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The Pirate Bay Facing "Old Fashioned" Pressure
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Nov 20, 2007 06:31 PM
from the brown-shoed-squares-in-the-dead-of-night dept.
from the brown-shoed-squares-in-the-dead-of-night dept.
Jety writes "Ars Technica has an article reporting that The Pirate Bay is facing legal pressure from a new front. A wealthy musician with a track record for going head-to-head with record labels and little kids is now joining the queue to take a legal swing at TPB. What I find particularly interesting about this article is the description of the 'camera-toting investigators following [The Pirate Bay admins] around in cars marked with Danish plates.' One TPB admin asks, '"What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.'"
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Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly not everything they do is digital. They have atoms as well: servers, laptops, flash drives. And clearly they are making a living somehow and someone is funding their activities somehow.
If I was investigating them I would have PIs on their tail. If nothing else it is certainly causing them enough concern to comment on it.
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
I may not be a lawyer, but it seems pretty obvious that since they're making illegal ELECTRONIC copies of stuff, only the electrons from those atoms are really in violation. The Pirate Bay folks should be able to insist that the cops leave behind all the protons and neutrons that are their rightful property.
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
NOTHING will be found out about them. EVERYthing they:
-- eat
-- breath
-- shit
-- shower
-- shave
-- scratch
-- rub
-- tickle
-- burp
is a DIGIT.
Can u dig it?
So I guess that means... (Score:5, Funny)
Arrgh, Pastry! (Score:5, Funny)
It's good to know that in Sweden cops have options beyond boxes of donuts. ;P
FTA: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FTA: (Score:5, Insightful)
Put it this way: not only was that lawsuit a dismal failure in terms of discouraging copyright infringement, but also yet another clear example of the RIAA mindset simply not getting it. They failed to grasp either the technological potential of P2P (there's more than one way to skin a cat) or the human element (we've had a taste of this and we want more.) Had they asked, I would have told them that all they were doing was forcing a phase change on the technology. The appearance of Frankel's prototype Gnutella client so close on the heels of Napster's shutdown was no surprise to me. I grabbed a copy the night it was released, before AOL tried to shut it down (horse, barndoor, all that.) I could not believe how fast music began to appear on it. The thing had a serious memory leak, but I'll be damned if it didn't work! Anyway, if it hadn't been Justin Frankel, sooner or later somebody would have released the next generation of peer-to-peer, because Napster gave millions upon millions of people something they wanted. Here's the thing: some of those people were programmers.
That was something that even an RIAA lawyer should have been able to predict, and I think it should have been sufficient motivation to make them work with Napster so as to maintain a level of control over distribution. That would have required some vision, though, and a willingness to tell their bosses, "Hey, things are about to go from bad to worse and you had better do something NOW." Instead, they did the only thing they know how to do: throw lawyers at the problem. So they blew it.
So the GP can claim that the RIAA was successful in eliminating Napster as a source of illegal downloads
Not that it mattered.
What's the Deal With Not Naming Names? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's Prince. Or that symbol thingy. Or TAFKAP (I think I know what one of those "A"s stands for).
The summary seems unnecessarily coy about exactly who's behind this.
ha (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhhh...yeah, Napster did.
Could someone please tell me how TPB is somehow offering some new business model for the people who make the music?
The record labels are told people will still keep illegally distributing music because the labels aren't providing it online. The record labels finally give in and provide it online, and they're told that people will still keep illegally distributing music because they don't like DRM and 99 cents a song is somehow too high.
The only business model a lot of people here seemed to support was AllofMP3, but honestly 10 cent non-DRMed songs really isn't a viable business model, as much as everyone wants it to be.
Re:ha (Score:5, Interesting)
At 99 cents / song it would cost roughly $5,000 to fill a 20GB iPod (assuming an average of 4MB / song).
The fact that 160GB iPods exist and are selling implies there is demand for them.
