Pirate Bay ruling

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The trial began on 16 February in Stockholm district court, when the four co-founders of The Pirate Bay, Fredrik Neij, Carl Lundström, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Kolmisoppi, were put in the dock on charges of assisting copyright infringement.

The Pirate Bay does not itself host audio and video files, but provides links to torrents hosted elsewhere on the internet.

I would say that I hope google have a good lawyer, but I imagine trying to prosecute google would be like trying to extinguish the sun.
 
"So, the dice courts judgement is here. It was lol to read and hear, crazy verdict.

But as in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That's the only thing hollywood ever taught us."

taken from here
 
I think alot of swedes got abit scared since the IPRED law went into affect, atleast me and my friends stopped and started hackin your neighbours wireless connections and continued dl :)

I bet alot of VPN services will blossom too :rofl:
 
"On friday we will get the verdict in the ongoing trial. It will not be the final decision, only the first before the losing party will appeal. It will have no real effect on anything besides setting the tone for the debate, so we hope we win of course."

Stands true. We were all pretty much agreeing on that they'd get convicted but that, in the end, wouldn't make that much of a difference. Either way there would've been appeals.

The next 'democratic' election can't come fast enough. FFS, let it be October 2010 already!
 
dumbest thing ive heard since a while, you could argue exactly the same way to ban google and every other search engine.
 
dumbest thing ive heard since a while, you could argue exactly the same way to ban google and every other search engine.
That's true, but only in the same way that hiding behind a sheet of paper is taking cover during a firefight.

When you have a site called "The Pirate Bay" that has the heading "Download Music, Movies, Games, Software!" and regularly promotes new game/movie releases by changing the front page accordingly, you don't just offer a "search" - you offer a search for warez, and actively promote the searching for, and download of, said warez. You can call that legal, and you can say that banning the Pirate Bay is like banning Google, but isn't that just a bit naive considering the previous sentence?
 
So is the aswer to attack every form of file share based on copyright or perhaps impose a per m/b tax?
Tax the torrent?
 
They make one big mistake. They assume that guys who download the stuff would buy it regularly when they couldnt download it.
that's a mistake in thinking.

Most games (hello EA) and movies are not worth to be bought. And many wouldnt even dare touching it then.
 
That's true, but only in the same way that hiding behind a sheet of paper is taking cover during a firefight.

When you have a site called "The Pirate Bay" that has the heading "Download Music, Movies, Games, Software!" and regularly promotes new game/movie releases by changing the front page accordingly, you don't just offer a "search" - you offer a search for warez, and actively promote the searching for, and download of, said warez. You can call that legal, and you can say that banning the Pirate Bay is like banning Google, but isn't that just a bit naive considering the previous sentence?
still i think its something different to tell people where to download something rather than actually hosting warez.
if that becomes illegal then imo you'd also need to remove the possibility to search for warez on google.
seriously, i've never been on piratebay, when i'm searching for warez i usually use google. "name of application + rapidshare" + google search = success.
 
cos they've got one of those ridiculous duck image verification things before you can find out their contact details!!!!!!!!one
 
I think this ruling is kind of ridiculous. US copyright laws shouldn't affect Sweden because US laws are shit and Sweden has a good-looking princess.
 
Isohunt are also subject to a law suit atm and this is on their front page, asking what exactly is piracy and what kind of filesharer you are, which is very relevant given the pirate bay ruling..

isohunt said:
File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into four types.

A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn't make it available for free. Most probably wouldn't have, but clearly there are some who would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing.

B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he's not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.

C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a solid weekend "recalling" old songs. She was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero--the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector.

D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away

And based on comments here and elsewhere, one I'm reminded I've heard before, I venture to add a 5th case:
UPDATED wrote:
E. Those who use sharing networks to download what they already bought in another digital form. Aka. format shifting, for various reasons including DRM or for backup purposes. Examples include:

* You bought a copy-protected CD, and you can't conveniently transfer the songs to your iPod or MP3 player.
* Games that are so crippled by copy protection that you had trouble running the game you bought, but a downloaded copy would be free of such crippling DRM. 2649 1/5 stars offers amusing insight.
* Your HDDVD player stopped working, no player is sold anymore, and you want Bluray versions of HDDVD movies you bought.
* Software/games where the CD/DVD they came on have been too scratched up to play (by your children or whatever reason). Case of downloading a backup copy of digital goods you bought..


