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The Pirate Bay Is Back Online
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Jun 03, 2006 07:37 AM
from the have-those-responsible-been-sacked? dept.
from the have-those-responsible-been-sacked? dept.
Many readers have submitted news that The Pirate Bay is back online, operating for now as "The Police Bay." Writes one anonymous submitter: "Pirate Bay got new hardware, moved the servers abroad and used recent backups. So the only bad side-effect of this police raid is that hundreds of clients of the ISP PRQ still have not got their servers back from the police. When the police did the raid on Wednesday, they took Pirate Bay from Bankgirot's secure server room. Then they also took all the servers in PRQ colocation facility STH3, effectively disabling a lot of small companies. The connection between PRQ and TPB? - Same owners, nothing more, this is beginning to become a huge scandal in Sweden with coverage on TV and all newspapers 4 days in a row."
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News: Digital Media Winners and Losers of 2006 36 comments
An anonymous reader writes "MP3 Newswire released its annual list of winners and losers in digital media for 2006. Winners include Azureus, the Pirate Bay, and YouTube. The losers list includes Streamcast, Captain Copyright (and his sidekick Lieutenant Lame), and the Online Guitar Archive. At the bottom of the post are links to past year's winners and losers lists."
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Sucks to be the MPAA... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sucks to be the MPAA... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sucks to be the MPAA... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sucks to be the MPAA... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Sucks to be the MPAA... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Sucks to be the MPAA... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Sucks to be the MPAA... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sucks to be the MPAA... (Score:5, Insightful)
The police raid of TPB (at the direction of the United States) is widely believed to have been illegal under the laws of the country in which the raid took place. Attempting to applying U.S. legal theory to the situation does not magically change the jurisdiction.
Yeah, so what? I don't care about the raid, I am simply pointing out that TPB is happy to help with piracy. They don't host the material, OK. They're in the clear wrt Swedish law, OK. So what? It does not mean you can pretend that piracy does not take place thanks to their portal. Then if their law allows this, more power to them.
Why does the United States and some of its citizens believe respecting the sovereignty of nations is optional?
I don't know, ask an American. In the meantime, were you in favour or against the bombing raids on Milosevic? What do you think of regulating the activity of farmers in my country so that the farmers in yours get a better/worse ROI? And I could make countless examples... Don't believe Europe is immune to this kind of games. The USA are definitely not alone.
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The Top ten (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Top ten (Score:5, Funny)
Looking at it from another angle, you paid $40 for a shirt.
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Re:The Top ten (Score:5, Funny)
Bragging about paying for Half-Life 2: $35.00
Claiming that a bundled t-shirt is free: er ... priceless.
For everything else, there's Pirate Bay.
:-)
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Political campaign for the Piracy Party (Score:5, Interesting)
Investigators liability? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Investigators liability? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember that this is Sweden, not USA we talking about, in here the police doesn't have any more leeway when it comes to laws than normal citicens. (Ever so often we get to read about wich high up police officer got how big traffic tickets etc [the fines are based on income rather than being a fixed sum]).
So please try to remember that not every contry works the same as America (and I'm really happy that it's so, frankly America and the American mentality scares me.)
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Re:Investigators liability? (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the Swedish news coverage, there is some legitimate doubts as to whether it was a legitimate investigation or not. Their laws don't make linking to infingements an illegality. As such, since The Pirate Bay didn't host anything that is illegal per Swedish law. Now, it gets even better than this. According to people over there the national police happen to keep whingeing about not having enough manpower, etc. to enforce problems like drug trafficing, etc. and little gets done about real problems- but they can muster 50(!) people to "bust" a place that doesn't do anything illegal per their laws as a result of pressure being put on them from MPAA and others in the US. It's my understanding that there's a lot of people pissed about it over there right now.
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Re:Investigators liability? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh come on ... the video from the surveillance cameras shows they took their sweet time checking out the server racks. They didn't have to take all the hardware they took (and who the fuck needs to wear camo on a raid of a server room anyway?).
The warrant was for seizing the servers hosting TPB; any seizure exceeding that was outside the scope of the warrant, and that's why they (the police and the minister of justice) are in the crapper - taking something that's outside the scope of the warrant is theft. That they covered the security cameras with garbage bags partway through just makes them look guiltier.
So - either:
- the police couldn't properly identify the hardware in question, in which case they were incompetent, and should have called in someone with more expertise, or
- they could, but over-reached.
- they purposefully grabbed more than they were entitled to, hoping for a backlash against TPB for causing the inconvenience
Those are the only options. How much you want to bet it was #3, seeing as politicians and the **AA were involved? This is a very public cluster-fuck, and someone will have to pay, both politically and financially.Parent
Re:Investigators liability? (Score:5, Interesting)
Both groundless searches and excessive destruction of property would be possible in this case; there has been no attempt whatsoever of the parties to in any way hide what they're doing, there has been public debate on the issue, there have been court cases giving credible support to the idea that linking is not infringement, everything's been open and available. Even seizing the actual pirate bay servers might be excessive, there is no grounds to suspect any destruction or tampering with evidence would be done; the parties in question do not consider their content illegal.
