Pirate Bay officially loses case

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/

by chris11 • 17 years ago

226 164 17 years ago

Mazy• 17 years ago

Summary: Everyone received 1 year in prison. They plan to appeal, which means the final verdict could take years. The website and tracker are staying up.

chris11• 17 years ago

I am surprised that the site and tracker is still staying up. I was under the impression that the prosecution was also going after the site.

davidw• 17 years ago

Yeah, my bet was more on fines and forcing them to shut down the site rather than jail time.

trickjarrett• 17 years ago

The admins are savvy enough, and they've previously relocated the servers to other countries before, so I have no doubt the site will continue.

paul7986• 17 years ago

Thanks to these guys and ones prior to them (ShareReactor) we now enjoy free content on Hulu and other sites!

I no longer use Bit Torrent, but do thank these guys for forcing old media's hand!

mingdingo3• 17 years ago

Seriously.

The South Park guys caught on, and with every single episode available on their site, why would you even bother to pirate the episodes?

Side note: Even when people were pirating their stuff, they were just happy that people liked the show.

vegai• 17 years ago

There's one reason: flash. When we get a good video standard over the web, then yes, there's one less reason to pirate stuff like that.

gamache2• 17 years ago

The widespread "piracy" of the Spirit Of Christmas short is what made South Park as popular as it was, early on.

vaksel3• 17 years ago

Because people want to see the stuff right now. Southpark example, they don't upload the latest episodes right away

Scriptor2• 17 years ago

The only thing that bothers me about their site is that every advertisement is the same and often just sucks. I'll take one of those annoying Sonic commercials, but seeing them over and over somewhat grates my nerves. It's a small price to pay though, since the ads are very short themselves and the video quality is good.

wesley• 17 years ago

Correction: The U.S. now enjoys free content on hulu and other sites.

habibur3• 17 years ago

Here's how I do it at $10/month:

Step 1: Buy an account from a hosting server in USA.

Step 2: Install your own proxy server.

Step 3: Enjoy hulu and others :-)

jimbokun6• 17 years ago

I think implicit in that is an acknowledgment that the content most in demand for pirating comes from the U.S. Which I find relevant because countries like Sweden might find less need for strong copyright laws because copyright-able materials are not seen as a valuable, exportable commodity, at least compared to the U.S.

metatronscube• 17 years ago

This verdict wont change anything for file sharing (may change a lot for their operators) but this will only serve to push file sharing further underground and make superstars out of its operators.

josefresco• 17 years ago

Reminds me of the 'war on terror'.

harpastum• 17 years ago

Except that terrorism is almost exclusively seen by the public as morally wrong, it's just the governments attempts to 'fight' it that are misguided.

Terrorism is used as a tactic by militant groups that are too small to be taken seriously otherwise -- file sharing is supported by a near-majority (obviously opinion/personal experience, but as far as I can tell, there is wide support) and has only grown in strength in response to the ridiculous tactics used by the record and film industries to stop it.

Even those that do not download illegal content can experience the benefits that file sharing has influenced (to varying degrees): almost all major networks have content online, and services like Hulu have been growing at an extremely fast rate.

There is also the enormous benefit to content providers (media & software) that can now use the well-established P2P protocols [1] (mainly bittorrent).

The only similarity I can see between 'The war on P2P' and 'The war on terror' is that neither is likely to be successful.

[1] http://linuxtracker.org/

dmpayton• 17 years ago

Substitute terror with drugs, guns, poverty, or christmas.

It's all just a bunch of hoopla.

habibur3• 17 years ago

At least Piratebay isn't closing down:

"As for the fate of the site, Peter has already promised that The Pirate Bay will continue. The site itself was never on trial, only the four individuals listed above."

moeffju• 17 years ago

They will appeal and the trial will be drawn out for months if not years. And even if they finally lose, the servers and the infrastructure will not be affected - they withstood raids, DDoS's, server moves, etc. This will only serve to make the structures even less obvious. "Organized" filesharing, anyone?

miracle• 17 years ago

They should go to jail since they are making big money out of other people's copyrighted work.

And hopefully they will.

jvdh• 17 years ago

I'm sorry, they are making big money? Rly?

What makes you think that? They have a big site, without any advertising banners...doesn't sound like a very commercially attractive deal to me.

[edit] Oops, my bad, they do have some banners, my ad blocking tools turned out to be far more effective than I thought they would be. Even if they serve those banners, I really can't imagine they are making "big money". [/edit]

ErrantX17• 17 years ago

Actually they DO have ads on the site.

