The Pirate Bay's statement on PIPA/SOPA

https://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/sopa.txt?

by llambda • 15 years ago

305 169 15 years ago

static.thepiratebay.org

'Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.'

To me this was the best part of the entire message.

artursapek• 15 years ago

I found it laughable, because of how Wikipedia's blackout is easily circumventable, and because I didn't see a single year or date.

prawn2• 15 years ago

That's how wrong they were. ;)

citricsquid• 15 years ago

Not sure I understand the point beyond the initial foundation of Hollywood. If this was say Linux vs. Windows they would have a point, but to say "...we crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man..." when they're talking about content created by these profitable companies it makes no sense and it seems like they're trying to make it into some sort of moral crusade for freedom. Strange.

tlholaday• 15 years ago

The profitable companies are not really the creators of the content, are they? Did DC create The Watchmen, or was it Alan Moore?

A consumer-pays-in-advance subscription model would provide better price signals to the real creators, wouldn't it?

bunderbunder• 15 years ago

Film studios specifically try to organize things so that the company that creates the content never turns a profit.

Supplying a Wikipedia link today seems silly, but you could Google "Hollywood Accounting".

(oh what the hey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting)

samlev5• 15 years ago

Funded by isn't the same as created by. Granted, without these companies there to throw massive amounts of money at writers/directors/actors, then we probably wouldn't have much of the content that we do today (at least not how it is). That doesn't mean that culture can't exist without them.

Anyway, these companies (on the music side in particular) love to talk about the "poor starving artists", but fail to change their own habits to give those artists a better deal.

They aren't content creators. They're content funders and distributors, but the content would still be created in some form without them. In this sense, the pirate community does actually perform one of the actions (distribution), and seems to perform it much more efficiently than the big companies. They just haven't got the 'funding' part figured out yet, but when they do, that will truly signal the death of the majors.

(P.S. No, it won't - nothing will truly kill them, but it will at least give them genuine competition)

jgn• 15 years ago

I don't take TPB's "press releases" too seriously, and I don't think they do either. It's interesting to hear how Hollywood came about but not significant or relevant to what TBP does. As far as arguments for piracy go, there was a much better submission here earlier today:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3478850

I'm actually shocked TPB hasn't participated in the blackout themselves. They made it clear they're international, but SOPA/PIPA are international too.

Edit: I wasn't very clear, what I really meant to say was that I'm shocked TPB hasn't acknowledged blackout day somehow, especially considering how often they change their image.

wvenable• 15 years ago

The pirate bay being blocked is the intended result of SOPA/PIPA. Reddit, Wikipedia, and Google getting blocked by SOPA/PIPA are the unintended consequences.

jensnockert• 15 years ago

Possibly because they are one of the few sites that are effectively immune to SOPA. And TPB being blacked out would just play the SOPA people into their hands and prove their point.

MiguelHudnandez• 15 years ago

I suspect TPB did not black out because they will not shut themselves down in response to pressure from the US Gov't.

Even though they might make a living, I don't think they see TPB as a business. Instead, I think they see it as a mission, or a calling. I glean from the tone of their writing that they are convinced they are doing good in the world.

dazbradbury• 15 years ago

Really interesting article, and I particularly like the opening paragraph. Impressed how the pirate bay stand out as having such a well reasoned stance with regard to SOPA. Much better than simply attacking the bill in my opinion.

"Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture."

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

I don't really understand how they can have such a radical view... If the pirate bay were to be the only media distribution system left after all of the traditional "Hollywood" corporations went out of business (b/c of the pirate bay), there would be no more movies which the pirate bay could distribute. I don't know about you guys, but I do like my movies. EDIT: Please note this was just I thought an interesting topic to think about - I by no means think this is going to happen. TPB's statement gave me the feeling that they didn't want the traditional Hollywood to exist any longer, which is why I brought this up.

Call it what you want, but what a ton of people are doing in downloading movies off the pirate bay is taking something that they haven't paid for. Maybe one can say that isn't stealing, but I find it hard to call it anything else.

Maybe I'm missing something in their stance?

EDIT: I know we're talking about the middleman and not the producing companies, but the pirate bay is still facilitating the act of taking revenues away from producers, right?

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

if you're a consequentialist then you only care about outcomes. Every economic analysis I've seen indicates piracy rate does not affect the returns to creators.

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

I'm sure the economic analyses are well thought out, but isn't it just common sense that some proportion of those people who download content for free would have purchased that content had they not been able to download it for free? That would obviously mean decreased revenues for the content creators...

The main reason I brought up the end game stuff was because the article gave me the feeling the TPB doesn't want Hollywood to exist any longer. They are talking about the people that allow Hollywood to make money as if those people are criminal scum that are just selling plush toys and anorexia. Just thought it was an interesting scenario to consider given the apparently largely negative feelings toward Hollywood's existence.

samlev5• 15 years ago

There are some movies and TV shows being funded now without the 'majors', but the funding model hasn't really figured itself out yet.

See Pioneer One for a self/crowd funded 'TV' show which was released under the Creative Commons licence (and distributed legally via pirate bay, etc.). Sure the quality isn't 100% top notch, but the point is that it's starting. It's slow, but the ball is rolling now.

secoif2• 15 years ago

There's not a single thing I've downloaded over a torrent I'd have ever paid for without first getting it via the torrent.

