Slashdot Mirror
UK Pirate Party Forced To Give Up Legal Fight
Grumbleduke writes "The UK Pirate Party has been forced to shut down its proxy of The Pirate Bay. The Party had been running the proxy since April, initially to support the Dutch Party's efforts, then as a means of combating censorship after the BPI obtained uncontested court orders against the UK's main ISPs to block the site across the UK. In a statement released through their lawyers, the Party cited the impossibly-high costs of legal action for their decision, but vowed to keep fighting for digital rights however they can."
Help! I'm being repressed!
And once again money trumps justice. Makes you proud to be human.
When it comes to court cases, being right (or at least being not-wrong), it often matters less what the law says and more what your bank account says. And, as long as the world works this way the bullies of litigation will continue doing what they do and passing along their legal fees to customers.
Start a crowdfunding campaign for this cause. They will cover costs in a few minutes.
...he who has the gold rules.
Consider: money can be seen as an abstract representation of how much influence one has over others. Seeing as how politics is largely just the exercise of influence over others, it should be obvious that we can no more take the money out of politics than we can take the medicine out of health care.
what about all the money they saved from not buying software?!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There are still many, many, many Pirate Bay proxy sites left.
listen you greedy capitalist pig
you should be happy to live off the pennies you make on selling t-shirts and coffee cups
So, what other proxies can UK residents use to circumvent the block? TOR, obviously. But that can be a bit slow. Here's a fairly long list.
I'll let others do the usual list of reasons why pirating is better for all mankind, and just point out that the digital rights referred to may be the access to resources on the internet (TPB), being allowed to host a proxy (as they had doe), or redirect (as some others do).
It is most unfortunate that they're basically giving up the fight. It makes their statement that they'll continue to fight the good fight elsewhere a bit hollow. I realize one should fight the battles one can win, live to fight another day, lose the battle but not the war and all that - but it still sends a message that when faced with legal threats, they'll back down pretty quickly.
Given the great number of 'pirates', mounting a legal defense fund should have been easy. Getting those 'pirates' to put money into that fund may be easier said than done for obvious and non-obvious reasons, though.
The claws of Fascism are spreading worldwide.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
After well over a decade, it's not even interesting anymore.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Folks, goto to http://www.goldenfrog.com/vyprvpn - buy and use. End of story.
When they speak of digital rights they mean the ability to get any piece of software without compensating the person/people who created the software, and who are not giving that software away.
Sometimes the author is neither giving the work away nor selling it. For example, how should one obtain a copy of the film Song of the South, the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, or the English version of the video game Mother (the Famicom game before Earthbound) while fairly compensating the author? And how should one compensate HBO for Game of Thrones without compensating Disney for ESPN, an unwanted service?
Don't forget the absurdity of the other extreme, which is exactly what many interested parties are after:
1) Everyone must pay for every individual use of every bit of software and data on every piece of hardware they own.
2) Software patents ensure that only the patent owner can produce any software that is even remotely similar to the outright-obvious thing patented.
This results in a world where the few wealthy players are the only people who can produce any software at all, and they can price gouge horribly for it.
Don't even start with "anyone can get a patent." It has been clearly demonstrated many times that only the super-rich can afford the litigation costs that come with defending a patent.
THAT extreme is morally corrupt, economically devastating, and exactly what groups like BPI are pushing for. Neither you nor anyone should be surprised that the people who suffer from this are resisting in the only ways they can.
Actually, software piracy is pretty minimal in the UK - at least, through personal downloading (rather than commercial-scale forgetting-how-many-computers-you-are-allowed-to-install-it-on infringement); according to Ofcom's recent study, only 2% of Internet users have illegally downloaded any software ever (compared with 6% for TV and film, and 8% for music). And as for it being free, about 85% of software that was acquired online *was* free.
