Pirate bay verdict

[evomedia]

Well they lost, a year in jail and £2.4m in fines

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

[makemassair]

Hmm... Google/Youtube next? How much of that money recovered actually goes back to the artists/performers pirated against vs the studios?

Honestly the piracy war is like the war on drugs, lost. You need to find new ways to make people not need to pirate so much, rather than react to the piracy.

Take Spotify for example. http://www.spotify.com/en/ free streaming albums (fucking loads) with ad-free option (£10/month, although it's like 1-2 ads per album) with royalties paid back to the artists per listen. Now you don't need to search for the album and download it illegally.

[makemassair]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/apr/17/piratebay-guilty-verdict

http://thepiratebay.org/special/2009epicwinanyhow.php

[vjpixylight]

You have to look at where PB was located as well..Sweden is as far right as perhaps any country on the planet, and so I'm quite surprised this didn't happen sooner..
Pirates are the next new terrorist to those right wing nut jobs out there.:eek:

[sleepytom]

they'll win as soon as they get to a real court with proper judges rather than a tinpot county court which has no ability to understand the technicalities behind the bittorrent system.

really this verdict is an obvious mistake by a system which doesn't understand what TPB actually do.

[karl]

You have to look at where PB was located as well..Sweden is as far right as perhaps any country on the planet, and so I'm quite surprised this didn't happen sooner..
Pirates are the next new terrorist to those right wing nut jobs out there.:eek:

Sweden does have a large far-right underground movement, and retains a legacy of feudalism but isn't considered far-right in european terms, current political governments moves countries like Italy, Denmark and even UK far to the right compared to Sweden.

For scandinavians the piratebay verdict might come as a surprise because scandinavia and Sweden in particular is well known for its liberal legal system, weak positions for corporations and focus on laws protecting citizen rights.

However Sweden has changed to a (much) harder line lately giving police extended rights (http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/03/013221) for anti-piracy surveillance.

[vjpixylight]

I realize that the right wing and European Union hasn't been an issue since the days of Hitler and the Nazi's, but since 2006, counties like Sweden and France are in fact turning back towards the right, and it shows with a ruling like this one.
BTW, It isn't only happening in Europe. The Dept. of Homeland Security here in the states has recently warned of an uptick in right wing radicalization.
(http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2229846/posts)

[cat]

Sweden is as far right as perhaps any country

America cough...

[vjpixylight]

Sweden is as far right as perhaps any country

America cough...
From Wikipedia:
The first modern liberal state was the United States of America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_America),[13] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism#cite_note-12) founded on the principle that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty,_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness); that to insure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."[14] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism#cite_note-13)

America has moved more to the left during the right wings advance in Europe/UK actually.
Obama wouldn't have been elected had the right been able to keep it's grip over the voters.
In Fact, ask any right winger here in the states, and they will tell you that Obama is bringing the Yanks to socialism quicker than any Pres. since FDR..

[sleepytom]

decisions made by the courts of the land are not generally influenced by the far-right activists that may or may not exist to a greater or lesser degree in Sweden (or any other country for that matter)

given that the piratebay case is only happening because of the political pressure from American organisations it is a bit rich for an American to start calling the swedes "far-right".

[karl]

I realize that the right wing and European Union hasn't been an issue since the days of Hitler and the Nazi's, but since 2006, counties like Sweden and France are in fact turning back towards the right, and it shows with a ruling like this one.
BTW, It isn't only happening in Europe. The Dept. of Homeland Security here in the states has recently warned of an uptick in right wing radicalization.
(http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2229846/posts)

yeah, i think its necessary to point out what "right wing" we talk about. neo-nazi/facist movements are alive and kicking in sweden, but the government is liberal.

but since we are talking about the piratebay verdict i just wanted to point out that swedish government and law would be considered very liberal for an american, and even european context. freedom of speech and citizen rights might be the reason why extreme right and left can operate in sweden.

when it comes to homeland security sweden is up with the best/worst, being a neighbor to the cccp during the cold war has streamlined and made swedish säpo (secret police) one of scandinavia's most feared.

sweden and france turning hard on piracy is indeed expected, but i would say that piratebay/mininova etc has made media/software "free for all" in such a manner that even growing up with the infamous c64/amiga piracy scene makes today look like the wild west and the death to copyrights

i am a software developer and has stuck to serverside development the last 12 years because software piracy did indeed kill the 80/90's game scene and the 90/00's application scene in such a manner that only large corporations can survive today. the small/single developer has a extremely hard time today because of rampant piracy

i don't cry a tear for hollywood and big-corp but i do think that piracy today is at a level that cannot be sustained because after all (piracy) its illegal and hurting developers/creators

piratebay has hidden behind the fact that they does not themselve provide the illegal copy, but media/software-piracy is illegal, short and simple

[vjpixylight]

decisions made by the courts of the land are not generally influenced by the far-right activists that may or may not exist to a greater or lesser degree in Sweden (or any other country for that matter)

given that the piratebay case is only happening because of the political pressure from American organisations it is a bit rich for an American to start calling the swedes "far-right".

Maybe, but you won't see american courts closing down bit torrent sites anytime soon. The US has always had a "hand's off" policy when it comes to the internet, and I'd like to know which american orgs presumably pressured Sweden to act against Pirate Bay??

[karl]

I'd like to know which american orgs presumably pressured Sweden to act against Pirate Bay??

John Kennedy of the IFPI (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/the-pirate-bay-verdict-guilty-with-jail-time.ars), but yeah its an international org

[vjpixylight]

sweden and france turning hard on piracy is indeed expected, but i would say that piratebay/mininova etc has made media/software "free for all" in such a manner that even growing up with the infamous c64/amiga piracy scene makes today look like the wild west and the death to copyrights

i am a software developer and has stuck to serverside development the last 12 years because software piracy did indeed kill the 80/90's game scene and the 90/00's application scene in such a manner that only large corporations can survive today. the small/single developer has a extremely hard time today because of rampant piracy


piratebay has hidden behind the fact that they does not themselves provide the illegal copy, but media/software-piracy is illegal, short and simple

Unfortunately my friend, this is a bit like the war on illegal drugs..
Until the price of software drops to a reasonable pricing,(much in the way Itunes offered cheaper music DL's) there will always be users that will look for pirated copy. Until the mindset changes with why people use illegal drugs, and the money the kind of money made from selling illegal drugs is not able to be made, we are stuck with both piracy and drug trading.

[karl]

Unfortunately my friend, this is a bit like the war on illegal drugs..

absolutely, the 80/90/00 piracy taught us one simple thing, there is no copy-protection scheme that actually works, just as the war on drugs can not be won as long as there is a demand and profit to be made of illegal drugs

but courts have to try to uphold _current_ laws, so i'm neither surprised nor sad for the piratebay verdict

[vjpixylight]

John Kennedy of the IFPI (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/the-pirate-bay-verdict-guilty-with-jail-time.ars), but yeah its an international org
Look again Mate, the IFPI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFPI) isn't American based by any stretch...

