ThePirateBay.org Raided and Shut Down 1189
An anonymous reader writes "ThePirateBay.org, a longtime fixture of the BitTorrent community, is currently under investigation. Slyck.com is reporting their servers have been seized by the Swedish police." What's really interesting about them is the strange political power that they held in their homeland. There was much discussion even of a political party. This will be interesting to watch unfold.
This is the sort of publicity you can't buy. (Score:5, Informative)
What we probably have here is pressure (who doesn't doubt it didn't go down like this [wikipedia.org]) from a foreign organisation to shut down something that's legal under Swedish law. (The torrent files themselves contain no copyrighted information).
Is this going to permanently shutdown thepiratebay.org? I doubt it.
Is this going to help the Pirate Party's chances for election in the September elections and be detrimental to the content oligopolist's interests in the long run? Hell yes.
Mildly offtopic, if TPB is shutdown, the thing I'm going to miss most is their 'legal' section (with legal threats + responses) - here's one of my favorite responses (via google cache [64.233.183.104]): (in response to a threat from Sega europe)
It wasn't the police. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It wasn't the police. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It wasn't the police. (Score:5, Funny)
...
And join forces to take out those damn dirty Vikings!
Re:This is the sort of publicity you can't buy. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is the sort of publicity you can't buy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is the sort of publicity you can't buy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is the sort of publicity you can't buy. (Score:4, Insightful)
This argument drives me nuts. They're not selling you the paper on which the book was printed. They are selling you the entertainment/knowledge/whatever you derive from the content of the book. The lost sales argument aside, this is the problem I have with any music/movie pirates who justify it the way you did. "Well, I wouldn't buy that shit anyway, and I just made a copy, I didn't physically deprive them of anything." Well, 1) How pathetic must you be to waste your time downloading shit you don't value? Either that or you're lying, and enjoy getting something for free. And 2) If you delete a bunch of vital information on a company's server, would you use the defense that "I didn't physically destroy anything, I just realigned some bits on a hard drive"?
Of course not, because the typical /. demographic understands that you can't apply laws and governance of the physical world to the virtual, technology world. So perhaps it is not THEFT in the traditional sense, but it is THEFT in the "I'm taking something that I'm not authorized to take" sense.
I post similar comments everytime I see this issue raised, and most people must think I'm a shill or something. I'm not; I personally believe in free (speech and beer) information, and public disbursement of my creative efforts. As a multi-medium content creator, however, I recognize that not everyone believes the same things I do, and it's more important to respect that than to push my own beliefs.
More like... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more like photocopying the entire book and taking the copy home with you. You get to enjoy the content any time you want without going back to the store. And although reading the book in the store might be legal (but rude), photocopying the whole thing is certainly copyright infringement and against the law.
Re:This is the sort of publicity you can't buy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is the sort of publicity you can't buy. (Score:4, Insightful)
"The market value of the content is dramatically reduced by allowing use without compensation."
Not necessarily. For example, Janis Ian claims she has actually sold more cd's thanks to Napster and its offspring. Most DVD's I own were bought because I downloaded the movie and decided I really liked it. I think p2p will usually increase the sales of quality and decrease the sales of crap. The movie and music industry prefer to produce crap because it's easier and cheaper, which is why they oppose p2p.
Re:This is the sort of publicity you can't buy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Legal circumstances of other actions on the Internet are different in that there are serious but legitimate differences in the laws of different countries. The best example of which I can think are Europe's anti-Nazi laws, of which Yahoo famously ran afoul. Trading Nazi memorabilia in France and Germany is strictly forbidden (at least for private parties -- museums may have more leeway), while no court in the United States would entertain such restrictions for very long. In Russia, you have the legal authority to break DRM encryption for the purposes of making a personal backup (though not for warez trading), hence Elcomsoft's legal dilemma with the PDF cracker.
I can't speak to the situation here, because Swedish copyright law may or may not be on the side of TPB, and I'm not familiar with Swedish law in general, but the overall situation may not be nearly as cut and dried as you seem to believe.
Re:This is the sort of publicity you can't buy. (Score:5, Informative)
Sweden, until rather recently, had one of the more enlightened copyright laws around. It explicitly required authorisation only for *commercial* reproduction. Making a copy of a cd, book, or whatever and giving it to your friends was never illegal.
