Leaked: Police Plan to Raid The Pirate Bay

http://torrentfreak.com/police-plans-to-raid-the-pirate-bay-120309/

by webandrew • 14 years ago

257 93 14 years ago

Hint to law enforcement:

It doesn't matter whether copyright infringement is ethically good or bad. It doesn't matter whether these sites are legally liable for copyright infringement that goes on using them.

You look like complete morons trying to take down site after site. You are pissing people off and what do you have to show for it except a few hollow victories?

If copyright infringement through file sharing has decreased, it's due to itunes, amazon, google, and all the smaller companies offering digital versions of content. Guess who is missing from that list? MPAA and RIAA members.

Trying to fight copyright infringement through punitive fines or throwing people in prison is sick. It's like the drug war, only worse. At least you can point to a few crazy meth heads as a danger to the public. "Pirates" hurt... the meatspace content distributors that are rapidly becoming obsolete?

kamjam2• 14 years ago

Totally agree. It's the old west trying to keep up with the world, it's only a matter of time before you are run over!

I have a question. Is copyright infringement (in the UK at least) a criminal offence or a matter for the civil courts?

njs12345• 14 years ago

I think it depends whether it's done commercially or not. See http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/I/chapter/V...

arethuza• 14 years ago

I believe that format shifting (e.g. ripping a DVD) is still technically illegal in the UK, although I don't think that anyone has actually been charged.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13429217

dagw2• 14 years ago

Law enforcement don't have free hands to decide what laws they enforce. There are a good half dozen layers above them kicking downwards screaming "Shut down TPB", until it ends up in the lap of some poor slob who then has to actually go out and physically perform a pointless raid or lose his job. I'm sure that guy (and even his boss, and probably also his boss's boss) don't want to waste their time and resources with these raids, and would much rather go after real crimes. If you want to fix the problem focus on the political and ministerial layer, not the law enforcement layer.

rmc• 14 years ago

Law enforcement don't have free hands to decide what laws they enforce

Sure they do.

In some countries (e.g. UK) the prosecution service (e.g. Crown Prosecution Service) only bring a crime to court if it's "in the public interest" (cf. http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/code_for_crown_prosecutor... ). Ireland has similar laws ( http://www.dppireland.ie/brief-guide-to-the-criminal-justice... )

Although this applied to the actuall criminal prosecution, not the police enforcement.

ktizo2• 14 years ago

In normal policing they do, it is a daily part of their job and is known as 'police discretion'.

http://rynardlaw.com/Article6.aspx

yabai• 14 years ago

Indeed law enforcement does not have free hands to decide what laws to enforce. They are being puppeted by big business and government pressure. This issue is less about the law, and more about big business pressuring everyone and their momma to protect their business interests.

I have always thought about The Pirate Bay like a gun shop in the US. Gun shops sell guns and ammo...they help facilitate killing human beings...but we never hold the gun shop responsibile (so long as they comply with licensing laws etc). Why dont we look at The Pirate Bay in the same way? They supply a tool that can be used for wrong doing. It can also be used legitimately (as in the case of guns).

How is this arguement so different?

lkrubner• 14 years ago

> Law enforcement don't have free hands > to decide what laws they enforce.

Law enforcement doesn't have enough free hands to go after every crime, therefore which crimes are pursued is always a choice. Resources are finite, therefore the decision to commit law enforcement agents to copyright infringement is also, at the same time, a decision to NOT commit law enforcement agents to pursuing trading violations on Wall Street, or income tax evasion among the rich.

In other words, with resources being finite, every decision about what to pursue is at least partially a political calculation. Ideally, that calculation may be based on social utility (in Jeremy Bentham's formulation "the greatest good for the greatest number") or, that calculation may be based on some corrupt influence of various political factions.

People like myself, who question the usefulness of these raids, are trying to raise the question "Is this the best use of our taxpayer dollars?" Given that trading on Wall Street recently contributed to the onset of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, I would say the case for stronger enforcement of trading regulations would prove more useful than further attempts to surpress copyright infringement.

toyg• 14 years ago

Law enforcement does have a choice, because their resources are finite. The cynic in me would say that, when choosing between having to deal with dangerous criminals or raiding a bunch of white-collar nerds, it's easy to see which one is the most appealing. Servers don't shoot back.

cyberswat• 14 years ago

It's kind of like how they started a country to escape taxes and then gave themselves the power to arrest and imprison those that don't pay taxes ... everyone knows how wrong what is happening is and how much it makes them look like morons to normal people ... but they have deeper pockets and patient lawyers/politicians in those pockets that will span generations if necessary until they get their way. They try a big step, and when it doesn't work, they step back and break it up into smaller steps that get them to the eventual goal. It's obvious their lobbying power is something that defies logic because we were taught how things are "supposed" to work in school. I'm curious how heartfelt blasting (totally justified btw) of these larger organizations accomplishes anything. A moment of rage doesn't stop a river. I'm not sure what does.

