Slashdot Mirror
Ex-Pirate Bay Admin Launches Micropayment Service
spyrochaete writes "Peter Sunde, formerly 'brokep' of The Pirate Bay, recently launched a beta version of Flattr — a micropayment service enabling internet users to tender cash payments to any participating content publisher. Its model enables users to divvy monthly subscription fees as donations awarded to the musicians, bloggers, photographers, or other publisher of their choice.
Sunde tells the BBC, 'We want to encourage people to share money as well as content,' and asserts, 'people love things and they want to pay.'"
Sounds pretty nice as long as it doesn't commercialize things that are already free. I like it because you wouldn't think about each individual transaction since you pay a flat rate.
The way Flattr is set up, your monthly payment is divided up among the sites you Flattr that month... so if you Flattr 5 sites it will be divided by 5, if you Flattr 100 sites it will be divided by 100. I am not sure I like that arrangement.
It's a good thing if Sunde gets this off the ground and profitable, because he's gotta having something to pay off that judgement to Big Media....
Connect the micro payment system to the torrents and any registered individual human parties that can prove identity and/or copyright ownership and is not big media.
This could give opportunity to actually pay the actual artists who want to get paid for the sharing that is going on. This should really serve to piss off the big media publishers who are essentially pimping the work of others for huge personal gain.
""We're not really in this for becoming rich," he said. "We're doing it to change things and making people get money they never got before."
"I know that people are nice enough," he said. "People love things and they want to pay." "
Well three things. One the guy has trust issues. Two the history of micro payment is a troubled one. And three the shear irony of that man saying "people want to pay" considering his original customers is black hole awesome.
They'll only be excepting pieces of eight and dubloons... aghghghrrr me hearties
Hi,
As far as I know Sunde has never been accused of pirating anything. ThePiratebay was and still is legal in Sweden.
Just because you can use their service to illegal distribute content does not make the creator a pirate. This would be the equivalent of calling the city a 'drunk driver' because it builds the streets that can be used to facilitate drunk driving.
For example: If you have 5000 people a month visiting you and you get Flattr revenues from 1/4 of them between the amounts of $0.01 and $2, with the average being $0,25 you would net $312,5 each month. That's a decent help with the server & hosting bills. How many sites with Paypal donate buttons can claim similar figures? (I agree, my figures are just random figures, but not entirely unrealistic, given the proposed system)
Another counter argument I guess is "Will people use it?" .. that is anyone's guess, but I would totally put some money into the account and whenever I saw something interesting or worth supporting, I could put my money where my mouth is. This instead of saying "If only paypal wasn't so much of a hassle and require so big an investment to donate, I would help these guys". Imagine what this'll do to small pieces of free software, many of which die of neglect because of lack of incentive.
Lots of popular sites right now run on good will of the owner, some individual donations and ads. And in many cases ads that are not very benign in nature. This Flattr system seems to offer a way out of this. Hell, it could probably be expanded to be a payment system for fixed-size payments.. like "Click here to pay $1.99" -> Goto Flattr site to confirm -> Get authenticated as paid customer.
I guess it remains to be seen if this system is any good. But I don't expect it to fail on the willingness of people to pay.. if it fails it probably fails on lack of participating sites or problems on making a deposit. I will sure as hell give it a whirl.
yeah, mr. criminal expects me to give him my credit card number and/or money. sure - why not!
The key here is to eliminate the role of the recording industry execs. In the digital age, the only real service they provide is marketing, and if you're already interested in paying money for someone's music, then those marketing services don't really add any value to the product you're paying for.
Aside from that, recording industry execs hinder creativity by stamping out cookie-cutter artists who are forced down the public's throat until they burn out in a blaze of drugs and/or stupidity. Music wants to be free (as in speech), and the recording industry is the single biggest obstacle to that.
This might explain why he was working with AES:
http://twitter.com/brokep/status/7915813818
"@niczar I clocked 12.8Gbps using AES 128 ECB on a dual quad 2.26ghz xeon with HT (= 16 cores). Not cost efficient."
http://twitter.com/brokep/status/7905751784
Is there a fast solution with a graphics card to do #AES within #Linux? I need 10Gbps or so realtime.
