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Four Indicted in Pirate Bay Case
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jan 31, 2008 09:21 AM
from the yo-ho-yo-ho-a-pirate's-life-for-awwww dept.
from the yo-ho-yo-ho-a-pirate's-life-for-awwww dept.
paulraps writes "Suddenly the founders of the Pirate Bay are not so hearty. The four men behind the popular file-sharing site were indicted in Sweden on Thursday on charges of being accessories to breaking copyright law. And this is more than just a shot across the bows. The prosecutor reckons that they can be hooked for 'promoting other people's copyright breaches' but there will be no walking the plank: instead, they face fines of up to $200,000 and the confiscation of all their hardware. 'The Swedish prosecutor listed dozens of works that had been downloaded through The Pirate Bay site, including The Beatles' Let It Be, Robbie Williams' Intensive Care and the movie Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire. Plaintiffs in the case include Warner, MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI.'"
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News: Legalize File Sharing, Say Swedish MPs 545 comments
CrystalFalcon writes "In the past week, the file sharing debate has exploded in Sweden, with numerous mainstream politicians finally having understood the issue. Last week, seven Swedish MPs wrote a prominent opinion piece saying that fully legalized file sharing is not just the best solution, it's the only solution. Now their number has increased to 13, and the issue continues to grow. Good summaries at TorrentFreak and P2P Consortium. Original opinion piece in English here."
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News: Pirate Bay Gets a 4,000-Page Complaint 643 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Swedish prosecutors appear to be close to finally pressing charges against The Pirate Bay, having served them with 4,000 pages of legal papers. While this might appear bad, the administrators have already moved some of the servers out of the country, so Swedish prosecutors can't shut it down, even if they want to. Moreover, the people of Sweden are decidedly on their side, with the Pirate Party, which is sympathetic to TPB's cause, being one of the top ten political parties in the country. Still, this looks like a dirty trick on the part of the prosecutors — like they're dumping all of this on the defendants in the hope that they won't have enough time to sort through it and defend themselves. For comparison, the second-biggest murder case in Sweden required only 1,500 pages."
[+]
Prince, Village People to Sue The Pirate Bay 435 comments
castrox writes to tell us that The Pirate Bay's legal concerns are continuing to grow. Prince and the Village People are planning to sue the popular torrent site with the help of the Web Sheriff law firm. John Giacobbi of Web Sheriff has also asked Swedish band ABBA to join the cause. The suit is seeking "millions of dollars" in damages, although it's still uncertain to whom the charges will be directed. The likely targets are the four Pirate Bay founders who were indicted a few weeks ago on charges of breaking copyright law. Prince has taken investigative action against The Pirate Bay in the past.
[+]
News: Sweden to Give Courts New Power to Hunt IP Infringers 171 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Swedish Culture & Justice ministers are preparing to give new power to Swedish courts to let them force ISPs to give up subscriber IPs. The end goal is trying subscribers in court for copyright infringement. As the one-time home of the Pirate Bay, which is now internationally distributed, they face both US pressure and push-back at home. The Swedish arm of the Pirate Party is calling this move a 'sanctioned blackmailing operation', but hopefully the Swedish courts won't allow the IFPI to use as many tricks as the RIAA has in US courts."
[+]
News: MPAA Seeks $15 Million From The Pirate Bay 110 comments
praps writes "Having tasted blood with its victory over TorrentSpy, the MPAA is now stepping up its attack on The Pirate Bay. The association is claiming damages of over $15 million, based on The Pirate Bay's distribution of four films and a TV series — Harry Potter, The Pink Panther, Syriana, Walk the Line and the first season of Prison Break. The Swedish court is unlikely to be as generous as the one in California, although the four Pirate Bay founders are already facing charges of being accessories to breaking copyright law."
TorrentSpy, in the meantime, has declined to pay the settlement awarded to the MPAA on Wednesday. In addition to appealing the decision, they have filed for bankruptcy.
[+]
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An anonymous reader writes "Verizon and Comcast announced they will not 'block or throttle Internet traffic delivered via peer-to-peer networks' — essentially proclaiming that they are now P2P friendly. The decision came as a result of a test conducted with Verizon and Pando Networks, testing the benefits of a P2P/ISP partnership. During the test, the amount of P2P content delivered to Verizon subscribers from inside its network grew from 2 percent to 50 percent. This shows ISPs need to work with P2P companies to improve content delivery and manage traffic. Verizon also announced it will be looking at ways to use P2P technology to deploy new features on FiOS TV." Just the same, read on for one approach to mitigating likely tightening restrictions on P2P network use.
