Pirate Bay founders found guilty

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

I think this is a bad day for the Pirate Bay guys, but it might just be a good day for ebooks...

I like the quote on the BBC News web site:

"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird," Sunde said.

Er, hello? Have you honestly only just realised that this is serious?

[kad032000]

Originally Posted by tompe

But most people guessed that they would be found guilty in the lowest court and not found guilty in higher courts.

From what I read, the only thing that people seemed fairly certain about was that regardless of the outcome, it would be appealed, meaning we wouldn't really get any meaningful information out of it for several years.

I think it's strange and potentially damning that the court treated all of the defendants exactly the same in their sentence, despite their different roles in the site.

Personally I'm more interested in the case against isohunt. Unlike TPB, isohunt actually complies with DMCA takedown notices, just like Google, even though the takedowns are effectively useless in keeping people from finding what they want, just like Google.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Er, hello? Have you honestly only just realised that this is serious?

That's not quite the full context. He was making the point that in Sweden a gang of four individuals could all be acquited of murder if it couldn't be shown which had dealt the lethal blow, and none may get a prison sentence.
Whereas, in the TPB trial, it seems all four individuals had been found guilty of killing the entertainment industry.

Someone else on the BBC pointed out that the postal system is the biggest distributor of illegal drugs in Sweden - but no-one would dream of prosecuting the boss of the postal service.

[tirsales]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

2) People trading files aren't "sharing" anything. When you "share", you either a) give something to someone temporarily, b) give someone something to keep, leaving less for yourself, or c) keep something in a communal area where multiple people have access to it. None of these definitions apply to this kind of "file sharing". The Pirate Bay was facilitating file transfers, which resulted in reproduction of files, not "sharing".

Well, one could argue with c) - and this argument is purely semantic.

I do not think that DRM is the ultimate answer to this. DRM is a temporary, necessary evil while companies/IP providers figure out if there's an actual market for these things.

Why? IF the market works without DRM (as demonstrated by music shops ATM) - then there is no need to test the market with a different instrument. In fact testing a market with a considerably different model (DRM) removes all sense of tests.
DRM is a evil. Full stop.

I would personally love to see all e-books distributed in open epub, MOBI, or (although I don't really like the format...) PDF format. Pirate Bay and similar sites slow that process down, though.

Nonsense. Without those sides music companies never would have started a download market without the concurrency through P2P (etc) - see their long, long fight against downloadable music, their continuing support of utterly useless formats (in low quality), etc

If you know people can get something for free, you have a hard time justifying starting a venture to sell it to them. The venture itself costs money, after all.

Why? Provide more service ... Keeping to this old market system is plain stupid.

I think this is a bad day for the Pirate Bay guys, but it might just be a good day for ebooks...

Why? You have not given a single argument that publishers will e.g. learn from the music industry (from their current development, not their errors) or that there even is a substantial ebook piracy or that it damages the market OR WHATEVER ELSE.

[kad032000]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Er, hello? Have you honestly only just realised that this is serious?

Nowhere does it say he "only just" realized this.

[Jovvi]

I still think the argument "people will not pay when they can get it for free" is flawed. People vill pay if service is easy, fast, reliable. They will probably not pay if service is poor, difficult and overly expensive. For example I buy lots and lots of books on fictionwise, despite being a librarian whit accsess to thousends of free books. Quite a few of my books i hav several copies of (hardcover and pbook, hardcover and ebook or pbook and ebook. I really whant my favorite authors to keep on writing...

However, if said author calls me a thief for letting my sister read my books I lose interest in supporting said author.

And the creativity card "filesharing will stop creators from creating when they can´t put bread on the table" is ridiculus. People have a need to express themselves an create and vill continue to do so.

back to topic
Today people use TPB to test music, or movies or audiobooks out... Then they buy the good stuff and get rid of the rest. Sure some people will stop paying and just download but that is the way things are now. The publishers, record labels and movie studios will have to change, but they will not do so voluntary. If they could musicians in the 1920s would have stoped sound recordings in movie theaters and vi would still have musicians playing piano during the silent movie.

Also as someone pointed out, people in sweden get away with murder and paying like 50 000 crowns and the pirate bay guys have to pay 30 million. How is that right?
Clara

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Someone else on the BBC pointed out that the postal system is the biggest distributor of illegal drugs in Sweden - but no-one would dream of prosecuting the boss of the postal service.

That's because the "boss of the postal service" doesn't publicly advocate using his service for illegal activities, and clearly states that violators of legal regulations (if caught) will be prosecuted.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

I'm not sure explicitly aiding copyright violation is wrong on it face. See the thread where some people can't even agree that copyright violation is wrong, period. Or the thread regarding whether or not certain python scripts explicitly aid in copyright violation.

You'll always be able to find people who don't believe violating a law is wrong. There are people who don't believe rape or child molestation is wrong, either. What the Pirate Bay guys were doing was explicitly bragging about helping people break the law. They didn't even have the common decency to be discrete about it.

The Python script in question doesn't aid in copyright violation, from what I can tell. All that script does is provide a PID so that you can buy Mobipocket books (if I'm understanding which Python script you're talking about). It's certainly arguable that a script which allows you to strip DRM off of a file is a violation of copyright, but I think that's much more of a stretch. You're not "copying" anything when you use such a mechanism, and you're not making anything available to be copied to anyone else. It's certainly a necessary step towards copyright violation, but it's not copyright violation in and of itself, as there are fair use reasons one would want to remove the DRM from an e-book (e.g., your Kindle dies and you want to read your book on your PC). That's not to say that it's legal under the DMCA. I don't know if it is, and I suspect it's not, but the DMCA involves more than just copyright, strictly speaking.

