Piratebay strikes back

http://blog.brokep.com/2009/10/08/fail-in-nl/

by bandris • 17 years ago

178 103 17 years ago

blog.brokep.com

bandris• 17 years ago

BREIN appears to have forged evidence. Piratebay files criminal charges against them.

ash• 17 years ago

Thanks for a short summary. But the post was a great read still!

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

according to:

http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/63922/pirate-bay-doet-aangifte-te...

(dutch) Update 22.03 uur: Joris van Manen, advocaat voor de stichting Brein, laat in een reactie weten dat het Experian-rapport voor Brein "geen enkele rol" speelt in de zaak tegen de beheerders. Het was destijds bij een brief aan de rechtbank toegevoegd in de zaak tegen Reservella. "We doen helemaal geen beroep meer op dat rapport. Het is ons bekend dat de gegevens erin niet kloppen."

Update 22.25 uur: Tim Kuik zegt in een reactie dat Brein zich inderdaad niet beroept op dat rapport in de zaak tegen de beheerders. Volgens hem is het rapport wel degelijk authentiek en afkomstig van Experian, maar bleek het niet te kloppen.

"Dit is afleiding, het zoveelste rookgordijn. Deze jongens blijven verstoppertje spelen. We hebben genoeg bewijs dat de beheerders verantwoordelijk zijn voor The Pirate Bay," aldus Kuik.

Persoonlijk doet de aangifte hem weinig. "Sunde zégt dat hij aangifte doet. We weten het nog niet. Ach, ik merk het wel. Van die vorige aangifte is in elk geval ook nooit meer iets vernomen."

Translation:

Update 22:03: Joris van Manan, legal council for Brein respons that the Experian report is no longer playing "any role" in the case against the owners [of tpb]. The report was added with a letter to the court in the case against Reservella. "We don't base anything on that report. We know that the data in there isn't correct"

Update 22:25: Tim Kuik responds that Brein indeed doesn't base anything on that report. According to him the report is authentic and it came from Experian, but it turned out not to be correct.

"This is just a distraction, the nth smokecurtain. These boys continue to play hide and seek. We have enough proof that as administrators they are responsible for The Pirate Bay", according to Kuik.

He's not bothered personally by the filing of charges. "Sunde says he's going to file. We don't know that yet. I'll fin out about it. That previous filing was never heard from.".

That may all be true, but I can't believe that the court is going to be happy with a party that has apparently not retracted a report that it knew to contain false information.

Also, if Experian says they didn't make that report and Brein says they did, where did it really come from ? If it can be pinned on Brein that they did falsify information it is going to hurt them tremendously. One thing they do is continuously harping on being on the right side of the law, if they falsify evidence then that veil is pierced once and for all.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out over time, but I don't think 'we're not using that report' is going to make this go away.

aerique4• 17 years ago

I'm willing to bet 100 euros that Brein will get away with it.

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

In court, probably yes. But in the press, probably not.

potatolicious• 17 years ago

What we really need right now is for Experian to come out and present the real report - or to publicly refute that any report was ever requested.

If Experian can testify to the tune that Brein falsified the report, then they're in for a real ride.

puredemo• 17 years ago

Oh shit! Have fun with those forgery charges..

moe• 17 years ago

This is so hilarious, I'm absoutely loving it.

The amount of raw, undistilled incompetence boggles the mind.

Fighting a lost case and losing the case is one thing. Forging court documents and losing everything: PRICELESS.

It also speaks volumes about the mental capabilities of the individuals at work here. How absurdly stupid do you have to be to forge a document that can be trivially cross-checked with a phone-call at the issuing agency? This is not something where you can weasel out later with an "oops, didn't mean to". It's plain out fraud and I don't think judges have much humor in that regard.

Anyways, I think I'm gonna forge me a nice tax-return statement now and sue my state over it...

arithmetic• 17 years ago

Hilarious! This is worthy of a movie. Or a soap opera at the minimum.

anApple3• 17 years ago

To be honest, I hope these guys are going to jail.

You must be a fool to believe that they don't own the pirate bay anymore, or are not associated with the keyman islands shell company running the company.

Alone mininova disclosed making > 1 million of profit a year, piratebay's profit must be much bigger, all from the copyrighted works of others.

Most of you wouldn't support piratebay anymore if your program/source code showed up there, except if it's opensource.

rimantas• 17 years ago

except that source code couldn't possibly show on piratebay.

eru• 17 years ago

Why?

Torn• 17 years ago

Of course it could. You/your svn/ftp could be hacked, your code could be decompiled...

Quarrelsome3• 17 years ago

With source code the major economic benefit is understanding and being able to modify that code, less so the code itself.