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

Why would you do that to yourself? You're illegally downloading content. It's really cool and good and all that you're making up for your illegally downloaded content by actually purchasing the movie afterwards because that is what matters, but you could still have to pay huge fines for doing that if anyone wanted to make you.

The other thing is that I think good natured people like you who want to pay for movies after watching them are very rare. The majority of pirates don't follow by your way of thinking, I would guess.

Sapient3• 15 years ago

Stop buying their stuff and you will force them to change.

vasco• 15 years ago

You imply that everyone that pirates doesn't buy. And you imply that people who pirate would instead buy if they couldn't pirate. I never seen proof to any of those two assertions.

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

I am talking about one movie. If a pirate pirates a movie, it is incredibly unlikely that he/she is going to then go buy the movie.

And yes, I do imply (and even say outright) that people who pirate would buy if they couldn't pirate, but not all of them. Probably only a very small proportion of them would buy a movie if they couldn't pirate it. However, if only one person would buy the movie out of the hundreds that pirate it, it would net the producing and distributing companies a loss, which is all that would need to happen for my argument to have sound backing.

bandushrew• 15 years ago

I dont understand this. if the hollywood corporations are unable to make something that anyone wants to pay for, why should they be in business?

if they die out, its because their business model is broken. if their business model is broken, they deserve to die out. why should the government protect them?

separately, if movies stop getting made that will because nobody is willing to fund them. surely that means that they should die out? if enough of us who like our movies (I am one) continue to fund movies, then they will not die out.

again, why should the government have an opinion on any of this?

snprbob864• 15 years ago

Most physical object businesses has a multi-tier process that, greatly simplified, can be described as:

(1) design -> (2) produce -> (3) distribute

This simplified traditional model can be directly applied to movies, games, books, etc.

For example:

(1) guy writes book -> (2) publisher runs the printing press -> (3) dude runs book store

Each of these steps can be greatly sub-divided. For example, someone needs to drive the truck full of books to the book store!

Furthermore, the line between each of these steps can be very blurry. An author could, for example, print his own book at home, if he were so inclined.

The big monkey wrench comes into things when you consider the most important missing element: MONEY! Where does it come from?

In the days of yore, if you wanted to produce a film, you'd have to go find backers, like you would for a startup business. Those backers could be friends, family, fools, professional investors, pre-order sales, etc.

More interestingly, one type of backer could be the production/distribution suppliers. They often have greater diversification, so they are more stable in the long term. As they grow more and more stable, they grow more and more rich. With their riches, they can go re-invest more and more of the supply and distribution chain. Once they own more and more of the supply and distribution chain, they can invest more and more in the design end of the process.

Now here's where things get rotton:

It is extremely difficult to profit from a movie these days which are not funded by the major studios. They simply won't run it in the theaters that they have exclusivity deals with! ie. most of them!

You're fucked.

This is true of a scary number of media empires! In addition to movies, think about TV, music, Broadway, books (especially text books). I'm sure I'm missing many.

It even is true of software! It may no longer true for boxed software at your local Compu R' Us store, but it still is for video games. You're simply not gonna make as much money if your game doesn't show up on the shelves at Walmart.

So while capitalism works pretty well in general, it's got a fatal flaw: it tends to generate monopolies. And monopolies are dangerous. If not presently malevolent, monopolies are like time bombs waiting to go off when new leadership steps in. I doubt the movie studios set out with the goal of controlling all media and public opinion. It just so happens that being good at making money makes you good at accumulating power. And power corrupts.

So now back to the question you asked: What is The Pirate Bay's stance?

Well.... I'd imagine that they view themselves as liberators from the tyranny of the production companies. If those companies went poof and disappeared tomorrow, films wouldn't disappear. I mean, just look at youtube.com/freddiew -- there are talented people out there who are figuring out how to fund things like they're doing with their VGHS film.

Surely, destroying the production companies would cause people to loose jobs and lots of great films to die on the planning desk. But people will overcome. The industry will find new ways of funding itself and the middleman will become less powerful. Sure, YouTube is huge, but that won't stop you from clicking a Vimeo link. The internet simply makes it too hard to get disgustingly rich from being a publishing or distribution platform. And if you do get disgustingly rich, you simply can't lock every movie theater into an exclusivity deal: anyone could run his own movie theater! And many other movie theaters are just a few keystrokes away! There are new ones every day.

OstiaAntica• 15 years ago

Capitalism doesn't create permanent monopolies, government does. Capitalism tends to destroy monopolies. Just ask Kodak or AT&T or any other monopoly disrupted by innovative technology.

Anyway, Notch is making tens of millions of dollars on Minecraft, a video game sold directly to consumers.

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

Thanks so much for the lengthy response - really cleared a lot of things up, but I had a few things to ask about:

1) So the main issue that we all have with these big production companies is that they make it difficult for small guys to get in on the movie game? But isn't that what things like Youtube and Vimeo are for? Distribution systems for the little guy?

