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The Pirate Bay Sinks And Swims

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the whac-a-mole dept.

mikael_j writes "This morning the German ISP that had been hosting The Pirate Bay's website and search engine shut the site down. A few hours later the website was back up, this time with hosting provided by the Swedish Pirate Party, which issued a press release (in Swedish) explaining why they have chosen to host The Pirate Bay."

48 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Press release in english by martenfjallstrom · · Score: 5, Informative

    Courtesy of Engström, pirate MEP: http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/the-swedish-pirate-party-delivers-bandwidth-to-the-pirate-bay/

    1. Re:Press release in english by Moryath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Obligatory "the more you tighten your grip, Tarkin..." reference.

      As for the rest, well, we'll see. Copyright law all over the world is fucked up right now; the original idea, the contract that someone would have exclusive rights to their story so as to make money for a certain time, before being required to give it up for others to be inspired by (since they used the language and ideas of the commons and doubtless had their own inspirations from there), is all but lost. We've already reached the point where many works have died, never to be seen again, simply because some shithead stuck (for instance) the degrading original film negatives into a vault to become unusable while there were no other copies around.

      Ideally, copyright terms should last no longer than patent terms, and registration should be mandatory before copyright can be enforced. Our current "everything is copyrighted by default including my fucking grocery list if I claim it's really a poem" regime is unsustainable and worthless.

    2. Re:Press release in english by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Clearly you've missed his point ;-) If the movies had been properly pirated they'd have been available to all comers on a site like, I dunno, The Pirate Bay. Pirating would have saved those movies rather than hurt them.

    3. Re:Press release in english by Ephemeriis · · Score: 4, Informative

      How would shorter copyright terms solve that issue?

      Well, if the copyright term was shorter, the copy in the vault may not have degraded by the time copyright expired. And then you could release that vault copy into the wild.

      Copyright law didn't prevent someone else storing an archival copy until copyright expiration

      Actually, it does.

      Copyright law means that I can dictate who makes copies and under what conditions. So if the only copies I allow are low-quality, or severely edited, or DRM-encumbered, or self-destructing... Then there's no way anyone out there can store an archival copy.

      Frankly, unless I'm handing out copies of my original filmstock with no DRM or anything like that, folks are going to have one hell of a time using any of their copies for archival purposes.

      and you would still have no right to go and take those original negatives...

      Generally speaking, you don't want the original negatives.

      The original negatives for Avatar, for example, are just going to be a bunch of people running around in front of a green screen.

      What you want is a clean, full copy of the work as it appeared for public consumption. Without any DRM or encryption or limitations. Without it being reformatted for fullscreen TVs or anything like that.

      A good, clean, full copy that can then be used to master additional copies in various formats.

      Generally speaking, this is not available.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    4. Re:Press release in english by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If they're any good, that already happens, law or no. That particular issue isn't copyright related (though copyrights are indeed screwed up), but rather just an indicated of just how fragile our storage is these days. For the latest copy of Avatar - sure, it's everywhere, but for less mainstream stuff that hasn't (yet) acheived popularity, things can be wiped out completely by a random hard drive crash or simple degradation. Sure, even when we had books they could be destroyed, but to me it seems that our current medium is just a bit more fragile compared to books - which basically will last a LONG time absent fire or flood.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    5. Re:Press release in english by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do you realize how many movies and records from the early days are destroyed forever. There is a crapload of Chicago blues artists and awesome songs that will never be heard again because of Copyright law.

      Honestly, Copyright does more harm than good if you look past the "money money gimmie gimmie" though pattern of the greedy and think of culture and history.

      The rampant greed of today is no different than the burning of the library of Alexandria. Lots of information, literary works, and art are being DESTROYED for no reason other than plain old greed.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    6. Re:Press release in english by DiademBedfordshire · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ideally, copyright terms should last no longer than patent terms, and registration should be mandatory before copyright can be enforced. Our current "everything is copyrighted by default including my fucking grocery list if I claim it's really a poem" regime is unsustainable and worthless.

      and

      A good, clean, full copy that can then be used to master additional copies in various formats.

      Generally speaking, this is not available.