But they were the ones who put the word pirate in the name of their site. In your example, the city would be called Boozer City.
Which I think does exist somewhere in Australia. I might be wrong, because I have been alternating between rum and beer, so I have no idea what is going on here. Hmm, and I am currently downloading some TV episodes at the moment. Oh crap! I am that pirate in Boozer City!
newsflash: they were found guilty and sentenced to jail time IN SWEDEN. maybe you tried to avoid hearing it, but it happened.
The guys a fucking criminal. lets not pretend he is some kind of fucking hero. All Sunde cares about is Sunde and Sundes bank balance.
Some other criminals of note: Sparticus; Jesus of Nazareth; Nelson Mandela.
Sentenced, and currently going through a multitude of appeals. They're not in jail yet, and it's likely they'll never land in jail at all. I don't think this has anything to do with heroism or anything of the sort. He has started a business, and it will mutually benefit him and the 'sellers' of the 'commodity'.
Disagree != mod troll.
newsflash: They were found guilty under a law that DID NOT exist, simply on the basis of the affiliations of the judge. What they did was, and still is LEGAL in Sweden, as no law yet exists regarding the copying of information. Unfortunately, instead of applying the law as it stood, the judge chose to create a new law akin to "aiding and abetting" especially for this case.
You have to realise that the Swedish adjudication system was originally based on throwing axes at people bound to spinning wheels to determine guilt, (or something like that), where the actual decision regarding guilt or innocence had probably already been made by the Chief Viking and his advisors, and the rest of the proceeding was just for show and keeping the lower ranks happy.
Surprisingly, 1500 hundred years after the Vikings, not a lot has changed, except the advisors are a bunch of corrupt RIAA employees :-(
But, what prison are they in?
newsflash: they were found guilty and sentenced to jail time in sweden by TINGSRÄTTEN. The case was then appealed, and that was just the first instance. There is an second and a third.
This is so beautiful. It might be the first web service I truly, really like. It's in the right place at the right time. People, me included, love clicking "upvote" buttons all day long, because they like to show appreciation and it gives them a feeling of power. How much more meaningful this becomes when there's money attached! It will feel great to "flatter" people with some of your money, while never bothering to keep track of "how much you spend" (stressful, anyone will tell you), as it's a constant that you've decided you want to give out to the world for a month.
I don't know about you guys, but this fits my mental model of donations better than anything before. I think it'll catch on, because both providers and consumers will love it. We will move to a web with less crap. Maybe even reverse Sturgeon's law.
Hence the suburb of Upper Hutt is guilty as charged, because it has a Moonshine Road.
Pity that it's unlikely that anyone contracted to the major content distributors will be taking it up - I suspect the studios and publishers would bang that on the head. They (sic) like total control over the money flow.
Earlier this year when "well known musicians" came out to damn piracy - and it was covered by bbc, abc (Oz) and others I posted the suggestion (on those sites) that artists create a blog with a paypal account, so that people who download music and movies illegally (like me) could directly send the artists money. The posts were immediately pulled.
I (for one) welcome a New World Publishing Order - where the consumer determines the rewards for the artist/author/whatever, instead of the existing model where the studios/publishers tell the artist/author and the consumer "what market wants".
Just saying...
Under Swedish law, the verdict means absolutely nothing while they're going through the appeals process. In other words, they're still "innocent until proven guilty". Judging by the obvious bias of the judge in the initial case, I'd say they have a pretty good chance to get a better verdict the second time around.
Sticking with the drunk driving analogy I think that the Pirate Bay's activity is more akin to putting up advertising billboards, some of which give directions to the nearest discount liquor barn. Still not "lock em up and throw away the key" stuff but hardly building streets.
Except, he has been convicted in court.
It has of course gone to the higher level in court, but he is currently under a court order to pay a lot of money for his crimes.
The court room was kinda farcical though.
Its a nice idea, making it easy to support stuff like FOSS-sites and other things that you like with just a click. Sure, Paypal exists but its not as easy to use and ill equipped for small donations.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
Just because you can use their service to illegal distribute content does not make the creator a pirate. This would be the equivalent of calling the city a 'drunk driver' because it builds the streets that can be used to facilitate drunk driving.
