Pirate Bay founders found guilty

[tirsales]

Originally Posted by tompe

The claim from the judge is that the at least one of the copyright organizations are neutral and is a discussion club. If you specialize in a certain area of the law it is natural that you are a member of organizations to increase your knowledge.

Of course - but shouldnt those memberships be known prior to the trial?
It is entirely possible that the judge has been neutral - I simply dont know - and that not publishing those memberships was an oversight because the judge does not see them as important. But in my eyes this does not change anything.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by tirsales

Of course - but shouldnt those memberships be known prior to the trial?
It is entirely possible that the judge has been neutral - I simply dont know - and that not publishing those memberships was an oversight because the judge does not see them as important. But in my eyes this does not change anything.

I agree with this. And a lot of commentators agree. And it is a bad mistake. If the higher court decide to let the sentence stand then the final outcome will be tainted because in peoples mind everything was not correctly done so people will not accept the final outcome. I am really curious about what will happen.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by tompe

The claim from the judge is that the at least one of the copyright organizations are neutral and is a discussion club. If you specialize in a certain area of the law it is natural that you are a member of organizations to increase your knowledge.

I personally think that the evidence does not support that the organizations are neutral.

But all people have opinions and that does not mean that these opinions influence how they do their work. I it really the case that if a judge has opinions about death penalty or what is the correct punishment that he cannot participate in a case in for example the US?

From what I have heard one organization is definitely not neutral, the other may have changed its website recently to appear neutral. This tells me that regardless of whether the judge himself is or is not neutral, he does not appear neutral now and that is a problem.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Can you find someone guilty of accessory to X without charging/prosecuting someone else of actually committing X? Can you be an accessory to a crime when the crime itself was not tried in court? I don't recall this trial including any of the actual copyright infringers being defendants?

Apparently you can, according to this judge. It sounds awfully weird though.

It appears I'm not the only one to find this confusing...

Professor Hydén continues with enumerating "at least three strange things in a strange trial": First, that someone can be sentenced for being accessory to a crime for which there is no main culprit: "This assumes someone else having committed the crime, and no such individual exists here... the system cannot charge the real culprits or it would collapse in its entirety." It is unprecedented in Swedish judicial history to sentence only an accessory. Second, that the accessories should pay the fine for a crime committed by the main culprits, "which causes the law to contradict itself." And third, that accessories cannot be sentenced to harsher than the main culprit, which means that every downloader must be sentenced to a year's confinement. Prof. Hydén sums up by saying that to allow this kind of judgement the Swedish Parliament must first pass a bill making this kind of services illegal, which it has not done.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Diffuse connections are one thing: but membership in two copyright organizations with a seat on the board of one of them is more than a diffuse connection.

Anyone having a professional interest in copyright will belong to copyright organizations, including judges.

Without knowing more, we can't tell if the organization is an advocacy organization, or one which has members with varying views.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

It appears I'm not the only one to find this confusing...

On your first point, about trying someone as an accessory without trying the primary offender - I'm a lawyer, and I don't see any problem with it. My wife is also a lawyer, in a different field of practice, and I just asked her about it, & her reaction is the same as mine. The primary offender might be dead, or have fled the country, or legally immune - say, a member of a foreign embassy.

On your second point, the professor's point may be more subtle than you realize. His point seems to be that there is NO primary offender. I say "seems to be" because some of the later part of the quote appears to contradict that assumption.

But no primary offender is a little different than not prosecuting an actually existing primary offender.

[smurphy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You approve of the fact that revenue from "The Pirate Bay" funds some of the most unpleasant neo-Nazi groups in Europe?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02..._bay_neo_nazi/

Just for your info. What would hosting a TOR exit node mean:
1. provide people in non-free countries a way to inform themselves without beein prosecuted.
2. provide bad people anywere the possibility to browse the net, exchange informations by staying anonymous

What now ? is the one hosting a Tor exit node a Bad guy ? or a good one.
Same is with the Pirate Bay. They just provide a plattform for people to exchange files and at the same time take off the load from the ISP's or source servers. Which is - in terms of the Idea behind the Internet - a very good thing.

Remember - you can bulid a Wall using a hammer, but you can also destroy that wall with that hammer.

So - this is a choice you have to take. The way the big labels are prosecuting small people just makes me They should rather adapt to the market and change their strategies instead of courting those small people who don't know it better.

[Ervserver]

The judge is looking more dirty everyday

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090506/1029274770.shtml

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by Ervserver

The judge is looking more dirty everyday

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090506/1029274770.shtml

Wow, from reading that the trial might as well have been a presidential election decided by the governor of Florida.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Ervserver

The judge is looking more dirty everyday

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090506/1029274770.shtml

This is just the same complaint as in the pirate bay trial but applied to another case. So if it is not a problem in the pirate bay case it is not a problem in this new case.

[Sonist]

LOL, they are back:

"After the Pirate Bay founders were fined $3.5 million, they swore they wouldn't cough up a single cent. Instead, they've come up with a DDo$ plan of attack that'll cost the IFPI instead of themselves.

Instead of collecting donations or paying the fee off themselves, Gottfrid Svarholm (anakata), one of the four Pirate Bay founders, has come up with the DDo$—not a DDoS as we know it, but instead, a Distributed Denial of Dollars attack. The plan encourages all people who use the Internet to pay a tiny "internet-avgift" (Internet fee) of $0.13, and send it to the Danowsky law firm, which represented the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in the Pirate Bay trial.

Because the law firm only has 1,000 free money transfers, if enough Internet users send a fee to them, it will actually end up costing the Danowsky firm and other music companies to handle and process all the payments. So not only will the Pirate Bay founders not have to pay the fine out of their own pockets, but also it could possibly play a role in the outcome of future pirating cases."

http://gizmodo.com/5249895/pirate-ba...ck-on-the-ifpi

Do you have $0.13 to spare...?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Because the law firm only has 1,000 free money transfers, if enough Internet users send a fee to them, it will actually end up costing the Danowsky firm and other music companies to handle and process all the payments. So not only will the Pirate Bay founders not have to pay the fine out of their own pockets, but also it could possibly play a role in the outcome of future pirating cases."

When this was described on Swedish blogs they said that if the payment was not a correct payment the law firm had to send the money back and that would cost them money.

[brecklundin]

HAHAHAHA...PRICELESS!!

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Sonist

LOL, they are back:

"After the Pirate Bay founders were fined $3.5 million, they swore they wouldn't cough up a single cent. Instead, they've come up with a DDo$ plan of attack that'll cost the IFPI instead of themselves.

Instead of collecting donations or paying the fee off themselves, Gottfrid Svarholm (anakata), one of the four Pirate Bay founders, has come up with the DDo$—not a DDoS as we know it, but instead, a Distributed Denial of Dollars attack. The plan encourages all people who use the Internet to pay a tiny "internet-avgift" (Internet fee) of $0.13, and send it to the Danowsky law firm, which represented the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in the Pirate Bay trial.

Because the law firm only has 1,000 free money transfers, if enough Internet users send a fee to them, it will actually end up costing the Danowsky firm and other music companies to handle and process all the payments. So not only will the Pirate Bay founders not have to pay the fine out of their own pockets, but also it could possibly play a role in the outcome of future pirating cases."

http://gizmodo.com/5249895/pirate-ba...ck-on-the-ifpi

Do you have $0.13 to spare...?

I read about this a little while ago. It's absolutely beautiful, priceless