Submitted by The verdict in the Pirate Bay trial surprised many people, seeing as how many errors the entertainment industry’s lawyers had made, and how little understanding they seemed to have of how BitTorrent works. The height of the sentence also surprised many; for aiding in sharing just 33 copyrighted items, the four founders were sentenced to one year in jail, and a massive fine of 3.6 million USD. Well, as it turns out, we now know why we were all relatively surprised: the judge in the case, Thomas Norstrom, is member of the same pro-copyright groups as many of the people representing the entertainment industry in the case.
Sveriges Radio’s P3 news programme has found out that judge Thomas Norström is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association. And who are also members of this group? Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted, who all three represented the entertainment industry in the case against the Pirate Bay.
There’s more, though, in case the above doesn’t ring any of your corruption alarm bells (you know, you should have those as a good citizen). Norström also sits on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property, a group which advocates stronger copyright laws.
Norström, unsurprisingy, insists there’s no conflict of interest here. Obviously, the TPB lawyers kind of disagree with that one, and are advocating a retrial. “I will point that out in my appeal, then the Court of Appeal (Hovrätten) will decide if the district court decision should be set aside and the case revisited,” Peter Sunde’s lawyer Peter Althin told The Local. Apparently, Althin had managed to get another judge excluded from the trial last year due to similar circumstances.
“This is corruption and decay on a completely inexcusable level,” says Rick Falkvinge, leader for the Swedish Pirate Party, “The judge in the most high-profile legal case of the whole year turns out to be a member of a highly partial interest group for one party in the proceedings, and also spend time privately with the prosecuting lawyers. The whole trial must be declared a mistrial and redone from scratch.”
This is not a very good showing for the Swedish justice system. The entire internet is following this case, and having a major blunder like this won’t go down well with many people. The obvious outcome of this situation is a retrial, because there’s clearly a massive conflict of interest here that cannot be overlooked.
I really hope they will rule this as a mistrial now. They may as well have had the president of the RIAA be the judge.
1) The Pirate Bay founders must get away from that without any prison sentences or fines — they’re just providing computer infrastructure for exchange of data, any society that forbids that is backwards at best.
2) A serious investigation must be opened, and the judge and anybody who shared the conflict of interest should be prosecuted!
If you handed a gun for someone to shoot, wouldn’t you be helping the killer to accomplish his task? I don’t think Piratebay guys are any that naive. They know.
However, piracy is a delicate subject. Absurd & high prices absolutely feed the piracy infinite loop. If we only had fair prices on music & films, we would not go the alternative way.
The problem here is, who’s to say what price is fair?
There will always be those people that would rather steal than pay no matter what the price is.
Well it’s a good thing those people aren’t involved in so-called “piracy” – how then, would we be able to get our hands on something to create the “pirated” copies from, if the original was stolen?
Absolutely. The judge should have recused himself from the case, knowing that he had a conflict of interest, but to support piracy still isn’t right.
However, the high prices are only part of it. Some people just refuse to pay and no matter what you do, they’re not going to change. Many people are simply entitled to whatever they see that they want.
I don’t know how many times it has already been said, but I want to stress it once again: most “pirates” wouldn’t buy what they download anyway.
Even Microsoft seems to undertand this simple fact. Rather a few pirates than a shrinking userbase.
Well, right and wrong has nothing to do with law. Law has to do with legal vs. illegal.
Right vs. wrong has something to do with moral.
Personally I consider it wrong to have copyright, since my ownership of my production means are transferred to the copyright holder. And that is a violation of my private property. And that’s wrong. Not to mention illegal (except if you are a multinational megacorporation, apparently).
If you handed a gun for someone to shoot, wouldn’t you be helping the killer to accomplish his task? I don’t think Piratebay guys are any that naive. They know.
First of all, there are shops who legitimately sell guns and the owners are not held responsible for the uses of those guns. Secondly, software piracy doesn’t kill people.
On a more precise note: Pirate Bay is a search engine. They don’t host the files, they don’t participate in the creation of those or anything like that. If they can be held accountable for the content found via their search engine, then ANY search engine can be held accountable for any illegal content found via it, including Google search. A simple Google search will give you thousands of links to illegal material, you can verify that even yourself. So, which one do you think is Right(TM): search engines only lists stuff they have found but aren’t held accountable for the material since it’s provided by others, or that search engines can be held accountable for such material and as such any search engine provider can be brought to court?
I saw an interview with someone from the prosecuting legal team where this question was asked. Basically they said that Google worked with the copyright holders and removed links when asked and tpb didn’t. That was why they weren’t going after Google. It wasn’t so much about what could and couldn’t be found as how they responded to take down requests that separated google from tpb. They further claimed that if google changed their policy they would go after google as well.