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The opposition made their homework this time (Score:5, Insightful)
The interesting argument brought up is that the defendants are in this to make money, and the prosecutor says he can prove elaborate plans to split the quite hefty incomes from advertising that the Pirate Bay is raking in. While linking to copyrighted material may be legal, making money from actively enabling people copyright infringement probably is harder to sneak by the courts.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The opposition made their homework this time (Score:5, Informative)
The MPAA members, OTOH, probably consider anything without a "billion" suffix chump change. Their combined revenue is in the hundreds of billions (too lazy to dig up all the numbers, but it's bound to be in the $100-200bn range). They employ thousands of people. DIS alone has some 130k employees. $4m is somewhere in the range of one of their CEO's pay.
Parent
Dangerous Nonsense. (Score:3, Insightful)
You must believe that there's something wrong with sharing. You can talk about money and laws the industry has made up, but you are ultimately recommending control and censorship of the internet. Freedom for all should trump the ability of a few to make money through obsolete publication models. Really, how impressed should I be that fifty year old media is available on the internet? The case would be laughable [slashdot.org] if it did not have the potential to do so much harm.
Re:Dangerous Nonsense. (Score:5, Insightful)
And when I find that way, when you start whining that your predecessors were able to take much more money from mine than you do from me, I won't care.
Parent
Re:Dangerous Nonsense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that is called "stupidity": you are making movies instead of plumbing even when you know that plumbing pays better, and then complaining about this fact. Coming to think about it, perhaps "insanity" would be a better word, because "stupidi
"help them profit"? not at all. (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is no right to profit from your work."
Correct.
"There is a right to try to profit from your work."
Sure, even if that's not written in stone anywhere - it's as basic right, I suppose.
"The difference is subtle but very important"
Absolutely.
"and frankly, I'm starting to get more than a bit sick of the copyright creeps demanding that all society and technology bend over backwards to help them profit."
And that's where I take issue. There is a difference between telling society that
A. they -must- purchase Artwork X
and
B. they -must not- pirate Artwork X
In situation A, society is bending over backwards to help them profit and I agree, there shouldn't be some mandate saying that every consumer must purchase a minimum of Artworks to help the artists.
In situation B, however, all that is said is that if society -wants- a given Artwork, they'd better either pay for it, or deal with the fact that they won't have said Artwork. And that, I think, is perfectly fair. If that results in the Artist neither getting purchases -nor- popularity from pirating, then that's the result of the Artist's own choice.
Parent
Re:Done their homework? (Score:5, Informative)
Do you have any facts - not speculations - supporting that any prosecutor, judge or police took bribes from the recording industry or its lobby groups ? I very much doubt that.
Parent
Re:Done their homework? (Score:5, Informative)
A moral prosector would of course tell the record companies to find a business model that doesn't depend on supply of expensive physical media for digital content that can be copied for almost no cost. Since sharing actually boosts sales of music the issue is not piracy per se, but rather the fact that open sharing prevents the recording industry from gaining exclusive control of the media. The only way to do this now is to seek to have ISP filtering/spyware/big brother type shenanigans instituted on the government level and to lock folks out of trying to circumvent government mandated via DMCA-like provisions.
The RIAA is playing the long game here to try to become the world's gatekeeper for all entertainment content and the prosecutor for the Swedish government is almost certainly being offered at the very least political influence, if not actual monetary bribes. The lack of a plethora of prior cases should not be taken as lack of an agenda here. When you make a move like this, it is calculated to have the most impact possible, and the RIAA is hoping for Sweden to make another Napster decision. Then you'll see the courts flooded with cases against infringement.
Parent
Re:Done their homework? (Score:5, Insightful)
NO. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!
UPLOADING *copyrighted* movies and songs *which you don't have the copyright holder's permission to distribute* is illegal.
Parent
Re:Done their homework? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Illegal != !civil (Score:5, Informative)
Official Judgement [uscourts.gov]
Explanation [llrx.com]
Sued for downloading, not uploading music.
Lost court case, via summary judgement.
I don't know how much clearer I can make it that you are wrong.