Just something to think about
Re:ha (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ha (Score:5, Insightful)
Radiohead made money with their recent dealie because they were established artists with a rabid fanbase, not a new band or a relatively unpopular one. For new artists, that isn't really a viable alternative either; not only because so few people would choose to pay for an unknown quantity, but also because cutting out the middleman (aka the record labels) cuts you off from the labels' traditional strong areas of promotion, distribution and general business nous, which, really, are the only reasons anyone signs with a label. What would be the point otherwise?
In all, my point (yes, I was getting to it in a roundabout way) is that business models based around free/absurdly cheap (read allofmp3) music are either unprofitable or wouldn't fly with shareholders of the major labels. It's a terrible business model unless your explicit aim is "get heard and damn the money". It is of no value except as a talking point for Slashdotters looking for the next justification-du-jour of why they will carry on being cheap rather than paying for what they consume. Like you said:
They can't win; there's always a new reason. Either it's too expensive ($0.99 a song, $9.99 an album seems reasonable enough to me, where I live that's 2 quid cheaper than even an old mid-price album) or it has DRM (see the "take anything nailed down" thing... you want to try before you buy? Most good online music stores have previews you know...) or it's not good enough quality either technically (there's this lossless format you may have heard of, called the compact disc) or aesthetically.
(I like the last complaint, that people pirate because the music's not good enough; that's definitely why the last Britney album has over 1200 seeds on Mininova and the last Porcupine Tree album's had over 18k downloads...
logical conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Only you seem to be focusing on deriding the people who don't pay directly for their copies of music (according to our brief custom of the last 70 years).
Why is it so hard to see that its ok to let companies with no practical business model die off? I know it becomes a touchy subject when we bring art into the picture, but the spirit of copyright law is to promote the creation of art, not to give business models to musicians. It seems particularly hard for people of the last couple generations to fathom that music (or art in general) can be created without being paid for copies of their work. They can't see that the true value in art is the process by which it is created, that is what is rare. This value can still be monetized, and a business model can be developed around it (think service instead of product).
Even if you don't want to or can't believe this old school view of art, you will face the reality of digital technology. Copying is only going to get faster and more convenient. Distributed technology will only get more robust. Controlling the location of 1s and 0s will become increasingly futile. No laws will be able to reverse this, no amount of yelling thief at a generation of hungry minds will hold them back.
What do you think will happen when 1 million 3rd world kids get on the internet through OLPC? What happens when they reach 10 million in the next few years? Can you seriously expect them to even consider intellectual property with an open source key on their keyboard?
Right now there are more people with cell phone in China than there are people alive in the USA. What happens when there are more Chinese online than people in the US? What happens when the same goes for India? Do you think these huge amount of people wont be able to find a way to adapt open source software for their needs? When they are completely bypassing proprietary western solutions, what good will our DMCA do?
So I laugh at the moral indignation of the slighted intellectual property holders. Right now I am stealing. I'm robbing those who were lucky enough to get fat from an unworkable system. Luckily, the system is changing and I wont have to steal in the future. Still, every time they yell thief I feel more like Robin Hood, and I'm not the only one.
Re:ha (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology routinely renders old business models obsolete and doesn't necessarily replace them. There may not be a viable business model for selling music anymore. Forcing the issue and banning technology to keep them in business amounts to a government subsidy.
Stalking! (Score:5, Interesting)
What, doesn't Sweden have laws against stalking? Because that's what this sounds like to me.
Just because Prince is some big star doesn't give him any special rights. Well, outside of America anyways. If Hollywood had any influence there, the TPB admins would already be in jail.
So go for it - sue Prince for harrassment and stalking.
Re:Mafiaa (Score:5, Funny)
We have your limited edition Star Wars Princess Leia figurine still in its original packaging. You do what we tell you when we tell you unless you want something....bad to happen to her. Just so you know what we're serious we have sent you the packaging from your original Jabba the Hut figurine.
MAFIAA
From the Lucas Academy of Drama: (Score:5, Funny)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Re:All the "piracy" is digital, sure. (Score:5, Informative)
If I were them, I'd be very careful about jaywalking
Just like the piracy laws in Sweden, there is no such crime as jaywalking. Sheesh - and they call the US "land of the free"!
Re:All the "piracy" is digital, sure. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:what's in a name (Score:5, Funny)