I agree with you that technically, they didn’t violate any copyright. I think there are miles between technically and morally or ethically right. They knew what they were doing was wrong, and they also knew that their countries laws were not up to date with the way things work nowadays and that they could get away with it.
It is hard to feel sorry for the poor RIAA or MPAA for getting ripped off, but on the other hand im not exactly going to shed a tear for these guys because they had the rug yanked out from under them.
It’s hard to feel sympathy for RIAA and it’s Canadian counterpart with the amount they rip off artists also. The Bare Naked Ladies are actually one of the founding artist behind a group specifically saying “RIAA and CRIA (not sure if that’s it) do not represent our interests by suing children and grandmothers.”
These are companies which have attempted to make it legal for them to enforce law directly rather than having to take suspected infringement cases too court.
Maybe one day we’ll see more independent artists again; it’s really not hard to self publish these days. Even a small reduction in the cookie-cutter studio-magic-sings-good-button crap they are pushing out would be a good thing.
As for Pirage Bay, I don’t think the punishment fits the crime. They are not guilt free as they where knowingly directly people too content which was never meant for free download so the verdict will probably stick. The punishment needs to be re-evaluated though.
I don’t think it’s much like handing a person a gun to shoot as it is like opening a gun store called “Cold Blooded Killers” and then being sued when someone buys a gun from your store and shoots someone.
The companies do not set the price, the market does. Basic econ 101. The reason you find them too high is simply because your fellow consumers have been willing to pay that amount.
Except is Google actually hosting anything? Also what is Google’s mission statement? I think it is vastly different than the one that is intended to promote piracy.
At then end of the day I personally just do not give a *$&@ about piracy. But what does really strike a nerve is the generation of today, the “Me” generation, the “Gimme gimme gimme free” generation of kids that have just grown up spoiled as hell and don’t expect they should ever have to pay for anything. Movies, music, software, games, should all be provided for free. When kids today whine about copy right protection, DRM, etc.. then have the gall to whine about their beloved torrent site being taking away, well that is just way too much stupidity to allow.Hey dipshits, give you a cookie if you can figure out the connection between the two.
As for the Pirate Bay, my sympathy kind of went away when they A:) Named themselves Pirates, and B:) Visibly flaunted this by posting letters they received and their snarky responses. Quite simply they thought they were immune and above the law, and flaunted it in the face of everyone. They were cocky as hell and just asked for their legal troubles.
True, but now people are waking up to that fact.
ummm .. heard of ‘cached’??? It’s stored on google’s actual server.
Then why quote and try to start a fight??
I agree to a point. I’m 29 and I think everything is priced too high for my taste.
hmm .. let’s see .. more DRM, copyright protection means that someone will crack it and post the cracked disk image on the torrent sites and that site will be shut down? Do I get my cookie?? lol.
I personally use no-cd and no-dvd cracks for my personal games (which I do buy) because I don’t like leaving the cd and/or dvd in the drive all the time so as to lengthen the life of the disk. It has nothing to do with piracy on that.
Well yeah they could be cocky and immune because the law was different at the time. They weren’t above the law at the time and could post whatever letters and responses they wanted. It’s just recently the law changed and now they have to deal with it. ARRRRRRG.
I don’t know who you are refering to, when you say people are your talking about the consumers that continue to eat up DVD movies like they are candy? Hell just look at how many are shelling out big money to get their favorite show on DVD, THEN to even purchase the box set at the end of the series. Or how many rush out to buy initial release, then the directors cut, then the “special” edition, etc..
I agree that DVD prices are quite ridiculous, but pirating movies is not going to lower the price. What will is the consumer’s spending habits. As long as people keep rushing out to buy $20 movies, the industry will sell $20 movies.
I think we can both agree that the definition of actually hosting and having a cache are quite different. Also, it simply can not be ignored the intended purpose of each sites. Google is not a direct aid to pirated software and movies, Pirate Bay is. There is a very clear distinction between the two. To say that Pirate Bay is “merely” a search engine is like saying the Mafia are just a tight knit business organization. Both are true statements, but the real truth is that the Mafia are blood thirsty scum, and the Pirate Bay existed solely to massively distribute pirated goods..illegally.
My whole issue is not that piracy bugs me as much as the attitude of the people doing it. It long since changed from a “hey this is neat” to an expectation that such service should be made freely available. The music industry model may be good, may be bad, but people illegally downloading do not get a voice in this debate.