      What if you had to apply for the copyrights to your work but in doing so you have to turn over a master to the copyright office and when the copyright expires the copyright office turns the master over into public domain,

    7. Re:Press release in english by ConfusedVorlon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      yup, shorter copyright per se wouldn't fix that issue.

      but requiring people to register and store their material in order to get copyright could.

      something along the lines of
      1) you pay for an independent registered copyright storage facility to keep a copy
      2) that gets you copyright for x years on the stored material
      3) after x years, the hosted material goes public

      with of course x = smallish number

      --
      VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
    8. Re:Press release in english by BoberFett · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't know about you, but that kind of loss of history and culture gives me an awful sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The original artists would probably feel the same way if they knew that the things they created vanished forever because some asshole in a 50th story office didn't want anybody to hear or see something they didn't pay for.

    9. Re:Press release in english by Ephemeriis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think Richard is saying that if the Owners of Avatar want the original movie to sit in a vault and rot, that is up to them. You don't get a right to copy someone's stuff if they don't want you to. Is it a loss? oh yes. But it's the right of the owner.

      Avatar did not spring into being in a void. It is based heavily on a shared culture that's built up of all the creative works that have come before it. Avatar, as it is, would not exist if it weren't for all the shared works that came before it. If Shakespeare had decided to cram his stuff in a vault and let it rot, Avatar simply would not be the movie that we have today.

      To a certain degree, the owners of Avatar owe it to the shared culture that allowed them to make this movie.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    10. Re:Press release in english by Svartalf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As opposed to without copyright law where the works would be destroyed in exactly the same way, except this time conditional on them existing in the first place?

      Really now... And I suppose the following:

      The Mona Lisa
      The Statue of David
      Plumbing
      The Steam Engine ...are all figments of everyone's imagination.

      Vast portions of our art and history had NO Patent or Copyright "protection" to speak of and yet they were done. Your premise is, sadly, an old saw- and very, very much wrong.

      --
      I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
    11. Re:Press release in english by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Because somebody somewhere WILL find a way to make a copy, because they know that they will eventually find a way to make a few $$ off of it? It's like this idea I had when I was in school..."DOSBox...in a box" basically taking all these old obscure 80s and 90s DOS games and putting a prebuilt DOS emulator on a disc with a GUI frontend, so that like a Linux Live CD you could just slip the disc into any PC and be enjoying in minutes.

      Me and another student had gotten it to a running mockup stage just to see if we could, but when we started trying to contact those that had made the old games we wanted to put on the disc we found a minefield where companies were gone, nobody knew WTF happened to the rights, and the few that responded acted like their game from 87 should be worth more than Crysis.

      So instead of a nice little disc that would allow new generations to easily play what we old greybeards cut our teeth on, thanks to copyrights it is doubtful you'll even be able to find a single copy to play or a machine that'll play it by the time copyrights end on them. The combination of copyright musical chairs and greedy pigs that think "we'll do something with it...some day, maybe" and want as much or more than it cost new simply makes it an undoable idea.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    12. Re:Press release in english by DrgnDancer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Your examples... well frankly they kind of suck.

      The Mona Lisa and David were both commissioned works. The artists made plenty money off of them (Leonardo da Vinci particularity lived quite well on his work), but the patron who commissioned them had sole ownership and provenance over the items. Much of da Vinci and Michelangelo's work is lost to us simply because the patrons never released it, and it was eventually destroyed or rotted away.

      This system was no better than the current copyright system and arguably worse. At least now everyone has an opportunity to hear or see the art at reasonable cost. Also, these pieces are both what I call "old art". Not old in age (people are still producing it now), old in media. Its very value is in its unique, unreproducible, nature. The piece itself is valuable... I could photo copy the Mona Lisa all day and it still would just be a photocopy of the Mona Lisa. New art (as in new media art) is often perfectly reproducible in limitless quantities. Its value is in playing it, watching it, or otherwise experiencing it.

      As to the Steam Engine, well, from the article you linked:

      "Boulton and Watt's practice was to help mine-owners and other customers to build engines, supplying men to erect them and some specialised parts. However, they mainly profited from their patent by charging a licence fee to the engine owners" (emphasis mine, spelling errors theirs :-))

      It was patented.

      I'll give you plumbing to some extent, but would like to point out that the concept itself was more on the order of a government public works project (such things often produce useful public domain IP even today). Many of the specific, useful, pieces that make up what we moderns call "plumbing" were patented at one point or another.

      This is the big problem with a lot of Intellectual Property reform arguments. The people making them often give poorly reasoned or incorrect points to support their arguments. If I can poke holes in your argument, trivially, and I'm generally on your side (I agree that IP laws need reform), what about someone who disagrees with you and is willing to spend lots of money for research and clever lawyers?