Parent
Re:Illegal != !civil (Score:5, Informative)
I know it's embarrassing but it's much more embarrassing to keep clinging to something that's already been proven false. Downloading unauthorized copyrighted works is illegal. It's not just uploading that's illegal. The RIAA DID sue someone for downloading - and won. They won because it's illegal. Please just listen to reason, admit you're wrong and we'll just move along.
Parent
I'll take you up on that (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I'll take you up on that (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, your whole post was based on a fallacy and a flawed assumption? Sorry about that.
Parent
Re:Done their homework? (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize you're throwing this challenge down to a group largely consisting of people who regularly write copyrighted works of computer code and contribute them freely to the world, right? Most of those here who don't have a coding credit to their name make extensive use of those works, contribute testing and bug reports, etc. You're talking to people who already put their money where your mouth is. You're doing it on a site that's owned by a company whose entire mission statement is facilitating that, and which makes money doing it.
Parent
Re:Done their homework? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but the
Just to note that you're referring to things not being freely shared which agitates the
Parent
Re:Done their homework? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since all of these various and sundry people paid NOTHING
for it, then you can't make any conclusions about the value
of the work. Sure, you can assign some arbitrary dollar
values to the cost of bandwidth and the cost of storage
space but those are already sunk costs.
The rest of my bandwidth is FREE if I am not already using it.
The last 200G of that oversized hard drive is FREE if I am not already using it.
Piracy happens because the people have the means of production
and the marginal production cost is pretty much zero.
Now since these guys are Sysops and not just random Joes,
the justice equation is a bit different. This is perhaps
the first high profile MPAA/RIAA case where they actually
had any business threatening the perpetrators with 6 figure
damage awards.
Parent
Re:Done their homework? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is valid tho a little rude.
Any one using torrents to download copyrighted material, especially recently released copyrighted material, should never lose sight of the fact that what they are doing is illegal and probably at least a little immoral. You have to balance the immoral hijacking of the copyright laws against taking the results of peoples work without compensating them. Likewise there is the issue of artificially inflated monopoly prices vs what the real cost of production is.
There is a strong argument that 50 year old songs by dead artists should be in public domain. Until our government representatives were bribed by rich corporations (i.e. disney, et al) copyright law was roughly 28 years. Numerous egregious examples ("Happy Birthday", "It's a wonderful life", "Mickey Mouse") show clearly how this area of the law is being abused at a large cost to society which has a reasonable expectation that works will go into public domain where they can be used to create new art.
I would also say that when employees in this industry make over a million dollars a year, they are being overcompensated and there must be some artificial reason why which will eventually be flattened.
Parent
Re:Done their homework? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a gross oversimplification, presumably based on the myopic assumption that market forces are the end-all be-all of any socio-economic situation.
Often, fans aren't just buying a CD because the object is worth $x to them, they're also doing it to support the artist. The value in the transaction is not just the object, but the knowledge that the fan has given money to someone they admire, to encourage them to keep creating good art. Considering this, it's very much the fan's concern that pretty much all the money they pay is going to someone other than the artist.
Parent
Summary correction. (Score:5, Insightful)
Plenty has been downloaded because of it.
All the legal arguments are going to hinge around this vital distinction, so it would help if the submitter could have been bothered to get it right.
Re:Summary correction. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Summary correction. (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't the submitter:
Of course, he could have also listed dozens of works that have been downloaded through Microsoft Windows, through the phone company, through Dell, etc ... since they didn't host the files either.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a single byte of the crap in question is sent through, to, or from the tracker in the BitTorrent protocol. All the tracker does is provide a locator service.
I guess that explains why the War on Drugs is not going so well: if you call the cops on the local
Our laws are not the world's laws. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Our laws are not the world's laws. (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently the government thinks so. The US government recently had a Canadian arrested on Canadian soil for selling marijuana seeds on the internet (something that's not illegal in Canada). At no time did this person set foot on American soil, nor did he ever break Canadian law. Everything he did was above board right down to declaring exactly what he did on his Canadian tax return and paying taxes on the income. All profits were even donated to charity.
Yet the US government felt that they had the right to arrest him. More info here: http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5h9Y7CVPeypqV77yWBmI45x_mP9SA [google.com].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Both probably - mailing a bomb is illegal in Canada.
Let's put it this way. Would the US permit Canada to arrest American citizens that have never stepped foot in Canada for handgun possesion because handgun possesion is illegal (in most circumstances) in Canada? I wonder how well that would go over in the US if that happend?
