Yep, it seems the court ruled that their intent was to help illegally distribute copyrighted works and sentenced each of the four to 1 year in prison and a $905k fine.
Source: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/
Quite interesting, I think.
George Orwell is dead. So I'm quite happy to submit that his view of the future is no longer one I'm worrying about.
They where sentenced as they where found guilty of intent, helping people to break the law. In that case, BMW should also be guilty when they make cars that can go faster then the speed limits. The system must change, this laws wont work in the long run.
A minor update, that did not show in my first for some reason (I have edited it now).
The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998,^ ("CTEA"), amended and codified in relevant parts at 17 U.S.C. 301-304, and Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act* ("URAA"), amended and codified at 17 U.S.C. 104A, 109(a), are unconstitutional.
To hell with Mickey Mouse and friends!
Are you forgetting that Pirate Bay is a multi-million dollar operation with offshore accounts and trust funds? Wouldn't that be nice! Whether you agree with piracy or not, what right does a greedy opportunist like this have to profit off backs of another company's labour, especially indie developers making a fraction of their earnings? Our labour...MY labour is lining their pockets and I can tell you it gives you that dirty feeling of being ripped-off. Similar to the feeling you get when you buy a poor quality, incomplete game loaded with DRM. I think you really need to question where the real greed is. Pirate Bay's 'anti-corporate' propaganda plays on a pre-existing contempt for corrupt American giants but it fails to address the fact that the creators of your entertainment suffer the most.
multi-million dollar operation huh, the guys cant even pay their regular bills in sweden mate, where did you get this info from... the media? lol
Are you talking about the millions of copyrighted videos that random people put up illegally, or the bunch of crap home videos that people upload? The first has nothing to do with anything - the movie industry is trying to take down youtube copyright infringers as well. The second one.... seriously? Is the mass idiocy of lolcats, fat guys singing, and crappy home-made animations supposed to be the replacement for actual movies by actual directors with actual budgets? You can have that... I'll keep the actual movie industry any day.
Ok, the modern copyright act being unconstitutional. Fact, irrefutable. The exact wording that gives Congress the right to establish copyright: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
No mention of corporations. Important words in the Constitution are capitalized, Authors and Inventors are capitalized. It is unconstitutional to grant a copyright that survives the author. Some of this is up for debate if you have no grasp of context, but it is clearly out of order.
Slightly more up for debate, promotion of Progress of Science and the useful Arts is not served by any of the extensions that have been made. This is arguable, as it's more the spirit of the law than the wording of the law, powers given to Congress are explicit though, what's not explicitly given is denied. This can definitely be argued over, even if you're wrong.
Of course, Mickey Mouse is still copyrighted as well, so it's all shot to hell and anyone that wants to argue about corporate copyright and 70 year durations after the authors passing are shit out of luck. All laws with retroactive effects are explicitly banned: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Despite all the cries of a right winger court, not one of them is actually a true constructionist. Even Thomas and Scalia rarely shoot down unconstitutional laws if they're built on standing precident. In the case of the Mickey Mouse act, it was actually Breyer and Stevens in the dissenting collumn. Niether of them would ever dream of ruling all the previous extensions unconstitutional and reverting to 14 year copyrights, which would greatly improve the progress of the Arts. The next Disney will never exist because nearly every work he created violates copyright law.
As to the corporate nature of TPB. I can't say I give a shit how much they've made off the merchandising and advertising relating to the site. Being a profiteering dirtbag claiming robin hood status isn't a crime. If they were convicted on fictional laws, it really doesn't matter how much they deserved it. It's still wrong.
Zyxpsilon, check into relief work and the resulting effects on the populations that are helped. To each according to his needs is a nice thought, but all it does is destroy people.
lol this thread is soo funny.
First off, software "piracy" wont go away. Remember Napster (as posted some pages back)? We all thought "oh great, Metalica just killed P2P" but how far from true was that? You could remove all the torrent sites and more would pop up. Its only funny because i "pirate" software all the time. For instance, Demigod, i downloaded that from a torrent site. Im never paying 50$ for another game again (or whatever the cost) simply because i have bought too many crap games with pretty boxes and great "E3 movies" that dont fit the game at all. The fix is not "jailing the torrent site admins" it should be stronger data protection. But then again .... Sony and Disney had awesome protection for thier DVDs. It was broken rather fast and DVDs were coppied again. If companies are soooo worried they need to come up with something better then SecureROM or other crappy "hackable" protection. CDKEYS? What a joke, start making these keys random not from an easily cracked "system". You know all this crap (SecureROM Disney Protection, Sony Protection etc) does NOT work with Mac OS? You can rip a movie or game (insert media type here) with Mac (pretty much any OS other then Craprosofts junk). Did i mention how Microsoft got started? Wouldnt that be considered "piracy" now? Or are we calling that "ok"? Maybe a bad example.. but i think most of you know what im getting at (maybe yall on momys puter' are clueless right now but hang in there). The laws need to be changed and the companies need to do more then sit there and cry. Do they lose out on a ton of money from ppl downloading games and playing them for free? They sure do. To say "well they wernt going to buy it so they should get it for free and no one looses a thing" is stupid (posted page 2 i think).