Well, of course once the *AA found out about that they had a tizzy fit, and funnelled an unknown, but apparently substantial amount of money to Sweden, funding the Antipirat Byrån and some other organisations, as well as bribing lots of politicians. They haven't had the kind of success they've been hoping for, but they did manage to change the law to prohibit unauthorised non-commercial copying. A rather unpopular move with the voting public, I might add, which is increasingly resentful of the swedish politicians who have a pattern of voting in stuff that's unpopular with the citizenry but popular with wealthy foreign lobbyists. Politicians are traditionally held in VERY high regard in Sweden, and there's an overwhelming tradition of people trusting them, viewing them as experts, and assuming that if they do something like this they must know best. That tradition has been quickly eroding, by incidents like this. Before that law was hustled through in the back rooms, very few people were actively thinking about the issue. Afterwards, a significant movement started to form and demand that their liberty be restored.
Anyhow, they did manage to technically make filesharing illegal there, and there was a test case a few months back. It was reported that, basically, if the court didn't impose a fairly harsh sentence, the police would not enforce the law again. As I recall, the court did not go mad, and therefore it was widely assumed afterwards this was essentially a dead law. They can, of course, write someone up for it if they happen to see it, but they cannot, for instance, breach privacy laws to get your IP over such a minor offense, so in practice it's nearly unenforceable.
I'm guessing this raid will backfire horribly for those behind it. Unless I've horribly misunderstood the law there (and not just me, the pirate bay folks, who have significant legal respresentation and counsel available) hosting the torrent files themselves is still completely legal. If a court winds up agreeing with that assessment, the pirate bay should wind up getting everything returned along with an apology and a nice fat cheque. And I don't mean that in the sense I would in a similar circumstance in the US - it should happen but it never will - I mean it's very likely. The falsely accused are normally compensated for their trouble there. If that happens, it should be rather impossible for this to be spun away - it will become another police scandal coming at a time when the police have way too many already.
So far, every effort the *AA has made in Sweden has backfired in terms of public opinion. The more attention they draw to the issue, the more support for liberty seems to arise. Won't be surprised if that happens again, although I note today that the hacks at dn.se, the nations largest newspaper, are desperately trying to spin this the other way. But then again, they've been doing that all along...
Re:This is the sort of accessories you can't buy. (Score:5, Funny)
The Political Pirate Party (Score:5, Informative)
From the first link, the aims of the Pirate Party seem to be:
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:5, Interesting)
Not every bit. They want a five-year commercial-only copyright term; allowing for non-commercial copying and use during that period.
Also, personal information and trademarks are to retain their protection.
> Disregard WIPO and WTO completely. Even though the US will "go bananas" as they put it.
Again, not completely. The WTO regulates some non-IP issues, on which the Pirate Party has no opinion.
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:4, Informative)
"Swedish police has today taken all the servers of The Pirate Bay into custody. Two operators of The Pirate Bay are in police custody, and can't be reached.
Swedish police has today taken all the servers of The Pirate Bay into custody. The police chose to do this despite the fact that the services provided by the worlds largest bittorrent tracker are fully legal in Sweden.
The servers where located in a protected area, to which the police had no legal right to enter, but this was ignored.
Piratbyrån (the Pirate Bureau), a swedish pro-pirate lobby organisation, also got their servers seized, since they where located in the same room.
Two operators of The Pirate Bay are in police custody, and can't be reached.
This article will be updated as more news come in.
14:35: 50 policemen participated in the raid."
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Voting as a message (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree however with the idea that one should only vote for parties that 'have a chance' of winning or anything like that. People should vote for the party that represents them and their interests the better, no matter how important they are right now. Small parties usually are small just because of people thinking that way. If you think something, and believe some party is proposing a good response to your expectations, you should put your vote where your mouth is, and vote them. Otherwise, don't complain when the government does something you don't like, because they will be doing it with your implicit approval (except if they deviate from their own political viewpoint).
Re:Voting as a message (Score:5, Interesting)
In America the Democrats and Republicans are both part of a larger group, a power monopoly. They take "sides" in order to make it seem like there's a choice. The last several elections were almost exactly 50-50 divided. The media and the politicians like to say this means the country is "Strongly" divided. I say that it means the two "sides" are closer together than ever, so it doesn't really matter which side you pick, you are voting for people who are part of a single group, the power monopoly.
