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Pirate Bay Co-founder Arrested In Northeastern Thailand

Posted by timothy on from the on-the-whole-I'd-rather-be-in-denmark dept.

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.

5 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. What a shame by metrix007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ALl this man did was help build a search enging allowing people to share.

    This only benefits society.

    There is no stealing, despite what some ignorant people unable to think for themselves claim.

    Is there a loss in profit for original work? No doubt, but I would argue this is superseded by a) the increase in sales that piracy has been shown to affect, and b) the huge benefit to society by allowing information to be more freely accessible, to inspire and educate.

    --
    If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
    1. Re:What a shame by CaseCrash · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      I can't believe you still don't get it. Taking that copy causes NO loss of resources to the artist, the resources being used are by the sharer and the downloader. The artist didn't lose anything.

      That the artist didn't get paid for that copy is irrelevant. That's just a failure in their business model. I can't charge you for every time you download and read this comment, even if I wanted to.

      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. If you aren't making enough 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."
  2. Re:um yea by ruir · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe he is used to do it, and this time forgot to bring money to bribe someone.

  3. Re:That's what you get by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    that's quite probable, is Thai authorities we are talking about anyways and it's.. well. let's just say that I would be very surprised if they fucking knew who was in the country or if there's an actual database of people with visas.

    you see, it's lucrative business to sell visas, for the personnel who have access to them, since the rules about how to get legit visas to stay without doing stupid border runs every 3 months is scarce and they're doing a terrible job of communicating how to do it. of course, now with the "new administration" they're doing a crackdown on corruption(that is, a crackdown that is done by a multimillionaire general) - so they arrested some guy few months back who had been selling visas.

    I think he was doing this as a visa run because he had done it multiple times before? but that is, if he had been doing it multiple times, there's a crackdown on that too. they'll even sell you a visa(at the consulate in laos) and then tell you at the border no. should have gone to some other country that wasn't in a police related international debacle at the moment.

    (disclaimer, I've spent the last year in northeast Thailand, working as a programmer for a foreign owned company that sells consulting, programming etc to the country of our origin and just keeps few devs here and pays us less but on the other hand it's fucking snowing in my home country now and comfy 30C here and you can buy lunch for a dollar - and yes I'm quite sure the local police would be so petty as to look for some international case "to do good" to turn away attention from Koh Tao. yes, they are that naive). just posting as anon because uh, who the fuck knows, the fucks even fucked up by instructing an isp to ban facebook few months back and then trying to backpedal that they didn't. the ban lasted all of one afternoon before hasty reversal, apparently they had instructed them to ban a specific PAGE on facebook without FUCKING UNDERSTANDING ANYTHING ABOUT HTTPS. the current dictator is also seriously off his rocker, and believes in ghosts and spells.. the economy is in the shitter too but "future feeling" index is 90% happy. it's good that our company isn't in any way dependent on the local economy.

  4. Re:He must pay for his crimes by rioki · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If I recall correctly, they where convicted of criminal copyright infringement. If I post an image on my website that is normal copyright infringement, but if print that same image on cards and sell them I am criminal copyright infringement. The difference is that I do it in a "commercial way" and with "significant damage". The really important difference is that copyright holders can get the police involved and serve jail sentences in criminal copyright infringement.

    But your assertion is correct, copyright is a civil matter, how they got criminal copyright infringement is a mystery to me. This is especially perverse, since the maximum jail sentence for criminal copyright infringement is 3 years and rape is 2 years.