TPB Files Police Complaint Against CPIAC for Copying Website 268
Last week, a Finnish anti-piracy agency copied the CSS and HTML of The Pirate Bay. Today, TPB announced that they have filed a police report and are preparing to sue for copyright infringement:
"The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest site for cultural diversity and file sharing,
has today (Monday 2013-02-18) reported a suspected crime to the Finnish police.
The suspected criminals are the Finnish anti-piracy organization CIAPC
(locally known as TTVK). The reason is that CIAPC have copied files from which The Pirate Bay is built,
to produce a fraudulent parody site. While The Pirate Bay may have a positive view on copying, it will not stand by and watch copyright enforcing organizations disrespect copyright."
The Pirate Bay is also arguing that parody laws do not apply thanks to recent legal precedent.
Could make for an interesting precedent (Score:1, Interesting)
If CIAPC uses the copyrighted material, wouldn't that legitimize what TPB is doing ;-)
Interesting.
Re:Pirate a pirate (Score:5, Interesting)
The copyright lobby group is now trying to say "no no, it's parody" but they've been lobbying hard to get parody removed from the list of exemptions and have recently succeeded.
Microsoft wouldn't be happy if you used a pirated copy of Microsoft Word to write a parody of Harry Potter. These guys try to create a parody of a website, not a parody of someone's CSS code.
Re:Pirate a pirate (Score:5, Interesting)
Kopimi... no? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand, actually. TPB proudly displays the anti-copyright symbol (Kopimi [kopimi.com]), so are they not explicitly granting permission to use their HTML and CSS? While the CIAPC are dicks, it seems hypocritical to grant permission to copy only when they like the person.
Re:Win-Win (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the people complaining about the hypocrisy of TPB here are really missing the point. This isn't hypocrisy, it's high satire with the legal system playing the straight man. It's brilliant.
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:4, Interesting)
Its not hypocrisy, its forcing them to live by the rules they themselves created. By doing this they expose the rotten double standard of copyright laws.
Imagine if the powerful had to live by the rules they created. No more police violence because the police could not mug people, no more wars Because murder would be illegal for the powerful too, no more bank shenanigans because the bankers could not burglarize people anymore. So many ills in society over.
So lets make the bastards follow their own rules I say.
Re:Lose-Lose (Score:4, Interesting)
If copyright went away, nobody could be required to distribute source code, of any of the other things the GPL requires for permission to use code thus licensed. (There wouldn't be much point in intentionally withholding things like source code without copyright, though). They would simply have no grounds to sue for copyright violation for their modifications to it. The GPL is not about restricting people from exercising legal powers they shouldn't have, it's about requiring people to do things to help the users of software, and it leverages those legal powers people shouldn't have to accomplish that.
A better viral copyleft license that would require people to behave exactly as if copyright didn't exist -- and consequently, would not lose any power if copyright really stopped existing -- would be one that said something like "you have permission to use, copy, modify and distribute copies of this software so long as you do not prosecute or litigate for copyright violations of any modifications you contribute". That would need a lot better wording of course, but the gist is "I'll pretend copyright doesn't exist and not sue you for copying this, so long as you do likewise and don't sue anyone else for copying your modifications of it. If you do sue anyone, then I'll sue you." If the grounds for such lawsuits went away, then it would simply become impossible to violate the license, and nothing would be lost.
Many people naively think that's all the GPL requires, but there's a lot of details that keep it from being quite so simple.
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:2, Interesting)
This is utter apologist bullshit.
People have always been able to copy - some by ear, others by writing.
This is nothing new. A whole class of monks was dedicated to copying religious texts, centuries ago, both in the East and the West.
Then you come out with this gem:
What the hell is wrong with you? Your argument for copyright protection is based around the idea that only the people who distribute stuff produce it! They don't!! They distribute it on behalf of others, who are just people like you and me. They have no monopoly on production of song and music, TV, film, the written word. I can go out and write a song right now - it'd be a great learning experience for me. (I'm a bass player.)
But here's the real killer - if I wrote a song and distributed it, the odds are fairly good that I would be sued by a copyright holder. This - and this alone - is precisely the reason I haven't bothered learning to write songs.
Oh look. Copyright is suppressing the production of material.