Not quite, what the state does is build streets, pass laws against drunk driving and maintain a police force to make sure people don't drive drunk. What the Pirate-Bay did was more like build streets, facilitate the free distribution of booze then make fun of people who complained about drunk drivers.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
But like you said too, they were sentenced. As it is currently, they have been found to be violating law. You can normally appeal, but as of now the court decision has been done.
Besides, this service charges 10% for "administration fees". Even PayPal doesn't charge that much and some take just 0.30%. Not in it to make profit, yeah sure.
If you're genuinely comparing someone who offered free movies and music via his website and was smacked down for it to NELSON FUCKING MANDELA and you're not high, you need to sort your fucking priorities out.
I write bullshit
What people must go through these days to earn the title of pirate...
"Copying of information", yeah right. At least take the stand and speak about things on their correct terms. It's file sharing. It's copyright infringement. On TPB's part, it was massive aiding of copyright infringement.
You see, our legal system actually looks at ones purpose on things, instead of going on merely technical terms. This means the stupid "but .torrent file itself isn't illegal!" doesn't hold much water and you can't just mess around going against laws with such stupid technical excuses. If you look at the legal letters and responses to them, or 99.9% of the content of the side, or the freaking The Pirate Bay name, I think it's pretty clear TPB knew what they were doing.
If they would had just played it cool, responded and acted to copyright infringement notices and, for fucks sake, chosen a little bit more neutral name they could had have a better change. But not like this.
ThePiratebay was and still is legal in Sweden.
I guess you can keep on arguing that. But they where sentenced and I don't think it's even hosted in Sweden longer so well. Make what you want out of that.
It's an interesting system, in that you don't have to appeal from a disadvantage, but it also means that more rash decisions are common at the first court as the accused can always appeal.
How we know is more important than what we know.
They can't always appeal. The appeal process has to be requested and it's possible it's denied if the defendants can't create valid reasons for it. But since this was a large case and they could provide valid enough reasons for it, they were allowed to appeal.
They are in no way "innocent until proven guilty" now as the parent put it. They are guilty already, but they still have a possibility to turn that around.
'We want to encourage people to share money as well as content'
I'm done working that side of the fence. Now I'll work this one and make a mint here too.
'people love things and they want to pay'.
I want people's money.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Funny, I'd been toying around with a VERY SIMILAR idea - I even had the good peeps & their servers @ The Pirate Bay in mind! Telepathy? Perhaps, but it seems some packets were lost on their way... You see, I thought a major Hook (Cpt., I presume) in the concept's genius would come from the fact that the service was called "The Pirates' Gold"! And as an equivalent to a digg-like button I was thinking a classic black salty liquorice candy "pirate coin" (salmiakkimerkkari in Phinland) icon should be used as "the token of appreciation"! (I wonder if the Swedes have these too?)
OK pirates, feel free to pirate - or whatever it is that you do - these ideas and exploit them as your own!
Of course he will ignore DMCA takedowns, they are not within US jurisdiction.
Besides, in Scandinavia we don't follow "common sense law". We are quite unreasonable people.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Well, the way the swedish legal system works you aren't "really" guilty until the appeals process has been completed.
Besides, it's pretty much standard fare for decisions in tingsrätten to be overturned by hovrätten or högsta domstolen since in tingsrätten there is normally only one actual judge and four laymen (most often politicians), and interestingly enough these laymen have a tendency to occasionally focus more on their emotional assertion of a case, how much money someone slipped them under the table or just plain political ideology ("Drugs are bad because they're illegal and they're illegal because they're bad, also by law any use of illegal drugs is always abuse, here's a SEK 20,000 fine for abusing drugs (but oh, don't forget that drugs are only illegal so we can help abusers stop abusing)").
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
But they were the ones who put the word pirate in the name of their site.
Originally PirateBay published economic trends. They used the price of Four'n'Twenties as a cost of living indicator.
Hence the name - "Pi Rate" which translates into English as "cost of a meat pie".
the city would be called Boozer City.