[karl]

btw, when star wars - revenge of the shit was released on us-torrent sites us government did indeed act by shutting them down (http://news.cnet.com/Feds-shut-down-BitTorrent-hub/2100-1028_3-5720541.html).

if i remember correctly the government "hands off policy" was related to net neutrality and censorship. and even as i don't question why media/software-piracy is illegal i do have strong feelings for freedom of speech

[karl]

Look again Mate, the IFPI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFPI) isn't American based by any stretch...

miami....?

[sleepytom]

you should be surprised that a search engine that simply returns locations of files which have been legally submitted by users is able to be prosecuted under copyright law. The implications of such a ruling are massive as it says that the crime is the intent to download pirate copies, rather than the actual act of downloading. This opens the door to prosecute any search engines which return any results which may be used to commit a crime. Google should be very worried; will google be prosecuted for aiding and abetting burglary when thieves have viewed their victims houses using streetview?

[vjpixylight]

miami....?
ah yes, Miami, the most important media city in the country...LOL
maybe Cuba will get an office soon.:p

[karl]

you should be surprised that a search engine that simply returns locations of files which have been legally submitted by users is able to be prosecuted under copyright law.

yes, absolutely, and from a legal point of view this could backfire in a way that harms a lot. the same dilemma is found in the war on drugs. extended right to surveillance and prosecution leads to a police state. as everybody probably wants the drug cartels busted we head for a slippery slope that we don't want.

the war on terrorism even worse because as most sane people would agree that heroin gangsters should rot in jail, hardly no-one agrees about who is a terrorist vs freedom fighter

but still i am not surprised because current law forbids their goal. but i think that current laws must change because there are a lot of things at stake if we grant police/government too much power

[karl]

ah yes, Miami, the most important media city in the country...LOL
maybe Cuba will get an office soon.:p

:D but Hong Kong, Athens and Moscow we're the 80/90/00's badboys of piracy so i don't think this body is created from the rank of media importance, rather on their piracy problems

that's polemic anyway as i said its an international org, but the point is that i would guess 60/70 percent of the material found on piratebay was made in america, so it would be naive to think that american interest groups would not be represented

[vjpixylight]

So, American interest groups...
In one corner, the software and media companies, right?
and in the other corner...Google, Yahoo, and the ISP's..
The referee for this bout, The internet public..
The only ones I see gambling on the bout are those that run peer2peer...

Care to take a bet who wins???

[vjpixylight]

Well they lost, a year in jail and £2.4m in fines

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

Apparently losing doesn't mean squat in today's internet world...
Still up and operational... (http://thepiratebay.org/)

[stickygreen]

the lawsuit was against the four individuals, not against the site, so even thought the four guys lost, the government cannot shut down the site. makes no sense but it's the way it is.
file sharing will just get stronger if TPB goes away anyway.......

[vjpixylight]

See, I just don't understand this all. Seems if they wanted to shut down Pirate Bay, the court would go after the Server/ISP. What good is going after these 4 individuals? It will be years of appeals before anything is sorted out using this strategy??? By then we will all be Cyborg, and P2P will be hardwired into our brains..

[stickygreen]

going after the individuals was the course of best possible success for the media companies. this whole exercise is to get the word out there that pirates are bad, you will go to jail, don't use file sharing. thats the goal here, it's a propaganda campaign started by the compaies who feel they are being harmed by file sharing. if on the other hand they tried to shut down the pirate bay site, and failed, as has been the history with said action, then the message to keep P2P going, and break the backs of the media giants would have been reinforced. this is just the start of many years of corporate feed initative into the minds of people to keep your media content legit. "don't file share"

my biggest concern is what message does this send to other jursitictions around the world? in the UK a fellow by the name Alan Ellis is charged with simillar offences for his site http://oink.cd we'll see how that one turnes out. I loved oink.... oh did I ever.

[vjpixylight]

well, I seriously doubt any of those 4 will ever spend 1 day in jail. How can they be guilty for just supporting their software? What the users do with it is really outside of the scope of their influence, and like Tom and Karl have pointed out, when the courts start telling business's it's illegal to support their products, then capitalism will die and we will all be left with nothing to work for...

[Motionreactor]

It has been so obvious for so long that piracy will never be stamped out, that to war against it and try to ruin the lives of four individuals is so shamelessly pointless and meaningless.

[Motionreactor]

http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html

This is such an articulate expression of the whole music industry... well worth a read.

[Rovastar]

you should be surprised that a search engine that simply returns locations of files which have been legally submitted by users is able to be prosecuted under copyright law. The implications of such a ruling are massive as it says that the crime is the intent to download pirate copies, rather than the actual act of downloading. This opens the door to prosecute any search engines which return any results which may be used to commit a crime. Google should be very worried; will google be prosecuted for aiding and abetting burglary when thieves have viewed their victims houses using streetview?

I think the difference between google and pirate bay to the common user are obvious. Pirate Bay is 99% used for finding copyrighted material they make no effort to stop this. If they actively stopped copyright material they would not be in the situation - and at the same time then they would have no site.

It is about time they were shut down the only reason they got away with it were the liberal law in Sweden regarding copyrights and the bit torrent technology. BGT technology circumnavigates the old napster peer-to-peer down by breaking apart the copyright file into small/tiny parts and they used to class this as not a copyrighted file. This in recent years around the world appears to be changing as the courst/lawyers get more clued up on technology.

Often people gone on about the moral aspect and what should be law here. Surely there is a moral obligation to the copyright holders to protect their copyright. Just because everyone wants free music doesn't make it legal or moral. There are probably many geek males out there taht want free sex........

[Motionreactor]

I think the difference between google and pirate bay to the common user are obvious. Pirate Bay is 99% used for finding copyrighted material they make no effort to stop this.

Isn't the material returned by a Google search also copyrighted? what the users choose to do with the returned results is their responsibility, not the search engines.

[sleepytom]

I think the difference between google and pirate bay to the common user are obvious. Pirate Bay is 99% used for finding copyrighted material they make no effort to stop this. If they actively stopped copyright material they would not be in the situation - and at the same time then they would have no site.

Umm that is 100% incorrect. TPB do actively remove any direct links to copyrighted material, the only downloads on their site are torrent files which do not themselves contain any copyright protected material.

You can argue that the torrents enable people to break the law, but that is not the same as arguing that torrents themselves are illegal. Owning a pair of bolt cutters doesn't make you a burglar, it is the act of theft which illegal, not merely having the tools.

Torrent files cannot be made illegal without serious implications for much of the internet, their is nothing special about torrents they are just information about the location of bits of data.

Technology will always be ahead of the law, this is yet another example of how a law that was largely designed to prevent illegal reprinting of books over 100 years ago, cannot really be applied to today's technology without some seriously complex knock-on implications.

