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Pirate Bay Trio Lose Appeal
nk497 writes "Three of the four founders of The Pirate Bay have lost an appeal against their conviction last year of helping to share copyrighted material. It wasn't a total waste of time, however. The three have had their one-year jail sentences cut to between four and ten months. (The fourth founder was too ill to appear in court, and will appeal separately.) The foursome also had their fine bumped from 32 million kronor ($4.5 million) to 46 million kronor ($6.5 million)."
Where freedom is a crime.
So they basically exchanged time for money.
Yet the pirate bay still stands tall. We best start ordering some of those tshirt they advertise to help pay their fine.
So, based on 12 mos, to 10 mos, and 4.5 => 6.5. I'd rather do 16 1/2 months and not give them a dime.
I'm sure that's not a real option...
---
By the way, who gets the money (besides the lawyers)? Sweden, or the *IAA?
... Do you know where the nearest convenience store is?
Me: Yes, take this street to the first light, turn right, it's 3 blocks down on the left.
(later)
Police: You are under arrest for aiding in the robbery and murder of three convenience store clerks.
In Sweden, I would be very hesitant about giving directions since merely pointing in the direction a crime may take place can land you in jail.
You know what they about squeezing blood from a rock...
Good luck collecting.
Because free trumps (most) peoples morals :) Sad but true.
K Man
I realize I'm responding to an AC who is probably just trolling, but I'd like to point out here that by definition, a crime is only a violation of criminal law. In the United States, copyright is covered under civil law, which is entirely different from criminal law. Therefore, copyright infringement is not a crime. Okay, that's only usually true, as there are very specific circumstances which constitute felony copyright infringement, but in the majority of cases, the police cannot just come and bust down your door and take you away because you pulled down a few songs.
Now, my stupid question is this: Is this also the case in Sweden? Or is copyright part of Swedish criminal law?
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
I see, it undermines your living so it's clearly a bad thing. Not saying you're wrong, but your argument isn't that persuasive as it stands..
The article is a bit sparse on info. Why did they lose the appeal?
Wasn't the origonal Judge working for the Swedish copyright lobby? Wasn't that good enough reason to thow out the case?
To be honest that's part of why people use it, but there are more issues involved:
1. Ridiculous copyright length. This means you have to pay again and again for stuff that's become part of culture, i.e. as I mentioned in a previous posting quite a while back, in my view the media companies get to have a stranglehold on your memories, on nostalgia. Stuff may not be great but may be nostalgic. Why should I have to pay (again!) to watch/use it? Why should people get to be rewarded for something that may not be good, but only be enjoyable for a reason not having anything to do with its 'real' value?
2. Attitude of the RIAA and similar groups in just about all countries.
3. Having to pay for media/printers/copying machines/video camera's because you might copy something with a copyright with/onto it. This happens in many countries, so why should I feel I'm doing something unethical if I'm paying for the 'just in case' scenario whether I do or not?
I can go on but this is enough to show your response is rather simplistic.
Your argument is: "What they are doing is wrong, because if what they are doing were right, I find it unlikely that I would be able to make money doing what I do"
Which is just as valid an argument against police officers as it is one in favour of current copyright law.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Media bits can't be stolen so it's okay to steal media.
If someone is stealing your software you obviously don't have the holy seal of GPL on it because no geek would dare incur the wrath of RMS (blessed be his beard).
......population reduction.
Anyone smart enough to wrap their head around this?
Pirate bay hosts no material, they only link. Not all torrent traffic is infringing.
The question for me is are they liable for what you do with a tool they provide. Just as guns don't kill people, pirate bay does not pirate software, people do both of those things.
I do not pirate anything, I use FREE software and netflix for my entertainment. I also buy some non-FREE software, mostly games, but I have not "pirated" anything in a great many years. I make my living by supporting FREE software in an enterprise environment. This is not to say I operate solely within the US copyright laws, I use libdvdcss and even rip all the CDs I buy, I find none of those activities morally incorrect.
The problem is with copyright law and the length of the copyright monopoly. Copyright should be for 5 years, wherein if you haven't eeked out a living from that in that time, then you loose. Otherwise, during that timeframe you should go hog wild.
Basically the copyright laws give too much to a creator and the copyright holder for too long a time.