freehunter• 14 years ago

You have a few good points, but I'd like to correct the first one. America was not founded to escape taxes, it was founded (in part) because those taxes were coming from across the ocean and the money was going back across the ocean with no American voice being heard and no American benefit from being a colony.

pinko• 14 years ago

"No taxation without representation" != "No taxation"

paulhauggis• 14 years ago

Nobody gets this outraged when companies that violate the GNU license get taken to court and you can use the exact same reasoning as the pirates (When you use open source in a proprietary app, the original is still in tact. The only thing we don't get are the changes, so nobody really gets hurt).

mikeash3• 14 years ago

Nobody goes to jail due to GPL violations. If the police were conducting raids, seizing servers, and throwing people in jail for years for GPL violations and people still weren't outraged, then it might be time to talk about a double standard.

rickmb• 14 years ago

People get outraged at the abuse of copyright by corporations against the common good.

Whether that abuse comes in the form of violating copyright or protecting copyright is irrelevant. Copyright isn't the ethical issue here. The abuse is.

tikhonj• 14 years ago

Just because both the GPL and the media industry both rely on copyright does not make them equivalent. If anything, it's exactly the opposite--a company not complying with the GPL is making information inaccessible to the public; a company enforcing normal copyright is also making information inaccessible.

The GPL is basically an inversion of standard copyright: where copyright is normally used to restrict access, the GPL ensures access. So it's pretty easy to see how not complying with the GPL is similar to aggressively pursuing piracy or using horrible DRM.

pyre• 14 years ago

I might find your argument somewhat valid if RMS was able to pressure the Swedes to execute a raid against a proprietary software company, and send people off to serve prison sentences.

  > When you use open source in a proprietary app,
  > the original is still in tact

One thing that you're completely missing here is that by including it in a proprietary app without attribution, you are implicitly claiming that the work is your own. When was the last time that a college student downloading an mp3 claimed that he was artist that created the track?

GPL violations and media piracy only share copyright as a common thread, but copyright isn't the entire picture.

JonnieCache3• 14 years ago

You are pissing people off and what do you have to show for it except a few hollow victories?

Budget increments. This is basically the beginning and the end of the story.

cake• 14 years ago

TiAMO’s decision to start a backup of the site is probably the most pivotal moment in the site’s history.

I'm surprised to see that a backup might be considered an heroic move. If you don't have any backup you may as well consider your data entirely lost !

kruhft3• 14 years ago

Pirate Bay Magnet Archive:

  magnet:?xt=urn:btih:938802790a385c49307f34cca4c30f80b03df59c&dn=The+whole+Pirate+Bay+magnet+archive&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80

toomuchtodo• 14 years ago

The Pirate Bay should commit all its magnet files to git; you then have a distributed, versioned hash library.

Then, build a package that lets you seek out one of the repos, pull it, and integrate it with your Torrent client.

Alternatively, you could hide the hashes in TXT records of domains no one knows about. Cached, resilient magnet hash records.

SageRaven• 14 years ago

That's pretty awesome. So... how does one convert those records into something you can feed into a client?

JonnieCache3• 14 years ago

You can feed magnet strings straight into any client already.

kruhft3• 14 years ago

People on TPB are promoting Tribler as a new decentralized, non-takedownable, open source file sharing network. I haven't tried this myself yet, but here's a link to the main site: http://www.tribler.org/trac. I'm downloading the source now to try it out.

mseebach3• 14 years ago

I wish they'd split the "search" and "discovery" and the "download" and (rather novel) "play immediately" concerns. I'd prefer to keep using uTorrent for downloads, and there's not point in Tribler spending their efforts re-solving a problem that's been solved very well.

Also, there's a certain irony in the Tribler download not being available on BitTorrent - to the extend they had to take the site offline a few weeks ago due to excessive download traffic.

TheCapn• 14 years ago

I don't think Tribler will solve all the problems and creates more issues for those less technically oriented. Until someone comes up with a novel bootstrap method that is truely decentralized and robust there will always be a single point of failure for peer networks.

runn1ng• 14 years ago

The thing is, TPB is not only a collection of torrents. If it was just that, it is already mirrored several times on bitsnoop, isohunt, torrentz.eu and other places.

What is interesting about PirateBay are the comments, the description and (why not) their name and status.

majani• 14 years ago

Agreed. Torrents without some sort of user feedback mechanism is a disaster waiting to happen.

Zirro4• 14 years ago

"Rather we find it interesting that a country like Sweden is being so abused by lobbyists and that this can be kept up. They’re using scare tactics, putting pressure on the wrong people, like providers and users. All out of fear from the big country in the west, and with an admiration for their big fancy wallets."