Im sure they dont make a lot of money out of it though (running costs perhaps)

EDIT: @jvdh - heh yeh I only happened to notice because I was using IE (spit) at the time.

acro• 17 years ago

I would imagine they can easily make more than mininova, and mininova apparently has revenues over one million per year, see: http://torrentfreak.com/behind-the-scenes-at-mininova-090316...

This is just quessing, i have no confirmed information.

jgrahamc4• 17 years ago

I'm sorry that you are getting downmodded. I agree with your sentiment. The Pirate Bay exists to facilitate copying of copyrighted works without paying the license fees involved.

And they have advertising on their site, hence they are making money from this activity.

It's a pity that everyone calls this 'file sharing' (which sounds so innocent) when the entire purpose of a site like TPB is to allow people to make copies of copyright works.

Confusion• 17 years ago

The purpose of the site, and many other sites, is to allow people to share works. They are guilty, in the moral sense, of not taking any steps to prevent copyrighted content from being shared, even though they were well aware that that was happening. The danger of your phrasing is that people start to think that any torrentsite is illegal, which is not, and should never be, the case.

rs• 17 years ago

Yes and no. Do remember that bullets don't kill people, it's people kill people.

TPB is just another tool for sharing files, it's people's actions that infringe copyright. They really should be after the folks who rip the content and upload them in the first place.

Get to the source of the incident, not the distribution channel.

sho5• 17 years ago

I don't see why it's any business of the government to restrict what people share with each other. I support copyright in what I see as its primary role of policing "passing-off" type activity - ie, trying to sell something you have no right to sell - but restricting private citizen A sending $whatever to private citizen B? No way. And TPB facilitates the latter, not the former.

"It's a pity that everyone calls this 'file sharing' (which sounds so innocent)"

People call it "file sharing" because it's about, get this, sharing files. What those files are is basically beside the point. I do not have a contract with the RIAA or MPAA to refrain from storing or transmitting data which may be derived from their works; if they can't make money in a world where people can exchange information freely, well, sucks to be them.

It's all moot anyway really. File sharing is a fait accompli. All these court actions are doing is speeding the development of the next generation, and then the war will truly be lost.

cabalamat3• 17 years ago

> The Pirate Bay exists to facilitate copying of copyrighted works without paying the license fees involved.

Not entirely true. TPB exists to facilitate copying of digital content. Copyright and license fees are irrelevant; if the whole of copyright law as abilished tomorrow, TPB and the BitTorrent infrastructure would still work, exactly the same as it does now.

> And they have advertising on their site, hence they are making money from this activity.

The one doesn't follow from the other; for example, the avertising revenue may not cover the costs of running the site.

> It's a pity that everyone calls this 'file sharing'

I agree, but ont for your reasons. It isn't "file sharing" because the files aren't shared; everyone ends up with their own copy. An accurate term would be P2P file copying.

> to allow people to make copies of copyright works

You probably meant to say "to allow people to make unauthorised copies of copyright works"; making copies of copyright works is in itself perfectly legal; I do it all the time, as does everyone else with a computer.

nopassrecover11• 17 years ago

But they aren't necessarily depriving the copyright owners. In fact, in some cases they may be helping them.

ErrantX17• 17 years ago

But they are not necessarily helping either. :)

Personally the biggest issue I have with TPB is:

- They have an anti-establishment attitude NOT a pro-file sharing one. So I dont ever count them as part of the (legit) file sharing community

- They have an attitude problem.. there is no reason sharers cant work with copyright holders. But said holders have no reason to trust sharers when people like TPB tend to be the public face (through creating a media circus).

gamache2• 17 years ago

The founders claim that they do not make money off the site; what they take in is just enough to cover server and bandwidth costs.

See the 12th paragraph down at: http://torrentfreak.com/news-from-the-pirate-bay-press-confe...

Tritis• 17 years ago

Like every news aggregation website on the internet?

sho5• 17 years ago

If the appeal is upheld and they really do have to pay $3.6m in fines, I don't think they would have much difficulty raising it online. I'd be up for a C-note no problem and I don't doubt there are plenty of others, especially if they throw in a special edition t-shirt or something.

The Pirate Bay website is pretty awful but they're a tremendously important tracker, used by many others. There is a genuine need for such a service. I'm not exactly a l33t w4r3z d00d but I greatly appreciate what these guys have done, and while I have some questions about the workability of their principles on filesharing I greatly respect their integrity in walking the walk. They're no mere pirates, they started a political party for fuck's sake, and the movies they made may suck but they gave them away just as they promised. I got a lot of respect for those guys and will gladly put my money where my mouth is.