Re:Our laws are not the world's laws. (Score:5, Insightful)
He broke no Canadian laws - it's the Americans that broke the law by buying. He never advertised in the US, nor did he ever solicit their business. If you sold something on ebay that was legal in the US, but broke the laws of the country of the person who bought it, would you accept extradition to that country to rot in their jails?
Thats not the whole story. He's only not fighting extridition because they were threatening to sue/arrest his coworkers and friends - one who has a medical condition and would have likely died in a US prison. He nor his friends have any money to fight these constant lawsuits that the US government has been firing at him for the last 20 years.
Parent
Re:Our laws are not the world's laws. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless he crossed into the United States to mail his items, United States criminal system should have *NO* jurisdiction. To hold otherwise is to open extraterritoriality floodgates; I'm sure you wouldn't be comfortable with the results.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
At least they didn't copy a CD! (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing they didn't copy a CD, otherwise they'd be paying $1.5 million [slashdot.org]!
not downloaded from the Pirate Bay (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been said 1000 times: These things were not downloaded FROM the Pirate Bay - they just provide the reference as to where they could be downloaded from. Do you think that by listing The Beatles and Robbie Williams I'm supposed to have sympathy? By listing Harry Potter are they 'thinking of the children?' - is the list of big media supposed to be scary? TPB are very careful not to break Swedish law. They don't care what the laws of other countries are - (I'm looking at you USA) as they live in SWEDEN they are only concerned with Swedish law.
I hope they come out squeaky clean - as they should as they have not broken their countries law.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IAAL, but not a Swedish (or European) one, and I know your argument wouldn't necessarily be convincing in a US court. It's a technicality, and a judge (or jury) would probably be more interested in TPB's intent and whether TPB's actions helped result in the copyright violation.
From the Model Penal Code:
Re:not downloaded from the Pirate Bay (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:not downloaded from the Pirate Bay (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Indict Google... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just have their lawyers show up in court with a laptop (with wireless connection and the appropriate software installed) and go to Google. Search for "Harry Potter Goblet Fire Torrent" and click a link. Viola- bittorrent starts up. Therefore, Google can be used to search for torrents, therefore they should be charged, too. If they are not charged, then it demonstrates selective prosecution. The same goes for ANY search engine.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They look pretty hearty to me (Score:5, Informative)
http://thepiratebay.org/blog/100 [thepiratebay.org]
Of course, it could be bluffing--but given their general reaction to legal threats [thepiratebay.org] and their reaction to the last raid [thepiratebay.org], I'm guessing not.
I find it incredibly amusing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Like a bank robber are not allowed to keep the money he robs from the bank, the people behind Pirate Bay arent allowed to keep money gotten while doing something illegal.
The sum is the total of all invoices for ads on Pirate Bay which was found as part of the raid of Pirate bay offices.
Ho ho ho, this is BAD (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This will have consequences for all search engines (Score:5, Insightful)
What about hiring a prostitute from an escort/dating service listed in the phonebook? Can the publishers of the phonebook be charged as accomplices to the crime?
This case will have profound consequences for anyone in the search or directory business.
-ted
How else with the **AA make money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I think The Pirate Bay is the best thing to happen. Because of it, we've gotten rid of cable TV. My wife and I will download a TV show or a movie before we buy it, watch a few episodes or minutes, and then go and buy the legit copy. The Pirate Bay is today's equivalent to reruns or syndication for television shows, or Blockbuster or NetFlix for the movie industry. The monopolists are just mad because they lose control over which productions to push and which to let fall by the wayside. Even better, torrent search sites also replace Nielsen for rating what is popular. I can find the latest popular movies just by sorting by seeds, and because of this I have purchased about 40 movies that I would NEVER have even heard of. Heck, the wife and I actually bought the Bourne trilogy because of The Pirate Bay -- the TV commercials and trailers were so bad that we would never have even thought of it.
Am I a pirate? In some ways, yes, but we own tens of thousands of dollars worth of music, TV DVDs, and movies, and I attribute it solely to being able to taste before I buy. I think in the past year we've had MAYBE ten torrents that I forgot to erase when I realized I didn't like what I saw.