That said, the study is a bit dubious because they claim only 17% of Internet users have ever downloaded computer software... I was under the impression that Firefox had a larger market share than that in the UK...
http://fucktimkuik.org/
Links to a random proxy and hasn't gone down yet.
The silly thing? I actually stopped for a long time with file sharing because it just wasn't worth it anymore and not much fun. Now it is.
Challenge accepted!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
1. Creation and sustainment of a cartel for the purpose of organized crime. ...
2. Creation of a model of artificial scarcity (imaginary property) through manipulation of and lying to government officials.
3. Conspiration to commit usury in millions to billions of cases. (Mere copies are not worth anything since they didn't require work to make. Let alone at those prices.)
4. Racketeering, blackmail and extortion in tens to hundreds of thousands of cases.
5. Distribution of propaganda, slander, libel and hate-speech at the expense of millions, if not billions of cases. (Calling people "pirates" and all those hate ads.)
I'll let others do the usual list of reasons why pirating is better for all mankind
Excepting those who don't get paid for their hard efforts.
and just point out that the digital rights referred to may be the access to resources on the internet (TPB)
Access all the resources you like, so long as it's not focused, even if "only" partially, on something illegal.
being allowed to host a proxy (as they had doe)
Nothing wrong there, host all the proxies you like, so long as it's not focused on something illegal.
or redirect (as some others do).
Redirect to your heart's content, so long as you're not focusing on something illegal. Wait, am I repeating myself?
It's not about digital rights. All the so-called "rights" you list are not at risk.
And despite the raving spewing forth, doing illegal stuff is also not at risk.
If you're really serious about digital rights and so forth, learn some marketing and put forth a proposal as to how business models should evolve. Back it up with numbers and hard data (not just "if only everyone did this, then such-and-such would work" or "me and my friends would support this, go on, give it a try"). The cop-out I see all the time on Slashdot is "business models need to evolve". So suggest this magical evolutionary path, then. If you can come up with a realistic and feasible roadmap, you'll make a lot of money. Otherwise you're just taking stuff because you can and because you're too damn cheap to pay.
Everything else is sophistry, and the reality is that no matter how much business models evolve they will most likely be a losing proposition regardless because people like being able to get stuff for free with low risk of getting caught breaking the law.
"Digital rights"? Please...what about the right to produce something, choose a business model that says "I want to be paid for this artifact up front, not when or if you feel like it", and bear the consequences of people rejecting your chosen business model by NOT BUYING YOUR PRODUCT and doing without it rather than just taking it?
Indeed. For all the billions they steal every year, you'd expect them to have a little more bite to their bark. They must be spending it all on amphetamines.
Will they still be liable to compile a list of quality PirateBay proxies and redirect people to them when they try to access the proxy?
How about them linking to a website that redirects people to proxies when they try to access the Pirate Party proxy?
What I'm trying to say is: when do people stop being liable for links/proxies?
What if I'm running a free SOCKS proxy? Am I still liable for the content that passes through?
You are absolutely right! Last week a friend of mine wanted digital copies of some of my CD's. Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, and of course...Bach. I told him to sod off with that glowing feeling in my gut, the knowledge that with one less dirty rotten thief these artists have a better chance of being fairly compensated for their works and will continue to create new music. Plus, I'm sure that when these artists die their works will be released into the public domain in a reasonable amount of time.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
When they speak of "intellectual property", they mean the ability to create a system of artificial scarcity for information, and demand real money that took real work to make, for a mere copy that took *zero* work to make. (A copy of the work that some poor schmuck, who didn't get shit, made, of course.)
In other words: To get free money while sitting on their fat asses. Forever, until the end of the universe.
Even for imaginary copies. Any price they want, because of their illegally enforced (yet utterly delusional) monopoly.
And you have the audacity add insult to injury, by calling *US* leeches!