Which I think does exist somewhere in Australia
There is no city in this fine and fair land called "Boozer City". You fool! (perhaps you've just come back from BongBong - hopefully Mount Camel was not on the way)
All the towns are called "Boozer Town". The cities, going clockwise from the bottom-south, are Shooter City, Underbelly City, City of Colour and Movement, PartyCrash City, Big Stubby City, Bundaberg City, Ice City, and (my city) Tired And Emotional Politician City.
Don't listen to the talking Polar Bear on the bottle - he studied at the school of Tallho Rolling paper trivia.
Hmm, and I am currently downloading some TV episodes at the moment
Wrong again! You are watching the dishwasher (and that is a mouse in your hand).
More to the point, the "piracy" term refers to the commercial distribution of copyrighted works without the copyright owner's explicit authorization. If you download an album for your personal use or even if you upload it without getting any currency out of it you are not "pirating" anything. But the media companies sure want to tack that nasty term to everything they don't approve. After all, "unauthorized distribution for personal use" doesn't quite have that negative image associated with it. You need an image of some bearded, blood thirsty thief and murderer with a parrot on his shoulder to make believe that copying a file is somehow a terribly wrong thing to do.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
He didn't imply a comparison, if he had he would have said so. Try reaching for the names of three historical or modern figures convicted of slightly dubious crimes to the mild consternation of a significant minority. You can't can you. He was pointing out how ridiculous it is to take the authoritarian definition of criminal at face value, because they can be a bunch of criminals themselves :)
I think this is a great idea. If one have a system where you pay a set amount of money for each click on a website one might stop for a split second and think if it's really worth it, and if you can afford it. With this you know you are going to pay a set amount of money each month, so you don't lose anything on pressing a button somewhere.
And three the shear irony of that man saying "people want to pay" considering his original customers is black hole awesome.
Not necessarily.
You often hear "There are no (or at most, little) losses of profit from piracy because people wouldn't have bought the music/games/software/movies/etc. anyways". That is only partially true, however: People wouldn't have bought the products for the price they would have had to pay. A college student might want to try out some nice game that people are talking about but he usually only has two options: "Pay 70 dollars (the PC games cost about 50 euros where I live) or nothing". Now, it might well be that they don't have the 70 dollars so they can pay nothing for the game. At that point the situation is "I can't pay anything, so the authors/developers/artists gain nothing and lose nothing based on what I do. The question of whether I download the product is entirely irrelevant to their profits. I have thus feel no moral obligation to not download" and then they download. It's the same thing with paying 30 dollars for a CD, especially when you know that most of the money wouldn't go to the artist you want to support even if you paid for the product.
Now, micropayments offer you the possibility to give less but still something. Perhaps you can't afford to give a few dozen dollars for a CD, but can afford to give a few. So you can act just like you did before, except now the artist gets what little you can pay instead of the "all or nothing" policy. I think it is awesome idea but like all concepts like this one, it needs a critical mass of people to succeed and I'm not sure if it can achieve that. But in theory, it's great. Now, as for your other things...
One the guy has trust issues.
That's irrelevant to everything. I don't care if he is there out of love towards creative commons or to become rich. If he offers a great service, awesome. If he earns something in the progress, I don't mind.
Two the history of micro payment is a troubled one.
True, but this might be able to circumwent that. In Flattr you (apparently, I haven't RTFA yet) pay flat rate each month and then your donations are just divided to artists in the form of micropayments. It has some problems of it's own but still, it might well be the solution for many problems concerning micropayments.
-AC
Also, You should consider who you trust more with your money/transactions. Paypal or Pirates? I know who I prefer
Governments are going to want to tax this.
A micro-payment system that prevents corporations from getting in there and taking the money they deserve?
Sounds like COMMUNISM!
Or at least that's how it's going to be played out in the media.
> That's pretty insightful of him!
But what I find most interesting is that most people learn, after a certain age, that it doesn't pay to say everything you think, no matter how insightful it actually is.
As soon as it's up and running, you can bet that there will be trojans, worms, evil javascript, and so forth all vying to exploit it. Setting up artificial flattr clicks to a scammer's site will probably be possible in many ways, even if you never consciously visit that site. Collecting flattr cash from a handful of victims is hardly worth the effort, but if you can infect enough unwitting donors, then it should be worth a bit.