Good luck to them and may the Pirate Bay reach ever new heights!

vaksel3• 17 years ago

they currently have 2.7 million users, they should have no trouble raising the cash...provided they need it

And if they can't, they still have all those people signed up for their VPN service, so should be able to cover the rest nicely.

juanpablo• 17 years ago

Peter Sunde said:

“We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay if we could. If I would have money I would rather burn everything I owned.”

manchesterseo• 17 years ago

thought the tweet was funny: @brokep [Pirate Bay founder] Really, it's a bit LOL. It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release.

jyu• 17 years ago

As witty and funny as this comment was, is it really worth 60 upvotes?

palish• 17 years ago

Upvotes are probably worthless, depending on how you define 'worth'.

nopassrecover11• 17 years ago

""There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that," he (the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy) said."

No, society has decided that companies profiting exclusively from the distribution of the creative work of others without added value has no future. In case you are confused I'm talking about the "Phonographic Industry".

seertaak6• 17 years ago

> ... without added value.

I think this allegation betokens a certain ignorance of how the music industry works. Firstly, producers, recording engineers and assistants, mixing engineers, and mastering engineers certainly do add value -- where "value" is defined in the narrow artistic sense. These roles are certainly part of the "Phonographic Industry".

In addition, just because record labels, promoters, publishers, managers, and agents, etc. don't "create" music doesn't mean they don't add value. When they do their job well -- which, granted, is not always the case -- they allow the artist(s) to focus solely on the music, rather than on tasks which they're not particularly suited to, like organizing international, multi-leg tours, getting ads on billboards, doing distribution deals with the likes of iTunes, Spotify, and the traditional music retailers, plugging artists' music into commercial radio stations. Record labels also act as a quasi insurance policy for artists; by using a portion of the revenue streams from "hit" and established artists, they can finance new acts. There is certainly value to that. Jazz music was, after all, only a niche art form known to very few before Norman Granz's efforts to popularize it. In this sense, while he was certainly no Miles Davis or Bird, his work had an immense impact on generations of listeners. (I'd add that in an age of segregation and prejudice against blacks, he stuck his neck out to sign them, and insisted on equal pay for all colours and genders -- see wikipedia) Again: no value?

I find it curious that the tech-savvy world of Hacker News, which should be comfortable with the idea of specialization in modern capitalist economies, seems to pine for a return to a "cottage" music industry, where the musician is to perform all of the afore-mentioned roles himself. Am I alone in thinking this would be a step back, rather than forward?

Sadly, in order for this system to work, people need to pay for records (but obviously, they should be much cheaper than in the heady 90s days). I therefore applaud the Swedish courts for upholding the rule of law and holding the facilitators of rampant piracy accountable for their actions -- which have, unquestionably, led to much misery for many low-level, up-and-coming musicians (myself included ;)

nopassrecover11• 17 years ago

Record labels promote and distribute music.

New communication methods mean old ways of promotion and distribution no longer work.

New ideas like TheSixtyOne.com etc. are great approaches to new means of connecting musicians with music lovers.

sdp• 17 years ago

That would be tantamount to a programmer founding a company.

emptyspace• 17 years ago

As a musician and songwriter I find it amusing that the large media conglomerates 'The Majors' did anything but create an closed system, that only that the anointed could enter.

I have watched the heavy-handed tactics of ASCAP / BMI in their 'enforcement', bulldozing anyone who would stand in their way. Not to mention the dragnet of lawsuits from the RIAA, using their copyright bludgeon.

The value you speak, was not created through true market forces but a controlled system of monopolies that relied on payola and 'insider information' to sustain their industry. It was 'services' such as Napster that opened people’s eyes to the true diversity of music, which never existed on mainstream radio.

The 'cottage industry' you refer is the power the 'modern musician' has at their fingertips, V.S. the controlled environment of the rent-a-studio producer and engineer, with a union watchdog that would make it impossible for the 'Artist' to touch a knob. If this story is to have a happy ending it will be the relegation of the Majors to marketing and distribution, signaling the end of their unsustainable business model.

ewjordan• 17 years ago

Specialization is great, but only when it's necessary and efficient - I find it particularly interesting that you make this complaint here, in a startup forum, where programmers are acting as CEOs, web designers, PR men, testers, etc., often quite successfully. You can trim a lot of crap out of the equation and still do quite well if you're motivated.