Voting for some wierd outsider would be great for the country. We need to get 2 or 3 totally weird outsiders into the senate and congress. These weirdos would not necessarily have any influence with their few votes, but you know for a fact they are going to:
1. Attend every vote
2. Read and understand every bill
3. Debate every pork barrel/hidden law/etc etc.
4. Generally put all the other people on the spot.
Those people up there are supposed to represent our states and help to make the country a better place also. Instead, they all live in Washington, DC, go to the same parties, and rarely if ever come back to their states to find out what's really going on. And if they do talk to someone from the state, it'll be some rich millionaire or business that probably does more than it's own share of subverting the will and freedom and comfort of the residents.
A weirdo elected would
1. Not be invited to those parties
2. Would not be able to find a place to live in Washington DC
3. Would not know any millionaires
Therefore he would probably come back to his house in the state he's from during the recess and actually talk to people and find out what's going on.
The only real problem is that he would shake things up so much that the power monopoly would hire one of their many hit squads and he would die in a tragic "accident".
I want to see some Henry Clay style beatings in congress though. Put someone like a Jessie Ventura in and have him PHYSICALLY BEAT people like Tom Delay (not just a clever name), Orrin Hatch, John Kerry, etc. BEAT THEM INTO SUBMISSION like the frail moneyed frat boys they are. Instead, it's just getting more aristocratic up there, because the American people think they have to go with a sure winner--when really going with the weirdest person running would be the best for everyone.
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:5, Funny)
IPv6 will sort that out
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly, their program would make both Creative Commons and GPL redundant. With no copyrights, everything would be in the commons, so a separate "Creative Commons" would not be necessary. The only reason we need the GPL is because commercial interests use copyright to artificially restrict their customers' freedom to do as they wish with their products.
Abolishment of copyright would be a decisive victory both for CC and GPL.
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite.
The GPL uses the power of copyright to enforce certain goals. If copyright loses force, the GPL loses force.
The BSD license is basically "you can do anything you want" and if copyright runs out, that's pretty much the situation. If copyright loses force, it's like everything is now BSD-licensed.
With no copyrights, Microsoft could take FSF software, change it, and sell the result without releasing source code. RMS would not be pleased.
The only reason we need the GPL is because commercial interests use copyright to artificially restrict their customers' freedom to do as they wish with their products.
No, another reason for the GPL is to keep anyone from taking free software, changing it, and not releasing the changes to the world.
steveha
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:4, Informative)
GPL uses copyright protection specifically to stop commercial interests from, say, enhancing the Linux kernel and selling the result as a closed source product. Without copyright protections, the commercial company COULD do this with impunity.
Personally, I agree that current copyright law is ridiculous, but 5 years seems way too short. I would argue for something like 40 or 50 years. There are plenty of examples of creative work that was a dud on initial release, but became a cult favorite a decade later... or creative work that was the product of decades of work, from a creator who would not be able to "just do more" to keep an income stream once copyright ended. We want to support these kinds of "master works" or "life's work" projects, not say, "sorry, but your 5 years is up -- if the word is still spreading, hey; sucks to be you".
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Political Pirate Party (Score:4, Insightful)
Others say we wouldn't need copyleft if there was no copyright. Without copyright, people could do evil things such as plagiarize. There may be ways to have the protections of copyleft without copyright law. We can have laws against plagiarism and similar evils without having to base them on or associate them with copyright law.
I would prefer an incentive based system. Having only the Big Stick of law to force people to do "right" doesn't often work, especially in America where protest against and distrust of authority is part of our culture. I would like to see a system that makes not sharing about as intelligent as shooting yourself in the foot, because if you don't share then you don't get any recognition or credit, and therefore no compensation. I'm not talking anarchy-- not let's throw copyright away and replace it with nothing. What something could or should replace copyright I don't know, but I have some possibly unworkable ideas about that.
The Pirate Party (Score:5, Informative)
An alternative to pharmaceutical patents (Score:4, Informative)
I apologize for not having a more complete translation of our proposal ready, but this is the basic idea.
At least in Europe, over 80% of the pharma companies' revenues come from the government (since we have universal medical coverage). The pharma companies claim that they have to charge several times more than the production costs in order to fund research. But they only spend 15% of their revenues on research. Most of the money they receive from the government actually goes to marketing (around 50%) and profit (around 15%).