Before long, infected PCs will just be sending floods of flattr clicks to a swarm of scammer sites, and the few clicks sent to intended sites will be effectively worthless. I expect flattr will fall by the wayside, unless security measures are added for each flattr click (password or other interactive authentication). It will certainly collapse after it adopts sufficient security to properly inhibit exploits.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
'nuff said.
If the cars being driven while drunk were incapable of causing harm when they collided, they would be right to make fun of those who complained. Imagine the oil companies complaining because people were able to fuel their safe cars with some of the booze available for drinking, thus depriving the oil companies of their rightful income.
Instead of constantly creating slices and diluting the amount equally between everyone, I want to be able to edit my Flatter profile the following way:
I log in and see all the sites I've Flattr'd in the last 30 days.
The site list is accompanied by sliders that are hooked into a bar graph or pie chart.
I slide the settings around until I'm satisfied with the split based on the content that I think has the most worth.
I can edit the sliders right up to payout day. That way if someone impresses me at the beginning of the month, but then pulls a bait-and-switch with trash for the following weeks (or it turned out they plagiarized another content producer) I can put that money elsewhere.
Either i have had too much vodka or some of those words are not English.
...FLATTR!
Of course - I'd run faster than light to give my credit-card information to the Pirate Bay Pirates, that only makes perfect sense in bizarro world!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
tl;dr
I don't beleive they have made any serious money out of it and I don't think their motivation is money.
They have taken money from advertising to run the site, but made any money, I don't think so.
Especially compared to what they could have spent their time on.
So, I think there is a fair amount of "heroism", or whatever you want to call trying to make the world a better place involved.
...that Flattr be "regulated as a bank"? After all, we can't have people going around doing things without permission now can we?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No it's not "done".
There are different legal systems in the world.
Micropayments are different from regular payments. 10% of a small amount is less than 0.30% of a large amount... More SHOCKING mathematical facts soon ;)
Why would heavy metal bands be making legal judgements?!?
This is a great idea. One thing that I would really like to see is an AJAXy tree of categories where I can give a fixed budget to site categories. Eg News->$10, Software->FOSS $40
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
More interested to know as to how the fuck the video was made. Looks similar to the old "Sub prime mortgage" video. Mother fuckers, with this kind of talent I'ma worship Sunde instead of the sun god.
Probably 'cause sweden is awesome like that.
They can't always appeal. The appeal process has to be requested and it's possible it's denied if the defendants can't create valid reasons for it. (...) They are in no way "innocent until proven guilty" now as the parent put it. They are guilty already, but they still have a possibility to turn that around.
Formally, you are wrong. An appeal does not turn the burden of evidence around, they start again with a presumption of innocence and the prosecution has to prove their guilt. I don't have the exact details for Sweden but at least here in Norway you can appeal the lowest court's decision on findings of fact, findings or law or procedural errors. There Supreme court will often refuse an appeal, but the appeals court (hovrätten in Sweden, lagmannsretten in Norway) will rarely refuse an appeal.
The whole concept is a bit different in Scandinavia than in the US, remember here both sides can appeal, so both the prosecution and defendant has to accept the decision. If there's real material disputes or legal principles at stake, it's almost always appealed. A ruling here can equally well find you guilty even though you were found not guilty in the first trial, make your sentence longer and damages higher rather than acquit, shorten and lower it. It more a "full" trial versus a "light" trial than a US appeal.
Formally the legal system is one big process with up to three stages (courts) and your guilt is not decided and the sentence is not binding and final until all the possibilities for appeal have expired. That works both ways, an acquittal is also not binding and final so it can be appealed without causing double jeopardy, to be double jeopardy the system must have found you not guilty not just a single court. The Supreme court's decisions are immediately final since there is no more appeals, anything else is not.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Not trusting "common sense" is actually very reasonable sometimes...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
This can be especially useful for managing recurrent donations to various charities etc...
I love the idea.
I am ready to sign up when some of my favorite content creators are using it. Until then, however, there is no reason for me to join. I know... chicken and egg...
The Flattr web site needs a list of content creators using the service!
XKCD?
Cory Doctorow?
Jonathan Coulton?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
If you're genuinely comparing someone who offered free movies and music via his website and was smacked down for it to NELSON FUCKING MANDELA and you're not high, you need to sort your fucking priorities out.