I don't really think it's practical to want to put a significant amount independent developers into theaters. The reason the production companies are really oligopolists (few in number, but relatively great in power) in the industry is that is the best way to actually make the industry work. For example, it's not a very good idea to have 100 different power companies where you live because it is much more efficient and therefore better for society to have only one company. Similarly, it really isn't a great idea to have hundreds if not thousands of movies playing across the country at the same time - it brings up huge issues with coordination, advertising, movie quality, etc. These big production firms don't have the problems that you would have with having hundreds of smaller independent firms.

The smaller guys should be going for the distribution channels made for the smaller guys because that's how those channels were designed. The whole construction of the network of theaters around the world wasn't designed to have thousands of movies playing at the same time - it was designed to have a few big movies playing at the same time. And the only way you're going to get a few big movies is if you have only a few firms that are able to make these big movies.

2) Just as a quick point on economics, capitalism doesn't create monopolies. It's the part of our economy that isn't capitalistic that creates monopolies. We obviously don't live in a purely capitalistic society as a whole - it's more monopolistically competitive and in some parts, oligopolistic. It is oligopolistic in those parts where it is most efficient to do so (like in the big name movie production and distribution industry).

gabaix• 15 years ago

This answers deserves a good article on its own.

baddox5• 15 years ago

I'll sidestep the tired but true arguments about why copyright infringement isn't stealing, and take a more pragmatic approach:

First off, even if your assumption is true, it would only mean there would be no more movies created in the way Hollywood creates movies today. There would still be movies created by passionate filmmakers. Secondly, I think your assumption is wrong anyway. Hollywood could make movies that would get people in theaters. It would require better movies and probably better theaters. Pirates will have a hard time competing with a good theater experience.

Remember, home video was not an original part of Hollywood's business model. Cinemas were. In fact, they have fought every new form of home media, heralding it as the end of their business, and then eventually adapting and making tons of money from that new media. It takes time, and they haven't quite managed to pull it off yet with today's new home media: high speed Internet access.

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

Could you please explain exactly why copyright infringement isn't stealing? I really don't understand any of the past arguments. Someone places a price on something that they paid money to create. Instead of paying that price (fair or not), you choose to obtain that something for free. That is, by definition, stealing. You are taking something that belongs to the creator of that something without the right to do so. -- http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal

I am not saying that Hollywood is going to be completely killed - I was just speculating as to a possible (albeit unlikely) future scenario. The reason for my doing this is that TPB's statement gave me the feeling that they didn't want the traditional Hollywood to exist anymore.

Sorry - what exactly are you getting at with the comment about them being so hypocritical about everything?

zerostar07• 15 years ago

That's why you need new models to promote and monetize movies. Piracy without compensation is of course not viable, but so is not the current "overcharge for zero-cost-digital copy so we can pay exorbitant promotions for mediocre movies" (e.g. avatar's 1/3 of the cost was promotion)

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

You can't think that you are paying for a no-cost digital copy. You are paying for a copy of a production that took over a year and millions of dollars to create! You wouldn't argue that you should only have to pay half-price for milk because half of the milk company revenues were spent on advertising, right?

pyre4• 15 years ago

  > there would be no more movies which the pirate
  > bay could distribute

That's not the case. I remember someone once mentioning the Nigerian film industry as an example. Everything there is pirated, but they make their movies with the expectation that they have ~2 weeks to make their money before piracy becomes rampant.

I'm sure that large $100-million movies won't be made in such a world, but I've never really heard anyone respond to whether or not that is a good or bad thing. Do we really need huge blockbusters like that to truly tell a compelling story?

the-cakeboss2• 15 years ago

Why should piracy just be expected and accepted to the detriment of an industry?

You don't need a huge budget to make great films, but why encourage an environment in which there is no choice but to make low budget ones?

dangrover• 15 years ago

> Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.

I don't understand -- aren't patents federally enforced?

grecy• 15 years ago

> I don't understand -- aren't patents federally enforced?

I can only assume they were not federal back then.

sdkmvx• 15 years ago

I found it confusing too. Edison built the Kinetograph in 1891, back when traveling across the country was quite difficult, and I'm going to assume that it was slightly easier to get ignored in California than in New York, and that is probably what they mean.

cbs• 15 years ago

Yes they apply federally. However, back in the day the sheer distance from Hollywood to Edison on the east cost made it infeasible for him to bring court action needed to enforce the patents.

philwelch• 15 years ago

Yes, but the Ninth Circuit Court, which has federal jurisdiction over California, was not too bullish on patent enforcement at the time.

trouble• 15 years ago

"The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence."