I think the pirate bay ruling changes nothing. It's like couterfeit goods, there will always be loads of it around, and if the cheapest (or best/easiest) site gets closed down then another will just come along to scoop up the client base.

The only way it will change is by making what the consumer wants cheaper, better and easier to get. I think the only thing recently to get close to what the consumer wants is iTunes, but even that is a little overpriced imo.

In my opinion, if you want to clamp down on this kind of thing in a big way, ie go around chucking people in prison or fining them huge amounts of money, you really need to have a competitive legitimate alternative, which, at the moment, there isn't.

Our lives have changed a lot over the past few years and owning things like songs, films and games purely in digital media is an awful lot easier and in a lot of cases better for most people than going out and buying the disc.

I think the way forward is the donations route. You pay a small flat fee for downloading something, ie 30c a track or $3 an album, $5 a film etc, which in itself will draw many more paying users than before and therefore probably increase revenue, but have an option whereby if you really enjoy the artists work and therefore want them to be successful you can donate more. That way the labels and artist is happy as they are still getting the money they probably would have digitally, but there is extra reward if what you produce appeals to people.

I know that isnt exactly a flawless idea but I cant really think of anything fairer that rewards greatness and would appeal to people who would possibly not purchase something for 99c a track / $15 a digital movie etc etc

If it doesnt become more competitive finanacially and technologically then tbh I have no sympathy for the labels/artists/makers and I really don't see a problem with downloading copyrighted material, so long as you do buy or have bought what you really enjoy.
 
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I think that if worst comes to worst all that will happen is a large increase in proxy providers.
 
I don't think there really is a suitable analogy for "data", whether that be a music CD, PC game or a Hollywood film. Data is data, and I've maintained for a long long time that the media companies are obsolete when it comes to the distribution of media/content/data.

Stephen Fry did a documentary a while ago about the Gutenberg printing press, it sparked a revolution throughout Europe by allowing religious scriptures and bibles to be mass produced with many benefits over the traditional method, mainly by Monks creating each copy by hand with ink and paper.

Using the Gutenberg press, copies were nearly perfect each time (compared to hand done), quicker to produce, cheaper - and ultimately lead to the books and literature becoming commonly available to ordinary people - rather than just the wealthy elite. It was a huge milestone in history. A true revolution.

It's hard to imagine the printing press being outlawed because it put people out of work.

Drawing a line in the sand and thinking about books, vinyl records, cassette tape, mini disk, CD, DVD, BlueRay.. they all do the same thing. Enable content to be distributed from the artist to the audience. Most artists (composers/musicians/film makers, authors etc) don't want to waste their time duplicating and delivering their work to their audience - so they employ someone else to do it for them.

Once upon a time, duplication used to be a difficult task which took specialist machinery, lots of labour, time, money and effort. The logistics of distribution required planning, money, effort, time and big containers on boats.

Lots of books/music/films from lots of people meant a saturated content market. It required promotion and marketing to ensure all of effort that went into the production, manufacturing and logistics wouldn't result in a massive loss of money because nobody bought it.

Bring all of these processes together under a few companies and we have the Content Industry as we know it today. The music industry and Hollywood.

They used to have control over the product from signing the band to delivering to a convenient place we could buy it.


Books, music, films and pictures all still need creating in the first place for them to exist at all. But they've always existed, for thousands of years, and always will. We just didn't always have the technology to communicate or distribute them originally and now we've got the ultimate network to do so.

The Pirate Bay, OiNK, Napster and all of the other well known distribution channels that have suffered over the years are almost martyrs to the cause of evolving our acquisition of knowledge and entertainment.

However just like the Gutenberg press, technology has evolved and replaced a process that makes the Monks redundant. Once Pandora's box has been opened, it's too late. And the printing press will keep on evolving.

Copyright should be no more than attribution to the author, recognising their work.
 
Agree with most of that Martin, although the last thing about copyright - it's not just there to recognise their work, but also to allow them to control how their work is distributed, and allow them to profit from it (while others shouldn't).

This is how the industry sees it anyway, I don't really agree 100% it. Although I agree people profiting from piracy of their work is wrong. Ie dodgy DVDs from some dodgy bloke at a market, or copied CDs - but what sort of an idiot actually buys those?

