PirateBay goes to jail
 

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...teverdict.html

They talking about Hollywood, the record labels and the rest of the content industry not mentioning Porn Industry but hey , finally somebody did something about it.:D

Here is an opposing view which I also happen to share:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/pirat...illegal_sweden

It was a swedish court. It seems to me that in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, telling somebody where to go to get something, regardless of what that something is is protected speech.

American's should pay more respect their founding fathers and especially James Madison and Thomas Jefferson for the bill of rights.

That guy really doesn't have an opinion of any kind, plus, he's an idiot.
(Not exactly quality reporting there.)

The main point is that file sharing, in and of itself, is not illegal and the PB people were not found guilty of it. Most people don't realize that.

Yeah and the guy can't profreed.

Yes it is.

I'm a lawyer - I should know.

I never know when you are kidding.

Legal filing sharing of GPL or other open source, copyleft software is done all the time. In fact, if I download a new Linux distro they'd prefer that I use a torrent to take a load off their server.

6 months ago I downloaded FC9 via a torrent specifically because it automatically runs the checksum and I know I won't be burning bad dvds if I get my OS from a torrent.

Which law did I break by using filesharing? I'm no lawyer, and I'd like to know.

A year???

Some people get off so easy.

While some guy from the midwest is doing 15 to life for growing weed.

I hope that will end with overruled appeal and shutting down their site.

"According to comScore, Mininova had 26.2 million unique visitors worldwide in February, versus 14.6 million for the Pirate Bay and even old-school torrent-tracker Torrentz had 13.7 million and has been running neck-and-neck with the Pirate Bay in terms of visitors. Other estimates put the Pirate Bay users at 20 million...." quote from here

In all those blind estimates illegal porn movies has it's own lion share and that is just money lost forever. How many people will buy porn from us knowing that they can get it for free from torrent's.

Closing those few big sites can start big chain reaction and others will think before opening new torrent sites. Of course that is not gonna stop people from downloading free stuff but it gonna make it harder for sure.

2c

Now that is criminal + bad for the environment!

Actually I seem to recall some case where that telling somebody where to get something illegal(eg. - c.p.) was ruled not protected a little while back by some upper court. I'll see if I can dig up the reference.

The basic rules of law would put them in the conspiracy/accessory categories for enabling an illegal activity.

Under US law I believe the specific term in this kind of case would be contributory copyright infringement. MPAA won such a case last year. I can only assume there is something equivalent in Swedish law.

Quotes from the article trying to equate Pirate Bay with Google:

> They obviously cater their results towards Pirates, but
> technically they don't host the files
...

> Obviously, from a logical standpoint they are certainly aiding and
> abetting people who are stealing from the entertainment companies.

Indeed the purpose of Pirate Bay is theft, they are in the business of
facilitating theft. That's nothing like the business that Google is in, so
to pretend they are the same is ridiculous.

Google doesnt seem to have a problem pointing me to places where I can download a pirate torrent, so they are just as liable. (note: I specifically chose this movie to look up on ggogle because it sucks so bad nobody will want to download it) Also, I might want to visit Amsterdam some day and I don't want to be arrested for aiding and abetting the piracy of some shit puked out by hollywood.

http://www.google.com/search?q=fast+and+furious+torrent

Actually not, but even IF that were true, scissors have no problem entering
someone's chest, if that's where you jam them. That doesn't make scissors
criminal. In fact, Google does NOT "point you to where you can download a
pirate torrent", they don't index torrents at all. Google will tell you which web
pages have the words you entered, nothing more, nothing less. They index
all web pages so you can find any web page you want. Pirate bay doesn't
index any web pages - Pirate Bay, as their name makes clear, provides
links and other tools for one purpose and one purpose only - theft.
That's why lock picks and other certain tools designed purely for the
purposes of bypassing security systems are illegal without a license, in
most places, while scissors are legal. Lock picks are designed for a
purpose which is generally illegal, while scissors are generally used for
legal purposes. Pirate Bay exists purely to facilitate piracy - theft.
Google exists to facilitate surfing the web.

Thats all pirate bay does as well. They just point you to whatever you searched for. The mechanics may differ, but the action is the same.

Also, as I said, google is just as guilty because they will point you straight to the alleged pirate websites.

Furthermore, have a look at this page. Its sitting on googles servers and its a collection of serial numbers for software. Google hosts maybe millions of similar pages. In this case, google is not just pointing you at the piracy info, they are hosting it and giving it to you.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.2...61dae65fcdd102

And I suppose a guy named Captain Morgan actually makes rum. Names are not a means to judge either content nor intention. Does Bass Pro Shop actually sell Bass Pros?

http://www.piratescove.net/ <--- are they in the business of pirating software?

