Pirate Bay founders found guilty

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Nate, unfortunately it is not always that straightforward. Various extreme right-wing groups in the UK, such as the British National Party, claim in their manifestos that they are not racist.
However, when undercover reporters record their meetings and rallies, it is an entirely different story, and racist hate-speech has often been recorded.
Currently UK police officers are not allowed to join the BNP because it is felt that they would not be impartial to all members of the community.

I've seen the effects of hate-speech. Racists murdered a refugee in the grounds of our local hospital a few years ago. They killed the man in front of his young step-daughter. Her father had been killed in her home country. Her mother had died after an illness. She lost the only other person in this country who was close to her.

The BNP failed to condemn the murder and have stood regularly for election in that constituency ever since.

If you are in the UK then I urge you to vote in the forthcoming EU elections. If you don't, then the BNP could benefit from the system of proportional representation.

Meanwhile, remember that political groups often say things for public consumption. It is safest to look at their actions and omissions.

The BNP are neo nazis, yes. There is a fair amount of congruence between the Wikipedia article, the BNP website, and articles from British newspapers. Left wing ideology + terrorist arm + targeted group to hate = classic NSDAP)

The Sweden Democrats are another matter. I have found no news reports of anyone sneaking into a meeting and hearing neo nazi ideology. I have found 2 news stories where someone did sneak into party meetings. In the first, the reporter overheard racist jokes. In the second, party leader participated in a singalong. Some of the songs were by a white power group.

While each story is distasteful, please put them in to perspective. Some of the music I listen to includes rap. This does not make me a cop killing, women beating, thug. And if racist comments make one a neo nazi, then Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a neo nazi. (Look him up.)

I'm not saying the party doesn't have racist members; I'm saying there is not enough evidence to label the party itself neo nazi.


As for Carl Lunstrom being a neo nazi, I have found no evidence to support the claim. I am beginning to think the label was attached by his political enemies as a way to hurt him. One article I found was on an English language news site based in Sweden. It was a profile of the 4 Pirate Bay defendants. They do not call him a neo nazi, nor even allege it. I have to assume they have more information than I do, and that the label is bogus.

And I think I found out what really happened in that "100 neo nazi candidates" story. Here is a second source on the story, in English.

I think the whole idea got started when one site found the story in Swedish and used Google to translate. The translation was garbled, and they misunderstood it. That site then reported the garbled story, and everyone on the internet repeated the story without bothering to confirm the accuracy. (This is what Harry did.)

[Nate the great]

Some time back Patricia posted a note a similar to Harry's in a discussion among the moderators. The major difference between the two is that the article Patricia linked to contained links to other information that supported the statements in the article.

In fact, this is what led me to the original article in Swedish about the candidates. I am fairly certain that this site was the one who garbled the translation and is responsible for the whole story. They messed up, yes, but since they are one of the few sites that actually does research and provides links to their sources I am willing to give them a pass on this one.

[HarryT]

Perhaps it would be better if we asked our Swedish friends here whether the "New Democracy" party in Sweden was regarded as a "mainsteam" political party, or as an extremist group. They are in the best position to know.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

As for Carl Lunstrom being a neo nazi, I have found no evidence to support the claim.

Here is a respeonse by Oscar Schwartz on The Register article (hopefully it has not been linked before in the threqad...):

http://swartz.typepad.com/global/

Orlowski is a remote commentator that has read some story on the net. In fact Lundström has never been "a significant national political player" in Sweden. He is basically unknown. I know Swedish politics. I live there. I am a writer and commentator and social critic in Sweden. The largest Lundström interview and story was done by Magasinet Filter, later republished in large daily Svenska Dagbladet . Lundström calls himself a "nationalist and protectionist, but not a racist". But he has supported and participated in fringe nationalist politcal circles, some of them branded "neo-nazi", that is true. At the same time he is married to a jewish woman.