Personally i think we need to see a full review of copyright law as it applies to the digital medium. Consideration should be given to issues such as torrents as well as caches of data such as google's and the waybackwhen system, with a view to enabling technological development as well as allowing traceability of ownership and rights protection. If we ever hope to see networks beyond the internet then the concept of node based caching router systems is fairly essential, yet under current copyright laws these systems are illegal.

So I wish TPB the best of luck with their case, the further the crazy pirates can push things into the media the more chance we have of it getting to the point where the actual laws are properly reviewed with a mind open to future possibilities, rather than simply protecting the profits of the giant media networks.

[PCProject]

Pirate Bay is 99% used for finding copyrighted material they make no effort to stop this........

Google is used for 100% of all google searches

The facts in this post are likely to be 100% wrong or right

50% of my posts on the internet are facetious

I could make them up all day

[karl]

See, I just don't understand this all. Seems if they wanted to shut down Pirate Bay, the court would go after the Server/ISP. What good is going after these 4 individuals? It will be years of appeals before anything is sorted out using this strategy??? By then we will all be Cyborg, and P2P will be hardwired into our brains..

well, I seriously doubt any of those 4 will ever spend 1 day in jail. How can they be guilty for just supporting their software? What the users do with it is really outside of the scope of their influence

I do think their goal was to shut down piratebay, but i think you're right, these 4 will probably not spend a day in jail because i believe the higher courts will have to let them go.

But the reason why they prosecuted these 4 is because in norway, and sweden the operators of a forum or newspaper has an editorial obligation to keep their forums/publications inside the legal framework. An operator of a chat/forum that does not take actions against say child pornography will ultimately be shut down. Same with swapmeet sites that continuously ignores the selling of illegal/stolen goods will also be shut down.

So the four swedes could be seen as a swapmeet operator that did nothing to prevent the sale of stolen goods, and they not only ignored their editorial obligations, they actively and quite publicly made it know that thepiratebay.org was a good place to obtain stolen goods.

Users of this forum should recognize this because any questions/answers about cracks and serials will be removed and banned.

You can argue that the torrents enable people to break the law, but that is not the same as arguing that torrents themselves are illegal. Owning a pair of bolt cutters doesn't make you a burglar, it is the act of theft which illegal, not merely having the tools.


But owning a pair of bolt cutters is not illegal, still if you have a pair of bolt cutters that could be traced back to a burglary, you could find yourself in jail just for owning that exact pair of bolt cutters.

If the court case against piratebay was "torrent files are bad and piratebay has a lot of torrent files" i would say that the prosecutors would be idiots.

And in the earlier days of MP3 and Torrents that was what actually happened. People was prosecuted left and right because "they we're using peer2peer" or "they downloaded mp3s" or "they subscribed to 2600 the hacker quarterly". And this is of course stupid and unwanted.

But reversing the logic and saying “because I am a fan of bolt cutters, no one should be jailed for using them illegally” is also stupid and unwanted. Not even the NRA and the gun lobby is dumb enough to say such a thing.

The piratebay operators was prosecuted for indirectly supporting copyright infringement, they we’re not prosecuted for operating a forum, using torrents or exercising their god given right to copy files.

[karl]

This opens the door to prosecute any search engines which return any results which may be used to commit a crime. Google should be very worried; will google be prosecuted for aiding and abetting burglary when thieves have viewed their victims houses using streetview?

It is, and this is also the crux of the matter. Todays legal system is ill prepared to handle the new world of technology and the internet.

Personally i would prefer if Google did _not_ have the right to run surveillance over my house. Personally i would prefer if number services would need a written statement from me before they published my phone number.

And to all the spammers out there, stop selling my email address to each other, i hate you guys!!!

[RayV]

Forbes: Why Google Is The New Pirate Bay
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/17/pirate-bay-google-technology-internet-pirate-bay.html

[sleepytom]

LOL - Remember when downloading pirate films / software involved having computer knowledge? Ratio FTP sites? Warez Scene? Hotline HQ? Binary News Groups? BBS? These days we see mainstream articles in the public press with precise instructions on how to download unreleased films...

By searching for pirated music or video, Google users can easily scan a range of lesser-known pirate sites to dig up illicit content. Those looking for the upcoming film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, for instance, can search for "wolverine torrent." The first result is a link to file-sharing site isoHunt, with a torrent tracker file that allows the user to download the full film. In fact, searches for "wolverine torrent" on Google have more than quadrupled since the movie file was first leaked to peer-to-peer networks on April 5, according to Google Trends.

Googling more obscure films works just as well. For example, search for "the maltese falcon torrent," and the first result links to Torrentz.com, which in turn links to other sites hosting torrent trackers for the Bogart classic, including Mininova, BTjunkie, Torrenthound and Seedpeer.
Is this responsible journalism? or feeding the fire?

[sleepytom]

The piratebay operators was prosecuted for indirectly supporting copyright infringement, they we’re not prosecuted for operating a forum, using torrents or exercising their god given right to copy files.

You cannot prosecute people for breaking the law if their is not actually a law forbidding their actions. As i understand the situation that is what has happened with TPB. They have been running a perfectly legal torrent tracker, which happens to be used by people to illegally share copyrighted material. And have been prosecuted for the actions of people who use their service. This is equivalent to prosecuting a barman for selling beer to a man who later drives his car into a tree.

The piratebay were "asking for it" as they made no effort to pretend that they disapproved of how users used their tracker. But i still don't believe that it is right to prosecute them for the actions of their users. It is a serious precedent to set which could seriously hold back the development of the internet.

Remember that Youtube was started by 2 guys at home who ignored the existing copyright laws to offer a service to people that has radically changed the way we are exposed to news and opinion. If they had been law abiding we wouldn't have video blogging or the associated democratisation of the media as a whole, Ian Tomlinson would of just been an unlucky bloke who died of a heart attack whilst walking home from work..

[karl]

You cannot prosecute people for breaking the law if their is not actually a law forbidding their actions. As i understand the situation that is what has happened with TPB. They have been running a perfectly legal torrent tracker, which happens to be used by people to illegally share copyrighted material.

In my previous post i used swapmeets and forums as an example of how norwegian and swedish laws are. I don't know about the UK, but in scandinavia publishers and operators has a legal obligation to keep their operations clean.

And the case against piratebay was not based upon an attack against torrent technology or filesharing in general, it was based upon the operators neglect to remove illegal content, and thus supporting copyright infringement.

When it comes to bar-owners, at least in norway and sweden bar-owners can and repeatedly are punished for what their customers do.

If you don't crackdown on sale of narcotics and stolen goods in your bar, you will loose your license. If you allow prostitution to flourish in your bar you will loose your license. You can even loose your license by not providing enough security and allow gangs/brawlers to beat up customers and each other.