An interesting statement overall, but sentences like the one above have to make you wonder how seriously TPB is thinking about the issue.

msandin• 15 years ago

Not very it would seem given that "pipa" does not mean "pipe" in the sense TPB are using it but rather only in the sense of a "pipe for smoking". A pipe in the sense TPB use it would be "rör". But relating the combination "trash" and "pipe for smoking" to their line of reasoning seems at least a little harder/more far fetched.

nixy2• 15 years ago

Well, "pipa" also means muzzle, which is perhaps a bit closer to their analogy.

lukejduncan• 15 years ago

The Pirate Bay is held up as the ultimate example of what SOPA aims to kill. However, isn't it hosted out of Swedish Parliament (http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-to-run-tpb-from-parliam...)? Aren't we in essence attacking a friendly government, and consequently afraid of pissing them off politically?

barrybe• 15 years ago

There's nothing about the US's past behavior which suggests that we're afraid of pissing off friendly countries. :) We're a bunch of international bullies, basically.

nixy2• 15 years ago

Actually, no, TPB is not hosted from the Swedish parliament. The Pirate Party did not manage to scramble the votes needed to get into parliament, and thus are unable to host any servers there.

earbitscom8• 15 years ago

The argument of efficiency is stupid. Of course I can do a better job distributing hot dogs than the hot dog guy if I just put out a massive table of hot dogs I got for free and let people run up and grab one without paying for it. But that model doesn't work if I have to pay for my hot dogs.

If you invest millions of dollars in movies or a music album, you have to charge money to make it back. As we can see from Spotify and others, ad supported models do not pay enough to cover the high costs of creating expensive products. But of course alternative revenue is enough to pay for the costs of selling something that doesn't belong to you and costs nothing for you to distribute. And once you have to charge, of course people will prefer to get it where they don't have to pay. It has little to do with convenience. The number one thing that will impact the conversion rate on a shopping cart funnel (besides SSN) is asking for a credit card, regardless of how few seconds it takes to fill it out. People are wary of putting their card in online, they're lazy, and they're cheap. You're not more efficient, you're just catering to the lowest common denominator of people.

There is virtually no reason why companies could not distribute products the way TPB does, except that they'd still have to charge money for those products. The minute you do that, someone who gives away hot dogs they didn't pay for wins. To pretend like it's some noble effort is a joke. You earn your livings off the backs of people who make things people want. Try charging your users for the things you offer and see how long your "more efficient" platform does well.

Sure, people will go on and on about how they get higher quality files, whole discographies in one click, and blah blah blah. Most people do not do that and they still pirate things. Taking things you didn't pay for and selling them cheaper than someone who did is not more efficient. Just start calling a spade a spade so we can move on and talk like adults.

pyre4• 15 years ago

  > It has little to do with convenience.

This is discounting how much it has to do with convenience. People love Netflix's streaming service, but it's plagued by the fact that the studios are reluctant to give them access to a wider catalog (as I understand it, not a Netflix subscriber).

There are tons of examples where the MPAA/RIAA members could have switched distribution methods, but chose not to for a very long time because they are too conservative. Once they shuttered Napster, they could have paid a team to develop something similar to the iTunes music store, and organized a set of standards to govern music players with electronics companies. They could have owned the new distribution medium by ushering it in themselves. Instead they spent time on legal teams playing wack-a-mole with the pirates and lobbying various legislative bodies across the globe to try and prevent the Internet from happening. The only investment that they want to make in the future is attempting to extend the ecosystem of the past into the future as far as possible.

earbitscom8• 15 years ago

As I understand it (and happy to be educated otherwise), the major record labels can not build an iTunes competitor together, as it would require discussions that lead to price fixing, etc. There is a good interview with the head of digital for Warner Bros Music on This Week in Music that talks about how they can only hope the other labels negotiate with people like Spotify because they have to make forward progress, but they can't know for sure and coordinate efforts to move the industry forward, because it's actually illegal to have most of those discussions with each other. Again, I don't know if that's true, but it could be.

seanp2k24• 15 years ago

Your argument would make a lot of sense if all the movie stars, directors, producers, composers, etc were as poor as the rest of America.

earbitscom8• 15 years ago

Do you know how many actors, directors producers and composers there are that are as poor or poorer than most Americans? The people you watch on TMZ are an anomaly. Most creatives struggle as much as the next guy.

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

As correct as earbitscom is in his response to this comment, there is another issue.

Some of these people are being compensated so well because they are able to play a part in the making of a movie, which millions of people want to watch and will pay money to do so. They are being paid for their abilities and the more specifically, rarity of those abilities.

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

Yes! Thank you for laying out your opinion so intelligently and with such a perfect metaphor. It is really time for everyone to just grow up and as you so eloquently put it, "just start calling a spade a spade".

samlev5• 15 years ago

Let's take this metaphor a little further, then.

Digital content isn't exactly like a hot dog, so let's assume that you could design a magical hot dog which, once created, you can copy many times with no other costs. You have an unlimited supply of hot dogs, and each one of these hot dogs, being an exact copy of the original, can also be used to magically make more hot dogs.

Now I'm not saying that this hot dog is free - it cost a LOT in R&D to produce this hot dog, and you invested a lot in it. The other thing is that hot dogs go with buns, and there's sadly no magical buns in this universe. Each and every bun has to be created, and costs money.

So you set up your hot dog stand, selling magical hot dogs with non-magical buns. You charge a premium rate because you're the only guy in town who managed to make a magical hot dog of this quality, and with it's unique flavour. Besides, the buns are still costing you money, and they have to come from somewhere.

Now you notice some guy has found out that the magical hot dog you sold him can make new hot dogs at no cost, but they don't have the buns attached. As a response, you start baking the hot dogs into the bread - it makes it harder to get the hot dog out, and you think that that's the end of it. But the guy realises that with a bit of effort, he can get the hot dog out of the bread too, because what's the point of a hot dog if you can't get at it? Baking the hot dog into the bread is costing you even more, and making it harder for people to get to the hot dog.