      --
      I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
  2. These guys never go down... by TrisexualPuppy · · Score: 5, Informative

    They never asked for money as other torrent sites did for legal costs. They have managed to make it against all odds. Props to TPB!

    1. Re:These guys never go down... by HopefulIntern · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Indeed, I am wearing my TPB t shirt today in support. Some of the younger managers here at work (I work for a major multinational IT co) are glaring at me :(

    2. Re:These guys never go down... by spleen_blender · · Score: 5, Funny

      I was going to mod this interesting, but I decided you should just come down to my office, Andrew.

    3. Re:These guys never go down... by Any+Web+Loco · · Score: 4, Informative

      Hi -

      I'm one of the younger managers at a large multinational. Were you, a "hopefullintern", wearing a TPB t-shirt at my office I'd think twice about your professionalism.

      What you do on your own time is your own business - but imho your support of TPB is probably best not demonstrated at your place of business, espcaially when you work for a major IT co!

      Don't get me wrong - I support TPB and I've got the t-shirt too - but there's a time & a place.

      Cheers,

      awl

    4. Re:These guys never go down... by HopefulIntern · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Did I mention it is a company I have absolutely no desire to keep working for? I am not customer facing, so the dress code is virtually non-existent. People here wear Che Guevara shirts to work all the time. Maybe a shirt depicting a mass-murderer is more acceptable? It's a sick world.

  3. News? by kingofnexus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The pirate bay is down/up so often is it worth reporting everytime? If it was going to go down for an extended period then yes, but its barely been 24hrs.

    1. Re:News? by mhelander · · Score: 5, Insightful

      True, but the news here is that TPB is now hosted by the Swedish Pirate Party.

    2. Re:News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think it is. The German ISP which previously advertised the Pirate Bay ASN ("provided access to the Pirate Bay servers") was forced with an injunction to cut access. This is noteworthy because they had filed a "Schutzschrift", which is supposed to give the target of an injunction a chance to be heard before the injunction. The injunction was granted without giving the ISP a chance for defense. That is only acceptable if the matter is urgent, which it clearly is not.

  4. Feh by Pojut · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't always download torrents, but when I do, I reach for Demonoid.

    Stay downloading, my friends.

    --
    Living With a Nerd
  5. Makes sense by CHJacobsen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is actually a fairly smart political move.

    With the swedish elections coming up in August, they are sure to gain some much needed notoriety.

    Also, they are in a different position to fight the inevitable legal battle. Since they are a political party, they don't have to put economic interests first, but are actually expected to take the fight to the bitter end. If they end up losing, and go bankrupt in the process, at least they've stood up for what they believe in.

    Either way, we're up for some good drama. Stay tuned.

    --
    Important stuff
    1. Re:Makes sense by dskzero · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I didn't even think about it that way (of course, i have no idea of swedish political agenda), and it will really stir some good drama. I don't think their intentions are to sweep the whole battleground, but to make a point by becoming a very real pressence in the elections.

      Interesting point.

      --
      Oblivion Awaits
  6. Learn the bloody lesson by durrr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If the money funneled into legal departments to hunt pirates were instead funneled into marketing and development of competitive alternatives we'd have next to no piracy.
    Instead, the money that the lawyers don't pocket goes to implemention of fascist-grade DRM and to greed inspired practices such as pay-for DLC which is a massive turn off. If i want to have a game continously bleed me for cash i'd play an MMORPG(which i do; eve online, but they atleast have the sense of providing expansions for free(and quite often) so the bleeding is smooth)

  7. This is not about the trackers by chrb · · Score: 3, Informative

    From TF translation:

    "The Pirate Party delivers bandwidth to the home page and the search engine The Pirate Bay, while the tracker and the torrent files that were previously on the page are now hosted elsewhere. These were never affected by the German court decision."

  8. hey, traditional media distributors: by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    buy all the legislators in as many countries as you want. hire as many lawyers as you want. you're working against tens of millions of technically astute, media hungry and most importantly, POOR teenagers

    there's nothing you can do: you lose. obfuscation, encryption, obscurity, steganography, darknets, p2p, proxies... we win, assholes. you will not preserve your dead economic model. the economic model of free media on the internet will be foisted on you. adapt, or die. end of fucking story. deal with it

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:hey, traditional media distributors: by zwei2stein · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, we will not.

      This is game of whack-a-mole. Those teenagers need to be able to access shared stuff. That access needs to be reasonably open if masses are to benefit from it and it is singple-point-of-failure. Whacking website or proxy is as easy as dropping packets to certain ip address. Obscurity means useleness for millions and win for media companies.