If the government would fund research and the buying of the pills separately, the total bill would drop by at least 50%, since there would be no need for the excessive marketing any more. And there would be no need to keep the research results blocked by patents, since they would have been paid for already.
So there would be no need to threaten third world countries with economic sanctions just because they try to do what they can to provide AIDS medicine to their own population.
odd (Score:5, Interesting)
(coralized link)
http://www.btflux.com.nyud.net:8080/archives/news
Re:odd (Score:5, Informative)
I talkt to the Pirate Party leader, he confirms the raid, confiscated servers (Both Pirate Parties and The Pirate Bay), saying there were 50 policemen in the raid this afternoon (14:00 Cent Eur time).
Re:odd (Score:5, Funny)
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:odd (Score:5, Funny)
Re:odd (Score:5, Funny)
No, I'm fine.
Re:odd (Score:5, Funny)
Re:odd (Score:4, Funny)
Legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
According to The Pirate Party, a Swedish copyright reform organization, the raid also seized Piratbyrån's (the Pirate Bureau) servers. In addition, The Pirate Party reports "...the servers where located in a protected area, to which the police had no legal right to enter..." Approximately 50 police participated in the raid, which placed into custody two PirateBay.org personnel.
Now I remember reading the legal threats page, and the phrase normally went along the lines of "US Copyrights Mean Nothing Here".
What changed? Sending letters is one thing, but something pretty heavy must be going on to warrant that kind of response.
Can any of our swedish friends fill in the gaps here? I'm sure we're missing something.
Bad guys win after all? (Score:3, Interesting)
With any legal system there are a million of loopholes, that his how the lawyers make their big bucks. It seems like one of those MPAA/RIAA/Microsoft/Adobe lawyers found a loophole in the Swedish law after all.
It seems the like the guys at the piratebay.org has fun with the
Re:Legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing as I can see it. It's still perfectly legal to link to copyright violating material in Sweden. The police probably hopes that they store some violating material on the servers. Which, hopefully, they don't.
That, or they're after the logs so that they can do it the American Way (tm) and start suing blind 90 year olds and quadriplegics.
Re:Legal? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Legal? (Score:5, Funny)
What changed? Sending letters is one thing, but something pretty heavy must be going on to warrant that kind of response.
Can any of our swedish friends fill in the gaps here? I'm sure we're missing something.
It's really quite simple.
Terrorists can download .torrent files. And if terrorists can download .torrent files, then terrorists can obtain unlimited copies of material by Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, etc.
This will (obviously) lead to a greater hatred of America, and western culture in general.
This will impact the safety of all of our children as terrorists with big boners from watching Britney in that video with the short skirt will erupt into testosterone-fueled rages ... and this will greatly impact our war on terror.
This has nothing to do with copyright law, and everything to do with the safety of the free world.
I don't understand what you don't get about it?
Re:Legal? (Score:4, Funny)
This will (obviously) lead to a greater hatred of America, and western culture in general.
Following this logic (terrorists acquire torrents of mass-produced crap which leads to greater hatred of the West) -- I side with the terrorists in their hatred.
(Note to NSA - not with the blowing up of things, just with the hatred.)
Re:Legal? (Score:5, Funny)
o <- Joke
O
/--\ <-You
|
/ \
By raiding the pirate bay... (Score:3, Funny)
TEXT if slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
As one of the largest trackers, ThePirateBay.org largely replaced the demise of the SuprNova.org search engine. SuprNova.org met its demise in late 2004, when it was under pressure from the entertainment industry to shut it operation down. Conversely, such pressure has been ineffective against ThePiratebay.org.
When such political pressure fails, the use of force is typically the next course of action. In a move that many thought would never come, Slyck.com learned this morning that ThePirateBay.org was raided by Swedish police.
"...The police right now is taking all of our servers, to check if there is a crime there or not (they are actually not sure)," ThePirateBay.org spokesperson "brokep" told Slyck.com.
The seizure of ThePirateBay.org's entire server farm will guarantee this BitTorrent tracker will remain offline until the police complete their investigation. Whether this will keep ThePirateBay.org offline indefinitely is another matter.
"We are not sure when it will return, but we are moving it to another country if necessary," brokep said.
According to The Pirate Party, a Swedish copyright reform organization, the raid also seized Piratbyrån's (the Pirate Bureau) servers. In addition, The Pirate Party reports "...the servers where located in a protected area, to which the police had no legal right to enter..." Approximately 50 police participated in the raid, which placed into custody two PirateBay.org personnel.