As has been asked--why should someone get a monopoly for multiple generations (their lifetime plus 75 years) for something they created probably with just a moment's intuition.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Despite that, They have not been accused of piracy, they have been accused of facilitating piracy by running a unmoderated database of torrent files. Using this thinking all seach engine are at risk of similar jugement.
What he fails to say is how the courts have interpreted these subsections--how the laws have been applied.
And, if you read it, it talks about distribution.
And, if you read it, it is US law, not the law of other countries.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
It's more persuasive to those of us who want to see content creators encouraged.
To those who don't care about content creation, invention, innovation, ethics, and general societal advancement -- a lot of what I have to say is just "blah blah blah".
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
It's pretty plain to see that the Swedish legal system has been hijacked by the media industry.
Typical fines dished out recently by the courts in Sweden...
Murder: 75000kr (£6825)
Rape of a 14 year old girl: 50000kr (£4550)
Pirate Bay fine for aiding Copyright infringment: 46000000kr (£4.1 million)
I'm not saying that they haven't done anything wrong (although if they have done something wrong then it's hard to understand why Google haven't been indicted as their index contains many, many more links to torrent files than the Pirate Bay's does), but lets get this in perspective. The fine is outrageous and has absolutely no basis in reality. Another thing to mention is that this is not the end of the road. The Pirate Bays guys have already said they will appeal this ruling. There is one higher court in Sweden to appeal to and they have already said they will appeal to the European Court in Brussels if necessary.
-The main charge was "aiding copyright violation". The decision of the court is mainly based on the fact that TPB did nothing to prevent it and that they in every way advertised that you could download copyrighted stuff on their site. The fact that this can be done with Google or any other search engine is beside the point according to the court. Google cooperates at least to a limited extent with copyright holders while TPB made a point of pissing them off.
- According to the court indifference to the possibility of the copyright violations occurring is not enough as an argument to let them off the hook. This is not so much a controversial point in the guilty verdict but a very controversial one when it comes to sentencing.
-According to Swedish law you can be found guilty of aiding even if the perpetrators of the main crime (i.e copyright violations) is unknown and the full extent of the crime is unknown as well.
-According to the court information provider neutrality as defined in among other things the EU's e-commerce law does not apply to TPB. Their main argument is that TPB was not a general service provider but a search service largely aimed at facilitating downloading copyrighted material.
-The most controversial point is the sentencing. The basic question is if the three specific persons could really be sentenced for crimes that they did not and could not have had information about (each individual download). The court's answer is yes and the reasoning behind it is fairly vague and general in nature. When it comes to the damages the reasoning is rather strange: Basically they say the following: The industry claims X million Euros in directly lost profits. This is clearly absurd as not all who download would have actually bought the product in question. So we'll split the difference and put the damages to X/2. X/2 turned out to be 46 million Swedish crowns. (€5 million)
Apart from the questionable reasoning one should put into context that a premeditated murder will in Sweden cost you on average 5 years in prison and 100,000 (~€10.7k) crowns in damages to the relatives. So although the guilty verdict of the court may be reasonable, the sentencing is very extreme by Swedish standards. As a rule damages are never in the millions and the idea is that the guilty party should have a chance to actually pay them. The sentence of 46 million crowns in damages is simply outside any Swedish legal practice.
You are providing a service being a programmer and that makes sense. The company needs you to develop the software so they have to motivate you to do it for them somehow. The trouble is that they are trying to sell the software afterward as a commodity. It doesn't make any sense economically(see infinite supply arguments). And saying that the only way that software would be developed is if it was copyrighted is misleading and insulting. Look at FOSS and the number of companies that employ people to develop software for it. They are motivated to do this because supporting a closed/license based system costs more then building onto FOSS to meet their needs.
You can reduce anything to the point of absurdity. I mean the anti-copyright argument reduces to the same argument my niece gives me when I won't buy her ice cream after every meal - "BUT I WANT IT!!!"
That's a lot less compelling.
I find it particularly useless, this whole go-round, because it distracts from the reality that there needs to be a societal discussion on the role of copyright in the age of such simple publishing. Instead, it's become two camps screaming at each other with positions that can neither be reconciled nor maintained. Genius!
