Pirate Bay founders found guilty

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

So the verdict is out but TPB is still up and running?

The individuals were sued for "assisting copyright infringement", not the site as a whole. As of this moment in time, the Piratebay is still perfectly legal.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

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.

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. It's the author and/or publisher that would withdraw their support from e-books.

The vast majority of books, as far as I know, now originate as electronic files, but that doesn't mean that the author and/or the publisher has to make these files available to consumers. That's what I'm talking about: If it's not in their interest, they'll just continue to publish in paper, and forget about ebooks altogether.

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

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.

Do you seriously believe that someone is going to sit there and manually type in the contents of a book from scratch? Not even the people at the Gutenberg Project do that. They, at least, use scanners. Not only that, but do you really want to read a book that's been copied this way? You'd see the quality of the texts go down precipitously.

I'm not saying that you'd never see books pirated the old-fashioned way. Certainly, there are some people who would sit there and scan page after page of a book. But the availability of books would go way down.

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

3. Profit from pirates by setting bounties for high quality ebooks, luring them out of the underground.

Good luck with that. Only an idiot would want to bring down the wrath of the government on them in that way. That's the kind of thing you see happen in foreign countries that are normally beyond the reach of U.S. law (until the F.B.I. gets cooperation from other countries).

Originally Posted by b0rsuk

4. A lot of classic books are already digitized thanks to projects like Project Gutenberg.

Sure. Those are out-of-copyright books that don't have legal issues. That project also has dedicated people who scan page after page of books into OCR software.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

So the verdict is out but TPB is still up and running?

Well, why should it not be running?

Copyright lobby organization tried to get ISPs in Sweden to block piratebay (which probably is not located in Sweden) but they refused stating that stating the reasons that the site itself had not been sentenced and that the sentence is or will be appealed so the question is really not closed yet.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

That's why I put "easily" in quotes. Bottom line: Baen's approach to ebooks may be great, but it doesn't solve most authors' primary problem.

I think I see what you were trying to get at. So: No! I don't think we can fix most authors' primary problem by telling them to publish with Baen. That obviously wouldn't work. Baen itself -- by itself -- is not going to fix industry-wide sales problems, nor will it pump sales up industry-wide.

I was attempting to suggest something else -- Baen has demonstrated that their business model works well in the current environment. I was intending to suggest that said business model might well put a real dent in eBook piracy, if it were adopted by many more (or even most) publishers. It would do that by pricing eBooks at a level that seems fair to many purchasers, by treating the end users (that's us readers!) with respect, and also by increasing the percentage of the sales dollar that makes it back to the authors who are the primary producers of value. Most of the "better royalties for the authors" part comes from cutting an entire layer out of the sales channel.

Xenophon

[sirbruce]

Well I still feel that as people shift from pbooks to ebooks, ebook piracy is going to grow and become significantly more of a threat, whether a publisher is using the Baen approach or not. And then we'll have to wait and see what Baen does. But perhaps I'm just a pessimist!

[pdurrant]

Heinlein was hardly "most writers".

And while there are several writers one can call to mind immediately, who have made plenty of money from their writing -- Jeffrey Archer, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, -- most writers do not make a living from their writing. Nor did they in the past.

Originally Posted by sirbruce

Yes, but that was not the way it used to be. At least not for a writer who got published regularly. Writing short stories got Heinlein *out* of debt, not into it!

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Heinlein was hardly "most writers".

And while there are several writers one can call to mind immediately, who have made plenty of money from their writing -- Jeffrey Archer, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, -- most writers do not make a living from their writing. Nor did they in the past.

I've already debunked that response, more than once, but obviously I'm not communicating here, so I give up. Believe what you want.

[harryE123]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

You're absolutely entitled to your opinion; but how much money flowing through Hollywood ends up bankrolling organised crime?
Are you saying we shouldn't buy Hollywood DVDs?

Excellent point. I would wager organised crime pretty much owns hollywood.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Jovvi

Well I think this is a sad day for Sweden because it kind of shows that the courts are totally inkompetent in the use of Internet. I´m not surprised bu I´m sad. I have never used Pirate Bay or any other torrent tracker but I just can´t accept that our use of Internet should be decided by multinational corporations.

I'm still trying to figure out what they were actually found guilty of. Is "accessory to copyright infringement" actually a law in Sweden? I've never heard of it before. There's no such thing in the US that I know of.

Also, the judge's explanation of why they were found guilty could be applied to a lot of websites, many of them mainstream.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

Why is it always about the authors when we're talking about copyright, and never about the whole system?

Because it's a lot easier for people who are trying to defend the system to use "poor starving artist" instead of "poor starving industry executive". It's very rare that you see anybody who is pro-filesharing say their goal is to hurt the artists themselves, it's almost always to hurt/eliminate the middlemen. However, the people trying to defend the industry always spin the conversation into "pirates" vs "starving artists" because it's easier to get an emotional response that way.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

So the verdict is out but TPB is still up and running?

This trial was not against TPB. It was against the individuals who currently run it. The ruling has no effect on TPB itself.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I'm still trying to figure out what they were actually found guilty of. Is "accessory to copyright infringement" actually a law in Sweden? I've never heard of it before. There's no such thing in the US that I know of.

There is a general law about accessory to X and that can give the same sentence as X.

[fugazied]

This is a sad decision and demonstrates the power corporations have over decisions in other countries where they should have no power. I like the fact the pirate bay exists, just because it acts as a catalyst, speeding up the move to the Internet and slaps the RIAA, MPAA in the face.
Corporations have been extending and fortifying copyright for years and paying artists a tiny amount of the overall price for copyrighted material. They just want profit and don't care who gets hurt in the path to that profit, consumers, culture, artists. The recording industry just wants to continue charging $15 for a CD and giving the artist $0.60 out of that. They want to move that model to the internet and aren't compfortable with any attacks on copyright.

[kyliedork]

the sweet irony is that Pirate Bay was convicted of a crime with maritime admiralty law, not common law. I wonder if they considered the word "dock" whilst standing in the "dock" to hear their conviction.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by tompe

There is a general law about accessory to X and that can give the same sentence as X.

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.