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Pirate Bay Is Infringing Copyright, European Court of Justice Rules (theguardian.com)
The European court of justice (ECJ) has ruled that BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay is directly infringing copyright, in a move that could lead to ISPs and governments blocking access to other torrent sites across Europe. From a report: The ruling comes after a seven-year legal battle, which has seen the site, founded in Sweden in 2003, blocked and seized, its offices raided, and its three founders fined and jailed. At the heart of the case is the Pirate Bay's argument that, unlike the previous generation piracy sites like Napster, it doesn't host infringing files, nor link to them. Instead, it hosts "trackers," files which tell users of individual BitTorrent apps which other BitTorrent users to link to in order to download large files -- in the Pirate Bay's case, usually, but not exclusively, copyrighted material.
the ECJ [argued] that the Pirate Bay goes further than a protected site should, by offering not just a search feature, but also categorising files, deleting faulty trackers, and filtering out some types of content. That means, in the court’s eyes: “The operators of the platform play an essential role in making those works available.”
I still think the primary mistake was naming themselves "The Pirate Bay." They should have followed the practice that politicians use in naming bills. Call it the "Noble Defenders of Copyright Bay" or something.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Ridiculous reasoning. Cavemen painted on the walls without having a DMCA in place, copyright protection, or a mega-corporation offering them exclusive perpetual distribution rights contracts.
Culture will happen regardless of whatever nonsense motivations you put behind it. An artist doesn't stop being an artist because people that weren't going to buy the art anyway, in fact, don't buy their art.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Where is the TOR equivalent of these sites? Surely that's where this game of whack-a-mole is headed - the lawless dark web.
Total amount of illegal content hosted by TPB: 0 bytes.
How is it clear? None of the files they hosted were copyrighted AFAIK?
In essence, the question is whether someone standing on the sidewalk saying "Get your illegal drugs over there ----> (points to someone in the alley with the actual drugs)" is guilty of any crime. Some will argue no, some will argue yes, but the ECJ has decided the answer is yes.
I still think the primary mistake was naming themselves "The Pirate Bay." They should have followed the practice that politicians use in naming bills. Call it the "Noble Defenders of Copyright Bay" or something.
Patriot Bay?
Sounds good. Sounds legit. Evil lurks. Similar to other "Patriot" themed things.