Basically it reeks of intimidation. Anyone around you doing something the MPAA doesnt like? Never mind if it's illegal or not, better get them to stop, or _you_ will be targeted. Collective punishment without due process.
They even took DNA from the _legal counsel_. In a possible contributory IP infringement case?? What are they going to use that for? As it has no value as evidence whatsoever, one can only assume they're planning to place it on some other crimescene or hand it to foreign intelligence. I cant think of any reasonable reason to take it, so the conclusion has to be they have some unreasonable purpose.
This isnt justice. This is state-sponsored political terrorism.
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Examples Please! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Examples Please! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Examples Please! (Score:5, Informative)
Media coverage have so far been very good, concentrating on the mismanaged raid, suffering of other hosted servers and the fact that the raid was not in line with the popular will.
Swedish state television have also done a news report connecting US lobbying and the swedish minister of justice to the raid, which is seen as extremly bad. Several other politicians and the justice ombudsman have started investigation into the legality of the raid.
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Re:Examples Please! (Score:5, Interesting)
The swedish national TV station (funded by every household with a TV) ran a story based on an informant, basicly saying that the minister of justice was running errands for the white house. Ordering the takedown of the pirate bay even though prosecutors had already looked into it and found that they couldn't justify a takedown. The minister of justice and his departments actions are currently being investigated.
There have been an online poll showing that about 87% think that music copying is ok. Most people also think that music piracy would go down significantly if a music CD had a resonable price.
Oddly there have been no mention what people think of actual programs and games being copied. So as far as the masses are concerned they think TPB is used only to copy music and movies.
I would like there to be an article around the fact that if TPB is found guilty of assisting copyright violations. Where do you draw the line? What about google or any other search engine? What about community sites, several cases of rape and pedophilia has been caused by connections made on such sites, are they assisting these crimes as well?
Lots of people are outraged that the police already low resources are being wasted on copyright violations when people don't want to go alone at night out of fear of rape / muggings.
All in all I think the media coverage have been better than expected.
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Amazing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Next thing you know, you'll be telling us that talking about war isn't actually talking about peace, and that freedom isn't actually slavery.
Re:Amazing! (Score:5, Insightful)
And now the police did a large-scale raid, not against drug smugglers, traffickers or other organized crime which people actually care about, but against file-sharers. As a result of a direct order from the minister of justice (who btw is not allowed to do that), and as a result of pressure from a foreign power.
So we have a situation where the police doesn't have manpower to do what people want, but when the US wants to shutdown a legal Swedish site, there's suddenly plenty of resources available. THIS pisses people off enormously. The average Joe couldn't care less about copyright or filesharing or the Pirate Bay, but this blatant misuse of the police is something a lot of people care about.
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Well duh... (Score:5, Funny)
This wouldn't have happened if those network admins were armed.
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Re:The average Joe may care more in future... (Score:5, Informative)
Contributory infringement has to be direct, not indirect. Pointing someone to a computer that has a chunk of a file is indirect. Giving them that chunk is direct.
The difference is important - otherwise, your electical company, your landlord if you rent/your bank if you have a mortgage, the company that made your computer, the chair you sit your ass in to type, and the boss who pays your salary so yo can afford all the shiny toys, would all be guilty of contributing to infringement, since without them you wouldn't be able to infringe the copyright. Oh, and the government as well, since they regulate the telecom industry and provide the environment that allows you to do all these things.
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Re:The average Joe may care more in future... (Score:5, Interesting)
The devil is in the details. In this case, "most of the western world" would probably disagree quite strongly on a) what constitutes infringement, b) how long works should be protected for and c) what the punishments should be.
For example, I doubt you'd find many people who think downloading a song that gets played ten times a day on free to air radio should be considered infringement. Similarly, you will probably not find a lot of sympathy for media companies claiming to be "suffering" from copyright infringement in the face of ever increasing profits and ever decreasing product quality.
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CCTV footage from the raid.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:CCTV footage from the raid.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would they do that? Do they have something to hide!?
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Thank you, Sweden! (Score:5, Insightful)
What's it like in Sweden? What's a nice time of year to visit? Are there programmer jobs available? Do you still have that bikini team [wikipedia.org]?
Be seeing you...
Re:Thank you, Sweden! (Score:5, Funny)
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Demonstrations (Score:5, Informative)
In Stockholm it starts at 15:00 on Mynttorget (right by parlament). That is in 15 minutes so hurry!
In Gothenburg a demonstration will start at 16:30 on Gustav Adolfs Torg.
Re:Demonstrations (Score:5, Informative)
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How many.. (Score:5, Funny)
50. One to do it and 49 to confiscate every other light bulb in the house as evidence.
Two political parties have alread filed complaints (Score:5, Informative)
This has increased the general publics awareness of The Pirate Bay and probably increased the number of p2p users.