Even though it's statistically *proven* that 1. sales didn't go down *one bit*. It only shifted to things like iTunes, and prices got into an actually realistic range again; 2. file sharers are *by far* those who spend the most money on information (like music, movies, etc); 3. all small labels, except for the cartel of the big ones, actually noticed that the more they uploaded their stuff for file sharing, the more popular they got, the more money they made.
Those are all facts, and you an look them up.
Fuck off, you fuckin' criminal and organized crime supporter! You know *shit*, and are dumber than a decorative cherry on top of a plate of monkey feces! Go learn at least the *basics* of the psychics of distribution of information, before you open your mouth full of shit! And stop gobbling the jenkem-flavored FUD Kool-Aid of the Content Mafia!
Speaking of sophistry - I'd like to know which artists are going hungry due to piracy, and which artists are going hungry because *IAA affiliated companies don't pass the profits on to the starving artists. Give me a list of artists who have missed a meal because pirates "stole" their music, so that all us "pirates" can send them a dollar or two. Oh, those poor suffering artists! The idea just hurts my soul!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
P.S.: I bet you will cling to that typo like a motherfucker, because it's the only thing you got.
P.P.S.: If you chose a delusional business model that has no relation to reality, and it then comes crashing down as reality approaches like a freight train at full speed... Don’t come crying to me!. Boo-hoo; Fuck youu!
The Courts are for the Super Rich and Mega Corporations!
We all just need to stop consuming their product... Listen to alternative music and documentaries. In a few years they will be to broke to do anything . . .
As a result of this proxy their site has jumped into the top-ten UK sites for traffic from being down in the mumble-hundreds. That's going to be a pretty penny in traffic costs.
Suddenly from on high comes a reason for them to shut it down.
The court order in question specifically lists the six ISPs that are required to block the Pirate Bay. The Pirate Party is not on the list. Neither is my ISP. The BPI is not suing my ISP. What makes the Pirate Party so special?
Perhaps someone from the Party could state right here what provision in legslation has them so spooked:
________________
Disclaimer: I do not respect the Pirate Party. Nor the Green party, for that matter. Or the Tories, Labour, Lim Dems...
I noticed that none of the artists you listed have recorded anything in a long time.
It is because of those pirates, no doubt.
I wish Slashdot would learn some damn economics.
The cost of producing a copy is the (marginal cost) + (fixed cost)/(total copies sold).
If I spend $1,000,000 making a movie and sell $1,000 copies even if the process of copping and distributing the film is $0 (It never is, servers and bandwidth do cost money), it still costs me $1,000 per copy because no copies can be made until the original exists. So unless I sell it at > $1,000 each I'm loosing money.
This is why pirating hurts artists. It doesn't matter that making the copy is free, because your not paying for that. You're paying a share of the fixed cost associated with creating the work in the first place. And if a particular work doesn't make it into the black the odds of that artist getting another chance shrink.
You can argue that copyright terms are too long, or that the *AA organizations are abusing their partners, or that the second order effects of piracy sometimes included increasing legitimate sales. However none of that changes the fact that it is not free to produce a digital copy, and claiming otherwise is an argument from ignorance that you need to cure yourself of before you can be taken seriously by the people in a position to do anything about copyright law.
Really.
Sue for damages caused by being forced to abandon their distribution method for their content.
given that buddy died over 50 years ago, all of his recording are out of copyright (at least they are here in the UK) as it only extends 50 years from the year of recording/release.
If you have a recoding of Bach playing his own compositions - please share with the rest of the world.
I hope your faux moral superiority comforts you at night when your children are sentenced to served time in a debtor's prison.
You're talking about people who choose not to take/steal things based on principle, even when it's trivially easy and "everyone's doing it". You are, moreover, taking the side of those who claim it's their right to do the opposite and acquire music, movies, and software, even when it's illegal, because of some theorized "digital rights", or because of a vague claim of "information wants to be free", or because "it benefits everyone in the end".
And you have the audacity to sneer at your opponents for "faux moral superiority" (while posting as an anonymous coward). How pathetic.
