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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)."
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)
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.
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