Many of the roles you mentioned are all but irrelevant to most musicians, and given the great advances in software, they can replicate them themselves as needed, quite easily compared to the difficulty of mastering an instrument: a good musician that spends a couple weeks learning what to do can produce music that approaches release quality by himself on a laptop with a few $100 microphones. Learning about recording is now almost a prerequisite for taking on the job description "musician." The other things, which musicians rightly have no interest in learning to do for themselves (managing tours, etc.) are what managers should be doing, and I don't think anyone is arguing that managers be taken out of the equation, because they unquestionably add value, much like a secretary adds value to a business person.

Anyhow, as someone that has at one point worked on both sides of the music industry (as a musician and in production), I'd suggest that the vast majority of musicians have always been in the "cottage" music industry mode, but have still been happily and consistently producing fantastic amounts of music. The friends that I have that remained in the industry as musicians almost all make livings by playing shows and teaching lessons; the few that have gotten record deals with real companies have all ended up feeling cheated, and tend to wish they'd never signed the damn papers. Google the horror stories yourself: I assure you, this crap happens all the time, I've seen it from both sides and it's pretty sickening.

Most working musicians have no need for copyright protection, as it doesn't tend to affect their careers one bit. There will always be demand for live music and lessons, and the financial rewards from those things allow them to do what they love and produce new music constantly. Even when they do produce their own CDs (usually to sell at shows), they don't rely on copyright to sell them - to the contrary, most of them freely share almost everything they produce online anyways, as they tend to be more interested in forming new partnerships and gaining respect and attention than locking in sales.

I won't argue with the point that the music industry adds some value to some acts, as I've seen how much work has to happen behind the scenes to get a major label release out the door; but the fact remains, if every big studio was to up and disappear overnight, we would still see tons of music coming out, and the huge demand for music would lead to the popularization of the best stuff in a quite natural fashion (exactly the way it does with websites, videos, and everything else on the Internet).

This is the fundamental problem the music industry is faced with: while at one time it was the only way to produce, popularize, and distribute music, and added massive amounts of value to the market, now these things could all happen without it. Its primary current value is its ability to elevate a few acts high above the din very quickly by throwing lots of money towards promotion, and it's true that this might not happen without it.

But in my personal opinion (one I suspect is shared by many), the ability to create these overnight hits is exactly what is wrong with the music industry, and I would be happy to migrate to a situation where such things could not happen, where quality acts had to fight their way through the rest of the noise to reach stardom. Without the huge acts in the way, the smaller ones would have a greater chance of getting bigger. If this is accelerated by people stealing music online, they you know what? Burn it down and salt the earth. We'll do just fine without that particular industry, and perhaps something better and more interesting will emerge in its place.

omouse2• 17 years ago

You could have smaller companies created that consist only of audio engineers, music marketers, distributors, etc. allowing musicians to pick & choose which company helps them out. Currently it seems like the labels force you to use certain people and if you don't like it, too bad.

req2• 17 years ago

Only a short time ago, planning a trip without a travel agent would be crazy. Travel agents allow the vacationer(s) to focus solely on the vacation, rather than on tasks which they're not particularly suited to, like organizing international, multi-leg flights, getting deals on hotels, and finding fun things to do once they get there.

In... The Age of the Internet... the networking ability of a music industry studio is less useful. The equipment is much cheaper, and the techniques are more accessible, so you can have cross country collaborations that produce music that sounds better than the Beyonce sound debacle.

The musician doesn't need to perform all of the roles himself, but it would help if he could choose the roles he needs without signing a 6 CD 3 pence a tour date contract.

ErrantX17• 17 years ago

I'd say that was a minority of "pirates".

Im betting most (i.e. the general populace of file sharers dl music & such like) just want a free lunch.

nopassrecover11• 17 years ago

Probably. I like to think that a lot of people find and ultimately buy stuff they wouldn't have encountered otherwise. Having said that I'm kind of biased by the industry's use of figures.

For instance, if I pirate it then buy it my pirating is still measured as a lost sale. If I pirate it twice it counts as two lost sales. If I buy it because I pirated, it does not count as a gained sale from piracy.

quoderat4• 17 years ago

Personally speaking only, I've spent about $1,000 (conservatively) over the past few years that I absolutely would not have spent if it had not been for edonkey, bittorrent, and other technologies.

My interest and time for music waned completely after high school, and had it not been for the ease and zero price of these technologies, there's no way I would have found the artists who produced the hundreds of CDs I've bought in that time, or the dozens of concerts I've attended.