The price of the 2009 Porsche 911 Turbo is quite high, but I also accept I don’t get everything in life I want, or I have to budget. But I also do not have the right to steal one off the dealer’s show room floor do I? If not, then why would anyone have the right to go into a store and steal DVDs or games? Do they? If not do we also have the right to download movies and games off of Pirate Bay?
The point of copy protection is twofold. First it does prevent the average individual of doing so, thus leaving it to a minority rather than the majority. But really the truth of the matter is this. All copyright protection, DRM, etc. are in effect knee jerk reactions to what has really become an explosion of illegal content availability. I honestly believe that at the time the first DVDs came out, the industry thought it would take much longer for it to be cracked. DeCss only gave rise to DRM, a much harsher and intolerant system, but one I have yet to hear even close to plausible alternative.
You have a very valid point here. In fact Blizzard just released a while ago a no CD patch for the old Diablo 2 game, knowing that the CD is nothing in terms of protection. What does prevent is the availability of legitimate keys. Hence why we can copy Call of Duty 4, but really what we want is to play online, thus they happen to have no CD requirement for online play for any of their games going back to the first.
With that said though I do know for a while the no-CD cracks were intended purely for copying games, this before the explosion of pure online play.
What ever the law was at the time is regardless. They should simply have not been so arrogant, and incredibly stupid. I say stupid because any imbecile should at least know that laws change, fact of life. Hell I can now drive 75 where once I could only do 55…see, laws change. But that goes beyond just the mere business of what they were doing. The flaunting and taunting was just down right childish and idiotic. You really do have to wonder if they had a much different name and did their best to fly under the radar, how much different things would be. There is absolutely no question that the industries went after hard as hell for them because they were so out in the open. They asked to be made examples of, and now they are it is hard to shed a tear.
And as for your comment darknexus, does it even bother a response. Yes, some old farts may pirate goods. That is not what I am even referring to. I was talking about a culture that exists among the young generation who feel an entitlement. I actually did not think this needs spelling out, but for you I guess I must. This is not about age per se, but generational view towards the subject. Get it now?
I think we can both agree that the definition of actually hosting and having a cache are quite different.
Care to elaborate what is the difference?
When you have a cache of something you are hosting copies of the files on your servers and providing users with those. If the files in your cache happen to be illegal then you are hosting illegal files.
Fine. I’ll admit the lemmings grab everything like candy, but those of us with a brain actually take the time to wait and pick and choose what we want. If you wait long enough the $5 bin at wal-mart has some nice stuff eventually.
That’s debatable. Even though it’s cached, it is still hosted on the server by Google.
Also debatable. The Pirate Bay is a site that lets the user post a file that contains a hash to a file or files on that users computer the may or not be copyrighted (Linux distros and public domain works and note only a file with a hash is actually stored and not the file on the users computer) without intervention by the admins of the site. Google may not be a direct aid to copyrighted works but you can still search Google and find copyrighted works nonetheless. I’d call that aiding.
Says who? I can record stuff off the radio and it sound just as good now. Most times people don’t want a whole album. They want singles. Itunes is interesting but confusing to some and of course the bundled DRM in the tracks just ticks me off to no end. I want to put my tracks on my media player the way I want to. I like mp3s. I’ve always listened to mp3s. I’m also not an apple user so I don’t have an ipod and more than likely never will. That and I think $1 a song is a bit much when you’re scrounging for money to just survive, and it adds up pretty quickly. Especially in this economy.
You miss the point. Actual physical theft I don’t agree with. The object is question is not tangible. You can’t touch it and it’s coming over a service you pay for. I pay $40 a month for my internet access. Why have it if I can’t utilize it. Someone else bought it and decided to share it. Sure it’s not like sharing the physical cd/dvd like you would a friend, but you don’t have to download it if you don’t want to. No one is strong arming you or forcing it on you.
It’s all cat and mouse. They come up with something and it will be cracked. Then something else will come along and then that will be cracked. Etc..
I don’t play online. Never have and never will. I like a game I can play on my own without help. I’m a freak I know.
No, the law was relevant at the time.
Possibly, or they may have a plan.
Yes, laws change all the time. So laws in Sweden might shift in their favor. The Pirate Party has over 30,000 members in Sweden now.
Again and this isn’t out of the realm of possibility that they do in fact have a plan. Of course if they had a different name they wouldn’t be who they are and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Perhaps they wanted the industries to come after them and try to beat them. Who knows?
Kids you say… What decent grown-up man would think it’s OK to capitalise on kids?
… while calling them “dipshits”?
