Slashdot Mirror
Pirate Bay Founders Lose Final Appeal
therufus writes "Sweden's Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal in the long-running Pirate Bay criminal trial. This means that the previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström will stand."
Gee, I wonder what the reactions on Slashdot will be. I can only guess.
Once again, we must suffer through another pro-piracy story. On Slashdot, piracy is awesome and copyright is evil, yet GPL theft is a terrible thing. GPL code must be protected because it's free shit, yet copyright must also be abolished so we can get free shit--even though the GPL is a copyright license! And don't you dare copy Slashdot's content on another site--few here seem to remember that Slashdot once sent a cease-and-desist letter! And does anyone remember when Slashdot pulled its Spider-Man 2 review because of plagiarism?
The only respectable pirates are the ones who freely admit that they do it because they want shit for free. Slashdot, however, invents convoluted moral platitudes to justify it. You are stealing from artists who created content. You use the "MAFIAA" as a scapegoat so you don't feel guilty about it. Nothing more.
No system can work in which nobody gets compensated for their work. Simply because a distribution channel opened up that made it easy to pirate things doesn't magically make it okay. The "obsolete business model" argument isn't even valid anymore because we already have things like Netflix, Steam, iTunes, etc.
It's almost as if people think the fact they can download Linux for free means everything should be free. The point of OSS is to give back, not to leech. You're not contributing anything back when you pirate something. You're only making sure that whoever made it doesn't get paid for their work, and if it was sold through a record label or something, that corporation will be less likely to take a chance on artists like that because they don't see a return on their investment. Way to go.
This is guaranteed to get modded down because it's anti-piracy. You cannot express an anti-piracy position on Slashdot. You must be pro-piracy, or you will be censored. This place is one of the most one-sided, self-serving communities on the internet.
That's the second time today. How many final appeals are they going to reject?
Infiltrated by Google employees and well-wishers, Slashdot consistently offers justifications for every bad behavior and terrible decision coming from Google. Just look at the privacy changes article in which fanboys banded together to make sure Google was perceived as the good guy and that anyone critical of them was modbombed.
Just to recap, Google is a multibillion dollar advertising megacorporation that was caught by the German government sniffing people's wifi data (they "accidentally" did it for three years before admitting it only when authorities threatened an investigation), forced people to use real names on Google+ and admitted it was an identity service and not a social network, stuffed Google+ results into the search engine without any competing social networks even though they have those networks indexed by the search engine (hello, Microsoft tactics), said that the only people who care about privacy "have something to hide," hacked into Mocality to call its customers, removed H.264 support in Chrome out of "openness" only to turn around and ship the closed-source Flash plugin, withheld Android source from the public but shared it with privileged hardware partners so they could have a leg up, abused their Android compatibility program to make things difficult for smartphone makers who chose Bing over Google, and on and on and on.
With all this crap they pull that would get them completely trashed if they were Microsoft or any other company, there's one reason and one reason only that they have been propped up as the good guy on Slashdot all these years--Linux. They use Linux. Slashdot is a Linux advocacy site, and so because Google uses Linux, they are good guys and get a pass for everything. That's all it takes to get Slashdot to love you. Just use Linux.
Hypocrites. When Microsoft used their Windows monopoly revenues to fund development of Internet Explorer and release it for free to try to dominate the web market, everyone here cried "antitrust!" But when Google uses its web search monopoly revenues to fund development of Android and release it for free to try to dominate smartphones, everyone defends it. For anyone who was on Slashdot during those times, to see Google doing all the very same things Microsoft did but get a completely different reaction is surreal.
Slashdot is a bubble. You only get pro-Google, pro-Linux news. Major news occurring elsewhere is often days late, if it gets reported at all. The Google+ search results fiasco is huge all over the tech sites right now, but there's nothing about it here, as if it doesn't even exist as a controversy. And did you know iOS surpassed Android in marketshare by the end of 2011 according to three research firms? With how obsessed Slashdot is over marketshare, and how they constantly trumpeted Android's marketshare all the time as a victory last year, you'd think it would be big news. But, no. This is pro-Google territory, pro-Linux territory. Gotta keep the natives happy for more page views.