A very nice shot in the foot for the Swedish Justice Dept., the police and our very "customer friendly" **AA organisations.
not to sound like a party pooper (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah sure, it's a giant game of whack-a-mole, but isn't the lesson here to do to thepiratebay what was done to napster?
that is, when the riaa/ mpaa behead these entities, they go underground and become headless
that is: no central server. thus, napster morphed into morpheus, kazaa, edonkey, et al
which is the real lesson for the mpaa/ riaa: you don't kill this "infection", you only make is more resistant to your antibiotics
the mpaa/ riaa is breeding superpiracy
you would think that instead they would coopt the pirate bay, legitimize it
but no, they have to fight where it would be wiser to collude. they just breed a stronger foe, drive this behavior further underground, and not stop one bit of it, and just make it much more difficult to ever stop
their behavior is creating the culture of piracy. if they embraced and extended, instead of exterminate and berserk, the mpaa/ riaa would create a culture that would say "hey, this stuff is cheap, and high quality, and easily organized... why would i want to go to a bad quality copy of my media that is hard to find?"
surely they see that that is all they are doing, no?
they are digging their own graves
you can't fight technological progress
this genie is not going back in the bottle
Pirate Bay admin interviewed (in English) (Score:5, Informative)
The interview also covers the political environment and the internet culture of Sweden, and of course the raid.
not a victory (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a huge victory. (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, the action has been criticised in Sweden, gained the pirate party a lot more support and publicity, and the website has been put back up within about 2 days. Now it's hosted in other countries, and if any of those countries attempt to take it down, you can bet that it will again get widespread coverage in the news.
The Pirate Bay has gone from being a website into an idea. The MPAA thought they could just take it down and that would be the end of it. Instead, it seems that any attempt to take it down just gets support for file sharers and causes copyright laws to be questioned. Other countries can take it down, too, but the Swedes have set an example - there will be political backlash every time someone tries to mess with The Pirate Bay.
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Server logs? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what's the likelihood that any records they may have kept of who's been committing copyright infringement are now in the hands of the Swedish police, the Antipyratbyran, and indeed the MPAA?
Pretty high, I'd say. Expect more raids soon... but this time, targetting the people who are committing the actual crimes, rather than the people who are exploiting legal loopholes to facilitate them.
Re:Server logs? (Score:5, Informative)
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Your help is needed! (Score:5, Funny)
The Pirates have gone global this time. They can change their port with the tidal waves of mind crimes and its nefarious actions.
It's not time to save on resources. The criminals can move between countries in a matter of days.
We need the help of a new super-hero [captaincopyright.ca] spotted in Canada previous week! Only him can track down the Pirates and sunk their ship of infringments around the Earth.
Support the fantasy! Don't let our dreams die!
Captain Copyright, our prays are with you. Save us from the Pirates!
Re:Location of servers... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:MPAA/RIAA press release (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:MPAA/RIAA press release (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_05_31.pdf [mpaa.org]
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Re:MPAA/RIAA press release (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:MPAA/RIAA press release (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No one to root for (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No one to root for (Score:5, Insightful)
You were pretty good up to this point...
And I must say I support file sharing exactly for this reason.
I want mass media to die an ugly death!
Lost to me (although better than most other crap they put on television) still represents what makes me ill about television. Maybe I'm just bitter over "Enteprise's" failure or the cancelation of "Firefly" but I am disgusted by most cookie cutter music and lame stories that make no sense and waste millions of dollars to make movies and TV shows that are unoriginal and could be made by an ad lib script.
The only thing I bother today is Adult Swim on Cartoon network because of the imported Anime... Heck... My movie collection is nothing but foreign films because some reason... When you don't have kiss butt to a hollywood director and fix script problems with CGI and million dollar actors... You are forced to make entertainment the hard way. (Which is why I love fan fics remakes of star trek).
If these moguls lost quit making emo boy bands and crap movies... The world would be a better place.
If no one made money from art, then only true artists would make art... Plain and simple. Of course they'd be starving and need patrons like they did in the Middle Ages, but Da Vinci made quite a living without the need for copyrights of his work.
Maybe I'm an art house bourgeois uppity bastard who only like foreign films, but I'd like for one day in my life to be able to turn on the radio or TV and see something that is more than just "entertainment". I'd like to see art.
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Re:No one to root for (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose Used Booksellers are leeches in your eyes as well. Should we shut them down too?
incredibly expensive shows like 24 and Lost WON'T EXIST if they can't make money.
How does filesharing substantially hurt 24 and Lost? The shows have already aired and made their money by the time they get onto filesharing sites.
Honestly, if networks and cable companies would get together and allow rebroadcasting on demand of major shows, the vast majority of people would simply do that if they missed a broadcast. Or they could allow downloading of the show off their website, complete with commercials, in a time-limited "secure" format that would expire, say, a month after initial broadcast date, so as not to interfere with DVD sales. Most downloaders would probably go for something in pristine quality that would be easy to locate and download, over the dubious quality of an anonymous fileshare.
Anyway, the point is that this is not about making money. There are plenty of ways for them to make money off the internet with their shows, as they are beginning to discover. This is about control. The suits have shown over and over again that they resist any attempt to lessen their total control over the distribution of their product, even when it can make money for them. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way.
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Re:One word (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would they set one up? I mean, bit torrent is completely open. Anyone can get your IP when you download off a torrent.
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