Amusing and ironic, isn’t it? The younger generations make a very convenient scapegoat for people like ssa2204. Do you know how many kids I see downloading pirated content? Yes, a good majority of them. Do you know how many people in the 30’s, 40’s, and even 50’s I see downloaded pirated content? A whole lot of them. Copyright infringement (piracy, if you will) is not configned to any one generation, not by a long shot. I know many in the older generations that pirate just as much as any of the younger generations, some of them are… let’s say, in a profession where they should most certainly know better, or at the very least should abide by the law.
This is not something you can single out a specific group as the cause. It’s the fault of those who download, it’s the fault of the entertainment and media industry, and the fault of those who share the content in the first place. There’s plenty of blame to go around, trying to make a convenient scapegoat helps no one.
That is simply not true. While you will probably call me pedantic the statement should be like this:
“The companies do not set the price [in competitive markets], the market does.”
This is just a major difference. If you don’t believe me check your books. (Compare competitive markets vs. oligopoly vs. duopoly vs. monopolistic competition vs. monopoly and monopsony)
To be fair I have no idea if the market for music/films is a competitive market or not but in the form you stated it, it is simply not true.
Well TPB is not hosting anything either, so your point is?
There was a really good post a couple of days ago replying exactly to this argument. It’s your generation (and mine probably), which created this greed. They are the generation which created the desire in the current generation to need everything, they are the generation profiting from this, they are the ones who put us in this mess we are in today.
That’s a loaded question 🙂
A better analogy would be “should the municipality be held accountable for the bank robbery because they built the roads leading to the bank?”
The Louse
Edited 2009-04-23 18:50 UTC
So gun shops should be held responsible for crimes committed with firearms.
Should the owners of Henckels et al do time for
stabbings?
What about Google, Live Search or LyGo?
Try typing “wolverine torrent” into any of
those search engines to see what gets returned.
Oh and let’s sentence Bram Cohen to death,
that piracy-abetting f–ker!
Does the gun shop do background checks or check for age? If TPB was my local gun shop, they would check to see if I could legally own that movies before I DL’d it? I think the gun shop comparison is a little too abstract. I think any comparison needs to be digital to encompass the easy nature of copying files.
-Bounty
So according to You U.S. government is helping his citizens in killing?
Thats kind of a ridiculous statement. Its right up there with McDonalds made me fat. People decided how to use tools that are provided too them and we can’t blame the people that make them available if people use them in an illegal fashion.
It’s a direct conflict of interest .. plain and simple. The previous trial should be declared a mistrial and a new one should take place. The judge and prosecutors should also be brought up on charges of conspiracy and corruption. The judge should either be sanctioned, suspended or relieved of his seat (fines and or jail time also)
The height of the sentence also surprised many; for sharing just 33 copyrighted items, the four founders were sentenced to one year in jail, and a massive fine of 3.6 million USD.
Actually, they were not sentenced for sharing those 30 odd things, they were sentenced for “aiding” in copyright infringement..
You’re right, I fixed it. Excusez-moi.
My country (Sweden) sucks. Here’s what I see in my crystal ball:
They will do an investigation but they will tell us that they did not find anything and the trial will stand. The Judge will give up his job and start working for the Mafiaa, just like one of the police did that handled the raid and the investigation of TBP. The appeals will not be successful (merely lowering the fine by a third, at most).
I don’t live in a democracy anymore. We don’t have any justice here. This is bad. I am now ashamed of being a Swede. My country has failed me so many time now, that this is just getting ridiculous.
I blame the people who have voted for the parties that are currently in the Riksdag. The left parties, the right, the green party… they all have enough power to stop this but are not doing anything. All they do is give us more laws that will monitor our every move on the internet, the phones and they play ball with the american corporations and lobby groups.
I hereby ask if someone wants a fed up Swede. I can do your dishes, clean your apartment, drive your kids to school, anything. Just give me a room so I can move. This is fscked up.
I hereby ask if someone wants a fed up Swede. I can do your dishes, clean your apartment, drive your kids to school, anything. Just give me a room so I can move. This is fscked up.
If you look like Jason Statham or Johnny Depp you can move in and be my personal playtoy, otherwise no thanks
Which country? Are you a guy or a gal? Do you have a place where I can sleep? Will you give me a tour of your city? What will I have to do as your “playtoy”? Sexual or just play and fun?
EDIT: I just found some anwers:
Finland, that’s not too far away so the trip would be pretty cheap. You are a lesbian? So why do you need a guy like me that looks like Depp?
Edited 2009-04-23 14:45 UTC
Finland, that’s not too far away so the trip would be pretty cheap. You are a lesbian? So why do you need a guy like me that looks like Depp?