You do know Nelson Mandela blew up trains? He was a terrorist.
Personally, I'll stay with the copyright infringers.
When you're being paid by someone to do something like this, it's hard to disguise the moves.
I give him a B-. lol
On TPB's part, it was massive aiding of copyright infringement.
Which part of "it is legal in Sweden" do you not understand ?
This means the stupid "but .torrent file itself isn't illegal!" doesn't hold much water and you can't just mess around going against laws with such stupid technical excuses
Well, yes, the law is *exactly* about technicalities, otherwise people walking around with gun holsters could be charged with firearms offenses, *regardless* of whether there was a gun in the holster !
A .torrent file is NOT illegal, it depends merely on what information it is POINTING to, and in which countr(ies) that information is considered copyrighted ... exactly the same position as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. Except those entities, being a American-based company are bound by American laws, such as DMCA takedown notices.
It still remains a fact that they broke no law as written in Sweden, and the "judge" (I use the word in it's loosest sense), created a new law under which to find them guilty. Thank your lucky stars you live somewhere where this doesn't happen, otherwise maybe next week they create a law against being an uninformed troll, and find you retroactively guilty under it.
Interesting slip.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Don't be silly now. According to Swedish law you can't be an accomplice in copyright infringement (which is what they were sentenced for) if there is no main culprit. That is, you cannot be convicted to be an aid in a crime when the crime has not been established, several legal experts have testified to the judgement being in error and it will be overturned when it gets to Hovrätten.
Tingsrätten is only for filtering minor issues and frivolous charges, almost every crime there is taken to Hovrätten. In fact you have the legal right to be tried in Hovrätten if the judgement gives you a punishment.
Can I do this without a PayPal or a bank account? Because if I can't, forget it. I can already pay for airline tickets at the convenience store after ordering them on the net. They need to come up with something similar for this. And in this case it needs to be anonymous. Otherwise, "guess who" will using this to track people.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I do plenty of piracy, not because I don't want to pay but moreso because I don't want to play big record labels. I always buy artist's T-Shirts so that I can give money directly to artists. I would gladly put $10 a month into this and "Flattr" a couple of my favorite artists and websites.
I mean...anything to stick it to the record labels. I don't want to give my money to terrorists.
I hope he makes a lot of money so that he can compensate all of the people he ripped off. He's a criminal, pure, simple, and convicted in a fair court of law.
His behavior in the TPB litigation indicates a lack of forthrightness and honesty. This doesn't bode too well for his new business, either. But, hey! A slashvertisement can't hurt!
However; .10x + .10x + .10x + .10x = .10(x+x+x+x)
So as you can see, 10% of many small amounts is 10% of a large amount.
But comparing it to PayPal isn't quite fair, paypal doesn't have to negotiate copyright licenses from potentially hundreds or maybe thouseands of different entities. Maybe 10% is actually appropriate in this situation.
I love The Pirate Bay and I love torrent sites - because I can get movies for free! I don't have enough money to give to Hollywood to keep making trashy films, so I download them for free, burn them off onto a DVD and laugh at them in the comfort of my own home cinema... :-)
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
Back around 2001/2002, someone tried doing this exact same thing. They shut down after something like 18 months, and didn't receive that many donations. I'm pretty sure they had less than $100,000 in donations.
I can't remember their name, and I'm doing google searches to track down the information about them, but yeah, they created a donation website where you could pay the musician if you downloaded their music. I want to say they were called "fairplay" or "fairpay" or something like that, but I haven't found any articles about it with google. Will re-post if I can track down information on them.
More to the point, the "piracy" term refers to the commercial distribution of copyrighted works without the copyright owner's explicit authorization.
... oh - *that's* why they called themselves the Pirate Bay. Oh wait. I take that back. Even the Pirate Bay disagrees with you.
As far as I know Sunde has never been accused of pirating anything.
I've seen videos of him admitting that he pirates stuff. I think his quote was something along the lines of "if I want something*, I take it. I don't care what the law says. I just don't care.".