This will get modded down because trolls have taken over the moderation system and openly subvert it. That's fine. It just proves my point about how Slashdot reacts to anything outside the partyline. This site's news reporting is old, antiquated, and slow, but the news isn't even why people come here anymore. The part of the community still remaining (after its years-long exodus to Reddit, Hacker News, and other sites, which is why traffic has decreased so dramatically on most Slashdot stories today) only comes here to pat themselves on the back for thinking a certain way. "Yeah, Microsoft is still evil! Yeah, Google is still the good guy! Yeah, Apple is still for chumps!" It's the year 2000 forever on Slashdot.
It's a sad day. Fuck judges, lawyers, politicians, and may death come painfully to them and ehti family by natural causes of course.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2648903&cid=38891841
The last few months I have been doing some research into the trolling phenomenon on slashdot.org. In order to do this as thoroughly as possible, I have written both normal and troll posts, 1st posts, etc., both logged in and anonymously, and I have found these rather shocking results:
* More moderator points are being used to mod posts down than up. Furthermore, when modding a post up, every moderator seems to follow previous moderators in their choices, even when it's not a particularly interesting or clever post. There are a LOT more +5 posts than +3 or +4.
* Logged in people are modded down faster than anonymous cowards. Presumably these Nazi Moderators think it's more important to burn a user's existing karma, to silence that individual for the future, than to use the moderation system for what it's meant for : identifying "good" and "bad" posts (Notice how nearly all oppressive governments in the past and present do the same thing : marking individuals as bad and untrustworthy because they have conflicting opinions, instead of engaging in a public discussion about these opinions)
* Once you have a karma of -4 or -5, your posts have a score of -1 by default. When this is the case, no-one bothers to mod you down anymore. This means a logged in user can keep on trolling as much as he (or she) likes, without risking a ban to post on slashdot. When trolling as an anonymous user, every post starts at score 0, and you will be modded down to -1 ON EVERY POST. When you are modded down a certain number of times in 24 hour, you cannot post anymore from your current IP for a day or so. So, for successful trolling, ALWAYS log in.
* A lot of the modded down posts are actually quite clever, funny, etc., and they are only modded down because they are offtopic. Now, on a news site like slashdot, where the number of different topics of discussion can be counted on 1 hand, I must say I quite like the distraction these posts offer. But no, when the topic is yet another minor version change of the Linux kernel, they only expect ooohs and aaahs about this great feat of engineering. Look at the moderation done in this thread to see what I mean.
* Digging deep into the history of slashdot, I found this poll, which clearly indicates the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today. 'nuff said.
Feel free to use this information to your advantage. I thank you for your time.
Anonymous cowards are... well, cowards.
Well, it looks like they haven't updated http://thepiratebay.se/legal in quite a while...
Just like sex, I believe in paying for it. (joke)
But, seriously, if you use someone's work, then you should be willing to pay for their work. That can take any number of routes, but the emphasis is on 'being fair'. (This implies that work not be overpriced.)
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
...
At least the editors waited for the story to fall all the way to the bottom of the front page before duping it!
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
Where's Anonymous when they're needed?
As per the article:
"One of the defendants informs TorrentFreak that they will now appeal at the European Court of Justice. But this, however, won’t prevent the sentences from being executed in Sweden."
"Today’s news doesn’t necessarily means that the defendants will have to go to prison. It is common in the Swedish justice system to deduct 12 months from any prison sentence on cases over 5 years old. Since the case in question meets that criteria the Pirate Bay defendants would qualify, but the decision lies with the court."
Effectively, however, as far as Sweden is concerned the verdict is good, it is still undermined if jail time will be served.
cc
And it's so easy when you're evil....
I do it all for free, your tears are all the pay I'll ever need.
To respond in general to the comments defending the pirate bay: I write software for a living. I know there are many here who do. There is a crack on the net for almost every piece of software I've ever written. Can someone explain to me how that is not harmful to my business? Seriously, I would love to know. In order for me to make sure that I earn money I have to price my software based on units sold and time spent writing it. Otherwise I might as well go and work in a nice steady government job. If everyone using my software had paid for it then the price would be half what it is. Pirates hurt other consumers just as much as they hurt the businesses they steal from. Their activities are based purely on self interest and have nothing to do with free speech. If you think anything else then you are living in a dream world.