It was a joke, you take things too literally
And I live in a lesbian relationship yes, but I am bisexual personally. I just have a rather limited taste in men 
*wanders off* :3
Ahhh… you’re just learning how the game is played from us Americans. I personally want to move to Canada or Germany. Better beer in both places.
Yeah, and that game sucks. I too like Canada, but the german language is really weird. Never got the hang of it. :/
What’s the appeal process like in Sweden?
They have at least two levels of appeal left to go through. The next level of appeal is pretty much guaranteed in a case like this. There two things can happen. They can decide to simply hear the appeal, or to order a re-trial with a new judge at the lower court if they felt that the original judge was biased or some other major error was made.
After that the supreme court can decide whether or not they think the case is interesting enough for them to look at.
In theory they can after that take the case to the EU supreme court and claim that Sweden is violating EU law.
Bottom line, no matter how this ends it will be years before any sort of final sentencing is done.
PirateBay is a search engine
All of what you wrote is just an excuse. If you pay attention enough, they publicly ridicule copyright holders in a very blunt way, that is to say, aiding totally copyright infringement. If they were only a search engine, copyright stuff would be monitored and removed. Also you can get access to the torrent file, differently of Google, which will return results from these torrents sites, but won’t let you get any torrent file.
About who’s to say which fair price things should have… Well there is a common sense of what things should cost. You wouldn’t pay USD20 for a needle, would you? The same goes for a hamburger sandwich. Music has been always expensive, but usually they’re pushing the price to a “next level”.
Ticket prices for shows also hit the stratosphere – you name it, Rolling Stones, Depeche Mode, U2… the upcomming tours will be twice or three times more expensive than tours they’ve made 3 years ago. There is a tendency of music & film industry to push everything price-related to the next level. Everything has its common-sense value, and people give up when they are overwhelmed by the prices they know it’s not the real worth of it. That’s where piracy starts.
If they were only a search engine, copyright stuff would be monitored and removed.
You have clearly no idea how much manpower such would require. There is no way for software filters to know which content is copyrighted and which isn’t so the only way to verify that would be to download it all and check manually. Do you really think that’d work? Besides, there are also totally legitimate torrents there, freeware and open-source. Not even nearly all the content is illegal.
Also you can get access to the torrent file, differently of Google, which will return results from these torrents sites, but won’t let you get any torrent file.
Err…you know, Google indexes websites, those search engines indexes torrent files. Two different approaches. Besides, just try to search for “.torrent”..Google will immediately suggest several sites known for having large amounts of illegal torrents. And you still claim Google is somehow better?
The key and crucial difference between Google and tpb is that Google (apparently) has a procedure you can follow remove a link to a .torrent from its index, and tpb does not. That is why Google isn’t on trial.
I don’t believe google is a tracker, and I think TPB is. Also, Youtube manages to remove copyrighted stuff. You could automate it so that Hollywood emails you and says please remove Chronicles of Narnia, and then TPB could filter results with the word Narnia in them. I’m not saying they are guilty or innocent etc. Just trying to see the whole picture. Corrupt judge thing is sick btw!
What if the site was just a regular Warez site pointing to rapidshare.de files?
You could automate it so that Hollywood emails you and says please remove Chronicles of Narnia, and then TPB could filter results with the word Narnia in them.
That wouldn’t work. The files can be named anything, it doesn’t have to have any of those words in it. And filtering all content that has the word “Narnia” in it would also filter out legitimate content. A better example would be e-books (I am a heavy consumer of free e-books myself): there’s a huge variety of totally free books and if you f.ex. started filtering out all content with the words “3D Studio Max” in them you’d also filter out a whole lot of interesting, free and high-quality tutorials and longer books about the subject.
So, my point stands: you cannot automatically filter it all because either you’ll filter way too much or way too little.
As for TPB: I don’t like their attitude, I’ve never used their website nor do I have any interest either. I still don’t think they should go to jail for providing such a search engine if they themselves don’t spread/host illegal material. I use isohunt.com for my needs, usually for those free e-books or the occasional Linux distro image.
The file name or description has to say something about Narnia in it otherwise nobody would find it and it woulnd’t be a problem. I also don’t think there are a whole lot of movie size, legit .avi files with Narnia in the name or description. It’s possible I guess. They could automate the obvious stuff, then accept takedown notices of things like movies obfuscated with alternate file names or descriptions.
TPB is popular because it’s easy. All you would have to do is make it less easy to make infringing users migrate or give up.