*[ referring to digital media ]
Uh, why would these guys need to negotiate copyright licenses. From all of the summary, article and their video I understand it will be like donations to different sites (like the paypal button on different sites). And even if it would actually be about selling something, flatrr would be just a payment gateway - there is no need for them to negotiate any kind of copyright licenses.
Yeah that's how it is. And yes, you can actually get toucher sentences if you appeal.
However, I was mostly replying to the parents saying about "you can always appeal, so first ruling doesn't matter". For example in civil cases, you cannot if you never answered for the initial court (it will be ruled as one-sided win for the suer). Another case where your appeal is likely refused is if it is quite stupid and a minor case. For example getting a speeding ticket from police, and trying to appeal it even when theres good proof you did actually speed (people do this time to time just for funs)
However on cases like these and when it's about a little bit more than useless things like that, it works pretty much how you described.
This seems very similar what Fairtunes was doing years ago.
Oddsock even had/has a Winamp plugin for it http://www.oddsock.org/tools/gen_fairtunes but seems fairtunes.com is no longer and just a parking page now. Here's some more info from 2000 http://www.bizreport.com/news/66/ and some google action http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=fairtunes.com&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Mandela was classified as a terrorist by South African apartheid regime and was on US terrorism lists until 2008 and arrested with the help of the CIA. He was involved in para-military activities, however I can find no evidence that he ever harmed people. In court the charges were sabotage and conspiracy. Had there been anything else than rumors charges would have been different.
My observation that RMS is not "most people" was not judgmental, merely observational; actually, I hold him in very high regard. And when I wrote the post, I was thinking exactly what you posted (that it is lucky that there are some who have the balls to say things they believe in without regard to the whims of society).
I do my fair share of moderation, but I try to be careful to mod down only the posts which I feel do not add to the discussion, regardless of whether I personally agree or disagree (my apologies if the meaning of your post was that you wanted to mod me down as Offtopic).
Had there been anything else than rumors charges would have been different.
Rumours? Really?
He was involved in para-military activities, however I can find no evidence that he ever harmed people.
So if I blow up your house, but I don't hurt you, I've not done anything illegal?
There are so many irregularities in this case that it would make a very long list. Here are just a few off the top of my head:
After the (very surprising, if you know Swedish law) verdict, some journalists found out that the judge was biased. He had an extra job where he worked with one of the plaintiff lawyers. And he was member of a copyright-fundamentalist club promoting harsher copyright violation penalties where he regularly met several of the plaintiff lawyers. The judge kept this secret during the trial. A tribunal of three judges was set up to decide if the judge was really biased, but when their names were made public, it was revealed that all three were also biased. The tribunal was replaced with three more judges, and although it was revealed that at least one of the judges in the new panel had connections with one of the plaintiffs in the case, she was not replaced. The new tribunal decided that the judge was not biased.
Just five months before the big raid on The Pirate Bay the chief prosecutor in the case wrote a memo where he concluded that it would not be possible to convict the people behind TPB for copyright violation.
There are heavy rumors and a lot of incidental evidence that the raid against TPB and the resulting court case was done on a direct order by the government. This is illegal in Sweden because it means that the court system could be abused for political purposes. Documents that could tell if this is the case are kept secret by the Swedish government.
The policeman heading the police investigation got a new job immediately after the police investigation was concluded. His new employer was one of the plaintiffs in the case, and he negotiated his salary with his new employer in the final stages of the police investigation.
The legal advisor of The Pirate Bay was arrested during the raid and forced to give a DNA sample. (This is possible in Sweden if the charge can give at least one year of prison time and a DNA sample is relevant for the case.) One of the people later convicted to a year of jail time was also arrested and refused access to a lawyer during initial police questioning. (Possible in Sweden if the charge is is not likely to give jail time. And Swedish law admit evidence even if the police has obtained it illegally.)
Anybody who knows Swedish law and have followed this case closely (ie. read all court documents) know that this case is a joke and a distortion of Swedish law. This is a political court case intended to bend Swedish law so people can be convicted for "crimes" that are not illegal according the the letter of the law.
There is an NBA team which carries the name Washington Wizards. Do you believe their players are wizards?
I assume he said that realising the irony of having been involved with Pirate Bay...