For me, with pretty much all the things I download, if I didn't download it - I wouldn't have bought it. So the idea of theft is completely lost on a person like myself. I still buy CDs and go to the cinema (although a lot less recently cos movies have been rubbish, and I've actually barely downloaded any either tbh), but I only tend to buy CDs at gigs where I can be more confident a larger percentage of what I'm paying is going to the person who deserves the money for the work. I don't like giving money to the retailer who marks the price up beyond reason, or to the record companies who exploit the musicians signed to them.

What needs to change IMO is that the musicians themselves need to take control of the record deals. This is obviously easier said than done, because producing the music in the first place is a heavy investment - a week in a good studio costs a lot of money, and that's why there is a need for a record company. So the costs of actually recording the album are essentially fixed - producers and sound engineers need to be paid, but once that is done, they are out of the picture.

So we're left with a certain set of costs in the production of the album (I'm sure the costs could be lessened by less extravagant behaviour, but thats not my problem is it?). The next cost is the production of the means of distribution and shipping it to shops, this is where the internet steps in and basically brings that cost to a very very small amount. In fact, using torrents or other p2p protocols, this cost is effectively zero - so why they don't embrace this and charge a nominal fee per month/week for use of a set of torrent trackers or so, I don't know. However, would people really seed to a good ratio if they have to pay? - difficult question. I suppose this lack of seeds could be offset by running a few seeds from the record company.

So that's the content distribution method (and costs) essentially taken care of. I'm sure some still want to buy CDs, but that would now be a different market really wouldn't it? - they shouldn't put the two together.

The final cost (and probably the biggest in the grand scheme of things IMO - I may be wrong as i don't have any stats on it lol), is the marketing and promotion campaign. Now I fucking HATE marketing, and i blame it for the state of "popular" music today - ie what we hear on the radio, although this has improved in recent years due to internet downloads (itunes etc). The thing here is that, by using a p2p-based solution, it is perfectly reasonable to have a "other people also downloaded this" section (much like OiNK used to have - the amount of new music i found due to that was brilliant and in fact i ended up going to gigs/buying CDs because of this), and obviously the more content that is out there being distributed, the more word of mouth comes into whats being listened to.

There's not a real point to what I'm saying here, I'm just kinda spilling my thoughts on the old model and what would be a new model for delivering content. I'm not sure if more/less money would be made via this, but the actual cost in putting an album out there would be reduced, which leaves more margain I suppose. Oh and the way to pay artists would have to be done from the pool of money collected per month and split according to total downloads for each artist I suppose.. things like that would have to be ironed out I suppose.

I guess what I'm saying is that what the pirate bay (and all the other smaller sites) does is essentially wrong, although indirectly I think a lot of people may end up buying more music because of it - something the record industry refuses to acknowledge, although total sales seem to be increasing every year, along with record profits.

At the moment though, I think it all boils down to politics and wrestling about who has control. The old guard of the record and movie industries are effectively being forced out, as they are leeching middle men who actually do nothing creative (despite all the bullshit they like to spout).. which is ironic as thats what they say about the guys who run the pirate bay :lol: Copyright needs a massive shake up though, and there needs to be seperate law between digital data (ie an mp3 on a pc), and physical things which hold that data (ie, a CD in a nicely produced case with cover art) - one thing cost something to produce and deliver, and one effectively cost no one anything once it was on the PC.. so calling it theft and fining people is stupid. Saying that downloading an mp3 or a movie cost the music/movie industry anything is very subjective - how do you know the person would have paid for it if they couldnt have gotten it for free?

How many people want that coffee mug with a corporate logo on? would you pay for something with say.. HSBC on it? - fuck no.. but you'd have it for free wouldn't you.. well ya might ;)
 
I think that needs to change is the artists expectation to be paid for the work they do. After all, copyright is a finite term - eventually their work will end up in the public domain for everyone to listen to for free. It's purpose is to encourage creation so that they will be paid for their work - in the fear that if they weren't reimbursed they wouldn't bother in the first place.

I'd like to draw a parallel to the software industry, where open source software is freely distributed and no payment is received by the developers. They do it for the glory/fame/recognition or for a means to an end. They put in countless hours, use equipment which used to be very expensive.

Artists should create their music and distribute it via the internet as a way to get people to turn up at their live performances. Just in the same way that a software developer uses their work in open source projects as a way to be recognised in the industry to gain employment.

Laws, legislation and awareness aren't ever going to keep the current model alive.