And I, as a Swede, is both angry and embarrassed that we're taking it. In the next election, the Pirate Party gets my vote, but sadly the larger public remains oblivious.

ma2rten• 14 years ago

Do you honestly think this is the most important political or social issue facing Sweden at the moment? I am not a Swede, but I do agree with you on this issue. However, in my mind this is a relativity minor issue in the big scheme of things. Or does the Swedish Pirate Party also have good points on other issues? I feel it's mostly a one issue party in other countries.

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

This party is a tool for applying pressure on other, more prominent parties. It is not about giving the PP a vote, it's about making a show of taking a vote away from other parties.

JonnieCache3• 14 years ago

Think of it as a way of not voting for the major parties while also not decreasing the turnout statistics and giving the impression of apathy.

radu_floricica• 14 years ago

It's an important enough issue that I'd vote for such a party if I could. It's not just about raiding a torrent site. I see it as being at least:

- Government for the people. This is often forgotten, but it's the most important point - enforcing strict copyright does not help the citizen. Period.

- Censorship - raiding one site means raiding any site, eventually

- Copyright should be relaxed for non-commercial purposes - not because RIAA it's obsolete, but because in the world of the Internet, this is the way that will insure maximum creativity.

- Hitting the incumbents and setting an example that it's possible

tripzilch2• 14 years ago

The Swedish Pirate Party doesn't suck as much as the Dutch one does. I wish we had a Pirate Party like Sweden.

The German one is pretty good also, btw.

ahoyhere2• 14 years ago

If their country's law enforcement and legal bodies are being so drastically corrupted by a foreign country, that would seem like one of the most important legal issues around.

frogtown• 14 years ago

Feel free to use google translate to look at Germany's Pirate Party's goals. http://www.piratenpartei.de/unsere_ziele

(On initial glance, the google translate version is an acceptable translation to get an idea of what is being said).

As you will see, their platform is not a single issue and the likely reason why the Piraten Partei was successful in the last Berlin local election. They were so successful they won every seat they could possibly have held. If they were any more successful, the additional seat(s) would have had to been left empty, since the Partei only had so many candidates running.

instakill• 14 years ago

Blocked at work. Gist or pastebin of the article please?

Chico75• 14 years ago

http://pastebin.com/FmhF2zue

dutchbrit• 14 years ago

Surely they can't touch them - did't Sweden recently recognize file-sharing as a religion? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16424659

Zirro4• 14 years ago

True, but opponents and critics were quick to point out that it does not protect against "illegal acts". Pretty funny, when you think about how religions have formed our society's rights and wrongs for thousands of years (for better or worse, depending on who you are).

J3L24044• 14 years ago

Europe's march to irrelevance continues apace.

J3L24044• 14 years ago

So nobody minds if I pirate their software right?

Sapient2• 14 years ago

You probably wouldn't have bought it anyway...

J3L24044• 14 years ago

Certainly not if I can just pirate it.

Zirro4• 14 years ago

After you have downloaded and tried it, think about this:

If you like the software, you pay for it or donate to the developers to support further development. If it turns out it wasn't what you were looking for, you delete it off your hard drive.

Goronmon• 14 years ago

Just because I don't want people pirating software I may write, doesn't mean I agree with the stance current governments take on copyright and it's enforcement.

Nice strawman though, if a bit lazy. You could have gone with piracy supports terrorism or something along those lines as well.

J3L24044• 14 years ago

If you are selling software to make a living that strawman just took money out of your pocket. If you are surfing broadband in your parent's spare bedroom it's different.

mikeash3• 14 years ago

Non sequitur. This is like going into one of the TSA threads and saying, "So nobody minds if I blow up their airplanes right?"

agscala• 14 years ago

If anything, piracy increases the chances that I may buy someone's software. I'm definitely not going to risk money on the chance that a program might be useful, and if it turns out to be what I want, I'll likely pay for it. Many people who pirate it wouldn't have bought it in the first place, so it's not a lost sale and it actually increases knowledge about particular software.

rimantas• 14 years ago

TPB response: http://thepiratebay.se/blog/209

cbr• 14 years ago

"The only box someone could find is the one in the front, that needs to be public. We have multiple of those, scattered like diarrhea around the world. They contain no storage device, no graphics card. Only a network cable, a cpu and memory."

Interesting. So if these servers are seized and turned off you don't know where they were talking to. Though if the police are careful they ought to be able to tap the outgoing connections and get the IPs for the others servers they were communicating with and go from there.

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

This all continues to look more and more like the war on drugs. An unwinnable battle that has no net effect except to piss everyone off and waste money.

hn_should• 14 years ago

"Why the Police Plan to Rain The Pirate Bay and you should too"

jebblue• 14 years ago

With any luck they will take down sites like torrentfreak next.

Leaked: Police Plan to Raid The Pirate Bay

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