In the civil cases it is not a question of guilt and crime in the formal sense - you're not a criminal because someone sued you (and the epithet 'criminal' sparked this thread, remember?).
In the cases of the speed tickets the ruling does still not come into effect until the appeal period has lapsed. Furthermore, there have been successful appeals to speed tickets too... ;)
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
Your subject line is a cliff-hanger. Why not just summarize your idea rather than require the reader to read your post to even know what the overall idea is? Suggestion: "Excellent if it becomes popular".
Which content providers are signed up with Flattr.com to provide content? Or are they just taking in the money and hoping content providers will retroactively sell their content for whatever Flattr.com is willing to pay them for it?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I think your response to me was very well thought out, and I'm sorry to see that you got modded "troll". With that said, I disagree with pretty much everything :)
Imagine somebody turned up at your front door and say .. And you say, wait, didn't I read about you being found guilty of something, and he says "yes but don't worry, I'm appealing!" - is that going to reassure you?
I'd take the trouble of finding out what he was convicted of. If he was an American citizen convicted of legally obtaining a handgun, I'd call the ruling preposterous and would disregard it. Likewise, a Swedish citizen found guilty of violating a law which does not exist is more likely to receive my business BECAUSE of his bullshit conviction.
The Pirate Bay deliberately antagonized the people he is now trying to help. He ignored DMCA takedowns and told anyone who would listen why he was right and the rest of the world was wrong.
Why is that a problem? He WAS right, and they were wrong.
If some twit from Saudi Arabia insisted that I take down a picture of Mohammed because it violates Sharia Law, I'd tell him to get fucked. The Pirates Bay folks did exactly the same thing.
And his business partners have a history of harassment, like the "ddo$" scheme against the opposition law firm.
Their "DDOS scheme" was perfectly legal, unlike the DDOS attack which "The Biz" was planning on using on them. Last I checked, there was no law prohibiting people from giving money to a law firm, while there certainly are laws which prohibit hiring hackers to flood someones servers.
Of course, they're walking a fine line there, and if I were them I certainly wouldn't have stooped to that. On the other hand, considering what they've had to put up with, I can certainly understand their response.
Like all the of the guys who ran the pirate bay, they have spent the last few years proving the world that they're stupid and untrustworthy.
That's your opinion. As far as I'm concerned, they've shown themselves to be a lot more reasonable and intelligent than anyone at the MPAA or RIA.
"Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_(media)
Quit conflating "providing a medium for distribution" and "piracy". A torrent tracker or the web service does not make copies of the content they are complaining about. Refusing to comply with a DMCA for content to which a company does not own ("torrent files") is not piracy. Unless you think they can copyright the numbers their potential works may produce when processed with certain algorithms.
Redundant? - show me where... Troll - hardly, it's a joke Narelle. The author of the parent is unlikely to be upset - he/she understands "irony". (no - that got nothing to do with ferrous content).
Hey I wouldn't complain if it was tagged "Off Topic".
Considering TPB's name and attitude towards legal threats/notices (that last one is a doozy), I think they knew GODDAMNED WELL they were facilitating illegality.
I don't know Swedish law to the letter but I think that aiding and abetting is just as illegal.
That's in New Zealand, idiot. And Upper Hutt is not a suburb, it's an entire town.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
At which point it's cheaper to just have PayPal donation buttons.
So what's the point again?
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
That's ok, vodka isn't English either.
it's in my head
Actually the GP is correct. The Swedish law doesn't do technicalities (the US law does, otoh) but focuses on intents.
(I'm assuming we're all Swedish here so please look it up ;)
it's in my head
Well, looking at all the recent articles of Paypal shutting down accounts one-sidedly, I would say the Piratebay founders have a much better track record of doing exactly what they say they would.
Hi,
Yes, because it's wrong to be an asshole to lawyers and paralegals that send you notices that don't apply to you.
Everywhere is not America. Well, It wasn't until the MPAA/RIAA bought themselves a judge.
I believe the point is that with Flatter^H^Hr you pay a fixed monthly fee, which is divided between the recipients. It means that you don't need to decide how much to give, and you can Flattr an artist without worrying whether you can afford to donate any more money.
Personally, I think it's a good idea, and not a duplicate of Paypal, although 10% does seem a bit steep...