And so, we enter War.
Hey! This story posted at 8:53am today with the title "Swedish Supreme Court Refuses Appeal In Pirate Bay Case". That story even had more links than this post does.
holy crap, you duped an article posted 9 HOURS AGO. a few weeks or a month is one thing, but not even half a day? do the editors even actually read /. themselves anymore?
...and I'll be raping them soon in prison. You see, I have to make a living too, and my comparative advantage is the size and swiftness of my cock, muscles, and being in the 99th percentile for ejaculations per day (sustained).
I know what you want to ask. The answer is yes - all of their anuses.
Life is good. -Bram Cohen
Property does not expire, but copyrights do. They are a time limited monopoly granted by us, the people, as an encouragement to make more. The ultimate owners of all creative works is society as a whole. We deferred our rights temporarily, just like with patents, on the theory by doing that, more will get created and end up in society's hands in the end. Copyright holders have tried to tilt the deal more and more in their favor, and some of us feel that they have gone too far.
Say it like it is.
Change copyright laws so that non-natural entities (companies,corps, etc) can't own copyrights for longer than 5 years. Copyrights are only naturally awarded to natural creators. So now, if a company has one or more employees working on something, those employees get the copyright, and can hold it for a much longer peroid of time, say 25 years. Companies could license the copyright exclusively from their employees to retain the longer copyright terms, but doing so means the actual creators get payment for it. Companies could put into their employment contracts that employees must give their employers first option on licensing any copyrightable materials created on company time, at reasonable prices. If the employee leaves the company, then they have to renegotiate terms for continued licensing. Alternatively, companies can do whay they do now and claim copyright for all work done by their employees on company time, but then they get the five year limit. This system means the actual creators get financial renumeration for their work, and are given direct incentives to continue creating.
My theory here is that if a company with all it's resources (I'm thinking large company) cannot capitalise on copyrighted material within 5 years, that material probably isn't worth much anyway. Individuals, or small businesses where letting individuals keep copyright is a much easier thing anyway, who don't have the resources, get a longer time peroid to extract financial gain from the material.
Essentially, the pirate bay is in the wrong because they encourage piracy. It's as simple as that. It's the artists' right not to have their works copied, and the pirate bay has built their living around robbing them of this right. It is completely within their interests to make the problem significantly worse, especially given that it has earned them multiple millions so far. Almost every single dollar made so far has been at the expense of someone else's hard work.
I like to think of them as a documentary film-maker filming the exploits of a serial killer. He watches, and profits from, every kill made. The serial killer will ask him about the locations of certain individual, and the film-maker will happily oblige him (after all, he wasn't to know they'd necessarily be butchered, right?). In fact, if anyone pulled the film-maker up on this behaviour, he would simply cite the many times the killer asked for the nearest petrol station or convenience store, painting himself as a dumb source of information that couldn't be held responsible for how the serial killer used his information. But, in the end, he knows exactly how the serial killer will use the information, and every time he commits another heinous crime, it's more money in the film-maker's bank.
When the film-maker is finally placed in jail where he belongs (but the killer escapes justice), the serial killer turns to this nice guy at an information kiosk (let's call him, say, Google). His job is to hand out lots of information to lots of people. The serial killer asks him about various locations of people and places, and he happily obliges, the same as he would any other customer. Google is aware that a serial killer is on the loose, but he has no more reason to suspect one person over another, and so instead of stopping (or severely restricting) service to everyone, he decides to keep his job and just deliver people what they ask for. Google may have aided the serial killer many times, but unlike the film-maker, Google really is just a dumb source of information. He has as much reason to believe the information he provides will be used for the benefit of everyone, rather than to murder people, and this is the source of his income. His position is perfectly morally justifiable.
Now, let's see how much this gets torn apart.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Jihad jerka jerka, shoe bomb car bomb, plastic explosives, ammonium nitrate for Allah jerka?
Maybe a bit too simple:
You put time, effort and money into something he wants to sell and make money from.
Somebody comes along, creates a copy and uses his work for free.
So, wouldnt you be angry about it?
There are other aspects and not just everything black and white (overpriced greedy corps and so on), but think about it.
recognize copyright