This is just supposition, but my guess is that so-called "pirates" consume much more music and movies (paid) than non-pirates.

access_denied• 17 years ago

I think this is relatively to their total financial income.

yason• 17 years ago

This is little in comparison to other people who have walked ahead of the front lines of various past revolutions. It hasn't been uncommon to get killed in there.

Maybe intellectual revolutions are different, then.

lucumo3• 17 years ago

I feel torn about this. On the one hand I use The Pirate Bay for my own pleasure sometimes and I'm disappointed that the makers have been ruled to encourage illegal activity with it.

On the other hand, last night I read this: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-evidence-of-over... And I feel all pirates should be put in jail...

Yeah, I'm a hypocrite :(

Edit: Submitted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=566693

seertaak6• 17 years ago

> On the one hand I use The Pirate Bay for my own pleasure sometimes

Thanks for your honesty, but really: you shouldn't. Especially if you live in the US, UK, or Germany, there are good, legal alternatives. If you're in Europe, why not give Spotify a spin? It's only GBP 1 / day to try out. Less than a pint...

I sympathize with those that, out of frustration with the record industry for not offering music in the format and with the ease we want, turn to filesharing. But if that's why you originally did it, morally speaking, you should at least make an effort to acquire your music through legal means.

lucumo3• 17 years ago

> Especially if you live in the US, UK, or Germany, there are good, legal alternatives.

I live in The Netherlands.

"Legal" to me seems a word that's terrible marketing. Maybe we should use words like "artist-supporting" and "moral" to indicate it. I don't think people care about the legal aspects as much as they do about the moral aspects of it.

> I sympathize with those that, out of frustration with the record industry for not offering music in the format and with the ease we want, turn to filesharing. But if that's why you originally did it, morally speaking, you should at least make an effort to acquire your music through legal means.

It's not really the music that sends me to TPB; it's movies (which I don't watch all that much anymore nowadays). Do you know any alternatives for those?

I think the main reason why TPB is my first resort is habit. It's a very easy go-to point where you can get anything you want, when you want it. It's interesting how "easy" can supersede "morality" so easily :/

cabalamat3• 17 years ago

> But if that's why you originally did it, morally speaking, you should at least make an effort to acquire your music through legal means.

While I have some sympathy for the sentiment you're making, I can't help thinking that if an Internet-based service requires an "effort" to use it, it's unlikely to succeed.

latortuga• 17 years ago

That blog post is ridiculously short on facts. Stardock (Gas Powered Games) didn't put paid authentication on their public multiplayer areas. There's a difference between having DRM and having a paid-to-access service. It's kind of like putting your money on the ground in the middle of a crowded market and walking away expecting it to still be there when you come back in a few hours. Pay-to-play multiplayer online games are proven to be moneymakers, with or without DRM (see: Valve, Blizzard)

weavejester• 17 years ago

Yeah, that decision seems a bit daft. Copyright infringement doesn't cause any direct financial harm to the publisher, as one pirated copy doesn't necessarily equal one lost sale. So even if piracy is at 90%, you may not have lost many sales. But if you're letting people use your bandwidth and processing time for free, there is a direct financial loss, and 90% suddenly becomes a huge problem.

knightinblue• 17 years ago

"The verdict was leaked from the court. I have to think about what effects that can have on the sentence. It is unacceptable that the court is leaking."

If that's not ironic, then I don't know what is.

Goronmon• 17 years ago

I sometimes wonder what the music/movie/television industry expects to gain from all of this. Though I don't really pirate anything but TV shows (television reception is pretty terrible in my apartment), I honestly don't see myself spending any more on those types of media.

I have to wonder if the end result of no more pirated media just means that people consume less overall.

sjs382• 17 years ago

There's jail time involved:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090417....

jpwagner2• 17 years ago

Anyone read the wired article on this?... http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/pirateverdict.html

Apparently, the prosecution cited a case from 1963 wherein a man was convicted of a crime for holding his friend's coat while the friend was in a fist-fight.

Amazing that such a case happened, and amazing that it was cited as relevant to this case.

jimbokun6• 17 years ago

Obviously holding the coat of a man in a fight is an extreme case, but isn't being an accessory to law breaking commonly used as a justification for prosecution?

jpwagner2• 17 years ago

I just don't equate that as accessory. What about the valet that parked his car? What if the man had stolen his coat?

lucumo3• 17 years ago

FTA: "The defense put it to the judge that he had folded under intense political pressure. The judge denied this stating that the court made its decision based on the case presented.

