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Pirate Bay Co-Founder Must Pay Record Labels $395,000 (torrentfreak.com)
Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has run into another setback. The Helsinki District Court has ordered him to pay $395,000 to record labels including Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI, after the music of 60 of their artists has been shared illegally through The Pirate Bay. From a TorrentFreak report:Sunde did not appear in Helsinki to defend himself so the Court handed down a default judgment. He is now ordered to pay the full amount plus costs of around $62,000 (55,000 euros) to the local branch of IFPI. He also faces a fine of one million euros if the content continues to be shared via The Pirate Bay but how he is supposed to do anything about that isn't clear. Sunde and Pirate Bay co-founders Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm owe large sums of money to copyright holders following adverse decisions in cases dating back years. None of those judgments have been satisfied and there's no reason to believe this one will be any different.
This is pretty much standard practice in western law. If you can't be bothered to show up, the court's not going to waste time on you, they'll spend the extra time on someone who could be bothered to defend themselves.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
What about Abba?
It goes the other way as well. If you go to court for a traffic violation and the officer who wrote the citation doesn't show up, the judge will toss it. Same thing if someone has sued you and fails to show up to court. The judge is there to preside over the trial, not to do the job of the prosecution of defense.
He has never expected people to pay his debts, in fact he has stated that he weill never pay a single eurocent of that debt at all.
Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has run into another setback.
He also faces a fine of one million euros if the content continues to be shared via The Pirate Bay
pretty extraordinary considering he hasnt been part of the pirate bay for nearly a fucking decade. Again, content isnt being shared, only metadata to acquire it from a distributed network of people who have it. Im sure the same media companies that employ metadata to track every iota of their customers lives are well versed in the concept.
Sunde and Pirate Bay co-founders Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm owe large sums of money to copyright holders following adverse decisions in cases dating back years.
the point of this is you do not, and cannot win these court cases. The cases arent the point, its biblical retribution for anyone who even dares to challenge the protection racket of music and video. Most of the attorneys are just showing up to bleed the defendant dry and ruin as much of them as possible. Its harder to do in more liberal european nations, however its getting easier. Media companies have a direct in with the FBI and ICE. They can lobby to have your generally trustworthy host countries police force arrive in full tactical regalia to drag you in handcuffs to jail for a victimless crime. Kim Dot Com doesnt get to win his cases either. your money is confiscated, youre made to be tried in absentia, your case is as obfuscated as possible, and the judge has more chromosomes than a sperm bank.
Good people go to bed earlier.
You sure showed them!
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
the Federal government, along with some State governments, (most notably Florida's), has announced that distributors and sellers of firearms will henceforth be both civilly and criminally liable for injuries and deaths caused by guns and ammunition they have sold. Oh, wait...
An individual can be hounded and sued into oblivion for providing a platform which others use to distribute copies of music and videos. Yet gun makers and sellers are held harmless, and continue to profit, while the products they sell result in illegal deaths on a more-than-hourly basis. So basically, the profits of music companies and movie studios are more important, in the eyes of the law, than the lives of average people. What a fucked up set of priorities in a thoroughly obscene legal system.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I'll have some respect for copyright when the terms aren't life of the author plus 75 years. That's ridiculous. If someone makes a work today, I'll have been dead 50 odd years before it's in the public domain - assuming, a big assumption, that the shill maximalists don't get the terms extended even more towards perpetuity.
Current terms are also theft: they are the theft of things that could have been. If terms were 20 years then at that mark new works could be created by anyone who would wish and their work would then get 20 years. You want to see an explosion of culture? Look at that right there. Creative works that take ideas in ways the original author couldn't conceive of or didn't think was worth the money. 20 year term: and I will never infringe again, unjust terms bring all of copyright into contempt.
For a free (pdf download) of a book which explains the issue in detail, see: The Public Domain.
Shh.
American copyright law does not mean zip in Sweden
The Berne Convention is not an "American copyright law". Sweden joined the Berne Convention in 1904.
The grandchildren can just market it as "The way our grandfather intended it to be!" They don't need exclusivity. Or how about this, make a standard open license for works between 20 years old and life of author +75 years where x% of the gross goes to the original author or their estate?
For what? You don't get thrown in jail for owing money to private companies.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
Most mature intelligent people are perfectly willing to pay for content as long as that content is high quality and convenient. It is only when content is degraded, restricted, or encumbered (or simply not even available) that most people turn to file sharing. Once content is made available in an unencumbered, reasonably priced digital download or streaming format, only political zealots and immature entitled jerks like the anonymous parent will insist on stealing it.
Tolkien's grandkids don't have the money to buy off Congress every time The Hobbit inches towards public domain. Disney and Time Warner, do.
Which makes a mockery of copyrights, at least as to how they came about in the U.S. The whole point is to have an exclusive, but time limited control over the reproduction of works to encourage creation. Locking up ideas for a century or more is the antithesis of that.
A good example here is Disney itself - FIFTY of their movies have been based on public domain works. Many of which, like the Jungle Book and Alice in Wonderland, they couldn't have made if current copyright laws were in place at the time.
My one traffic ticket was failing to stop at a stop sign. (I did a "rolling stop.") When I was called, I was immediately told to speak to the prosecutor. He gave me a deal - they'd reduce the verdict to "parking on the pavement" if I entered a guilty plea. That charge wouldn't hit my insurance and would have a lower fine. They were doing this for everyone coming in with such fluidity that it was likely just Business As Usual. I suspect that very few "ran a stop sign" cases actually lead to "ran a stop sign" verdicts.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.