Lock picks and certain other tools are not speech. Therefore that example doesn't apply. We are talking about words as a collection of organized bits, not screwdrivers. And besides that, I'd like to see which federal law makes possession of lock picks and certain other tools illegal. I can walk onto any of the local tool trucks and buy a lock pick set and other tools designed specifically to unlock cars without a key. I don't need a license. Besides, give me an old wiper blade and ten minutes with a grinding wheel and I can make my own set of lock picks.

Regarding this thread in general:
Frankly, I'm surprised to see people that rely on the first amendment so heavily, piss on it when it doesn't suit their purpose. That's pretty disgusting.

No, Pirate Bay does NOT gives you links to web sites. Pirate Bay gives
you links to stolen movies. Do you not understand the difference between
"stolen" and "not stolen", or the difference between a stolen MOVIE and
a WEB SITE? Apparently not.


Do you not understand the difference between a set of systems
designed solely for the purpose of theft and a general purpose
tool like a pair of scissors?

Yes, Bass Pro Shop sells things of interest to Bass Pros.
Champion Firearms is in the firearms business, and Pirates Bay is
in the pirating business.

In most states, you can't. You asked about federal laws - you do realize that
most laws aren't federal, right? Like laws against robbery, murder, etc., all
all state laws under a federal system. As a matter of fact, under the most
well known federal system, the federal government doesn't have the
constitution right to make such laws:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article...merated_powers

You might want to glance over the constitution and get a rough
understanding of how the system is designed before making arguments
about the constitution. When you assume that all laws are federal laws,
during debate about a constitutional issue, you look kind of silly.

So you think the first amendment protects a bunch of people planning
a robbery, and the mastermind is perfectly innocent because all he did
was plan the robbery and tell the other members of the gang exactly how
to carry out the robbery? All he did was SPEAK, right? That's what the
owners of pirate bay did - plan and organize an ongoing series of thefts,
provide the tools needed to carry out their plan, and explain to other
criminals how to go about executing the planned thefts.

Perhaps extortion, threatening to harm someone unless they give you
money, is covered under the first amendment because the person was
speaking while committing the crime? No, freedom of speech means that
the act of saying something is not itself a crime, generally. The PURPOSES,
EFFECTS, or RESULTS of what you say may indeed be criminal - as in the
case of extortion, espionage, etc. The crime of extortion is the making of
the threat, whether that threat be verbal, drawn in a picture, or communicated
in sign language. It's not the speech that is criminal, but the purpose
you seek to accomplish - the unlawful taking of money. Similarly with
the copyright infringement by pirate bay - whether they had provided
HTML links or smoke signals doesn't matter because it's not about the
speech per se, the crime is that they acted for the purpose of causing
theft.

I guess you'll never understand that, tough, the idea that what you are
doing, stealing, matters, not just HOW you do it - by HTML links.
Pirate Bay and Google both make links. Google exposes an index
of the internet by making links. Yes, they both use links, but for entirely
different purposes.

No, not really. It gives you a list of other computers that may or may not have whatever you searched for. If you are hell bent on prosecuting thieves, start kicking in the doors of the users that are sharing data. I'm sure that you can net some pirates as well as the nerd down the street that wanted a copy of FreeBSD.

Your leading question aside, they are both tools and can be used for various things. I can open a bottle of beer with a pair of scissors, and I can download Tokyo Breakfast by loading a torrent from Pirate bay in my torrent client.

It seems to me you're complaint should fall with the user and not the tool. I mean, they will send you to jail for stabbing somebody with general purpose tools... like scissors.

You do realize the Constitution trumps each and every state law that has existed or ever will exist, right? The first amendment to that all-overriding set of laws protects the right to communicate. That's all Pirate bay Does. They communicate. They reply to questions? User asks "Who has a gentoo ISO they'll give me? Pirate Bay says "That guy over there said he had one, go ask him". That's protected speech.

Unless they are conspiring to commit a robbery, yes. Pirate Bay doesn't conspire, they only hand out information that is asked for. If I knew a cool way of getting into fort knox and told you about it, that doesn't make me a conspirator regardless of whether you break in or not. That's part of what makes America great.

Who is pirate Bay extorting or threatening? Nobody that I know of. On the other hand, I'm not sure how well a mere threat could be prosecuted. Unless the person making the threat is violating some sort of parole or physically acting against another person or their property, I'd say it's free speech. Thats what restraining orders are for. You can't really threaten someone if a judge tells you to stay 1000 feet from them at all times and to not contact them by any means.

I don't think there are many copyrights placed on torrent files, and that's all Pirate bay gives you. It seems to me that by their nature, torrent files are made specifically to be public domain. If you know of any copyrighted torrent files, point them out.

I don't see the difference in purpose. Both can be used with equal ease for both good and nefarious purposes. Just like scissors and wiper blades. Your beef is with users, not tools. You just don't seem to know it.