I think TPB was screwed in this case, with the judge biased and all. Clearly were over-sentenced. I’m leaning towards that they were doing something wrong though. It is a cat and mouse thing, just like viruses and AV vendors though. As long as people can share data this will happen in one form or another. Some compare this them to google, I see them more like youtube or this comment thread because of the user posted nature of it all.
What if we all posted links to files we ripped to rapidshare or personal ftp sites and nobody policed the forums for that kind of thing. To the point where OSNEWS became a warez portal? Should OSNEWS be liable? Also, who all can they go after on those “post your own porn” sites if it’s not legal material… somewhere..somehow. How about if OSNEWS actively sorted the list of links to help people download Windows XP or whatever? Is there a line and where do we draw it?
This is totally false logic, since the second part in no way follows from the first.
Sure, they mock the current copyright laws (and, in some instances, the copyright holders). This is in no way illegal.
But do they aid copyright infringement? Maybe, that’s a technical question, and actually has a lot to do with the way that the Internet works.
Even more important – is it really a serious crime to aid copyright infringement? Or is it more like jaywalking?
That’s actually the part that the court should have considered. But it seems the judge had already made up his mind…
…organizations that propose and support laws? Why should he not be involved with copyright organizations? I imagine those are not the ONLY organizations he belongs to.
He can of course be a member of whatever he wants. There is however a problem when he’s involved with organizations that have an interest in the outcome of a case that he is the judge on.
Are you cute? Demanding cuteness can cost cuteness.
Bisexual is a *HUGE* frigging improvement over lesbian-only. 😛
Are you cute? Demanding cuteness can cost cuteness.
Hell no. Geeky, sufficiently smart (not saying I am smarter than average, but atleast not much dumber either) and independent..no way I could be cute, too
don’t be depressed
50% of the world population are dumber than the average
49.9 recurring of the population falls below. You forgot the fellow/lass right in the middle you insensitive clod
Technically, it’s 50% are dumber or as dumb as the median.
The average is not always at the 50th percentile, the median, by definition, always is.
Geeky? Oh… I pictured now big heavy glasses on you. It’s OK as long as you don’t have ugly feet. That would rule you totally out for me.
Geeky? Oh… I pictured now big heavy glasses on you.
No, thank god!
It’s OK as long as you don’t have ugly feet
Foot fetish? 😮
*cough*
http://cogscanthink.blogsome.com/2008/04/07/eyes/#comment-2803
*runs*.
It was my neighbour! *points in some random direction* Look, a three-headed monkey :O
Stop nerding around with the law, it’s illegal.
Yeah an example that private intrest with alotta money can buy the parts that suits them, im from sweden and im boycotting all the retail entertainment products , hope more people join up , they get too rich if they can sue people like this.
I don’t want Warner Bros to be the Judge of any court in the world.
The music and media conglomerates come to the table with dirty hands. In the US (to pick law with which I am intimately familiar), they have bought both the Congress and the Courts to create “copyright law” that is patently unConstitutional, i.e., that seriously violates the Supreme Law of the land.
I know these arguments don’t hold for Sweden, but they do for the US. And my suspicion is that the media conglomerates there have corrupted government just as much there as they have here.
There is no way that current US law passes muster on the “limited term” requirement mandated by the US Constitution: by definition, if Congress is free to extend a term, it is not limited in mathematical terms. If you cannot name me three works whose copyright term has expired during my 57-year-long lifetime, you must admit that copyright term is operationally indistinguishable from unlimited. And since copyright term lasts for decades past the death of the author, it is not limited in human terms, either.
Making matters worse, note that Obama has appointed five RIAA/MPAA attorneys to senior positions in the US Department of Justice. That’s the change he has brought us — government not just corrupted by the media monopolies, but actually run by them.
Ah, corruption…
The lobby lawyer, hire him and your opponents get prison for downloading
Guess they have the same ‘he with the most cash, wins’ judicial system as we (U.S) do.
What dop you Swedes expect from your country when you live it up – go bankrupt and then run to the IMF with cap in hand for help? The IMF is run and controlled by Corporate America and as a result, any country that seeks financial help from it will have sever US Corporate interests imposed on it.
You want to make things right in Sweden again, do the hard yards, pay back the IMF loans ASAP and tell them to piss off. As for the judge of the trial having a serious conflict of interest, he should be brought before the powers that be in the Swedish Legal Fraternity and publically thrown out from the profession. He has comitted a serious breach of confidence in the impartiallity of the Swedish Legal System but of course nothing will be done because – refer to the first paragraph. Enough said.