But this has nothing whatsoever to do with the Pirate Bay.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Perhaps it would be better if we asked our Swedish friends here whether the "New Democracy" party in Sweden was regarded as a "mainsteam" political party, or as an extremist group. They are in the best position to know.

Well, the were not considered as an extremist group at least. It was a real politcal party but some of the members or supporters had more extremist views than other.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

I don't think accomodation is possible.... Copyright holders make books so cheap and readily available that piracy's impact is minimized. It is arguable that this is already largely the case, but I see ebook piracy growing while the total book market continues to shrink....

What do you base this statement on?

On sites like Sony's, ebooks generally cost more, than for what I can purchase a paper copy elsewhere. Even at $10 in the Kindle store, it is still often more expensive, than a paperback version.

I believe the price of ebooks has to be adjusted downward, to reflect the savings to publishers. If this happens, most interested readers would be more likely to pay, than to "pirate."

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Sonist

I believe the price of ebooks has to be adjusted downward, to reflect the savings to publishers. If this happens, most interested readers would be more likely to pay, than to "pirate."

Right idea... though I'd amend it to say that the price only has to be acceptable to consumers, no matter how it accurately reflects savings to publishers, in order to create good sales. Then it's up to the publishers to adjust their internal models to allow them to profit at that price point... something no publisher wants to have to do, but will find they have little choice in the matter.

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by Sonist

What do you base this statement on?

Sorry, my statement was more a reflection on the current impact of piracy (minimal) than on the low cost of ebooks. Yes, ebooks could be cheaper, but if pirated stuff was freely and easily available I think most people would choose free over anything that cost more than a dollar.

Originally Posted by Sonist

Even at $10 in the Kindle store, it is still often more expensive, than a paperback version.

Don't know where this experience is coming from, unless you're used to buying secondhand books. While there are exceptions, most of the major Kindle books I've seen are consistently cheaper than the paperback from Amazon. And that's before shipping. Don't bother posting examples; those could easily be exceptions, and you claimed "most", and neither of us can prove what the actual % is.

[netseeker]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

Yes, ebooks could be cheaper, but if pirated stuff was freely and easily available I think most people would choose free over anything that cost more than a dollar.

I disagree. If they know that downloading the free ebook might be illegal and the eBook is offered in a shop legally for a fair price, then most of the people would buy it. Imho most people don't want do illegal things.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by DuneSoldier

If you are saying that the iPod led to a greater demand for generic MP3 players then I understand your point. If that's the case then we might see something like that for eBooks fairly soon.

Yes, that's essentually what I was claiming. I think the next generation of Kindles (or whatever comes along that's the equivalent, if someone happens to beat Amazon to the punch) could be that 'iPod of ebook readers". When that happens, it reaches the next level, where sales of ebooks go up, and thus, piracy goes up. But ebook piracy is a bit more dangerous for the consumer than music piracy, because, as I said, there's no easy way to put a paper book in digital format. At the point where they see widespread piracy, publishers could simply withdraw their ebook offerings altogether. It would be no different than withdrawing support for any other format in another media (e.g., the demise of HD-DVD in favor of Blu-Ray). At that point, consumers go back to where we were pre-Kindle: People scanning books to get them to e-book format, distributing them without DRM, but on a much smaller scale than they could be distributed with the publishers' cooperation.

Originally Posted by DuneSoldier

I don't see how you can get away from platform dependency and still have DRM. DRM is different than regular encryption as there is only really one trusted party. There will never be an actual DRM standard. As soon as you publish a DRM standard anyone who duplicates it has violated the DMCA.

Well, I think if you publish a DRM standard (assuming you're the one who devised the DRM), you're not in violation of the DMCA. The DMCA is aimed at protecting DRM, not in preventing it from being distributed. (i.e., the idea is to prevent DRM from being broken.)

More to the point, it's not true that DRM can't be cross-platform. Encryption is just an algorithm, and algorithms can be copied between platforms. It's just a matter of translating the procedure into a format that the new platform can understand, and using the algorithm in that platform. It's fairly simple to write a fuction that requests a string from a user and then compares that string to a generated product key, and then querying a website to see if that key has already been registered on a different device.