[karl]

Further more if hooligans rip shit up at soccer matches, the supporter-club can be punished in norway, and if that doesn't help the soccer-club connected to the hooligans can actually be punished as well. harsh but effective.

But from this there is a absolute need to use sound judgement in each case, if i were to upload child pornography to this forum, and the admins removed it, no court in norway or sweden would jail the admins of vjforums.

If i went to a soccer-match and killed a guy, the supporting-club or the soccer-club would not be prosecuted for supporting murder.

Unless there were a reason to believe that they had neglected any attempt to moderate the forum or provided to security the the match... sound judgement.

Sweden is not USA, where people can sue McDonalds because their coffee is hot, so the people fearing that this court decision would affect say Google should watch less american court tv.

However if sweden become usa, and allows any twisting of the law text regardless of the law's intent by superstar lawyers, then this ruling might become troublesome and backfire in ways that was not the law's intent.

[karl]

Forbes: Why Google Is The New Pirate Bay
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/17/pirate-bay-google-technology-internet-pirate-bay.html

And this is where sound judgement comes into effect, from the forbes article

Google, for its part, says it is vigilant about removing illegal content. "We are committed to respecting copyrights and have a well-established process under the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] for removing links to infringing content when they appear in our search results," a company spokesman wrote in an e-mail.

Up til recently i worked for a norwegian search company and had legal sessions with the companies lawyers to make sure our index was in a proper legal state.

As it is; a judge will have to decide for each case if she/he thinks a company has done enough to prevent illegal entries, or if in the piratebay's case, the judge found that the operators did not do enough.

In scandinavia atleast a law cannot be used as a blanket decision, it will have to be used with judgment.

[sleepytom]

no - the judge doesn't understand what a .torrent is, nor the fact that links to torrents are not ilegal.

it is not within the judge's remit to decide that .torrents are illegal. AFAIK TPB haven't broken the laws as they exist today.

as to google - yes they may(?) remove some sites from their rankings where illegal files are distributed from. However under todays laws torrents are not illegal files and so google will not remove links to mininova or whatever torrent sites as .torrents are not illegal.

Google's other services already massivly flaugnt copyright laws, their whole caching page search system depends upon google making illegal digital copies of the majority of the websites on the internet. Google may argue that they will remove a site from the cache if they are contacted by the copyright holder, but they still act illegally by making their cache copies without permission of the copyright holder.

I don't understand why people seem to think that The Pirate Bay breaking the copyright of time-warner is more important than google stealing my website for their cache system? Copyright was originally designed to protect the smaller individual from the ravages of commercial printers. Why people seem to think this should (/ has) change(d) to preserve the rights of the corporation over the individual is quite beyond me??

[karl]

no - the judge doesn't understand what a .torrent is, nor the fact that links to torrents are not ilegal.

read the verdict, they didn't say anything about it being torrents or not, just as the bolt cutter argument, torrents are just a tool to copy files, legal or not. the verdict said that a big share of the torrents links linked to illegal files, and piratebay failed to remove them

I don't understand why people seem to think that The Pirate Bay breaking the copyright of time-warner is more important than google stealing my website for their cache system? Copyright was originally designed to protect the smaller individual from the ravages of commercial printers. Why people seem to think this should (/ has) change(d) to preserve the rights of the corporation over the individual is quite beyond me??

I do agree with you about this, but i fail to see how piratebay has become a champion for the opposite, they're just a warez site. a more suited champion for digital freedom would be http://www.youhide.biz/ or other ways to circumvent The Great Firewall of China and visa versa.

[sleepytom]

read the verdict, they didn't say anything about it being torrents or not, just as the bolt cutter argument, torrents are just a tool to copy files, legal or not. the verdict said that a big share of the torrents links linked to illegal files, and piratebay failed to remove them

Again this simply shows the lack of understanding of what a torrent is, and the implications of imposing such judgements to wider ranges of technology are huge.

Even if TPB's intention was to facilitate the sharing of content via torrents, this is not dissimilar to ISPs and broadband providers who all market their connections at file sharing users
Music, movies and more in minutes

Whatever you're into - music, photos, movies - you'll be able to watch those files fly onto your computer. And, because there's no download limit, you can really make the most of the fast speeds.

For example, it takes as little as eleven seconds to download a 60MB album, which means you could potentially download as many as 340 60MB albums in an hour! But the real benefit will be for those that like to download large files, such as movies. Most people would have to leave their computer working overnight to download a movie in HD, but with up to 50Mb it can be done in less than an hour.*
You could claim that virgin are aiming only at legal downloads, yet their is no mention of the sources of movies and music in the broadband marketing. I'm not familiar with many sites which offer legal HD movie downloads so advertising a service which allows you to download HD films in an hour is surely not so dissimilar to the pirate bay's activities. The only real difference IMHO is that virgin make a lot of money by providing their service where the pirate bay don't make any serious money from their site. Both companies provide services which enables people to share files, both companies know that their users use the provided services to break the law.

I don't see how this verdict can stand, if it does then it has massive implications for all of the internet, If companies become responsible for their customers actions then we could well see then end of fast broadband, never mind the stifling of new technologies which depend on caching of data to increase speed of access.

If we go on intent alone then it is very difficult to show that the pirate bay intentionally aid illegal downloaders, whilst ISPs do not intentionally aid illegal activities. If we accept this verdict then the logical conclusion is that broadband providers start to get targeted by the same laws and we see them stop offering internet access packages, preferring AOL style walled gardens of content which is deemed legal and acceptable to the courts.

I cannot see this as a good thing.

[USE]

I don't understand why people seem to think that The Pirate Bay breaking the copyright of time-warner is more important than google stealing my website for their cache system? Copyright was originally designed to protect the smaller individual from the ravages of commercial printers. Why people seem to think this should (/ has) change(d) to preserve the rights of the corporation over the individual is quite beyond me??

you obviously haven't been socially conditioned enough then... get this man some TV now!

didn't you know - corporations keep everyone safe and never fail in thier love for humanity. it is the "few bad apples" that cause problems, not corporations. get with program dude - stop trying to talk common sense :devil::cry::devil:

seriously tho...If countries are corporations, and the courts are corporate entities, what reason would they have to rule in favour of individuals against corporations? it's shooting themselves in the foot. luckily the old concepts of Law and Justice are still remembered by a few of those at the top, so it hopefully wont stand up against appeal.

but to me this is a clear case of corporate greed superseding Justice in the courtroom. it is a truly frightening trend.

[evomedia]

Its not the verdict that concerned me really but the charge

"providing access to copyrighted material"

Thats a hard charge to fight, a torrent may not be illegal, but come on pirate bay is almost totally used to find ripped movies, music or games. Whatever anyone says, Pirate bay obviously was almost totally used for distrubution of pirated material, it's even in the name "Pirate" bay. I understand that technically a torrent isn't illegal, but isn't hard to prove they have been involved providing access to copyrighted material.