The premature departure of ThePirateBay.org marks a significant turning point in the BitTorrent community. Although it's not currently known what, if any, entertainment entity is behind this raid, failure to secure ThePirateBay.org's permanent removal will only bolster this tracker's position of defiance.
Re:TEXT if slashdotted (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it's a web site taken down in a battle against a movement in modern society. Yes, it was a popular web site, but are we really calling the Suprnova take down the same in retrospect? All good that did was spawning many others.
Re:TEXT if slashdotted (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone's house/appt? You know, cops can't just walk into any building and take what they want. Unless, of course, they don't like the person who lives there.
An open letter to Sweden. (Score:5, Funny)
24 (Score:5, Funny)
They were too cocky (Score:3, Interesting)
The should have stopped taunting the MPAA, RIAA, and just about every Hollywood movie house. Those entities combined have an enormous amount of influence and power. It was just a matter of time unfortunately.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Interesting to say the least! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting to say the least! (Score:3, Insightful)
TPB shutdown clearly visible in graphs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:TPB shutdown clearly visible in graphs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:TPB shutdown clearly visible in graphs (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh shit (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe they were warned about it... (Score:5, Funny)
Story unfolds... (Score:5, Informative)
For the benefit of those who don't speak swedish, here's a short summary:
3 people have been arrested, age 22, 24 and 28. They have not been charged, but are taken in because they the police suspect they have violated copyright laws. The persons are directly connected to TPB.org. They are as of an hour ago still under interrogation. 50 police men have worked on the case.
Re:Story unfolds... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Story unfolds... (Score:5, Insightful)
"...The police right now is taking all of our servers, to check if there is a crime there or not (they are actually not sure)," ThePirateBay.org spokesperson "brokep" told Slyck.com.
Aw shucks. . . (Score:5, Funny)
-CR
What the Swedish antipiracy firm (ATB) has to say (Score:5, Informative)
"The Pirate Bay nedstängd
Polisen genomförde idag en rad husrannsakningar mot lokaler där The Pirate Bay bedriver sin verksamhet. Klockan 12 30 stängdes sidan thepiratebay.org ned.
The Pirate Bay var fram tills igår knutpunkten för en stor del av världens illegala fildelning. Enligt egna uppgifter fanns det en dryg miljon användare som kunde laddade upp och ned främst filmer, spel och musik. Genom sin storlek och uttalade målsättning att hänga ut och håna berörda upphovsmän gjorde man The Pirate Bay känd över hela världen. Sverige blev internationellt känt som en fristad för dem som begick upphovsrättsbrott på Internet. Detta utnyttjades ekonomiskt för en omfattande försäljning av annonser, porreklam och insamling av donationer.
Det är bra att den svenska polisen nu prioriterar denna typ av brottslighet. Det är upphovsrätten som finansierar nyskapandet inom film, datorspel, musik och övrig kultur. Den som bryter mot upphovsrättslagen stjäl från framtidens kreatörer och biopublik. Därför är stängningen av The Pirate Bay bra för alla oss som uppskattar ny film och underhållning säger Henrik Pontén, jurist på Antipiratbyrån.
Svenska produktioner drabbas i hög grad av den illegala nedladdningen, säger Per-Erik Wallin, Föreningen Sveriges Filmproducenter. Om svenska filmer finns tillgängliga på nätet före premiären innebär det minskade chanser att filmerna ska spela hem produktionskostnaden och mindre medel för att göra nästa film. Det drabbar både manusförfattare, regissörer, skådespelare och filmarbetare."
Roughly translated
"The pirate bay closed
Today the police raided multiple places were The Pirate Bay conducts its operations. At 12.30 the site thepiratebay.org was closed.
The pirate Bay was until yesterday the center for a large part of the worlds illegal filesharing. According to piratebay itself there was over a million users who could upload or download foremost movies, games and music.
By its size and outspoken goal of ridiculing authors The pirate Bay got known all over the world.
Sweden got known internationally as an asylum for those who commited copyright crimes on the internet. This was use economicaly for a large scale sale of adds, pornadds and donations.