NOTE: I'm not necessarily advocating such a DRM system for e-books. I think watermarking would be sufficient for the publishers' purposes of preventing widespread distribution of works. Watermarking is a form of DRM, because it serves the purpose of discouraging piracy, just like other DRM methods. No DRM method completely precludes piracy altogether.

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by netseeker

I disagree. If they know that downloading the free ebook might be illegal and the eBook is offered in a shop legally for a fair price, then most of the people would buy it. Imho most people don't want do illegal things.

Umm, it wouldn't be illegal. Or rather, it would be illegal, but no one would ever get prosecuted for it because stuff wouldn't have DRM and the industry would be minimizing piracy to a level where it wouldn't hurt their revenues. This gets back to my "accomodation" point and why I don't see how the two sides can reach a solution that will satisfy both parties.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by netseeker

I disagree. If they know that downloading the free ebook might be illegal and the eBook is offered in a shop legally for a fair price, then most of the people would buy it. Imho most people don't want do illegal things.

I think that most people don't want to do illegal things, but I also think that most people are not that sophisticated about the legal issues involved. Not only did some people just plain not know that things like Napster were illegal when they started, but they also made rationalizations like, "Well, if I like the CD, then I'll buy it, so I'm actually helping the artist." (Of course, the user rarely followed up with buying the CD in such cases, partially because the quality of the MP3 they downloaded wasn't appreciably different from the sound a CD would make coming out of a crappy stereo system at home or a car stereo.)

I think what does encourage people to do things legally is quality control. I have compared several Gutenberg texts to the equivalent texts on Amazon's site, and in most cases, the $1.99 versions of the books far surpass the free versions on Gutenberg, or the $0.99 versions of the Gutenberg texts on Amazon. That's the kind of value people get from professionally-produced media, as opposed to the pirated stuff. (Not that the Gutenberg e-texts are "pirated", of course, since they are out of copyright, but I think the analogy still holds, in terms of the value added.)

[netseeker]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

Umm, it wouldn't be illegal. Or rather, it would be illegal, but no one would ever get prosecuted for it because stuff wouldn't have DRM and the industry would be minimizing piracy to a level where it wouldn't hurt their revenues. This gets back to my "accomodation" point and why I don't see how the two sides can reach a solution that will satisfy both parties.

I like your szenario and i think it would indeed satisfy both parties. Consumers could buy the digital goods for a fair price and without technical restrictions, the vendors would have their revenues and the "pirates" would be a very little evil.

[b0rsuk]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

But ebook piracy is a bit more dangerous for the consumer than music piracy, because, as I said, there's no easy way to put a paper book in digital format. At the point where they see widespread piracy, publishers could simply withdraw their ebook offerings altogether.

1. Assuming the book was ever published as a paper book. Admittedly, the vast majority of books currently are. But newer books are often written in a word processor, so no translation is needed. It's just a matter of contacting the author.
2. Hmm, let's see. Retyping paper books into digital format would require a lot of work. Almost as if, *gasp*, it could create new job opportunity. "It's beneath publishers to do that" ? Then people will have to do the work themselves, for free. If publishers don't want to participate (by creating incentives for well digitized books, paying for work etc), let them look like greedy bastards.
3. Profit from pirates by setting bounties for high quality ebooks, luring them out of the underground.
4. A lot of classic books are already digitized thanks to projects like Project Gutenberg.

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by netseeker

I like your szenario and i think it would indeed satisfy both parties. Consumers could buy the digital goods for a fair price and without technical restrictions, the vendors would have their revenues and the "pirates" would be a very little evil.

I do too, but does such a price point exist for ebooks? We found it for music, but I'm not convinced it exists for ebooks. Authors don't have performance venues to supplement reduced royalties. There are many authors leaving the business *today* because they can't make enough money anymore, even though their writing is just as good as it used to be.