I agree there is little difference to google returning torrent links, however piratebay have specifically tried to stick 2 digits up to the law. Everyone knows its a modern version of napster, kazaa etc.

The term torrent or its technical aspects has nothing to do it, a lawyer only needed to prove in the courtroom that piratebay deliberately "providied access to copyrighted material"

So on that charge I'd say they had little chance, my suprise was more that the charge even existed under law. Its not a charge of supplying copyright material but just providing access to it, I can see a big move in not too distant future to enforce this via the ISP's.

[karl]

Again this simply shows the lack of understanding of what a torrent is, and the implications of imposing such judgements to wider ranges of technology are huge.


No, not at all, this shows that they got a really good understanding of what torrents are. They're the modern bolt cutter that can be used for legal and illegal uses. And in piratebay's case its pretty clear from even the domain name that it was illegal use.

If we go on intent alone then it is very difficult to show that the pirate bay intentionally aid illegal downloaders, whilst ISPs do not intentionally aid illegal activities.

I do agree, and this is probably where the next battle will go, content creators will most probably try to target ISPs because they provide means, ironically blank VHS cassettes and blank CD/DVD's can be purchased legaly from Sony to record your illegal copy of Sony Picture movies :D

So intent is alfa and beta-max in any case

[karl]

but to me this is a clear case of corporate greed superseding Justice in the courtroom. it is a truly frightening trend.

aww, come on! content creators are really just a lot of hardworking writers, artists and musicians :D

YouTube - Poor Hardworking Artisan

[sleepytom]

please don't say "content producers" when you mean "copyright holders"! The 2 a very very different.

I do agree that the copyright holders will probably go after ISPs next, and that this is essentially the same as going after a blank media producer. It is very scary if they start winning these cases though as the likely outcome will be that it becomes almost impossible to get an affordable high speed internet connection.

None of this is new, in the past the hollywood studios did go after VHS manufacturers, claiming that home tapeing would distroy their industry. Imagine how different the last 30 years would of been if they had won that time and it had become illegal to own a video recorder! The only videos you could get would be pre-recorded to play in your home playback system.

The past clearly teaches us that piracy doesn't destroy the music industry, film industry, or indeed any industry. Allowing the corporate studios to prevent / curtail development of the internet in the interest of protecting their profits would be a very very bad thing.

TBH the only "solution" is for the studios to work out how to allow people to pay for digital downloads of films. This has been effective with music and musicians continue to make a good living from their music even when its sold for $0.99 per track. If hollywood wants us to stop illegally sharing films then they should look at the music model and allow us to download films for a reasonable price. They should also look at trends of cinema attendance. I have frequently been to the cinema to watch a film which i had first watched illegally, I do not generally bother to go to watch things I haven't seen before. Hollywood would do well to notice this trend and start to offer downloads of films at affordable prices whilst the films are current and on cinema release. I suspect this would see a rise in attendance at cinemas rather than a total collapse of the whole industry.

[karl]

please don't say "content producers" when you mean "copyright holders"! The 2 a very very different.

Might be for US and UK but in Norway content creators and copyright holders are the same. I think you try to distinguish between artists and publishers. But then again in Norway at least artists does not loose their copyright just because the use a publisher.

None of this is new, in the past the hollywood studios did go after VHS manufacturers, claiming that home tapeing would distroy their industry. Imagine how different the last 30 years would of been if they had won that time and it had become illegal to own a video recorder! The only videos you could get would be pre-recorded to play in your home playback system.

Exactly, and since the legal system seemed to be able to see the difference between legal usage and illegal usage then, why should they not be able to do that now?

There were several attempts to ban or tax blank VHS cassettes, but it didn't work out and it didn't kill the industry. But still a lot of cassette pirates were prosecuted because they did large-scale copyright infringement.

I know because i was a member of Triad (http://www.df.lth.se/~triad/triad/) that got raided by Swedish police already back in 1987 because we were cracking games, and we knew very very well that it was illegal.

But we did not regard ourselves as knights in shining armour defending civil rights and freedom just because we did software-piracy. We rather though we were some really really cool gangstars, but that wasn't true either.

And in the following years after the c64 scene i've meet a lot of the people that created the games i cracked, kinda ackward ;-)

[sleepytom]

Might be for US and UK but in Norway content creators and copyright holders are the same. I think you try to distinguish between artists and publishers. But then again in Norway at least artists does not loose their copyright just because the use a publisher. in the old world copyright then yes that may be true, in film production though the "content producers" almost never have any rights over the final product. The content producers do not really suffer from piracy as they are on fixed fee contracts with the studios. The studios say their profits are damaged by piracy but really they have no way of proving this. The current method they use is to round up the estimated number of illegal downloads, then multiplying the number of downloads either by premium box office ticket price, or by special edition dvd box set price. They then claim this figure as a loss to piracy. Its clearly nonsense as the vast majority of people who download some films and music would not go out and buy the film if they couldn't download it for free. Moreover some people might actually go and watch something in the cinema because they have seen a dodgy downloaded copy and they found it to be such a good film that they wanted the full cinema experience whilst watching it.


Exactly, and since the legal system seemed to be able to see the difference between legal usage and illegal usage then, why should they not be able to do that now?

Yes but the studios lost their cases in the 70s and 80s, they were unable to get VHS banned even though they tried. The courts decided that it was the individuals that used VHS decks to pirate films who were criminals, not the VHS tape manufactures, not the VHS recorder manufacturers, not the guy in rumbalows who sold you a VHS recorder.

Today things seem to be working out differently, rather than allowing universal access to technology and putting the burden of responsibility on the user to not misuse their computers to pirate films, we increasingly see companies being made to take responsibility of the actions of their customers (as in the case of TPB) or worse still technological development and quality being impacted upon by copy protection systems (as in the case of HDCP)

[karl]

The content producers do not really suffer from piracy as they are on fixed fee contracts with the studios.

That would be like the "victimless crime, because insurance covers it" argument and even if that was true it would still not change the fact that copyright infringement is illegal

Yes but the studios lost their cases in the 70s and 80s, they were unable to get VHS banned even though they tried.

You're missing my point; even as they couldn't ban blank media they still could prosecute copyright infringement and they did, the one does not exclude the other.

Today things seem to be working out differently, rather than allowing universal access to technology and putting the burden of responsibility on the user to not misuse their computers to pirate films, we increasingly see companies being made to take responsibility of the actions of their customers (as in the case of TPB) or worse still technological development and quality being impacted upon by copy protection systems (as in the case of HDCP)

Again, as i said in previous posts, there are a lot of examples where operators of bars, supporter-clubs, swap-meets, forums, classified ads, newspapers etc are indeed responsible for their customers actions, to some extent and with sound judgement.