      You still need to download data to your computer. No encryption or steganography gets around the fact that any reasonably fast download will be up on radar due to its size.

      Obsuscation, Steganography and Encryption is not going to help much either. People of both ends of pipe need to know wtf is going on, and if you want something more than couple of people, it needs to be public.

      Efficient sharing is open. Open means vulnurelable. They own pipes, and they own people who make laws about pipes. Best we can do without pipes is sneakernet.

      True hope is that those millions will turn to adults and vote for change. Reality is that as they turn to adults, they will have different issues than free music or movies.

      --
      -- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
    2. Re:hey, traditional media distributors: by ZekoMal · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This scares me.

      What we need to be doing, is killing the middle man. The RIAA, the MPAA, the greedy non-artist studios that do nothing but leech off of the artist.

      Don't say "free as in beer media" is the future. Say that buying directly from the artist, at whatever price the artist dictates, is the future. That is the free you want.

      Because if you make it so that artists can't make money at all, then you will kill creativity. Don't give me anecdotal evidence to the contrary, one artist here and there already sitting on millions or on another job do not count as success with 100% free art. At the end of the day, a lot of art takes years of 80 hour weeks to produce, and you can kiss non-D movies and non-flash games goodbye if everyone stopped paying the artists involved.

  9. TBP and DHT by gorzek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    TPB going down isn't even that big a deal anymore, since they shut down the tracker and went full DHT. At this point, you can pretty much get by with something like IsoHunt. All we need for torrents anymore are search engines. Having someone actually run a tracker has become completely unnecessary.

    But it does lots of good PR for TPB to keep getting brought down, then popping up a couple hours later. Makes the authorities pursuing them look utterly incompetent.

    --
    Check out my world simulator thingy.
    1. Re:TBP and DHT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      This one?

  10. Just delaying the inevitable by soporific16 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The pol-lice state is coming
    Doo dah
    Doo dah

    The pol-lice state is coming
    Oh doo dah day.

    Oh doo dah day
    It's on its merry way

    The pol-lice state is coming
    Oh doo dah day.

  11. Bankrupt ? HAHAHAHAHAAH by unity100 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the moment they put up an international donation page, they would get flooded with money. remember obama's campaign and how he floated on $5 donations as opposed to clinton and won.

    --
    Read radical news here
    1. Re:Bankrupt ? HAHAHAHAHAAH by richie2000 · · Score: 5, Informative

      the moment they put up an international donation page, they would get flooded with money. remember obama's campaign and how he floated on $5 donations as opposed to clinton and won.

      http://www.piratpartiet.se/donate

      --
      Money for nothing, pix for free
    2. Re:Bankrupt ? HAHAHAHAHAAH by unity100 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      but they wont be fighting the courts in usa, where money can buy justice. it will be in sweden.

      --
      Read radical news here
  12. I'm not sure how I feel about this by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately, The Pirate Parties (including the Swedish one) are now the party to go to for a lot of reasonable views on many issues. Not just copyright, but other IP issues and even some non-IP issues. We should be worried by the fact that even some people who are massively in favor of copyright reform (such as myself) are not happy with The Pirate Bay and think that at minimum a lot of what Pirate Bay does is unethical. Having one of the Pirate parties directly associated in this way already reinforces perceived connections between the Pirate parties and outright software piracy to an extent that really isn't helpful.

    1. Re:I'm not sure how I feel about this by Yvanhoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You have to take into account the fact that the Swedish party pirate came into being because of a single event : TPB being chased out of Sweden without any debate about copyright laws in the internet era. This is a way to force the door. As I understand it, the PP position could be : "What TPB is doing is clearly problematic, just as is the fact to just try to shut it down without debate. Let's talk about this now."

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  13. Re:All good and well, by kthreadd · · Score: 5, Informative

    On their web site under the link titled donations. http://www.piratpartiet.se/donate

  14. or it could be stupid ... by Lazy+Jones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know how trustworthy the swedish legal system is, but here in Austria, most judges are political puppets who would be pressurized into sinking the PP together with TPB simply because it's politically opportune and because they can (a good example is the current trial against legal animal rights activism where anyone can see how unfair such a political trial can be: tierschutzprozess.at). It's a glorious move on behalf of the PP for sure, but it'll be an uphill battle and the heroes only win reliably in movies.

    But hey, if you don't fight, you can't win...