It is good that the swedish police now priority this kind of crime. It is the copyright that finances creation in movies, computergames, music and other culture. Whoever breaks the copyright steals from future auothors and cinema audience. Therefore the closing of The Pirate Bay is good for all of us that apreciate new Movies and entertainment says Henrik Pontén, legal advisor at Antipiratbyrån.
Swedish productions are very much affected by illegal downloading, say Per-Erik Wallin, Föreningen Sveriges Filmproducenter. If swedish movies are availible on the net before the premiere chances are smaller that the movies will get the production cost back and less means to make the next movie. It affects both scriptwriters, directors, actors and filmcrews."
Note that this truly is a crappy translation.
Has it not occured to anyone (Score:3, Interesting)
Damnit! (Score:5, Funny)
First hand information here: (Score:5, Informative)
The Pirate Bureau have set up a temporary news blog to inform the public about this whole incident: http://piratbyran.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Shutting down The Pirate Bay can be compared to shutting down Google, by Swedish laws. Both sites supply a search engine with which you can find legal and illegal material on the internet. TPB will prevail.
Ahhhhhhh (Score:5, Funny)
The Pirate Bay (Score:5, Insightful)
However, as the main goal of the pirate bay is to facilitate copyright infringement, I find it very hard to believe that none of these guys had any illegal copies of stuff at home, on their laptops, etc.
Since their homes apparently also were raided, this is probably a way for the authorities to get to them, even if the Pirate Bay itself does nothing illegal. When you are involved in something like The Pirate Bay, it is too tempting to use it yourself.
Of course, if Swedish copyright law allows for downloading copyrighted material for personal use, then this will be fine as well.
Why people really are reading this thread is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why people really are reading this thread is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nah, no political power (Score:5, Informative)
I am Swedish and I don't think that TPB has had much influence at all, laws and attitudes would have been just the same if this was an organization outside Sweden. My guess is that the presence of the organisation is simply reflecting current attitudes in general in Sweden today. It is notable that a minister in the socialdemocratic government downloaded mp3s, burned them to CD, and gave it to friend as a birthday present [aftonbladet.se] (Swedish article) already in 2000, without seeing any wrong with it.
An explanation to this phenomenon could be a tradition of relatively strong consumer protection laws (and traditions), and that the "personal use" clauses in copyright have always been defended here.
English quotes from Swedish police, Pirate Party (Score:5, Informative)
SIlver Lining... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:come on, let's face it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:come on, let's face it (Score:5, Informative)
Whether Sweden has anything like this, I have no idea.
Re:come on, let's face it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:come on, let's face it (Score:5, Insightful)
So you'd prefer another country to have hold over what is and is not legal in your own?
What if the shoe was on the other foot? What if the law being violated was, for example, Iranian, and the website was American? I'm sure there are thousands of porn sites hosted in California that are just as blatantly illigal in repressive countries as TPB is in America. Would you be so quick to say "It doesn't matter what country they're in, it's still illegal in the prosecuting country, so that makes cracking down on them OK" ?
And no, it doesn't matter that the prosecuting country in question is "unfreindly" - in case you missed the memo, what matters legally are local laws and possibly extradition treaties. Plus, many Swedes would undoubtably view American law as repressive on IP issues, just as many Americans would view Iranian law as oppressive on free speach issues.
The "not in my country" defense is otherwise known as national sovereignty. Don't like it? Tough. You either abide by it, or accept the idea that another nation can enforce it's laws upon you remotely. If you wish legal sovereignty for your own nation, you must allow others the same right. To grant them any less makes you little more than a hypocritic shill.
Re:come on, let's face it (Score:5, Informative)
And here's where you're wrong and trolling:
We're not talking about the DMCA, we're talking about basic theft.
NO, NO, NO, WRONG.
Theft is when YOU HAVE SOMETHING, SOMEONE ELSE TAKES IT, and YOU NO LONGER HAVE IT.
This is copyright infringement. It is NOT the same thing as theft. In a way, the copyright owner has something, someone else takes (an exact replica of) it, but the copyright owner STILL HAS IT.
It is not as simple as "reduce the problem down to something you can understand and digest easily", and "repeat it often enough, it becomes true". You can't make a simple analogy out of this; it is not a simple problem. Attempt to understand it. Bring yourself to it's level; not vice versa. This works for all complex problems, be it micro v. macro kernel, evolution v. creation, pro-choice v. pro-life, etc. Elevate your understanding.