But even more importantly is the fact that judges and courts, police and lawyers _does_not_create_laws_ politicians do, so while these important questions are evaluated police, courts and judges are bound to uphold _current_ law. A fact that a lot of TPB's supporters seems to miss.

I too dream of a egalitarian society where everything is free and just. Personally i have a few questions about the whole concept of ownership of land. But i am not surprised at all if thieves and criminals are punished.

PS: on a philosophical and social-economic basis i actually believe in the "victimless crime, because insurance covers it" argument, but i am to chicken to go out stealing

[complexvisuals]

PS: on a philosophical and social-economic basis i actually believe in the "victimless crime, because insurance covers it" argument, but i am to chicken to go out stealing

So when crime shoots up, and I have to pay a higher premium for my insurance, its still victimless?

[karl]

So when crime shoots up, and I have to pay a higher premium for my insurance, its still victimless?

No absolutely not, you are still a victim, but society gets their hands full of crime to handle which provides work for repair, police, prosecutors, judges, lawers, doctors, nursers, rehabilitators, journalists etc...

A friend of mine made his cand mag paper on "how crime drives society" as he postulated that the very reason for a civilized society was to provide basic security for its citizens... don't know if he was well received or not... :)

[karl]

@complexvisuals

Yesterday i saw "Cocaine Cowboys" about the rise of the cocaine cartels in Miami. The last part of the movie touches the subject by suggesting that at the same time cocaine nearly destroyed Miami it also brought a lot of money into the city, money that eventually trickled down to construction site workers that paid taxes that the state used to pay wages to coppers... stranger than fiction!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380268/

I also found the book freakonomics (http://freakonomicsbook.com/) both amusing and intersting

[sleepytom]

So when crime shoots up, and I have to pay a higher premium for my insurance, its still victimless?
That would assume that insurance was priced according to levels of crime, rather than what the market will bear...

We are all victims - the greatest trick of capitalism is to make us feel like we are victims of each other, rather than victims of the corporations which run the system.

Take an illegally downloaded dvd for example, a popular film will of already made a profit from its cinema release. It is then released on DVD and sold for £20-£30 a go rrp. Even if most units are sold via discount store which sell for between £5 and £10 the studios are still making a massive profit from their DVD sales. Where do these profits go? Well mainly to the shareholders who have invested in the film studio, although a small percentage of profits might be shared amongst the cast and crew who actually made the film.

This is where it all falls down for me. I'm meant to feel guilty for downloading a film because i'm stealing the shareholders profits. I don't. Actually i feel guilty when i buy a film as i know the majority of my money doesn't go to the talented cast and crew of the film, but it goes to a load of faceless investors who's sole motivation for involvement in the process is to accumulate more and more money.

[Rovastar]

To many points to reply to atm but

You could claim that virgin are aiming only at legal downloads, yet their is no mention of the sources of movies and music in the broadband marketing. I'm not familiar with many sites which offer legal HD movie downloads so advertising a service which allows you to download HD films in an hour is surely not so dissimilar to the pirate bay's activities.

I am under the impression that places like iTunes you can download full HD films. Surely they don't have to list all the sites where it is legal.

[sleepytom]

itunes will sell you ipod encoded films. They can't really be called HD and are a long way from the 15GB of data that virgin claim i can download in less than 1 hour. What difference does 50Mb broadband make?

However, all that extra detail means significantly bigger files - an HD movie can be well over 15GB! On some broadband connections that could take you all day to download at least, but with up to 50Mb you can download an entire HD movie in as little as 45 minutes.* And as for streaming, forget buffering, judders and stutters. With up to 50Mb broadband you can stream HD video straight to your computer, and you'll hardly notice it buffering. Can anyone link to anywhere where you can legally download a 15GB movie?


Surely they don't have to list all the sites where it is legal.
based on TPB case they would be guilty of "providing access to copyrighted material"

The argument that people could use their 50mb broadband for legal purposes is irrelevant, it is clearly marketed at people who want to download significant quantities of music and film, and boasts of increased upload times which pretty much only attract people interested in sharing files.

No longer is it good enough to claim that the users should take responsibility for their actions. Virgin will have to prove that they have done everything they can to prevent people from downloading films illegally. The easy way to do this is to stop offering fast broadband connections, or to packet shape the connections so that only web traffic gets the high speed. We already have seen some ISPs disallowing encrypted connections on their home broadband in an effort to be seen to be fighting piracy. (not good if you need to connect via ssh or run a VPN or anything)

This is the tip of an iceberg where the RIAA et al could seriously affect the internet, not only as it stands today but well into the future. After all it is in the film and music industry interest to prevent / slow the development of any technology which could see people choosing to be entertained in ways other than watching films and listening to music.

[john01]

The first thing I'd like to say is

http://homepage.mac.com/john01/.Pictures/hometaping.jpg


This is where it all falls down for me. I'm meant to feel guilty for downloading a film because i'm stealing the shareholders profits. I don't. Actually i feel guilty when i buy a film as i know the majority of my money doesn't go to the talented cast and crew of the film, but it goes to a load of faceless investors who's sole motivation for involvement in the process is to accumulate more and more money.

Especially when you realise the shareholders are not always people who have saved or earned the money they invest but people who have borrowed it. Corporate buyouts are achieved thru loans from investment banks, and we all know where that system has got us.

Personally I prefer vinyl, I like the sound, I like the fact you need to care for it and I like the fact you have to change the record every 20 minutes or so. However the record industry opted for digital technology because they made more money that way. It was only a matter of time before they ran into trouble, kind of ironic really.

The other irony for me is that we are subjected to so much music and video without our consent these days, with video as transit media you will watch this junk like it or not unless you avoid cities. So on the one hand it is forced down our throats, on the other we are told to pay for it. When they want to sell us a product .....actually in my case that is when we want to sell you a product .....we choose a song, pay the owners of the various rights large sums of money and play it to death, so Led Zep no longer remind me of being 14, they remind me of Cadillac cars & overweight advertising people.

Underlying all this is an assumption that life should somehow be just and fair, it isn't. What we see is that people will adjust their morality to suit their desires. If you want your music free you will think of reasons why this is OK, if you want people to pay for it you will construct arguments to support this.

The music industry wishes to control its property, good luck to them, I'm quite happy hunting through the used vinyl at my local record shop in Kichijoji where I can find pristine copies of music by Cuban men with large moustaches I didn't even know existed until I hauled them out of the rack and decided to take a chance, a record for the price of 2 cups of coffee and a bun, yes please, and I love the album art too, so even if the music sucks you still get some nice design, but I grew up with vinyl.

Has anyone mentioned the Verve's bittersweet experience yet ?

[sleepytom]

http://www.beggar.org.uk/images/keep_music_live.gif

But of course in reality neither home taping, nor samplers and synthesizers killed music. In actual fact the development of new technology lead to an explosion of new genres and sounds, actively creating jobs for musicians rather than taking them away.. Fear of new technology is pretty pointless, remember round 1 of the downloading argument? While napster was being pursued through the courts by the record industry, bands like the Arctic Monkeys were using the new technology to get their music heard, and successfully used an "illegal" filesharing system to market their album to the point that it was the fastest ever selling album when it actually hit the shops.