A lot of ISP companies are going to the "big brother" method. I know 90% of them are already on it and ppl are getting knocked off for movies all the time. I happen to be on one of those right now. They can tell what movie and what torrent.com you used to get it, all the important info. They also send the information to the "parent movie company" and let them know whats going on. Again, a simple IP block fixes this issue. The reall issue is not games... i dont really see game companies loseing THAT much money over torrents. Think Blizzard is worried about losing 60% of thier income to piratebay ? haha, they sure arnt. We trust them, we grew up with them, we know what they can do.
Torrents/P2P isnt the problem, its companies pushing out crap and making YOU (the consumer) pay for it. Too many ppl getting burned too many times. Why pay when i can get it for free and if i want to play multiplayer cause my CDKEY is crap, i can buy it. Sounds like a winner to me.... or why not encrypt the EXE's to look for the CD? Why stop there, lets add double, no tripple ... no lets add CD checks all over the place, i mean who cares about a few more KB added to the already 8gig game im installing. Want an example of burned? Go pay for Gothic2 .. lol. Unless you speak german you will get burned. Want updates? dont have them. Want translations? no go there to. I bought it at a US store and it was version 1.0 german and crashed like CRAZY. Its happend mroe then jsut that one time to. Hell even the F2P games are doing it now to. Runes of Magic, go check out thier "game movie" then download the game and wonder where all the good stuff went and why the movie has NOTHING to do with the game at all (not 1 thing in the movie is actually in the game). Companies are lazy. They only care about the dollar ... or yen... or .. sea shell .. or whatever your money is.
Im not saying lets all go download game/movies..w/e and say "im only one guy, they wont miss 50$" ... these guys jailed (pirate bay) is stupid. HIGH FIVE to the retards that decided to put them there. A lot of you have said "everyone should be jailed for coppying stuff" True, ever quote a movie? or say "lets get ready to rumble!" You actually have to pay that guy for saying that. I should be jailed for typing it since i didnt pay him. How many of you made "mickey mouse ears" from 3 quaters or dimes or whatever? I used to when i was little, thats copy protected. Jail ... All im saying is, used in moderation and for "the right reasons" torrents can be the best thing for companies. i like the 30 day full trial thing. I mean i can download an OS and trial a full copy for 30 days without buying it as long as i delete it. True story. Hell even cell phone companies give you 14 days without paying lol. Those 2 didnt desurve what they got, but the law needed to "make a point" and an example of someone and they did just that.
for everyone who supports communism, this is exactly what China does.http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/internet-12172008074827.html
Being a writer, I support copyrights to an extent. Why do you have the right to take my intellectual property, without asking me, and spread it to places I never intended it to go? "Information wants to be free"? Bah! Maybe if I attached (gnu) to it, sure. But because I sell one book, all the sudden it's O.K. to put it on the internet and transmit it throughout the world, because, after all, someone scanned it and now it's just 1s and 0s? That is how criminals justify crime.
I fully believe this thread will be locked soon, like the other political threads. No one will ever agree about it anyway.
Any paying members of Rapidshare Premium Zone here?
Like all things "wwwhttp+s", someone would find a way to start another thread where near infinite unresolvable argumentations will keep flooding these Forums.
I find this situation quite amusing in fact, communication wise.
But when it comes to commercial & financial principles, i think it's a bit less funny if you're losing money you'd rightfully deserve in other context(s). I believe the word *fraud* could apply in some cases, but i'm no criminal lawyer or prosecutor.
The cohesive global institution (neutral) dream of "United Nations" has yet to be completely independant of Industrial/Financial/Political/..al/..etc interests.
Sure, historically - the Blues stood (and still do) between warrying countries to enforce everlasting Peace and promote Human Rights, somehow.
Utopia is a two (i'd gamble the term - multiple if i only could) edge sword and as of now, we're simply cutting a sharp bloody line to separate poverty from wealth.