Soon you have some people coming up to you and asking if they can have seeded bread, or maybe gluten free, or maybe they just hate bread and want it on it's own. Some of them want to buy just your hot dog and put it on their own bread. But if you start selling them hot dogs by themselves, won't they just start handing out free hot dogs to all their friends? That would be a disaster! So your answer is no! Hot dogs come baked into bread, and by now you've convinced the mayor to make it illegal to take your hot dogs out of the bread. People should just learn to love your bread!

So how's the guy who took your hot dog out of it's bread going? He's still giving away hot dogs for free, and what's worse is that he's telling everyone he gives one to to give them away, too. It's costing him nothing to do because he doesn't have to pay for bread. Sure, some people are still coming to you because they actually like the bread, but mostly the people coming to you are asking about bread-free options, and are still willing to pay. Most of the people going to the guy who's giving out hot dogs for free never bought anything from you, and some of them don't even eat the hot dogs. Sure, you see a few of your old customers going to him instead, but mostly the people going to him either never came to you, or (after tasting the free hot dog) later come to you to buy a genuine one in bread.

The point isn't that the guy giving away free hot dogs isn't a jerk. He is. The point is that you're stubbornly refusing to let people pay for a hot dog how they want it, in a way that costs you less (because you don't have to adjust the price for the bread - you just have to cover your costs, rather than incurring new ones).

You're doing this in an attempt to stop people doing what they're already doing. People don't want to rip you off - they just want to be able to pick their own bread.

To break from the analogy now, I was happily a pirate because it was difficult for me to get what I wanted how I wanted and there was no technical reason why it wasn't available. Sure, if I wanted all my movies as flip-books, then there's a technical reason why that doesn't make sense, but there's no technical reason stopping me from getting them as digital media files.

If I'm looking for music from a band, I will always try to find a legal channel to obtain it first. If I can't find one (and these days, it's getting pretty rare), then I'll probably pirate it. Sure, some people will pirate it anyway because they feel entitled to it, but the point is that many, many people have no problems paying for content so long as they can get it how and when they want it. This type of availability of content is pretty much what TPB seems to be about for many people. It's not about screwing content producers - it's about freedom of choice.

Anyway, that's my take on it. I know that there are people who will always choose to steal rather than pay, but most of society would happily pay if only we were allowed to.

res0nat0r6• 15 years ago

If this is true, shouldn't TPB take down all items on their website which is already available digitally? Everything available currently on Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, Spotify, Rhapsody, Netflix, et al should be removed then correct? It is availably digitally. I think your statement of 'how and when they want it' actually means they want it immediately and want it for $0 or as close to $0 as possible.

the-cakeboss2• 15 years ago

"""Anyway, that's my take on it. I know that there are people who will always choose to steal rather than pay, but most of society would happily pay if only we were allowed to."""

I don't buy that. There is and will always be ( as far as I can tell ) the simple fact that I can get an album that costs x dollars for 0. Itunes and Amazon make the purchase of music about as easy as possible, but they still can't beat free.

earbitscom8• 15 years ago

You're wrong.

> The point is that you're stubbornly refusing to let people pay for a hot dog how they want it

If you are the guy spending money to create the original magic hot dogs, you have to charge a certain amount to recoup your money. If you do not, you cannot afford to make those hot dogs anymore. You must also take into consideration the many investments you make in magic hamburgers and fries that don't pan out.

Once you create that hot dog, even if you give people exactly what they want - bread, no bread, wrap it in a fucking croissant - if you require a credit card and the dipshit down the street does not, no amount of convenient packages and toppings is going to make up for it. Does it make the guy down the street a genius with a better product, as TPB's "statement" tries to paint of them? No, it makes them a parasite leeching from people who have the talent and skill to make magic hot dogs.

As I said, let's just call a spade a spade. The greater efficiency they bring to the table is removing the paywall, which they can only afford to do because they create nothing. Maybe you think there is nothing wrong with that. But if everyone is going to so adamantly insist that we not call piracy theft, let's also not call TPB innovative. Their only innovation is finding a way to profit off the backs of people who make things we enjoy, while giving nothing back. Bravo.

stephen_g2• 15 years ago

"Of course I can do a better job distributing hot dogs than the hot dog guy if I just put out a massive table of hot dogs I got for free and let people run up and grab one without paying for it. But that model doesn't work if I have to pay for my hot dogs."

I'm not arguing for the Pirate Bay, but there is an error in your logic - to make that analogy fit into an online distribution situation, you would have to postulate that you only have to pay for one hotdog, and the rest can be duplicated and distributed for close to zero cost.

samstave• 15 years ago

As a father of two girls, I love this comment:

"...what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat."

---

I try to minimize the exposure of my kids to the plastic reality of disney - but it is nearly impossible. The system for indoctrinating girls into the consumption servitude archetype is insidiously powerful.

It is threaded in our society and very very hard to avoid.

benologist• 15 years ago

I like the bit where TPB didn't mention what they really do .... line their pockets with the revenue from billions of ad impressions a month.

chernevik• 15 years ago

"our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA."