Those crapping on about the legitamacy of copyright material, ask yourselves why Disney and other US companies have continually sought and won extensions on the time limit of copyrighted material? This totally destroys the object of copyright and turns artistic works from being something that can benefit the original creator to being long term money spinners for corporates well after the creator has passed on. Also with copyright, would we have had the brillient compositions of Mozart and any other classical composer if they were subjected to the limitations on artistic creativity that todays copyright imposes? It’s just protecting a racateering scheme for Corporates who now make the mafia look honest.
Edited 2009-04-24 05:49 UTC
Of course piratng movies, software etc. is wrong. On the other hand big companies try to press as much money out of one product as possible. If they could i believe we would end up buying a song several times for every device you want to use it on and the whole thing tied to one person so that nobody else can use it.
I really believe that with the internet a new time has come and new business models have to be implemented because the old ones don’t work anymore. Perhaps the new idea is more like sharing knowledge, music, movies, software and all that stuff for a fair amount of money. The idea of literally sitting on your property and this whole ownership stuff maybe not so up to date any longer.
How is it wrong? It’s information, when you release information, whatever the format, it is as free as air. If you have a text file of a book on your computer and you somehow share that folder when I’m on your network, if I download that file, are you made any less for that exchange? It’s non-competitive and non-rivalrous. Were one to try to regulate information, the amount of force, enforcement and information gathering on citizens necessary would cause nothing short of the collapse of civilization. . . THAT is wrong.
Movies, music, and other forms of information are all still information. Great, authors can make money from the information they create, awesome but should we enforce the ultimate right to ownership, that they receive compensation for EVERY use of that information at the cost of privacy and freedom in society?
Copyright was created as a simple stimulant to creation, not as a protection for creators, not as a promise of compensation either. It was a simple compromise, a short time monopoly for publishing rights in exchange for the benefit to society of more printed works being available. The funny thing is that when such a compromise is LEAST needed, we are attempting to enforce it the MOST. Absurd. Authors used to be rare and consumers of information were odd but there were still many more than authors. Now authors of works are a dime a dozen but the thing people don’t realize is that the market has kept pace, at least. There are millions of ways to capitalize on one’s creation today. We needn’t suck every artist’s and author’s proverbial authorial meatcicle, when it comes to the natural rights of the general population, F’ the artists and “intellectual ‘property'” owners. F’ em hard.
Edited 2009-04-24 09:55 UTC
Here look it up:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pirating
Copyright infringement does not equal stealing!:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
From the above link:
So enough with the dumb “you wouldn’t go into a store and steal a DVD now would you?” comparisons.
Edited 2009-04-24 08:36 UTC
adkilla posted…
What’s a DVD? ;P
–bornagainpenguin
You go into a store and steal a DVD. You now have a movie you have not paid for, and the maker has not received payment.
You go to download a movie, you now have a movie you have not paid for, and the maker has not received payment.
Interesting how it works the same way. Just because the packaging is different, then it is suddenly all right? You now have a moral backing simply because what you obtained was in a different form than the former?
You are very misguided if you think you have a moral backing simply because there big evil corporations you are stealing from. And equally misguided if you think you have the moral superiority simply because the form of what you have taken without payment is in a different form.
I will enlighten you on one aspect. Pirates do not make a distinction of what they make available. It is just not the movies, software, games, etc.. of big evil corporations made available, but also thousands upon thousands of small, independent, personal, non corporate software, games, movies, etc..
Sorry, no matter how much you want to twist it copyright infringement is not stealing. Illegal, yes, but not stealing.
Stealing in a store and making of copy of something does not work the same way. By your reasoning killing someone by accident and committing murder one is the same since the end result in both cases is that a human being is now dead.
Enough with the personal attacks already. The OP did not state he had any kind of moral superiority or that copyright infringement is “right”.
You go into a store and steal a DVD. You now have a movie you have not paid for, and the maker has not received payment.
that is not true at all the maker already has the money only the store losses any money on that transaction. Would not be to suprised if that’s why the penalty often is that much smaller for doing it this way. no extremly big companies are lobbing for harser punishments for stealing since well they are not losing any money att all.
You go to download a movie, you now have a movie you have not paid for, and the maker has not received payment.
that is true except that no one is actuly missing an item that they had before it happend, you have lost an opertunity to make money. or you could possible have gained one. there are still people that downloads movies/music and then buys it if they really like it, but sadly in most cases this is not true becus there are way more leechers.
Actually, the DVD analogy is a good one. Downloading the movie is similar to shoplifting a single DVD from a store. You deprive the studio from the revenue of a single sale. However, copyright infringement is not like stealing the master copy of the movie (which would deprive the studio of making and selling any copies). The book you cite seems to be making the later comparison, not the former.