    --
    "I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
  15. which is bullshit by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    they gave songs away for free for decades: the radio

    they gave shows away for free for decades: broadcast television

    and before either, there WAS no recorded music or images. yet we still had shakespeare and mozart

    art is not dying, creativity will never die, in fact, those who truly love art are not motivated by the almighty buck, they are motivated by love of the art. they'll waste millions to make art, and we'll benefit from it. meanwhile, art made for profit, the usual mindless pop movies and music, will we miss them?

    and finally, if you give away your songs for free, what really happens? well, for 0.01% (the rest stay poor, JUST LIKE BEFORE THE INTERNET) you get famous. then you make millions from concert gigs, advertising endorsements, personalized content... in other words, you'll still make $ from art, only via ANCILLARY REVENUES

    so sorry chicken little, the sky is not falling

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:which is bullshit by marco.antonio.costa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree with the parent. I'm almost coming to believe that artists getting paid is a bigger threat to creativity and art.

      I mean, lets face it: if there was copyright in the late 18th century, Beethoven would've written 3 symphonies, 9 piano sonatas and lived off the royalties till he died of cirrosis some 10 years earlier than he did.

      --
      Send your spendthrift head of state this
  16. A LOLcats declaration by Yvanhoe · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Pirate Bay has even issued a statement, written in lolcats, to explain this move :
    http://thepiratebay.org/blog/179
    :
    AS U MITE HAS READ OR NOTICD, PEEPS ONCE AGAIN R TRYIN 2 SHUT US DOWN. DIS WILL NOT SUCCED, LOL. OURS RLY NICE WEBHOST WUZ THREATEND WIF RLY HUGE FINE, SO WE DECIDD 2 MOOV TEH SIET SO DAT THEY DIDNT GOT INTO TROUBLE, LOL. TEH DECISHUN 2 MOOV WUZ TAKEN BY US, TEH PIRATE BAY, LOL.

    TEH PIRATE BAY IZ AN UNSINKABLE SHIP. IT WILL SAIL TEH INTERWEBS 4 AS LONG AS WE WANTS IT 2. REMEMBR DAT, K THX.

    TPB, ONLY IN IT 4 TEH LULZ SINCE 2003

    The year is 2010. This is a political official statement.

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    1. Re:A LOLcats declaration by Jaysyn · · Score: 3, Funny

      I love the "hidden" message:

      "Assclowns ov teh RIAA"

      --
      There is a war going on for your mind.
  17. That should be obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Since when do pirates ask for your money?

    1. Re:That should be obvious by TheSpoom · · Score: 3, Funny

      *head explodes*

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
  18. what the hell is wrong with you? by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Insightful

    why do believe you need money to make art? why do you confuse a DISTRIBUTION MODEL with an essential passion of mankind?

    and how did mozart and shakespeare function? patronage, that's how

    and why do you NEED an ancillary dvd market to support crap movies? as you say, avatar made bazillions... in the movie theater! can the world survive without direct-to-dvd crap?! pfffffft

    musicians will make millions... at concert gigs

    sure, only 0.01% of them

    JUST LIKE IN THE PRE-INTERNET ERA

    but with the long tail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail) greater quantization of the market due to more efficient distribution (the internet) means the world is not a binary existence between signing a contract (and making millions) or making nothing. instead, all those starving musicians... some will make $100s, some $1,000s, %10,000s, $100,000s... where before the capricious opinions of record company execs decided your fate between nothing and millions. and even THEN made you sign contracts where they got the lion share of $ anyways. in fact, artists will be RICHER because even though there is less money in play on just concert gigs and other ancillaries, they get the money DIRECT, not 10% of what some record exec rams down your throat due to holding all the power. now, on the internet, YOU, the audience decides who will make $$$, not some asshole snorting blow off a hooker's ass. its a far more efficient, egalitarian model. the artist is freer, the audience has more cultural riches... and the old school media conglomerate dies. let me find my tiny violin somewhere...

    you fail to think the issue through. you only grasp part of the issues you talk about. just think all of your concerns through. you will see for yourself: THERE IS NO PROBLEM (unless you are an old school distributor). the sky is not falling chicken little. the world has survived far greater shocks to social and legal convention due to technological progress. open your brittle mind, see the better future for what it is

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  19. Re:Library of Congress, not just a unit of measure by wealthychef · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Somehow, relying on the government to be the central repository of all things cultural seems like an idea best left unexplored.

    --
    Currently hooked on AMP
  20. Surrender the Booty! by freejung · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well... I wouldn't exactly call it "asking."

    --
    My site: Free Nature Pictures