The Pirate Bay Trial - A Spectrial

http://trial.thepiratebay.org/

by swombat • 17 years ago

45 35 17 years ago

trial.thepiratebay.org

mixmax4• 17 years ago

In denmark all access to thepiratebay has been blocked by the major internet providers. When you go to any piratebay page you get this: http://www.maximise.dk/temp/STOP.htm (translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=en&...)

It's based on a court decision where IFPI (association of record companies) sued Danish Internet providers, claiming that since illegal content could be downloaded from thepiratebay all access should be blocked. Unfortunately they won, meaning that I can't read this post (Well, I can, but non-tech savvy users can't) and that I can't get linux torrents, and other legal content.

Looking at the court case Google, youtube, and many other sites should also be blocked since they also give a user the possibility of locating and downloading illegal content. But I guess these targets are too big...

It's absolutely appalling and a clear breach of free speech.

jacquesm5• 17 years ago

I think the largest factor in targeting the pirate bay is that they are not pretending to be anything but a source of pointers to possibly illegal information, google, youtube and so on can spend millions on their defense and have a clearly legal use as well. The pirate bay has a much harder time making that case and is a softer target.

mixmax4• 17 years ago

I have two problems with this case:

1) Thepiratebay's blog is also covered, thus making it impossible for them to state their case to the people. Effectively their voice is censored by the ban.

2) Thepiratebay isn't illegal in Sweden. Banning something that isn't illegal borders on totallitarian.

ensignavenger4• 17 years ago

The Pirate Bay has many clearly legal uses, as well.

richardw• 17 years ago

Google is in court because they're big and have money. They also make a good effort at removing illegal content. TPB doesn't, AFAIK. Seriously, it's nice to get free stuff but then why have any laws? May as well just take what you want from whoever has it.

mixmax4• 17 years ago

thepiratebay isn't illegal in Sweden.

There's a reason power is divided into a legislative, judicial and executive branch in a democracy.

This is very clearly a case of the judicial branch being bent by the recording industry. Since TBP isn't illegal there should be no case. If the legislative branch sees a problem and changes the law it's a very different scenario.

jacquesm5• 17 years ago

The funny thing is that the pirate bay strictly speaking does not spread illegal content, the torrents are pointers to possibly illegal content, but unless you download a file and verify its contents there is no way of being sure that it even contains whatever it is labelled with. And the download will not take place from any servers owned by or associated with the pirate bay.

m_eiman• 17 years ago

"Support The Pirate Bay, change your Twitter profile picture"

http://www.johnsjolander.com/2009/02/support-pirate-bay-by-c...

There have been so many "mistakes" (aka abuse of power) made during this whole process that I'm ashamed to be a Swede. This sort of thing really shows that equality before the law is a pretty relative concept. Like they said in the Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others.

ktharavaad• 17 years ago

This is the reason why we need a decentralized p2p solution to share files which is: 0) easy to use 1) robust to file pollution 2) give incentive to people to upload instead of them being leechers 3) protects the anonymity of its users

Many protocols/networks ( ed2k, kazaa, bittorrent, gnutella, freenet ) satisfy some of these requirements but not all of them. I believe with all these BT sites getting shut down and banned, its a ripe time for another disruptive technology in the area of p2p file distribution to take hold.

ars• 17 years ago

LOL: "At 1130, a spontanous gathering will take place"

New meaning for spontaneous? Perhaps the different spelling has a different meaning? :)

liam64• 17 years ago

May I make a point here? Youtube, Google video, Rapidshare etc all host copyrighted material of some sort so why is the pirate bay being targeted here?

The Pirate Bay Trial - A Spectrial

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