At one point the judge was asked if he was concerned for his personal safety after handing down this decision. The judge said he hadn’t received any harassment and was quite surprised at the question."

Classy.

Edit: Oeh, this part is also good: "Rasmus Fleischer, one of the founders of Piratbyrån commented, “The sentence has no formal consequence and no juridical value. We chose to treat the trial as a theater play and as such it’s been far better than we ever could have believed.”"

ErrantX17• 17 years ago

> We chose to treat the trial as a theater play and as such it’s been far better than we ever could have believed

This is the guy that, at one of the press conferences, said they were planning to take the trial fairly seriously because they new they would win and were there to prove a point to the industry.....

cabalamat3• 17 years ago

The European Parliamentary elections are in 2 months' time, I expect the Pirate Party hope the publicity will do them good.

k0n2ad• 17 years ago

oh noes!

makecheck2• 17 years ago

I don't know why there's this assumption that untracked distribution automatically leads to losses. In fact, it can lead to significant gains.

Consider two scenarios...

One, suppose a paying customer decides to buy something, then finds they don't like it, and wants to return it? In that case, the vendor incurs a cost for dealing with the return, which will mean no ultimate income from the sale. Whereas, a free download to try something and discard it, costs nothing to either side.

Two, suppose the downloaders really like what they see, and share it with friends? And the friends, in turn, share with friends. The item may eventually reach several people who are more than willing to actually buy the product (if it's good). The paradox is that the act of preventing a single "illegitimate" download was blocking many more legitimate sales.

Both of these scenarios highlight perhaps the one thing that vendors are refusing to admit, which is that quality matters most. Anything that is inherently good should have no problem making money even if it's pirated. Their beef might be that they can no longer push crap on the public and make money based on the shininess of their packaging.

jacoblyles3• 17 years ago

I think the point of the court case is that the vendor has the right to decide which scenario he will choose.

electromagnetic2• 17 years ago

Well the whole thing is that, do they still have that right?

Is it right that I have to wait an entire year to see the movie on DVD, when they know full well from before production starts that it will be released on DVD. It's just a tactic to try and force people into the cinema: "You like the look of this movie... ooh, only in cinema!"

With the amount of Cam rips and TS's out there, and have been out there for a long time, people are clearly telling the movie industry that we expect not to wait a year for a movie to release on DVD.

sebastian• 17 years ago

“We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay if we could. If I would have money I would rather burn everything I owned.”

"As for the fate of the site, Peter has already promised that The Pirate Bay will continue. The site itself was never on trial, only the four individuals listed above."

I LOVE Peter's attitude. I will always be a big supporter of the Pirate Bay.

File sharing is NOT stealing.

jimbokun6• 17 years ago

Can anyone comment as to the actual legal issues involved? Is there any reason to think this will be overturned on appeal? The Pirate Bay Four seem to be responding to the moral righteousness of their cause, more so than the reality of Swedish law.

braz2• 17 years ago

http://comentariobovino.com/

jacoblyles3• 17 years ago

>"The judge said that the users of The Pirate Bay committed the first offense by sharing files and the four assisted this.

>It appears that the court chose to not take any of the technical details into account and only judged based on intent. They find it clear that the intention of the defendants is to facilitate sharing of copyrighted works and based their verdict on this."

While I don't agree with the justice of the law, I do think the judge's logic is 100x more clear and believable than the "king kong" defense.

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

if you never buy anything because of advertising then pirating TV shows is financially neutral anyway.

dexen• 17 years ago

For those who like to compare copyright infringement to theft, here goes my take:

Suppose a neighbor of buys that new awesome European car, great style, full option . The car is instant hit among neighbors, since they all suffer form products of Detroit Big Four. `Chicks dig him', so to say.

Enter copyright infringement.

One night you venture near the car, wielding necessary tools, dark clothed and masked. You write down every detail carefully. You visit local distributor next morning, you order exact same car, down to last detail. Later on you show off, driving in it around.

Will the neighbor be angry at you? Surely you deprived him of some of the car's value (uniqueness).

Yet you stole nothing anything from him. You copied information. No theft of property.

Is this example legal? I guess it is.

Is this morally OK?

What if the neighbor in question lived off of a business model based on having the best car around (scarcity, perhaps artificial)?

schtog• 17 years ago

If these guys aren't making money, how do they support themselves?

Pirate Bay officially loses case

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