~Wx
What planet are you from? (Score:4, Insightful)
How DO YOU THINK they GET THE ORIGINAL ITEM?
Typically, they buy it in a store, it's given to them by the studio as a screener/review/demo copy, or (less often) copy it at the studio.
Shoplifting != piracy
Shoplifting !-->piracy
I "know people" who pirate movies, music, and software. If you broke into their houses you'd find shelves and shelves of store-bought movies, music, and software. Why? Because they're not shoplifters or thieves. They buy the things they love, and frequently make copies for their friends. Sometimes they set up torrents for them.
This is the norm- not your hypothetical thug who does a smash & grab at Best Buy. You're trying to tie together two crimes (theft of a physical item and copyright violation) that are fundamentally different and unrelated. Stop it. You're wrong, and you're making yourself look like an asshat.
Re:come on, let's face it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:come on, let's face it (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe some of the content was illegal, but what Pirate Bay did was not - at least by Swedish law (IANASwedeL). All they did was host tiny text files and provice a search database. They were a tracker, not a host.
This is basically the same as American cops raiding Bell because the Yellow Pages lists the phone number of a paper mill, and paper can potentially be used to write harassing letters.
Re:come on, let's face it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a better analogy would be cops raiding a house because the guy was distributing directions on where to buy [drugs,hookers,whatevers illegal].
Re:come on, let's face it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Strange political power (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Strange political power (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Strange political power (Score:4, Insightful)
A bunch of porn profiting pirates who are breaking even seem like a big improvement to me. At least they seem to understand that you have to have revenue in order to spend money.
Re:Strange political power (Score:3, Interesting)
Anglo-saxon politicians are, for the most part, failed businessmen.
Anglo-saxon culture views the State/Government as something bad, for which it is demeaning to work for. So the brightest people tend to work in business, whilst those unsuccessful in business but with still an ounce of ambition will be drawn towards politics, where they will apply their businessme
Re:Strange political power (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Strange political power (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Strange political power (Score:4, Funny)
Only if the advertised porn sites contain a sufficient girl-on-girl selection.
Otherwise, no.
Re:Strange political power (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Strange political power (Score:3, Insightful)
The only non-negligible contenders to the Repunazi Party, the Commiecrats, are as bad or perhaps even worse. They're even more corrupt, even more populist (although the Republicans really went forward in this department during the last few years). Just think: whom do you thank for DMCA?
In the US, it's more like 3% of us and 97% of them.
Re:Strange political power (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Strange political power (Score:5, Insightful)
A "No" vote = -1. "Yes" = +1.
The candidate with the most positive total or lease negative total wins.
In current "popular" systems if you don't like a candidate you have to vote for some other candidate or don't vote at all - this distorts stuff significantly - you could have a situation where a candidate wins even though hated by the majority, because the voters spread their votes amongst the other candidates. After a while the voters might end up just flip flopping between two fairly hated candidates, or give up entirely.
With my proposal if people really hate someone they get to "pull them backwards", rather than trying to figure out who else to "pull forwards" and hopefully the hated one doesn't win.
The popular method probably works fine if the _majority_ actually _like_ the candidates and want to _vote_for_ them, but it doesn't work if the majority don't. And perhaps the latter is true in the USA?
Re:Strange political power (Score:3, Funny)
I might actually start watching the SOTU again if they did that...
Re:A quote (Score:5, Funny)
A Møøse once bit my sister ...
Re:same as a drug dealer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hoaxed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mixed feelings... (Score:4, Interesting)
Given the dishonest, beligerent, outrageous, overbearing and insulting nature of the legal threats in question, thepiratebay's response was completely justified.
Re:The law doesn't have to change to change (Score:4, Insightful)
How odd that you think a concuring opinion by Justice Thomas somehow overturned a precident, when the opinion of the court was the one written by Justice Rehnquist.
IMHO the language J. Rehnquist uses shows respect for the doctorine of Stare Decisis:
Rehnquist's opinion has the court declining to expand congressional powers, but neither does the opinion contract back those powers already ruled constitutional. It declares no previous decision overturned. And you'll note the opinion citing supporting decisions. Stare Decisis in action.
btw I have no interest in breaking balls. Its just irksome to me that some people seem intent on undermining the purpose of the judicial branch. Its their job to fill in the gaps of statutory law, not to be mindless robots ruling on the letter of the law rather than the intent.