Originally Posted by sirbruce

Even if we could agree that copyright violation is wrong, providing tools or mechanisms to make it easier for other people to commit copyright violation is not necessarily wrong. Even if those tools were originally intended to commit copyright violation.

Providing tools that allow someone to commit copyright violation isn't wrong. In fact, there are lots of mechanisms (photocopying, faxing, digital imaging, OCR, speech-to-text) that can be used for copyright violation. It actually takes some work to implement a mechanism to prevent copyright violation for any device which allows digital reproduction. What sets The Pirate Bay apart from, say, TiVo, is the fact that the people that ran The Pirate Bay treated copyright law with contempt, and apparently continue to do so. In addition, because torrent files contain metadata, and because users have to register their e-mail addresses before they can upload torrents, they could, if they wanted to, ban users that try to seed copyrighted material (or at least any material that they receive complaints about). Because of the e-mail and the metadata involved, this should be a trivial matter for programmers.

But the fact of the matter is, they intended to violate copyrights, and they were proud of it. The fact that they hosted ads on the site shows where they were really coming from: They were all about the money, and knew that copyrighted material drove people to their site (not unlike Napster, in ye olden days). It's actually a weird kind of dichotomy. On one hand, they act like greedy little leeches, while on the other, their anti-copyright stance makes Richard Stallman look like Gordon Gekko.

The underlying technology for The Pirate Bay is little more than glorified FTP writ large. Sending and receiving data is the whole purpose of the Internet, after all. The problem with The Pirate Bay and the like (as opposed to other sites, which let you host files in a more neutral way) is that they were sending and receiving data which they knew was violating someone's intellectual property rights. They knew it because that's what they intended. The people that started The Pirate Bay weren't neutral about the enforcement of copyright and intellectual property laws in general. Thy want to see them destroyed.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by Good Old Neon

That’s absurd – there are major distinctions between what is implied by socialist and neo-nazi. The only persons who still get their panties in a bunch w/r/t anything that even remotely resembles socialism, typically spend their days listening to the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity, when they’re not reading Ann Coulter.

Which is to say, morons.....

Uhm, how open-minded to those with differing political views.... Would you like to line them up against the wall, too?

I guess you've never lived, or talked to, anyone who's had the joy to live in a socialist paradise.

BTW, both socialism and nazi-sm (as in the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party), often appeal to the same constituency. Except, that socialist powers never had fashionable uniforms, to appeal to the beer-sloshing unemployed of Europe's poorer parts. So, while throwing Molotov cocktails, they prefer to wear black shirts, rather than waiving red flags.

But, if you look at Greece and France, or at the regular violence at the G8 summits, the left can still burn a few cars and loot a few stores.

[tirsales]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

You'll always be able to find people who don't believe violating a law is wrong. There are people who don't believe rape or child molestation is wrong, either.

You are not seriously comparing copyright violation and child molestation?

[HarryT]

Can someone who is familiar with the Swedish legal system explain why it is that these four gentlemen are not now in prison, given that they have been found guilty and sentenced? Do you only actually go to prison when the appeals process has been exhausted in Sweden? For any crime?

The way it works in the UK, by contrast, is that you'd go to prison immediately. If you wish to appeal, you can do so - but from prison.

[Jellby]

I'm not an expert in Swedish law, nor in any kind of law, but I guess they would be in prison now if they had been found guilty of murder, rape, or a similar crime; being "just" copyright infringement is probably different.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

If you know people can get something for free, you have a hard time justifying starting a venture to sell it to them. The venture itself costs money, after all.

I think this is a bad day for the Pirate Bay guys, but it might just be a good day for ebooks...

I think there are still many reasons why being able to buy ebooks from a reputable ebook seller far outweighs "free"

If the ebook seller can sell well formatted copies for a reasonable amount it's well worth the effort of spending a few bucks to save time going to the free places and wading through multiple copies of not so well formatted ebooks.

There is a market as Baen has proven for ebooks.

The big companies are just greedy bastards who charge 29 dollars for an ebook when the paper copy at amazon is only 16 dollars!

Until that issue can be resolved I don't see the sites like the Pirate Bay going away anytime soon. At 29 dollars it's well worth my time and effort to hit the "free" sites to find what I'm looking for.

Sadly, Baen is the only publisher that seems to have a clue as to what their customers want. So I do buy ebooks from them because they provide value at a low cost. And what they offer is worth more than "free."

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by Amalthia

...There is a market as Baen has proven for ebooks....

Duh :-)

Again, and again: It's the Price, ....!!!

If you charge too much for your product, you'll capture a small percent of paying users, and a larger percent will resort to piracy. Charge a competitive rate, and you'll capture a larger percent paying users, while fewer will resort to piracy to obtain your product.

I know some don't like this, but it's a fact of life, and a fact of the market. If it's not PirateBay, it will be someone else. Kind of like the drug war.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Amalthia

Sadly, Baen is the only publisher that seems to have a clue as to what their customers want. So I do buy ebooks from them because they provide value at a low cost. And what they offer is worth more than "free."

They are not the only ones, for the record. There are a number of small pubs and independents that provide similarly customer-friendly service and value. And just as Napster influenced online music enterprise, hopefully the influence of indies and small pubs will eventually influence the big pubs to be more customer-friendly.

TPB takes advantage of a singular lack of customer-friendliness in the online entertainment industry, in order to thrive. In fact, if the entertainment industry at large had been more customer-friendly, TPB would not have had as large a market of illegal material, and they would not have risen to enough prominence to be attacked by the entertainment industry. (So, in a way, the entertainment industry has caused their own problem...)

If that industry changes its tack and becomes more customer-friendly and value-added, you'll see a lot less patronage of sites like TPB.