The film industry is harder to change, not many films get made by people off their own back, and convincing investors that you can make money by giving away product is going to be much harder than convincing you fellow skint band members to let the world download your music for free.

[john01]

http://www.beggar.org.uk/images/keep_music_live.gif



I had that sticker on my flute case when I busked on the London Underground in the eighties.

[karl]

[IMG]bands like the Arctic Monkeys were using the new technology to get their music heard, and successfully used an "illegal" filesharing system to market their album to the point that it was the fastest ever selling album when it actually hit the shops.

Which "illegal filesharing system" was that? myspace? common, stop spreading F.U.D. like "illegal filesharing system", its not true and its an stupid argument.

Mp3 was in its time regarded illegal, not because it was used to share music with but because Fraunhofer (http://www.fraunhofer.de) had the patent. You can dislike the patent system, but the controvercity was around Fraunhofer patent, and was resolved, iTunes sells their music with Mp3 now.

If you bring up the bolt cutter argument, at least be consistent. The TPB court case was not about bittorrent technology, as i have tried to tell you in about 10 posts here.

[Scratchpole]

That stuff about the Arctic Monkeys is utter tosh, I know becuase their manager was in an ajoining office and he is well connected, plus my studio mate put his web connection in. 'Don't beleive the hype' as the band themselves say.

[sleepytom]

Which "illegal filesharing system" was that? myspace? common, stop spreading F.U.D. like "illegal filesharing system", its not true and its an stupid argument. No it was napster and other p2p networks, which were flooded with Arctic Monkeys tracks well before the album came out. Various "home recordings" were "leaked" to the p2p networks as part of an extensive web marketing scheme the likes of which we did not see again until that florist girl who's dad used to be on telly "burst" onto the blogosphere.

[asterix]

Personally, if piratebay got shut down it is in retrospect good and moral .You don't call yourself the 'pirate bay' and then fall back and act all innocent in regards to what you do. IT IS SETUP SO PEOPLE CAN ACCESS PIRATED CONTENT (the name says it all). Its a loop hole that they know is almost impossible to be regulated by government.

Like come on - when has anyone downloaded a torrent that is legal and found it on a torrent search engine? And if so - I bet its like 0.1% of what pirate bay gets used for.

Yep, I've used it. But its too easy not to. We've gotten to the stage where we're 'numb' about illegal file sharing. It needs to be addressed and the excuse of 'oh yeah we're just hosting the torrent file though' is just a load of crap.

Commercial torrent sites need to self regulate if they really want to stay in business. I bet piratebay has earn't much more than the fine they've received. But without the illegal stuff they wouldn't have a dime anyway.

[sleepytom]

i seriously doubt that TBP have made much money from their website. I mean "Adult Friend Finder" referrals can't pay that much...

The Pirated Bay have never acted all innocent. They have simply setup a service which exploits a loop hole in the law. Its the same loop hole that mininova, isohunt and all the others use. Torrent files are not illegal, torrent files cannot be made illegal as they are essentially just files. So sites which offer downloads of torrent files are not breaking the law.

The only way that you will see a reduction of illegal file sharing is to make legal filesharing affordable. People didn't stop sharing MP3s when napster died. However the majority of people i know don't bother with illegal downloading of music anymore, prefering iTunes store, facebook music player, or whatever.

I pretty much gave up downloading films when i joined lovefilm - for a small fee they send me the actual retail dvd which i can watch and then send back. Its much better quality than downloading a dodgy divx film, and lovefilm seem to have a copy of just about every dvd that has ever been released.

In the next year or so we will almost certainly see a digital set-top box which has built in social networking, iplayer and some kind of legal filesharing / video on demand type service. This is the kind of technology that the movie studios need to develop if they want to beat the pirates. If i can pay a quid for a legal copy of the latest film to watch at my convenience in HD on my real TV then why would i ever bother to try and download a pirate version? If i could click on my facebook friends and see what films they watched last week and then instantly get the same film down onto my TV then i'd be really really unlikely to go to a pirate download site.

But the movie studios seem to be very slow on the uptake. instead of thinking how can we make legal film watching more accessible they clearly focus on making illegal filesharing harder, which frankly isn't working. Even if they had managed to shut down the pirate bay's site (which they haven't) their are a million other torrent trackers. Pursuing pirates is a massive waste of time and money which could be spent inventing new ways to provide legal downloads. Just look at eDonkey, or Kazza. Both of these systems have been "shut down" meaning their founding companies were prosecuted and fined for copyright infringement. Both these networks still function to this day because they were designed to be node based so that nobody could shut down the whole network from a single point.

So i don't see the pirate bay case as a victory for anybody. the movie studios have wasted lots of time and money prosecuting people who will never pay their fines nor be sent to prision. The studios are no closer to stopping piracy now than when the won the napster case. Actually they are further away, as at least when the won against napster the network did eventually go offline. This time all they have done is make every tom dick and harry know where to go to illegally download films.

Its like fighting the war on drugs by putting up advertising hoardings on the side of crack houses saying "get your drugs here"!!

[sleepytom]

i seriously doubt that TBP have made much money from their website. I mean "Adult Friend Finder" referrals can't pay that much...

The Pirated Bay have never acted all innocent. They have simply setup a service which exploits a loop hole in the law. Its the same loop hole that mininova, isohunt and all the others use. Torrent files are not illegal, torrent files cannot be made illegal as they are essentially just files. So sites which offer downloads of torrent files are not breaking the law.

The only way that you will see a reduction of illegal file sharing is to make legal filesharing affordable. People didn't stop sharing MP3s when napster died. However the majority of people i know don't bother with illegal downloading of music anymore, prefering iTunes store, facebook music player, or whatever.

I pretty much gave up downloading films when i joined lovefilm - for a small fee they send me the actual retail dvd which i can watch and then send back. Its much better quality than downloading a dodgy divx film, and lovefilm seem to have a copy of just about every dvd that has ever been released.

In the next year or so we will almost certainly see a digital set-top box which has built in social networking, iplayer and some kind of legal filesharing / video on demand type service. This is the kind of technology that the movie studios need to develop if they want to beat the pirates. If i can pay a quid for a legal copy of the latest film to watch at my convenience in HD on my real TV then why would i ever bother to try and download a pirate version? If i could click on my facebook friends and see what films they watched last week and then instantly get the same film down onto my TV then i'd be really really unlikely to go to a pirate download site.