The real fight is made of intelligence not beliefs.
I'm calling that sentence/argument retarded. That's why i used that instead of you.
I've noticed that you have problem with intelligent discussion, responding to points made, and frequently fall into logical fallacies. I claim that equating unauthorised filesharing with rape, murder, and armed robbery is retarded argument at best. It's also a strawman argument - you attribute some position to someone (sympathy for murder, armed robbery and rape), then walk away happy that you've 'refuted it'. It's intentionally misrepresenting opponent's position. Additonally, it's an example of emotional argument, you try to associate unauthorised copying with rape, murder, and armed robbery and subvert rational thought.
Seeing as this post of yours does nothing to adress any point made, and focuses on ad hominem (personal attack) instead, I'm even more convinced that ignoring you from now on is a good idea. I usually focus on arguments and don't even care (or remember!) who said what, but I make exceptions for people who consistently write exceptionally good or bad posts.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/index.html
------------------------------------ (Not related to above; combined two posts to avoid a double post)
Some news picks from Groklaw ( http://groklaw.net/ ):
My guess is that while it should be acknowledged that the classic business model and, hence, the classic model of IP utilisation, will last for many years or even decades, it would be extremely wise to allow the augmentation of our economy by creating headroom for a variety of diffrent business models and corresponding models of IP utilisation to rise. Vice versa, it might turn out to be utmost detrimental to accept that lobbying efforts undertaken by proponents of the 'ancien regime' leads to a system of law where new approaches don't have room to develop and thrive.
As already indicated above, the main transformative factor of our days might be the growing availability of broadband Internet connectivity. And, it might not come as a surprise that there are plenty of political and lobbying approaches to control the empowering potency of the Internet by curbing its capabilities in a way that long established but outdated business models still can be preserved.
One important cornerstone for the proponents of that 'ancien regime' in this context is to promote the notion of piracy in conjunction with the Internet.
http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/61-IP,-The-Internet,-And-The-Ancien-Regime.html#extended
Saturday, April 18 2009 @ 11:59 AM EDTIn this case, The Pirate Bay already moved most of its servers to the Netherlands, a move that could keep the site running even if The Pirate Bay loses its appeal....
The bad news for copyright holders is there is obviously a market demand for this type of content distribution model. And while the entertainment industry seeks compensation via lawsuits, other similar services... will continue to thrive.... And then there is always new technologies on the horizon. Hollywood might want to start looking at a budding new peer-to-peer tool called OneSwarm that aims to let file swappers preserve their privacy by cloaking their IP address.
(PJ: What I hope they think about is this: if they push P2P into the hands of criminals only, then what happens? There is a market for P2P and by refusing to satisfy that market, they are driving it underground, where no accommodation will be possible for them. Unless, of course, that's the actual goal.)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/163366/hollywoods_victory_over_the_pirate_bay_will_be_short_lived.html
(moved to post above. Please let me message me if you know how to delete posts)
I did nothing of that sort. I used some analogy to shift focus on the essentials, given. But there's a thin line between opinion(s) and interpretation.
Nevertheless all is fine with me, keep ignoring what i share with others, it's anybody's prerogative anyway.
I find THAT insulting. My logic is as good as anyone's and i *probably* know more about intelligent discussions than you might guess.
Troll away, boy - i'm done & through with your personal remarks.
Sadly though, this thread had a premise - good and bad.
I think the Swedes have got it all wrong. If their logic has any sense anyone who sends a textor vedio as attachment to anyone else is also guilty. The whole of the Internet is a free file sharing site.
These are all "slippery slope" arguments, and seem like an attempt to spread hysteria to justify your own pirating. Laws are not giant killer robots that obey their commands exactly as written. Laws are guidelines for a society which are interpreted and reinterpreted constantly by actual human beings - despite the prevailing attitude by unemployed american teenagers that everyone who actually works for a living is a greedy unfeeling machine. Laws are interpreted by the court, and every case is different. Just because the court found the pirate bay guilty of massive copyright infringement and illegally profiting off of other's work (and they are guilty), doesn't mean that suddenly little Timmy is going to get shot in the head for putting a song on his iPod. Criminal cases are generally more a matter of scale and effect and actual harm done more than a strict interpretation of written rules. Personally, I applaud the judges in this case, because they are looking at it a realistic economic standpoint with a clear view of who is being hurt by piracy, and prosecuting based on that rather than waiting eternally for someone to come up with the One Ideal Law that will somehow make intellectual copyright crystal clear. IP is never going to be clear; it's a complicated subject. That doesn't mean that everyone "has to" sit around and let you steal (sorry, i mean non-steal) all of their income while waiting for someone to come up with the ideal phrasing. Because let's face it - people like the pirate bay and the millions of junior high kids pirating games are NOT trying to come up with a "fair" copyright system. They just want everything for free and are trying to justify their own personal greed by claiming that they're fighting the system.