I concur, it's not bad to give a license to someone so he can exploit his new idea, the present problem is the crazy duration of that period.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I congratulate and thank the Pirate Bay founders for taking the IP wars personally and fighting it with honor and courage, not bending under the pressure and willingly withstanding the evils that have befallen upon them. Long live the Pirate Bay! Down with intellectual property laws!
the guilty party should have a chance to actually pay them
Carl Lundström is a multi-multi-millionaire. He can pay it all.
Will someone please think of preserving our culture?
Piracy is part of who we are ;)
I doesn't even have to do with whatever I like TPB or not (I don't, poorly seeded, no forced registration, so on ;D)
It has all to do with whatever I think it's right that four (?) individuals get punished for the crimes of a whole nation / world.
Imho the issue is the breach of the copyright (or download of content for which you don't have the permission from the copyright holder), and every single individual breaching those are the issue. Not the system allowing it to happen.
They just get punished because it's much easier to sue and punish four individuals than it is to do the same to millions (or hundreds of millions) of people.
The masses won't care so much as long as it's not affecting them.
But these aren't the droi... copyright infringing people they are looking for. They just get punished because it's convenient, and _HARD_.
So they may have had harsh e-mail responses. So what? That's worth ten of millions of SEK in punishment (I won't say damage because there isn't much damage from those letters, the damages has been done by everyone spreading or not buying copyright protected material.)
No, media bits can't be stolen THEREFORE calling it stealing or theft is disingenuous. Doesn't mean piracy is right [and only a moron would, IMO, assume calling out a disingenuous label to a "crime" == supporting said "crime]
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
but took the time to remove child porn and then later claimed that keeping track of copyrighted material would be too difficult, and this is after they posted a letter from a rights holder and mocked it. What a great group of guys.
Pirate Bay listed plenty of indy software as well. They made a lot more than some of the developers they helped rip off.
Funny how they took the time to remove child porn but claimed they couldn't keep track of pirated material. Why defend such scummy people? They made millions off the backs of others.
and then spending the ad revenue on luxury cars and motorcycles. What a great group of people to get behind.
Nope. Copyright shouldn't exist at all. It started with 17 years since work creation in the US, and it got subsequently extended up until (today) 95 years after the death of the author... edging towards perpetual copyright. Actually, I'd suspect that any kind of temporarily granted monopoly will eventually get extended in time, repeatedly, just like Copyright, because the monopoly beneficiaries will always have deeper pockets to buy legislators than the general public could ever dream to have. Granting the monopoly in the first place was the start of the slippery slope.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Does the argument "it doesn't affect me personally so I'm ok with it" work any better? Or even, "I stand to personally profit if copyright is abolished or non-enforceable."
I doubt most people here have completely altruistic motives regarding this debate, even if they've convinced themselves of that. Just saying...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Eked* lose*
Except that copyright doesn't encourage content creation.
Seriously, how anyone can think that copyright actually encourages content creation is beyond me. The whole point of copyright is to make sure that you don't have to constantly create new works, but instead can rely on your existing productions to provide income.
Elect authoritarian wing governments out of fear of minorities,
Corrected to point out that left-right isn't the issue here.
Copyright encourages content creation.
Seriously, how anyone can think that copyright doesn't encourage content creation is beyond me. The whole point of copyright is to make sure that content creators get paid by the people using and enjoying their creations.
That said, I'm not in favor of the never ending copyright extensions over the past years.
I think that after the first 10-20 years, you don't get much of an effect of content creation. But getting rid of copyright completely isn't the answer.
Why do you think that the US has dominated so much of the world in content creation: software, music, movies, etc.? It's because we made our content creators wealthy and made the pursuit of that wealth the goal of so many people.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
yes! and I also contribute a lot to open source for none profit.
Well, why don't you spend $100 million to make a movie, and as soon as you release it I'll copy it and release it at 1/10th the price you can afford to release it at and we'll see how much copyright would have been worth to you.
I'll make more money off your investment than you will. Most likely you'll lose money as who is going to buy from you in spite your investment when they can buy the exact same thing, off the same shelf in the same store, from me for 1/10 the price?
How many more movies are you going to invest time and money in after losing most of your $100 million the first time? Are you going to keep on losing 10's of millions time and time again? How stupid would you have to be to keep on losing large sums of money not to learn that you couldn't compete with someone who just copies your work and releases it right alongside of yours?
Yeah, copyright is just pure idiocy.... It doesn't encourage anyone to invest time and money producing creative content at all.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Why the fuck do you need $100 million to make a movie???