Well, John Calhoun's, anyway. If you don't like the rules everyone has agreed to play by, go make your own.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Read this -- http://goo.gl/643Wv -- for a real understanding of "freedom" and "equality" and "law".

Or just look it up on Wikipedia when they come back up.

wmblaettler• 15 years ago

Honestly, this argument is REALLY weak. Hollywood spends millions of dollars to create these movies. To pirate it and not compensate the companies involved is irresponsible, selfish and ignorant -- it is stealing. There is is great amount of financial investment that goes into creating these movies. Today with the internet, the distribution avenue exists for people to produce and self publish, independent of Hollywood, but there is so much more to creating a successful movie: expensive sets, actors' salaries, special effects, post processing, marketing, the list goes on... In order to be successful these movies require great financial outlay and to expect the final product to be free is ridiculous. If these people really believe in free movies and music, they'd boycott Hollywood productions (they very stuff they call 'trash') and instead trade independent creations where the artist or writer chooses to give it away.

This argument is not about freedom of exchanging original ideas or even sharing bits of "copyrighted" information, it's about the wholesale stealing of movies which took a great deal of time money and effort to create, even if they are considered 'trash'. In the end, TPB and it's users only pander to the "culture" that they supposedly so despise by consuming such media, they just don't like paying for it.

The "great game" referenced (Civilization, at least the most recent version: 5), is ironically available to download on The Pirate Bay. I suppose this is not worth paying Sid Meier and the development studios he worked with to create this game either.

Pretty much the only thing I don't disagree with are the buried statements about Fox News and the media's control over the public opinion and the inhumane conditions in foreign factories.

FWIW, I OPPOSE SOPA and PIPA, I called my congressmen and voiced my concern today, the proposed law is useless to curb this behavior, but will instead hurt those who DO want to freely exchange ideas and information.

andrewcamel17• 15 years ago

I completely agree. It's time for all of the pirates to stop justifying their stealing by putting up the facade of protecting online freedoms in front of the obvious primary motive, not paying for content.

Steal if you want to, but stop trying to call it something else.

pyre4• 15 years ago

  > It's time for all of the pirates to stop justifying
  > their stealing by putting up the facade of protecting
  > online freedoms

Does this mean you feel it's ok to take away our freedoms just so long as it's in order to fight piracy?

  > Steal if you want to, but stop trying to call
  > it something else

So anyone that insists that copyright infringement be called copyright infringement is "just a pirate trying to justify their theft?" That's a false dichotomy if I've ever seen one.

zimbatm• 15 years ago

No it's just copying. Copying is not "theft" or "piracy" unless you prove that there is a loss. Arguing that investment return should be a guarantee is kind of creepy. Honestly, story telling has never been so expensive.

There's always a rogue fringe in the population. No matter how many laws you introduce, these law are only going to inconvenience the majority of the population. America has this great trend of over-criminalizing everything and for what ? The content industry represents what, 1% of the GDP ?

I'm not saying that if everybody would use TPB is wouldn't be bad for the content industry but last time I saw their numbers, they never have made as much profit. If it weren't for TPB&friends, we would probably not have Spotify or Netflix because the pressure wouldn't be there. The rogue people have always been useful in history to challenge status quo and we should cut them some slack. This is where the freedom kicks in.

Also, by repeating these terms of "piracy" and "theft", you are playing right in the hands of the hollywood PR. It's not aligned with reality and oversimplifies the complexity of what is going on. That's why I'm reacting. I'm sick of seeing the same biased ideas repeated by intelligent people that sound exactly as coming from hollywood.

Please, can't we just have more tolerance for each-other ?

res0nat0r6• 15 years ago

You are asking for more tolerance, but blindly ignoring the fact that artists are asking you to pay them for their content. Don't believe that? Or think downloading the music is acceptable as long as you go see them in concert?

Here is Anthony Hamilton who is a Grammy winner signed to RCA Records tweeting an hour ago asking to please not bootleg his music: https://twitter.com/#!/HamiltonAnthony/status/15984085001528...

Also asking for an investment on a return is creepy? Isn't that kind of what you do for work? I'm investing in the fact I'm going to get paid at the end of the month in return for time I put in at the office every week.

jquery• 15 years ago

As soon as you refer to copying as "theft" you lose me. Society can function just fine with unlimited PirateBay activity. It already does! Society cannot function with unlimited real-life thievery. QED

eurleif• 15 years ago

Society can function with unlimited theft from bike shops, so theft from bike shops isn't really theft.

dvdhsu4• 15 years ago

> * Society can function just fine with unlimited PirateBay activity. It already does! Society cannot function with unlimited real-life thievery.*

What does "unlimited" mean here? Does it mean "if everybody torrented" and "if everybody stole"?

If so, you're basically stating that there should be no IP. How would a writer or filmaker make money then? After they wrote a book, would they just publish it online and hope to stay ramen profitable by running ads in the background? But wait! That wouldn't even work... because if everybody torrented, nobody would even see the advertisements on the creator's website!

