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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)."
Nope, apparently supporting piracy is a crime.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Profiting from the support of copyright infringement.
Yet the pirate bay still stands tall. We best start ordering some of those tshirt they advertise to help pay their fine.
... 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.
However that may be, just blatantly disregarding the law is not the solution. At least not in this case.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
They don't support it more than our LKAB and SSAB support knife murder.
They just say "That's not our problem go fuck yourself! We aren't breaching any copyright."
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..
I tend to be instinctively law abiding, but I think its very clear that if the law is sufficiently widely disregarded it will become unenforceable.
There is only one more court to appeal to and that is the Swedish Supreme Court. That court only tries special cases that is of importance so it isn't sure that they will try this case.
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.
By widespread breaking of the law you are only proving the point that current laws need better enforcement and bigger punishments.
You're an oppressive government's wet dream, every time they impose another unjust law you just say "it's still the law" and obey it. Widespread breaking of the law probably means democracy is being circumvented and that politicians are lobbied or bought off to prevent the law from changing. Why would then stopping what you're doing change anything? It just means that those that want to suppress them has scored a massive victory and will continue to marginalize the need for change. You show a charming naivity when it comes to how most change comes about. Wnen people wanted to legalize gay sex, do you think it was like "So we've never done it seeing as we obey the law and all, but we think it maybe would be a nice change."? If so, I have a bridge to sell you. Enough breaking of the law has changed many laws like prohibition for example. Maybe it's not our "moral high ground" way of winning, but it works.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Even the US Supreme Court has stated that copyright infringement isn't stealing. They distinguish between finite goods and infinite goods. A digital reproduction is an infinite good (meaning no one has lost something by having it reproduced). Hence, no one had anything stolen from them. Copyright infringement is a concept in that if someone reproduces an item and they don't own the rights to that item they are infringing. Stealing something is when you deprive the owner of their goods (and others) of the item that they could use to sell for money.
In your analogy, as with so many fallacious arguments, you presume that each copy is a loss because that person copying it would have purchased a copy. Even the US Government has chosen to cease using that debunked argument. There's no guarantee that anyone that copies an item would have bought it otherwise. As a fact, it doesn't deprive anyone of their sale, and thus it doesn't equate to lost jobs.
Come on, you have to at least understand that this whole counter argument has been thoroughly vetted.
What your masters need to do is get it through their heads that they need to compete in the digital world. Instead of raping the public for $15.00 - 20.00 a CD they should be providing the public with incentives to buy, to buy some finite good. That means they need to come to grips with the fact that this world is changing.
This whole debate here isn't new. There are repeated instances throughout history where advances in technology has driven the currently entrenched business models to seek government protections. The horse and carriage when cars were invented, live performances were felt to be in jeopardy when recordings were created, recording sales were felt in jeopardy when the radio was invented. This goes on and on going backwards in history and moving forward. Adapt or die. Your business model can't survive the onslaught of technological advances.
People are fully aware of the facts that the entertainment industry has been seeking protectionist policies and laws from the lawmakers to prop up their failing business models. The world is changing, either you adapt or you die as a business.
Many recording artists feel that the biggest pirates of all are the members of the RIAA cartel. Their contracts are onerous. Their accounting practices only add to that by denying artists their due. Imagine an artists selling a million copies of their album (at around $15.00 per CD) and still owing their label millions. And how about the very problematic fact that the RIAA had a Congressional staffer named Mitch Glazier sneak four words into a big Congressional bill in the middle of the night when no one noticed making all sound recordings into works-made-for-hire. This had the chilling effect of denying the artists their due rights to reclaim their copyright after a period of time. Since people noticed this they raised their voices loud enough to force Congress to correct it.
Do you not understand that those methodologies used by the RIAA and even the MPAA are greater acts of theft than anyone downloading a song or movie for their own use?
Now, distribution on the other hand is covered. Distributing copyrighted material, especially for profit, is against the law.
Let's get real here. So far, as far as most of the lawsuits where the RIAA/MPAA have sued their customers (thus creating a hostile environment) there have been no criminal charges filed.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.