You should read Doctorow. It won't cost you a dime, he puts his books on boingboing for free and credits that for his standing as a best selling author. IINM "Makers" is the one with a good explanation for teh worth of piracy, but I could be wrong. Hell, read them all, they're free. You might wind up with a few copies on your shelf and him with an extra buck or two.
I wonder why libraries never put print authors out of business? I wonder why I have a dozen Asimov books on my shelf, when every single one of them is or was available at the library? After all the library is a monstrous pirate haven, with all those people getting books, CDs, and DVDs for no cost whatever! The horror! Close down all the libraries!
Nobody ever lost money from piracy, but many talented artists have starved from obscurity. And IMO anyone who can't understand that is not very intelligent.
Free Martian Whores!
just don't, you know, share it on the pirate bay. Cause fuck that site.
TPB proxies are still available on all major darknets and can't be taken down.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You mean the money they perhaps never had to begin with? Not everyone pirates just because they can.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This was predicatable; they should adopt the same strategy as that used in the McLibel Trial.
http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/
Do you also demand I release the many, many pieces of crap I've written but not published over the years?
There's a difference between works that you've never published or publicly exhibited and the works I'm talking about. The film Song of the South was publicly exhibited in U.S. movie theaters several decades ago. The television series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea was publicly exhibited on Nickelodeon more than two decades ago. The video game Mother was first published before Famicom games were discontinued; therefore about two decades ago.
Access all the resources you like, so long as it's not focused, even if "only" partially, on something illegal.
Based on that I assume you view Google as being just as guilty as TPB?
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
And that folks is why ultimately we will lose. We cant afford to fight, so we lose by default.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Nobody ever lost money from piracy,
Citation Needed.
Just based on some of the comments on slashdot, plenty of people have lost money from piracy. Of course there are some people who gained money from piracy. But YOU don't get to choose someone else business model.
If someone wants to give the first one away for free, and charge you for the second. That is his right. It isn't yours to choose that method. You can suggest it, and you can take your business elsewhere.
Can PPUK just use that £9000 to pay one of the other Pirate Parties to run a proxy for them?
It may also be possible for PPUK to run a "find a good proxy" DNS service. You go to proxy.pirateparty.org.uk and it CNAMEs you to somewhere else.
There's got to be a way to still provide a service, but not to get sued so convincingly.
Citation Needed.
Citation given.
Citation given.
Citation given.
Citation given.
Free Martian Whores!
The problem with the Pirate Party is that they are attempting to win a rigged game. In the legal game the one with the most money wins.
Inability to access a server is a technical problem, even if it was caused initially by a legal ruling, and it has a technical solution.
Don't ask for permission to do what you know you have the right to do.
gosgog:
Aah, I have books I bought, books that were given & books swapped & loaned. I bought a laptop years back in the U.S. , came with windows (damn sure MSN & GATES made a bunch off it).
Now I live in Asia & bet 90+ folks here with their own computers & a good many net cafes all have MSN, pirated! Big Deal, MSN & Gates sold all Gov'ts, & tons of non gov't businesses throughout the countries.
I now spend tons of time (retired) on my CPU, don't need to steal any more. 'cause I found Ubuntu & Linux & Opensource.
If folks bought Movies, books, programs & don't mind companies like Pirate providing links to people who want a copy getting 'em....why in hell should "Net Providers" give a damn? If this pricks a conscience then provide a donation! And keep Gov'ts out of Net Control!!
If you want to do a play, and do it once. Should you be forced to do it everynight forever? Should you be forced to film it and give it away?
That or license others to distribute copies of the script and perform it publicly at a fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory royalty.
If you paint a painting, should you be forced to paint copies for anyone who wants one?
That or license others to distribute photographic reproductions of the painting. My point is that expanding compulsory licensing to other media would satisfy the economic goal of copyright "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" without adding a privilege to make a work disappear, which runs counter to promoting this progress.