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Pirate Bay Co-founder Arrested In Northeastern Thailand
New submitter SeeingMole writes, just a few days after Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg was found guilty in Denmark, that Thai immigration police arrested 36-year-old Fredrik Neij, aka TiAMO, while driving a car to pass through the border checkpoint from Laos into Thailand with his Lao wife. He was wearing the same shirt that he wore in his arrest warrant photo. In 2009, Neij was convicted along with Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstroem of 'assisting in making copyright content available' in Stockholm, Sweden. Also at the BBC; thanks to reader iONiUM.
Welp, they got him! Don't we all feel so much safer. After all, the heinous crime of "assisting in making copyright content available" surely warrants the international manhunts. I can walk downstairs and buy a stack of any movies or games or, well, anything I wish in the open in China..good thing countries like the US use grand tools like embargos to press the Chinese government to do something about it!
It's easy to pick a famous name - or create symbols for these 'wars' and spend ridiculous amounts of money on the behalf of old-style big business with lobbyists and donations...but the solution to piracy is to change the business model employed by the companies or artists who are being hurt by piracy. Louis CK famously sold $1mil in a week worth of $5 specials on his own website, why? Because he put out a great product and said: You don't need to sign up with a bunch of information or provide me with a bunch of details, or opt into some kind of marketing scheme, you can give me $5 and get a product, and watch it anywhere on any device you want..or pirate it.. do whatever you like - but I'm trying to provide a quality product and hopefully you'll appreciate that.
The alternative is to fall into the game, music, and movie big industry problem of pushing out a massive amount of shit at high 'standardised' pricing to audiences who are tired of spending too much and getting too little, and as a result, driving people to simply pirate and try things before deciding what they really want to support. Personally I pirate most of my games, I also bought legitimate consoles and buy legitimate copies of games I *really* want, or buy authentic DVD/sets when there is something I really like out there - 100% of which I have already seen.
They'll get the hint, someday, or crumble eventually. For now, people like Gottfrid need to be admired for what they've contributed to making change happen.
Fuck dude. Maybe you should realize that you are useless. You provide no value. You job and thousands like you can be replaced by exactly 0 people. The small niche players were never cared for or looked after by the likes of you. They provided you no money, so you were no interested. With the democratization of the internet, the small players may actually have a niche. But you can buy off your hired guns and arrest people like this. So I guess you can continue making money for a little while
The long arm of the law only extends to copyright. Stick to tax fraud and there is apparently nothing they can do.
There is no stealing, despite what some ignorant people unable to think for themselves claim.
Well, you are still taking the copy without paying for it. That copy still carries a value even when the plain act of copying does not involve any manufacturing costs. I can't believe how tough concept this often is for slashdotters.
In an extreme scenario, one guy could just buy 1 piece of the authentic music album and then copy it for his 1,000,000 buddies for free. In this example, 1,000,001 people receive the album, but the artist gets money from just 1 copy. How is that fair?
He committed horrible atrocities against Sony and EA's profits!!
It would be less sad if they had at least proved that.
We have, for society as a whole", created a value or 1.000.001 times what we otherwise would have acheived. This is a enourmous benefit for us all. When it comes to music this might be filed under the "doesn't really matter", but when it comes to other stuff such as medicines or inventions that could be as important as survival for individuals or for society as a whole...
If, because of restrictive copyright/patent issues, or economic or social development is held back, lets say 5% of what it would otherwise be, this has an ENORMOUS impact over 50 or 100 years.
The whole raison d'être behind copyright is to stimulate more inventions/music to be produced not to make copyright lawyers and the media mafiaa rich. I would argue that today it works against what it was DESIGNED for.
Despite the by Hollywood bought "justice" in this case inovation is powefull. Do you think Spotify would exist if the piratebay (and similar services) didn't? That is also a benifit to society. Fredrik Neij and his colleagues has done more for the music industry and for humanity as a whole than 99.9% of people, certainly more than me or you or anyone in the media conglomerate.
The thing you keep missing is that the artist (or record company, or estate or whatever) DOES NOT deserve to get paid for every single copy of their song, forever and ever.
That's an opinion, not a fact that can be "missed". And its your opinion - don't assume anyone else holds the same opinion.
There already exists a means by which the complete rights to a work can be bought, eliminating re-occurring sales in the process - but typically that puts the work well outside the purchase ability of a normal person.
Duhh. Neither does the artist make any money.
So? The copy doesn't mean that downloader would have ever given any money to the artist if that was the only way to obtain the file, they might (probably) would have just gotten something else for free instead (or be willing to pay a lower, but not offered in the marketplace, rate). That's why we have all these new methods of paying artists like donations (pay what you want), kickstarter (like for the latest Zach Braff movie), indiegogo, etc. (as well as the traditional methods like t-shirts and swag and concerts, seeing the movie in the theater for the theater experience)
These are inherently ephemeral goods; there is no real world resource loss. Whether they get paid once or a billion times, the amount of work has not changed. Even if they never get paid, like plenty of artists who work their whole lives at their craft and never even make rent money.
If you can't make money doing what you are doing, then do something else.
No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
Devil's advocate, but shady "finance" people that rip off unsuspecting moms with investment ideas and pyramid schemes. No violent crime. No one dead. Should they be given a pass?
Just think that if he had sold billions of bad mortgages and defrauded both investors and the public sending the entire world economy to the brink of collapse, he would have gotten no jail time and a multi-billion dollar bailout.
Instead he built a web page that lets people find trackers, and he must be put away for life.
'Merica!!!!!
Actually yes, they are.
Intent is pretty important in law, as is whether the crime was willful or not.
Try this, leave your home and car unlocked so that others can have free access to your stuff. Your stuff wants to be free, let it go.
How does a book author make money from touring? He spends years writing a book and some jackass puts it on a website for free and makes money off advertising and buys a house in Phuket.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Do you have any conception whatsoever of how lame that rhetoric is? I'd like to think you do, and that it is just cynical misdirection, but I have my doubts. I think possibly you are so brainwashed or you have an axe to grind in terms of personal livelihood that you really don't have any conception of the issues.
Anyway, I'll spell it out. Your parallel is blatantly false. If you take stuff out of my car and home and into yours or somebody else's, you deprive me of the use of my property. You can't readily "copy" my car or my car radio or living room sofa in a magic replicator, while still leaving me the original. If you could do that, more power to you. Of course I wouldn't mind in the least. Some day, when the Star Trek universe becomes reality, such replication might become possible.
Copying movies and songs does not involve any theft. Nobody loses access to the movie or the song. Only somebody else now enjoys the same access, and has in no way inconvenienced anyone thereby. Yes, the guys with the thoroughly obsolete business model will be annoyed at its disruption. But they should be annoyed at reality, the harsh undeniable universe, and the march of progress, not people whose only sin is that they actually understand reality and progress. I don't get my kicks from seeing people facing a hardship making their livelihood because of progress, but I am in contempt of the viewpoint that they are entitled.
You can make a stand against the electrophotographic copier, digital computing and copying equipment, and communications infrastructure like the internet. I prefer to use them and marvel at the benefits they provide.
Disclaimer: I don't try to profit or make a living by violating copyright. A sufficient reason - I won't claim the only reason - is because I am a sniveling coward and have no wish to rot in jail. I have the common decency to neither condemn nor praise such activity.