Remember who these large production companies are: they're multi-tiered organizations where the right hand doesn't talk to the left hand. These companies do many things:
1. Raise money and invest in productions (i.e., producing)
2. Market finished productions (i.e., advertising)
3. Protect the industry insiders (actors, directors, producers, and crew) from competition by locking the distribution medium (i.e., monopolizing)
Now, the future is getting rid of them. Want to raise money for a money or a TV pilot? Invest in making a trailer. Put it out there. Get people interested to fund your production, maybe even sell bonds (of course the SEC and IRS will prevent you from doing this versus a market economy where people understand the risks inherent to investing). Once you've raised enough, you go and shoot the flick. Give it away online at low res, or evne at high res, and sell value added products to raise the funds. If people love the production, they'll pay for it. We do. Many of our friends do. Most of my family does.
I laugh when people try to get great shows back on the air, like Serenity. Joss Whedon is one of the most vile monopolists ever. It's his fault directly for the death of Firefly. He could get online, start a money raising campaign, and go back to business. But he wants to pander to his union/monopolist buddies. He loves the residuals he receives on the backs of others. He's part of the industry, and that's why I'm glad Firefly failed, even though we love the show and watch the legal DVDs regularly. Screw Joss, screw Hollywood, and screw the industry twice over -- they're not ready for a truly market-based economy of art, where people subsidize the FUTURE production of more content by purchasing the previously produced content.
The Internet will destroy these monopolists/mercantilists quicker and quicker every day. Their only option to "save themselves" and their grotesque profits is to use the laws that THEY created, prompt the pawns that THEY elected, and force people to pay money that the people earned through labors they actively did. The people behind the Pirate Bay spend an amazing amount of time keeping it running. The users may submit content, but the servers, Internet connections, software code and overall support need labor to keep it running. TPB deserves every penny, and then some. Maybe TPB should produce a high budget movie or TV series.
Making Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone read that and NOT think: "What's the difference from Record labels?" =P
crap (Score:4, Interesting)
Google Protected by DMCA (Score:5, Interesting)
See, in the US, if you're operating an index like Google or Napster that works on an automated basis or is controlled by your users, you don't have to worry about infringing material, until you have actual knowledge of it. Once you have actual knowledge of infringing material you have to do something about it. Thats the difference between Google and Pirate Bay (besides the fact that TPB is not in the USA.) Once Google has actual knowledge of infringing material they take it down and they are OK.
Furthermore, Google's service just finds torrents. TPBs helps you find torrents, but they also host the torrents. After you've download the torrent from TPB, TPB's tracker helps you connect to the other peers for exchanging the requested infringing material. Combined with the actual knowledge of infringing torrents on their site, that's a lot closer to contributory infringement than anything that Google does.
Back to your regularly scheduled TPB Swedish Legal Follies.
The RIAA should be careful what they ask for... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not true. The distribution of free entertainment product is an established fact now. It's not going to go away. Nor will the RIAA/MPAA ever be able to charge for downloaded product what they charge for the product on disk. The market has changed.
By persecuting people who consume downloaded RIAA/MPAA product, they will not bring these people back to overpriced entertainment product, they will create a secondary market of non-RIAA product that is available through low or no-cost download.
The RIAA is destroying the market for their own product.
They assume that because the RIAA product is better entertainment quality now that it will always be better entertainment product that non-RIAA material. But non-RIAA entertainment will get better over time given the large audience.
The RIAA should refocus on what they do best. They should be taking all the dork music and videos on YouTube and the alt-RIAA music sites and giving recommendations for improvement. Then they should offer contracts to marginal bands for low cost distribution of music and videos. They need to learn to function inside the 'long tail'. If they don't then someone else will and they will lose the opportunity to enter and profit in this new market.
Most likely, the RIAA will split the music business into two basic parts; a mass-media world of a few stars and an 'underground' of no stars, but groups with clusters of devoted fans. This exists today, but what the RIAA will create in the coming years is a market where the people in the musical underground will have no interest in the rock/pop star world . A market situation will arise where large sections of the population will have a 'magnetic like-pole' adversion to RIAA mass pop product. This would be bad for the RIAA (I know, they're just a front company, but I mean all the companies that fund the RIAA) because it will cause them to permanently lose 1/3 to 1/2 of their current market.
If that happens, then it won't matter if they lower their product prices, or remove the DRM. Because a large segment of the musical market will have a fundamental aversion to their product, and won't consume it under any market conditions.
This is the true danger to the RIAA in their current actions.
Re:Accessories (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent