of law when people can be charged with crimes in this way.

    1. Re:This is a significant breakdown in the law by vivaelamor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Lets face reality though, Pirate Bay exists to facilitate copyright infringement. You really can't deny that, it does not make any attempt what so ever to prevent it. It was created by an anti-copyright organization.

      No, they exist to share files. The consequences of providing this service is many people share copyrighted material; I agree that the people running the pirate bay have demonstrated they have no problem with this. You are wrong in saying it exists to facilitate copyright infringement because if copyright was not an issue then the site would still exist to share non copyrighted material.

      You can't hold me responsible for a murder on my property that I had no idea was going on, didn't see, didn't intentionally facilitate and would have attempted to stop had I known about it.. But when on any given day (in fact several thousand times EVERYDAY), I can look out my window and watch it happening, while I sit and drink my coffee, its a slightly different story. When the exclusive reason people come to my property is because I'll provide them with information on how to find victims, and then look the other way while they strangle those victims, I am most certainly responsible for the murders as much as the guy doing it. They can't even say 'I was just following orders', unless you think that was a valid excuse for Hitler as well, considering he was giving the orders, I don't think anyone would go that far would they?

      I wouldn't expect the courts to allow someone watching these murders to take place and not do anything about it, I hope you don't either.

      Why do we feel any different about Pirate Bay?

      Simple, no one really feels that copyright infringement is a crime on the order of magnitude that the content producers want to treat it. If you want to fix the problem, change copyright law, don't allow loopholes around it. Change the law that is the problem.

      The only thing copyright infringement has in common with murder is that both of them are considered unlawful. It may be an effective emotive device to draw a comparison between copyright infringement and murder but I think the argument could be summed up 'people should respect the law'.

      There is a lot of precedent to contest this. We largely got where we are today by people ignoring laws they did not agree with, for example the Boston Tea Party is widely regarded as a justified case of direct action, Wikipedia has many more examples.

      Bad law has the inevitable effect of reducing the respect for good law, in defending the respect for law as a whole you are defending bad law and exacerbating the problem. In showing a disagreement with bad law you can strengthen good law by highlighting the reasons behind it. Consider the chicken and egg scenario: what came first? Law or reason? It is obvious to most that reason came before law but If respect for the law is a goal then that implies that law is an ends rather than a means. When law becomes the ends then the pursuit of reason becomes diminished by the pursuit of law. If people start basing their choices on whether something is lawful then they lose the ability to reason which is far more important than the ability to follow law.

      I worry for the rule of the law when people can so easily skirt around it in this way.

      I worry when we are ruled by law rather than reason. A famous philosopher once said that philosophy allowed him to do by choice what others did by the rule of law, to say that law is more important than reason is to take the power of people to reason for themselves away from them.

      When you make comments like yours, and people mod them insightful, it just makes the anti-copyright movement seem all the more illegitimate. Take legalized racism in America for example. Riots and violence didn't make it go away, it just got people killed and hurt those being wronged more than those d

  3. Re:Oh no! by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's not the point of enforcing the law. You don't leave thieves, embezzlers or whatever alone because there's a lot more of them out there. You catch the ones you can. (No I don't really think the piratebay should be shut down but it IS a stupid argument.)

    When the law starts making large portions of the population into criminals, it's time to start changing the law.
    I say that because the same laws being used to go after TPB are being used to come after you and me. Or is that a stupid argument too?

    The War on Copyright is going exactly like The War on Drugs:
    A supersize order of Fail with an extra side order of extensive collateral damage.

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    o0t!
  4. Re:Meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > Remind me: How does (x == px) evaluate?

    It evaluates as "laws are not based on pointer arithmetic".

    See the concept of aiding and abetting. Things that are, on the surface, legal, can be illegal if they are knowingly and willingly and purposefully helping the commission of a crime. YMMV, consult your local legislation for details.