Source code available on pirate bay is useless unless someone spends a lot of time / money on figuring out how it works. This is why people can write in scripting languages without worrying about the "openness" of the source.

eli5• 17 years ago

It's disappointing that so many people are downvoting this comment just because they disagree with you.

I think the truth is more nuanced than that, but you have a perfectly valid opinion.

anApple3• 17 years ago

Thanks, I don't write comments to harvest karma, but just to state my opinion. :-)

Quarrelsome3• 17 years ago

I think it would more apt if both sides go to jail, neither is the answer to the future of artistic works. On one side a bunch of cartels that IMO should be investigated by the monopolies and mergers commission and on the other freetards that don't provide a realistic revenue model for artists.

unalone3• 17 years ago

The pirates aren't freetards. I resent your accusation.

The current model isn't working if it's so easily subverted. The solution is to figure out a model that's pirate-proof. They exist.

doki_pen3• 17 years ago

I can't resist. I'm a freetard and here is my proposal:

* Artists(haha, really? is Spears and "artist"?) perform live to earn income

I know... it's earth shattering.

If people don't think it's worth the trouble of recording, then they shouldn't do it. See how many people come to your live performance without the free advertising that recordings provide.

Oh, maybe they won't make hundreds of millions of dollars. Should I give up my rights so "recording artists" can be filthy rich? I think not. And also, I don't give two shits about all the administrative ppl in the recording industry. They can all live in the streets for all I care. The current system is worse then welfare.

praptak• 17 years ago

> ... and on the other freetards that don't provide a realistic revenue model for artists.

Gee, I didn't know this "intellectual property" war has gone this far! Is it now a crime not to provide a realistic revenue model for artists?

Just in case it's actually true (I haven't been following the news recently) I am hereby providing a realistic revenue model for artists: get a job.

No, really. I don't believe that being an artist (or an author in general) entitles you to anything. Copyright is a privilege, not a god-given right. Its original purpose was to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", a social contract designed to provide fair compensation for contributing to the public pool of ideas.

Then the suits came and fucked this up with their concept of intellectual "property" and perpetual copyright term extensions. Copyright doesn't serve its original purpose anymore, we should just drop it. If you don't like it, don't publish. It had been this way for most of human history and it worked fine.

trafficlight2• 17 years ago

I'm disappointed they are gone. I used the Pirate Bay as my primary tracker for distributing my music free of charge.

tjogin6• 17 years ago

I understand your position, but the thing is that there is no proof for either of the claims you are making:

* Not that they own TPB (the Swedish IRS have even concluded that they do not.)

* Not that TPB are making any money. While they must have some revenue (from banner clicks), it is not at all certain that it exceeds the costs of running the website.

It's possible for both claims to be true, but it's not proven. I, for one, do not wish people who haven't been proven guilty to go to jail. I certainly don't think that your hunch that they probably do own it should suffice.

As a bonus, keep in mind that the crime they're charged with is is something as flimsy as "aiding" unspecified crimes against copyright — that's right, the copyright crimes that they are supposed to have aided are unspecified, and nobody has been accused of committing those.

anApple3• 17 years ago

- The Swedish IRS can claim whatever they want. They don't have access to the bank accounts on these islands, so how should they know if some of them are affilated to that company. - It is completely irrelevant if the TPB is making money or not. And I bet it does a hell lot, or otherwise they wouldn't been so keen to go to jail.

doki_pen3• 17 years ago

I think you wouldn't find many "coders" that give a shit if their code is "pirated". For most of them, it's a day job.

diablo_r• 17 years ago

This war is already lost for copyrights protectors, the question is when they stop bother us.

Keyframe2• 17 years ago

By us, people who steal stuff?

callahad3• 17 years ago

The tactics involved in "defending" copyright do more to inconvenience legitimate consumers than pirates.

romanm• 17 years ago

We don't steal stuff, we share stuff !!!

boredguy83• 17 years ago

I honestly don't get why this is so heavily down voted. I want my "original hacker's news" back. What's next in the /. -> k5 -> hn chain?

whughes• 17 years ago

It doesn't matter. The war is lost anyway. You're not going to change anyone's mind; people simply don't place value on files.

Luc2• 17 years ago

BREIN is the organisation that puts inane 'Downloading is theft' (which it a simple lie, as any lawyer can tell you) commercials at the start of movies in the cinema and on DVD - not possible to skip them of course! Talking down to their paying public like they do, it's like they really WANT people to stop paying for movies and pirate them.

aerique4• 17 years ago

Agreed. Not being able to skip that (and other) crap on DVDs is infuriating! It's really one of my pet peeves.

eli5• 17 years ago

If you don't mind using a PC as a DVD player, AnyDvd strips all that stuff out (along with region coding and most other DRM)

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

as any lawyer can tell you

As a point of order they would almost certainly tell you it a) depends on the country, b) has been untested in the majority of countries so it is neither right nor wrong and anyway it probably would count as theft in a civil case sense.