If LouisCK released his video "Live at the Beacon Theater" and nobody bought it, and everybody torrented it, would Louis be likely to release another one without DRM?

Would society truly "function just fine" if the creation of intellectual property netted the creator nothing? (I'm assuming that torrenting doesn't net the creator anything -- a valid assumption given the torrents I've seen)

Ah, of course, I'm misunderstanding your usage of the word "unlimited". Perhaps you meant that currently ThePirateBay is relatively "unrestricted"?

In that case, you're stating that at least some people will be willing to pay for intellectual property (and these people manage to keep the creators afloat), while there will not be enough people who will pay for physical property if stealing of physical objects were condoned. Why's that?

The convenience argument states that people are willing to pay for music if it's A) at a reasonable price and B) easy to obtain. If that applies to IP, why doesn't that apply to physical objects as well? It seems like you believe in the convenience argument, so I'll attack that right now. The convenience argument doesn't work with your proof at all. You're stating that the fundamental difference between IP and physical objects that causes a society that condones a stealing of the latter to "not function" is because stealing a bottle of Coke from CVS is easier than paying for it. Bullshit. Do you really think it's easier to steal?

Ah, maybe you don't believe in the convenience argument anymore. Tell me why people nowadays are still willing to pay for IP (even though they can get it off of ThePirateBay) but wouldn't be willing to pay for a physical item.

twelvechairs2• 15 years ago

> Hollywood spends millions of dollars to create these movies. To pirate it and not compensate the companies involved is irresponsible, selfish and ignorant -- it is stealing

I think the point being made (albeit badly - through one poor analogy) is that society gains more through the distribution of 'creativity' than it does through ensuring that artists are fairly compensated.

I'm not entirely in either camp, however I would say to you that 'compensation' is never well applied. There are millions of artists who have changed the world and have made little to no money off their inventions. On the other hand there are many who have also made little contribution to the world, but profit hugely from incredibly meagre creations (often off the back of other, real inventions).

tjogin2• 15 years ago

Why stop at stealing? Why isn't pirating a movie also rape, murder, armed robbery and polygamy, and any other crime it doesn't fit the definition of?

crististm• 15 years ago

How many times am I allowed to watch a movie after I buy it?

Imagine now that I _buy_ the movie. Can I watch it with my friends? Or do they have to pay the movie too? If they pay _me_ then I'm a pirate. If they don't, are they pirates?

If nobody payed for the movie than me and my friends who watch it are all pirates. Except that I didn't buy it because someone in the "extended circle of my friends that I've never met" gave it to me. At least that's how I'm pretending it to be.

Now it's not entirely like this but this is the problem with the Internet Hollywood doesn't like. You can interact with people you've never met very easily and pretend that they're your friends.

drewblaisdell3• 15 years ago

Just a note regarding most of the piracy discussion I have seen take place on HN in the last day or so: everyone who refers to internet piracy as theft is doing a disservice to the argument. They can call it immoral, dangerous, or harmful, but it to equate it with theft is just not accurate.

The people who most frequently refer to internet piracy as theft/stealing are the ones who want to censor the internet and pay off congress. I hope that, regardless of where they stand on the piracy issue, HN users can be a little more articulate about why piracy is or is not permissible and stop referring to it inaccurately.

dino50502• 15 years ago

So then, by your logic, walking up to a record store, and sneaking out with a cd that you did not pay for, is not theft then.

wnoise2• 15 years ago

That's clearly theft. The record store had a CD, and then you took it.

But what's that got to do with copyright infringement?

codabrink2• 15 years ago

Why are people suddenly embracing this argument that piracy isn't theft?

People work to create music just like people work to mine the earth to produce coal. Should one not get paid just because what they're producing can't be physically held?

drewblaisdell3• 15 years ago

Because it isn't theft. There is no argument-- it simply isn't. When a user downloads a file, that file then exists in one more place. It is copied.

That may be immoral, but it is not theft.

tjogin2• 15 years ago

So what? That doesn't make it theft, any more than it makes it murder or rape.

twelvechairs2• 15 years ago

'Theft' and 'non-theft' are bad words to use.

Of course piracy is like theft in one way (you get something for free without compensating the author), however its not in another (unlike smashing a window and taking a diamond ring, nobody loses a diamond ring - or a window).

ColdAsIce• 15 years ago

Theft - you take something from someone. Result: You have something, someone else does not have that same thing which you just took from them. That is called theft.

Piracy/Copyright-infrigiment - you copy something from someone. Result: You both have that same thing, in digital world, it is exactly to the bit the same. In analog world the someone has the original while your copy will probably be a bit different and unique. Nobody is left without having stuff.

rickmb• 15 years ago

Oh please, I actually find it rather convenient. I know I don't have to take anybody who equates copyright violation with theft seriously. Anyone who uses deceitful propaganda and newspeak to hide the truth is obviously not interested in a serious discussion about piracy and copyright law, but is only looking to demonize their opponents to further their own cause. It's like religious fundamentalists that equate homosexuality with child abuse.

It's far more than just being semantically "inaccurate". Anyone who equates piracy with theft is being deliberately and fundamentally dishonest, and is only interested in waving their propaganda about instead of having an open debate.

edanm2• 15 years ago

"It's far more than just being semantically "inaccurate". Anyone who equates piracy with theft is being deliberately and fundamentally dishonest, and is only interested in waving their propaganda about instead of having an open debate."

