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.

Comments

That's what you get

[evil crash]

For wearing the same shirt. If only he had changed, they never would have noticed him.

Re:That's what you get

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Yarr, a dark day for all we sea dogs

[GameboyRMH]

A swig of grog for our mateys who are rotting in the brig! :-(

What a shame

[metrix007]

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.

Re:What a shame

[CaseCrash]

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.

Re:What a shame

[CaseCrash]

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.

Re:What a shame

[LordLimecat]

Actually yes, they are.

Intent is pretty important in law, as is whether the crime was willful or not.

Re:What a shame

[clarkkent09]

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.

Re:um yea

[Zocalo]

I doubt very much that his method of communication with others had anything to do with things. He was arrested at a border checkpoint, so I suspect all that happened was they checked his ID as a matter of routine and got a red flag because of the arrest warrant. I doubt very much that a Thai/Loatian border guard would even know who Fredrik Neij was, let alone recognise his shirt as being the one in his arrest photo. What's more surprising to me is that Neij was attempting border crossings with an outstanding international arrest warrant - unless he wasn't aware of the warrant or the Thailand-Laos border control isn't particularly robust.

He must pay for his crimes

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:The long arm of the law

[Anonymous Coward]

The long arm of the law only extends to copyright. Stick to tax fraud and there is apparently nothing they can do.

SRT has come a long way ...

[CaptainDork]

... SRT has been in development for several years and its success rate improved greatly after Google bought out the shirt recognition technology site, "Shirt Happens," back in 2011.

Re:Another terrorist off the street

[fibonacci8]

To be fair, EA has committed far more horrible atrocities against EA's profits.

Re:Another terrorist off the street

[fafaforza]

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?

He should have...

[CimmerianX]

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!!!!!

Re:He must pay for his crimes

[rioki]

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.

Re:He must pay for his crimes

[fnj]

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.

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.