That's too bad. Copyright laws are bogus, people need to adapt to new technology, not fight against it. People like the Pirate Bay founders are just going with a new technological trend, and honestly I think it's a good thing. It makes music and content far more available to people who would otherwise have no way to get it, and they've also forced the legitimized music industry to lower music costs (see: Zune offering unlimited music downloads for $15 /month).
Besides the fact that music / dvds have been and largely still are way too expensive for what they are, the vast majority of what has been recorded / created / filmed at any given time is not available to the buying public. The only way to get it is through p2p downloading.
Also, the supposed evidence for p2p sharing and "pirating" hurting music industry revenues and the like have often been shown to be tenuous at best. The fact is, the idea that online file sharing is killing certain industries is to a large extent exaggerated. The legitimate industries need to adapt to their "illegal" competition - it's basic capitalism. Until they can provide a comparable legal alternative, file sharing will continue to thrive, and rightly so.
So what is the "basic capitalism" method to compete with people who give away all the products of your labor for free? What's the comparable legal alternative?
They might not go to jail for that long.. they are still appealing it. Their servers are also being moved to the netherlands, so the server will continue to operate and they did not make millions.. in court it was shown they made about 100,000 dollars or so. I don't condone piracy as it would put every person working on this for a living out of work (and out of a living) but I do think that piracy has made some software more popular (I can think of Windows 3.1)
This is what I call a piracy apologist. There is no way to compete against free, and only a complete moron would expect actual productive people to try to compete against pirated versions. If someone does try to compete - say by adding multiplayer not available to pirated copies - the pirate apologists STILL bitch about the "unreasonably restrictive DRM". Such people will never be satisfied. It's like negotiating with terrorists; there's no way to give ground without encouraging them to cause further trouble in order to get more concessions.
I see alot of incredibly stupid comments here, so i figure i need to type down something that actually makes sense. They have only lost the first round in the lowest criminal court, a court that quite often makes rulings that are overturned in the higher ones, due to a variety of reasons. And they have appealed which means that it will continue to run until the swedish supreme court or even the international human rights court makes a final ruling. (depending how far the two sides wants it to go) The verdict as it stands here and now is not final, thus nobody can say they are guilty as the case has not finished processing yet. Alas the end result may aswell see them innocent as guilty, only time will tell.
From the viewpoint of someone who actually listened to 30+ hours of the trial and has been paying close attention to it aswell as having studied law, i must say that i find it highly ulikely that the ruling will stand. The procecutor and his band of merry hollywood-lawyers-tag along made a total fool of themselves during most of the trial, going from having to drop half of what they had originally charged the piratebay-boys with due to not understanding the technology behind it all, to harassing people testifying in a highly distastefull manner. I personally heard the procecutor Haakon whatever his last name was calling people liars and cowards. In my personal oppinion what happened there was nothing more than a mockery, and its obvious that the judge was biased like hell or he would have made short work of such as went on in there.
If the piratebay is going down for "helping to distribute copyrighted material" then google, msn and hundreds of other serviced also need to go down. First and foremost law need to be consequent, you cant just pick and choose what to pick on. If something is illegal then it is illegal, it has to be illegal all the way. And if offering a service that lets people of their own free wil share material, be it legal or illegal without supervision is illegal then many others need to go. Heck you can without supervision send files to others via the inbuilt program on msn messenger, Sure it goes slower, which means smaller files, but remember: a 40 kb book file of copyrighted material is just as illegal as a 15 gb pc game. The law cannot separate them. Im sure you see the circle here, one cannot attack google, msn and the rest for this, thus the ruling cannot stand as it cannot contine and it needs to do just that. Perfect example of stupid people in action.
Then before someone makes a brainy comment abouth how they are different due to their name/attitude/their public list of correspondance with copyright holders, try to understand that these things dont mean jack shit in a legal sense. And for those interested they actually proved that they operated with the same name years before the start of piratebay for another entirely different project, and as for the attitude: well its not illegal is it? The legal correspondance is also perfectly ok, they stated on their web page that they had no say in what was laid out on the site, if anyone had any complaints they would need to take it up with the guy who had put it there and the ones seeding/downloading it. Still the companies continued to send them mail and call them and that in turn led to the piratebay starting to make fun of those issues.