However I agree BREIN are a bit crazy - and the video they add to DVD's is inane.

On the other hand better that than suing individuals I suppose :D (even though that happens too :()

Luc2• 17 years ago

It agree with a), but I would expect 'copyright infringement' covers the situation in most countries with IP laws. As to b), isn't that mainly applicable to common law systems like the US, UK and its ex-colonies? Most of the rest of the world uses the civil law system which gives much less power to precedents.

henrikschroder• 17 years ago

No, the crime is copyright infringement. Almost all countries have signed the Berne Convention treaty, and made copyright infringement illegal according to national law.

Theft is a different crime that has been illegal pretty much for as long as there has been laws.

Pirating a movie is illegal because it is copyright infringement, not because it is theft. Therefore, calling it theft is a lie, as any lawyer can tell you.

trafficlight2• 17 years ago

It's misguided like most things in the "War against Piracy". The people who really suffer are the ones who legally purchased the DVD. Most DVDs you download have those things stripped out. Same with games and applications.

pyre6• 17 years ago

All that "you can't skip these previews" crap at the beginning of DVDs were be there regardless of pirates. It's all about companies treating customers as an inexhaustible resource to mine as they see fit.

maxer2• 17 years ago

I'm happy for the guys behind pirate bay they are making a killing, every time an article like this crops up on pages like this or digg/reddit its more marketing.

start-ups take note- controversial is king!

tom_rath• 17 years ago

Software start-ups should in particular note: If you're selling B2C and your target market is technically savvy, the folks who will pirate and distribute your work are considered heroes by many you've hoped to sell to.

CamperBob• 17 years ago

They provide a better product for less money. That's called capitalism.

The fact that it's my product is unfortunate, but ultimately, I have to compete with them. I can only do that if I can make it easier to deal with my company than with the Pirate Bay. (Which is exactly how iTunes and Spotify work, for instance. You can compete with free: you do it by being convenient, and by finding ways to add value where it wouldn't otherwise exist.)

I've downloaded quite a bit of stuff from various torrent sites, but you know what's funny? I've never downloaded anything that I could have purchased from the copyright holder instead. Whose fault is that?

stavrianos• 17 years ago

Is there actually controversy here? I thought that the anti-piracy boys had more or less entrenched themselves as antagonists in the public mindset.

maxer2• 17 years ago

look at it from both sides- wouldnt be in court if it wasnt controversial

tjogin6• 17 years ago

Why do you think they are making a killing?

vizzy• 17 years ago

well, it's good to believe Reservella is not connected to TPB, but it must be run and owned by someone. TPB claims that the ownership was transferred to this company in 2006. Now how they can be continually discussing a sale of TPB if they don't own it? Anonymous offshore companies are useless under the scrutiny they get. Sooner or latter it will be known who controls it and in this case, I believe, to our major disappointment.

hapless• 17 years ago

" it's good to believe Reservella is not connected to TPB, but it must be run and owned by someone. "

That's true in most European countries, but in the U.S. and certain other areas, it is in fact possible to have a company with not just anonymous ownership, but NO owner.

You can structure a company such that all stock works something like a bearer bond: whoever happens to hold the piece of paper is the owner.

pyre6• 17 years ago

> Now how they can be continually discussing a sale of TPB if they don't own it?

So far as I know none of the people that are being charged here stand to gain any money from the sale of ThePirateBay. The company that owns it is the one that stands to profit. This was my impression ever since I heard about the possible sale.

tjogin6• 17 years ago

You don't have to own something to discuss a sale of it.

berntb• 17 years ago

Charging people in courts far away... the defendants not even knowing about it (or even two courts with hearings at the same time!)

Isn't that what the Scientology church do?

dschobel• 17 years ago

It happens. You can even serve legal notice "by publication". So if you can't track someone down and the judge approves it, it's perfectly legal to serve notice by posting an ad in the local newspaper (which of course the recipient will never see).

If this weren't the case, screening your mail judiciously would be the ultimate legal defense against all civil litigation.

pyre6• 17 years ago

Isn't that why there is a business to serving subpoenas? Couldn't this be utilized in the same way?

paul9290• 17 years ago

Any US citizens use Pirate Bay less? I applaud them for forcing media's hand which prompted great sites like Hulu and Justin.TV(lol - best of the bunch). It maybe time to throw in the towel; downloading no longer cuts it for me, prefer streaming.

Piratebay strikes back

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