But the movie studios seem to be very slow on the uptake. instead of thinking how can we make legal film watching more accessible they clearly focus on making illegal filesharing harder, which frankly isn't working. Even if they had managed to shut down the pirate bay's site (which they haven't) their are a million other torrent trackers. Pursuing pirates is a massive waste of time and money which could be spent inventing new ways to provide legal downloads. Just look at eDonkey, or Kazza. Both of these systems have been "shut down" meaning their founding companies were prosecuted and fined for copyright infringement. Both these networks still function to this day because they were designed to be node based so that nobody could shut down the whole network from a single point.

So i don't see the pirate bay case as a victory for anybody. the movie studios have wasted lots of time and money prosecuting people who will never pay their fines nor be sent to prision. The studios are no closer to stopping piracy now than when the won the napster case. Actually they are further away, as at least when the won against napster the network did eventually go offline. This time all they have done is make every tom dick and harry know where to go to illegally download films.

Its like fighting the war on drugs by putting up advertising hoardings on the side of crack houses saying "get your drugs here"!!

[evomedia]

i seriously doubt that TBP have made much money from their website. I mean "Adult Friend Finder" referrals can't pay that much...

Hard to say, the court estimated they had a turnover of 3 to 4 million dollars, I know that estimate was based on potential advertising deals but with 15 million users I'd guess its not small.

Seperate to that though they are also backed by private financiers like the swedish green party and the ultra right wing Carl Lundström who is a very wealthy man. (Even the right-wing Swedish political party threw him out saying he was being too right-wing.)

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/27/the-pirate-bays-little-talked-about-financiers-adventures-in-extreme-right-wing-politics/

As it is Pirate Bay did not disclose its turnover, Peter Sunde said it was "under 1/2 million Swedish kroner annually" but I'd take that with a pinch of salt. The Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet has estimated the turnover at "hundreds of thousands of kroner each month" and international estimates mention "at least US$2 million annually"

Whatever the figure I doubt its small, a site with 15m users will almost certainly be making get some serious revenue from advertising. Then add to that the private backing and I'd hardly say they were hard done by paupers.

The Pirated Bay have never acted all innocent. They have simply setup a service which exploits a loop hole in the law. Its the same loop hole that mininova, isohunt and all the others use. Torrent files are not illegal, torrent files cannot be made illegal as they are essentially just files. So sites which offer downloads of torrent files are not breaking the law.

You got to stop saying this tom, the charge was NOT about torrents, the charge was relating to 'allowing access to copyrighted material' which it does, it was nothing to do with the technology or torrents, but they have introduced a law that closed the loophole that TPB were exploiting and therefore using as a shield from the law.

Whatever the judgement TPB was obviously flouting the laws, it is entirely aimed at pirating software and music, like all torrent and p2p sites I'd hardly expect them to avoid the law forever via loopholes. It aint difficult to see that those looking to close p2p, torrents and piracy websites were going to close loopholes that have put places like TPB out of the reach of the law for so long, after all they are a website totally aimed at promoting piracy, the name says just that, so any site so obviously aimed at piracy aint likely to win, thats the way society is run, to stop the criminals AND those that use loopholes to obviously break the law.

Whatever the arguements for and against, TPB was always an obvious 2 fingers up at the law. No one can really think they weren't seriously bending the law, and anyone who has ever used it should hardly be suprised they are always trying to be closed.

As it is, the law has changed, technology terms are being replaced by charges like these, the charge to 'promote access to copyrighted material' or whatever the exact term is, obviously means that they are putting in place the means to close, fine and punish anyone trying to promote piracy regardless of how clever they are at finding loopholes.

[sleepytom]

Compaired to other sites with 15m users TPB will not be making much money. If we take the court figures as correct then $4m turnover is $0.26 per user. Not a massive amount really. Certainly nothing like what youtube is getting.

[karl]

Seperate to that though they are also backed by private financiers like the swedish green party and the ultra right wing Carl Lundström who is a very wealthy man. (Even the right-wing Swedish political party threw him out saying he was being too right-wing.)

Carl Lundström is such nazi that in his view pirating hollywood movies is a way of denying "the jewish hollywood conspiracy" a revenue stream... jeeeesus (no pun intended)

Its like inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to have a opening speech against racism... hey wait a minute....

[asterix]

I don't have a problem with torrents - but torrent search engines essentially only serve the purpose of distributing torrents that contain illegal content.

i.e. - there have been several torrents distrubuted over vj forums over the past few years - machinista dvd for example. All legal. I posted it to a few folks using messenger/email. The publisher hosted/featured it on their website. Thats how torrent distribution should work.

The difference is I wouldn't have found them on a torrent search site. Nor would I have bothered looking for vj dvd.

Lets face it, the majority of 'files' that would benefit from torrent downloads are large files like videos and software. Audio albums would be easier hosted on a server (unless you want like 20 albums which is obviously not a legal pack).


There are plenty of free options for hosting videos and software also.
------------------------------------------------
Video can be freely hosted on vimeo amongst others.
Software Developers - lets face it a small time developer isn't going to have a 1.3gb application, and already there are hundreds of freely hosted options out there where people are likely to look.

So aside from times where people are using social networking to distribute a torrent which was intended to be distributed amongst 'peers' - why do you need a torrent search engine?

[unjulation]

i presume most of you have allready heard about this -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jun/30/pirate-bay-bought-by-swedish-firm

but thought i'd post if you havent

this is an early articall that came out yesterday morning and there is a lot more info out there now about the whole deal which im sure you can find if you want to look

read an interesting interview with the way that they are going to set the whole thing up but carnt find the link atm - ill have a look in a bit

[Kyle]

Damn, I was just about to post the whole vj loops collection to torrent.

[MotionGuy]

Ive Used TPB whitout thinking of this ! I Feel guilty :D LOL

[MrJustin]

Like come on - when has anyone downloaded a torrent that is legal and found it on a torrent search engine? And if so - I bet its like 0.1% of what pirate bay gets used for.


I have downloaded demos before through torrents because they downloaded quicker than the manufacturers site. there are plenty of legal torrents around, just have a look. but that's beside the point.

more to the point....

I can walk 10 minutes from my house and buy kingskin rizlas, an electric grinder and a cocaine 'bullet' with no legal implications to either myself or the shop owner.

...yet i have never seen any of these objects used in a legal way.

You cant make it illegal to provide a tool which could be used for an illegal activity. nor can you expect the supplier to make sure it is not being used illegally. if we allow that to happen we'd be in a whole new world of shit.

I wish the TPB guys all the luck in the world.

[vjpixylight]

BTW, did you see that TPB was making it possible for web news to get posted out of Iran during their recent election unrest?
those damn pirates:whip:

[MotionGuy]

Do you guy pay all your software ? :confused:

[vjtonyremast]

Hmm... Google/Youtube next? How much of that money recovered actually goes back to the artists/performers pirated against vs the studios?
The VJ can advertise a bad film, a bad song and from it bad becomes popular. The VJ revives unsuccessful projects. And it is not necessary to take successful projects.