I can understand that the greedy big companies get annoyed with people who make fun of their important lawyers and then ridicule them publicly and lastly who refuse to budge from their strongarm tactics (go read some of the correspondance if you doubt my word, they say things like that they are going to take their house to that they are going to make all sort of problems for them in the correspondance) but annoying someone is not illegal.
Also the piratebay has not made much cash at all. There was some rediculous amounts beeing circulated both in court and in the media, with amounts beeing made beeing around 4-5 million dollars, when in reality it all amounted to around 220,000 dollar for all the years they have been running it. And running such a place takes a substantial amount of time aswell as expensive stuff so its not like theyve really made any cash at all.
The industry has been labeling every new technology contrary to their interests since the damm paper was first invented as a great evil, maybe its time to think a bit different eh? i understand that they want to be able to contine to milk the cow they have been milking for so very long. But times change and they need to follow or they will be left behind.
To repeat myself somewhat. Lot of stupid posts in this thread. If people cant be bothered to think for a second before opening their big mouth they should maybe keep it shut.
A nice retort Malanthor.
Agreed, a nice retort. However, from what I undersand, the verdict was based solely on the intent of the defendants and nothing to do with the technology or anything else (if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me). I don't know whether that will stand up through an appeal or not, but keep in mind that intent is used in court to differentiate between degrees of murder, so it's not without precedent to sentence based on that.
That being said, I'm also under the impression that their convction was not covered under any existing Swedish law (anyone know if this is the case?). If that's correct, then I can't see how it would stand up through an appeal.
Nice post Malanthor.
I would like to know also.
I have to say I assumed the Pirate Bay would get off due to the TOTAL incompentence of the prosecution.
Such as on day 7, this
First up to testify was Magnus Mårtensson, a lawyer for the IFPI. The court heard that Mårtensson has been working for the IFPI for 15 years, specializing in anti-piracy work. He explained that he worked gathering evidence against The Pirate Bay by downloading various music albums via .torrent files he obtained from the site using the Azureus client.
Mårtensson’s evidence gathering equipment consisted only of screenshots, as quickly became apparent. Mårtensson’s technological ability was called into question and he acknowledged that it was difficult for him to answer some technical questions.
When asked if he had any network equipment logging exactly what was going on ‘behind the scenes’ of any of his sample downloads, he replied that he didn’t. When asked if he verified in any way during the download process that he had any contact with The Pirate Bay’s tracker, again the answer was negative.
Defendant Gottfrid Svartholm questioned Mårtensson on his evidence gathering techniques. The following questions are particularly interesting as they show that the prosecution has no evidence that the Pirate Bay trackers were actually used.
Gottfrid: Before taking the screenshot, did you turn off DHT and Peer Exchange? Mårtensson: DHT was obviously on. I wanted to be like an average user. Gottfrid: So in other words, you can’t check if the tracker was used? Mårtensson: The tracker address was visible on the screen. From that I assumed it was used in some way. Gottfrid: But since you had DHT on, you have no possibility to state to the court as to whether The Pirate Bay’s tracker was actually used or not? Mårtensson: No.
Gottfrid: Before taking the screenshot, did you turn off DHT and Peer Exchange?
Mårtensson: DHT was obviously on. I wanted to be like an average user.
Gottfrid: So in other words, you can’t check if the tracker was used?
Mårtensson: The tracker address was visible on the screen. From that I assumed it was used in some way.
Gottfrid: But since you had DHT on, you have no possibility to state to the court as to whether The Pirate Bay’s tracker was actually used or not?
Mårtensson: No.
It seems unthinkable that the Prosecution has gathered ‘evidence’ in this way. Mårtensson was further asked if he was aware that Google can also act as a torrent search engine. The IFPI lawer seemed to be unaware of that, and he stated that they never had any problems with Google.
Plus the infamous "50% charges dropped" event on day 2
The flaw in the evidence was pointed out by Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), who requested to comment on Roswall’s explanation of how BitTorrent actually works. Fredrik said that the prosecution misunderstood the technology, and told the court that the evidence doesn’t show that the Pirate Bay’s trackers are used.
This has resulted in prosecutor Håkan Roswall having to drop all charges relating to “assisting copyright infringement”, so the remaining charges are simply ‘assisting making available’. “Everything related to reproduction will be removed from the claim,” he said.
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