Not at all
if you steal the movie from a store.
1 the studio still get’s the money the store has already payed them
2 the store losses money that they have paid to the studio
3 the store losses the opportunity to sell the movie to you
4 the store losses the opportunity to sell it to someone else since you stole that copy.
And if you download the movie
3 the store losses the opportunity to sell the movie to you
it’s not even close
I have a few points that need to be made.
1. Software piracy is NOT like stealing some physical item. It is like copying the EXACT design of a car with a special high-tech cloning device – which is what is actually happening… duh!
2. Providing means by which to obtain another’s intellectual property is illegal virtually globally. Often this involves cases of corporate spying.
3. Cheap knock-offs exist of almost everything, legally. Lexus copies Mercedes rather closely. ( even the logo ) Mercedes does not sue Lexus.
4. There is no quality bar for legal replication of copyrighted material. This is the sole fault of the recording industry.
5. The recording industry was well aware of the changing consumer environment, but failed to adapt. The internet revolution should have been viewed as an opportunity – and it would have been, if all the idiots running the show weren’t 100 years old.
6. No artist or company can show ANY impact from digital ‘piracy’ on their bottom line. The impacts shown, to date, mimic the general economic downturn which has been ongoing for the last decade ( raise your hand if you bought fewer CDs/DVDs because of money problems ).
7. The vast majority of ‘pirates’ would not purchase the full-priced product anyway, They are typically the bargain hunters – those who can’t see why ALL movies and albums cost so much when they are released – especially considering the millions in profit already attained through other means.
8. I am a pirate, but I buy the movies once the price has settled to the sub $10 range ( normally $5 ). I don’t need or want special features – I want the movie – and I DON’T want to pay the high prices.
9. I ‘pirated’ every movie before ever considering it for purchase. If I liked it, I bought it. I am not alone. I own HUNDREDS of movies. All legally.
10. When you download a pirated movie, you generally must accept that the time to obtain the movie can vary beyond your control – you may even have to try a few or more sources.
11. You have to accept that pirated movies have an unknown quality until after they have been downloaded. The quality is generally poor.
12. If you want the best quality, you will need to buy the movie at some point – or talk to me 🙂 j/k I don’t share.
13. The industry will need to awaken to the truth of the world once the world economy hits full depression mode. Indeed, a full depression, sadly, is needed in order to correct many wrongs from the corporations.
14. Most of the ‘wrongs’ these corporations have accomplished would have been impossible if only the people wouldn’t buy everything with a plastic little card. It is MUCH harder to justify pending ALL of your money and MORE when you have to do so in cold hard cash.
–The loon
Copyright laws are immoral, unnecessary and incompatible with true property rights. Yes, copyright infringement (not “piracy”: if you want to see a pirate, go and do some fishing near the Somali coast) is illegal in most/all countries. So what? Freeing slaves used to be.
Enforcing copyright (and also patents and other forms of so-called “intellectual property”) is negating people’s right to use their own physical resources to store and share information as they see fit, just because this would frustrate someone’s plans to charge a hefty price for said information. Some people try to justify copyright as a kind of contract, but what kind of contract can be enforced against those who didn’t sign it? If someone signs a NDA and then leaks the information, you go after this person, not the ones who may have benefited from the leakage. Why is not copyright enforced this way? (hint: it wouldn’t work).
Intellectual property is also unnecessary and even counter-productive. Copyright lobbyists would have us believe a world without copyright would be dull and silent. Well, most of humanity’s artistic creations were produced before the introduction of copyright laws, and the highest rate of invention during the industrial revolution happened before the introduction of patents. True artists first and foremost focus on creating as many good works as their talent lets them, and only afterwards they look for ways to earn a living from them (and there are lots of ways); inventors would disclose their ideas if only for the fame of being first, letting others sort out the details. Intellectual monopoly laws make artists and inventors rich and lazy, not brighter or more productive.
For a factual, historic analysis of how the industrial revolution flourished until the patent system came and almost killed it, or how the extension of copyright to classical music annotations since 1777 didn’t help England increase its musical relevance with respect to its European neighbors who adopted it decades later, you can read Boldrin and Levine’s book “Against Intellectual Monopoly” (available through amazon.com and yes, also for free online).
Of course, the law has to be applied as it is, and nowadays copyright infringement is illegal, but this doesn’t mean copyright violators are just like thieves and murderers.
Why everyone talks just about piracy? What about projects, that chose TPB as place to host links to their absolutely legal content?