That's just not true. If you asked a random person "what do you call the act of taking something without paying for it", they'd answer "theft". The fact that there is a distinction, because in one case you're "physically" taking something and in another you're not, is a much more nuanced argument.

Most people will use the term theft because that's the term which fits the best in our language. You might not like that, you might want to change that in order to help people understand the difference. But that doesn't mean that anyone who uses the word "theft" is someone to ignore.

axk• 15 years ago

Same goes for the intellectual "property" rights. Mixing together three completely different areas of law (copyright, patents and trademarks) is bad enough; implying they are related to physical property rights is unforgivable: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

wormwood28• 15 years ago

Really? I'm starting to feel the opposite: that these arguments by definition are getting tedious and deliberately miss the point. In much the same vein as the "marriage is only between a man and woman" variety.

The English verb "to steal" is certainly capable of meaning "to take without the right" regardless of whether physical property is involved. Not to mention the myriad of common idioms, like "So-and-so stole my idea." What else are people trying to express by its use in this case?

It's clear that the issue here is their legal right to exclusive distribution and transmission (or "state granted monopoly", if you prefer) of their work, not whether or not they "still have a copy". It can be disagreed with, but they have it and others distributing their work without permission diminishes it.

Not saying I disagree with you that it's the wrong way to go about things, but, I think if one is being honest, the argument over the use of word is telling on both sides and that some people are clearly trying to demonize those who use the word, in the same way that they feel they are being demonized by its use against them.

demigod• 15 years ago

Yes, both sides are playing with semantics and what's more important is that, like a lot of questions of law breaking this boils down to question of rights and doing something which you clearly have no right to. Im not supporting the recording industry in any way but nobody has the rights to intrude upon someone else's, be it a recording company, and if you dont like the way they do things you have the right to refrain from doing business with them, not pirate their stuff.

runn1ng• 15 years ago

I don't get one thing with internet culture not refering to intelectual property as a real property and its theft as not a real theft.

If copyright theft was not theft, the whole GNU and Free Software movement wouldn't exist. As author of software licenced under GNU GPL, you say "this is free, but because I am the author and I have copyright, if you want to use it in your software, you must also release the code under GNU."

If you say copyright theft is not theft, any software company can go and use GNU code, include it in their proprietary code and re-sell it. And because you also imply that we should give up on copyright enforcement, they would get away with it.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

Because you can't really own an idea 100%. That's why "intellectual property" is a misnomer, and it's not actual property. And that's why there are time limits for patents and there "used to be" time limits for copyright, too, which now are pretty much gone, thanks to Disney and others.

wnoise2• 15 years ago

I'm not saying copyright violation is not illegal. I'm just saying it's not theft. It's a different crime, with different characteristics, defined in a different section of the US code.

1272• 15 years ago

If I build a factory at great personal cost, but the materials and electricity to produce the goods cost next to nothing, is it theft if people take these goods without my permission? I don't see the difference between this and intellectual property.

You say it is not accurate but don't provide anything substantial to back up your claim. Instead you use a logical fallacy: because these persons are bad, thus the argument of using term "theft" is bad.

redbad• 15 years ago

When someone takes your factory and materials and electricity, you don't have them any more.

Symmetry• 15 years ago

What if someone figures out how to make a similar factory very cheaply, and drives you out of business by only charging their marginal production costs for their widgets? The important difference, I think, is that they're using their own materials and electricity to make their goods, but people who engage in copyright infringement are too.

EDIT: And I'd note that many would would say that this second person is "Stealing the customers" of the first factory owner, but that doesn't mean what he does is actually morally equivalent to stealing.

bering2• 15 years ago

Could someone copy/paste the text of the blog entry here? I am in a country (Denmark) that already has DNS-blocking and I can't access The Pirate Bay (without changing my DNS settings... and I am too lazy to do that right now).

ComputerGuru2• 15 years ago

Here you go: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3483394

bering2• 15 years ago

Thanks!

ComputerGuru2• 15 years ago

The text of the linked article, for those that do not have access to TPB (oh, the irony....):

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It's all based on the fact that we're competition. We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

davyjones• 15 years ago

Hmmm...seems like the internet is the new California then.

masonlee• 15 years ago

Perhaps it is not banal to say "INTERNETS" if you are indeed writing about the problem of network fragmentation?

zupatol• 15 years ago

The claim that Hollywood was created to evade Edison's patents is dubious.

According to "A history of narrative film" by David A. Cook "The reason why a full-scale Eastern-based industry moved its entire operation to southern California during these years has never been completely clear, but the general contours of the phenomenon are obvious enough". He then lists these reasons:

- the type of temperate climate required for year-round production (most shooting was done outdoors at the time)

- a wide range of topography within a 50 mile radius

- the status of Los Angeles as a professional theatrical center

- a low tax base

- cheap and plentiful labor and land

tedsbardella• 15 years ago

The kind of people who are so worried about "internet piracy" also want to sterilize poor people

The Pirate Bay's statement on PIPA/SOPA

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