Pirate Bay Gets a 4,000-Page Complaint

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."

Dude, I so have this one:

Don't read any of the complaint.
When they ask you to enter the plea, you say:
"Oh, we thought we were members of the US Congress faced with a piece of legislation. Dont tase me, bro."
Worked for me.

Re:Dude, I so have this one:

A 'top ten' political party means the people of the country are behind you? You mean, like just how the American people are behind Ron Paul.

Looking forward to watching the Pirates of the Bay become a different kind of 'pirate.'

Re:Dude, I so have this one:

In the elections 2006, the Piratparty got a stunning 0,63 % of the votes cast.

More significant may be that according to polls, 30-40 % of those who answer say that they share files on internet.

Wrong file type

I would have just replied "Sorry, we can only read ODF, what us being communist hipppy pirates and all"

Re:Dude, I so have this one:

Well looks like they wont have to go to COSTCO/SAM CLUB/MAKRO for the super-mega pack of toilet rolls this month.

4,000 pages?

Is there a link to the .torrent?

Re:Dude, I so have this one:

I guess the biggest murder case was the one on Olof Palme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olof_Palme) our prime minister, it's been over 21 years (died 1 march 1986) since then and it haven't been solved yet. And I guess they have put quite a lot of effort into that one.

Second biggest?

The second biggest murder case required 1500, how much did the biggest require?

Probably "Olof Palme" @ ~700 000

The second biggest murder case required 1500, how much did the biggest require?

The biggest would probably be the Olof Palme [wikipedia.org] assassination which remains unsolved and have been under investigation since 1986. Current page count of the investigation is approximately 700 000 based on the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].

Re:Second biggest?

"There are only 2 parties here, but many other countries have far more than 2 parties."

I had to research to see that you are probably in the USA because you didn't state that specifically. While we in the USA have two predominant parties, there are many other registered parties. Keep in mind that the Libertarian and Green parties are slowly gaining supporters and the Democrats and especially Republicans are losing supporters as other parties propound ideals that fall in line with voters' primary concerns. Ron Paul has not done well in the primaries but he sure as hell has done well with fund gathering. Bloomberg may run as an independent and with his personal capital available as funds he may be a lot more successful than Perot was.

I've been a bit off topic here but I'll try to bring it back on track...It really doesn't matter how many parties are involved in a country's government. The majority party gets to write the rules (laws) and more importantly...interpret them. The Swedish government is no different than any other country. If the powers that be get a bug up their ass, they will swat it to the extent that they can whether that is "right" or not.

Damn, I sound awfully cynical tonight.

Re:Second biggest?

The majority party gets to write the rules (laws)

Not quite. The system is far more nuanced.

There is no single majority party. The largest party has only 35% [electionresources.org] * and is on the side that lost in the last election. On that side there are three parties. The winning side, and thus the government, is an alliance of four parties.

The winning alliance is somewhat to the right, the others are somewhat to the left. There are lots of other parties, but here I'm only including the seven that have seats in the parliament.

Our multi-party system is probably somewhat less efficient than the US two-party system, because of the need for constant haggling and give-and-take and compromise, but it has the important advantage that, as voters, we can nuance our votes by voting, not only for a preferred side, but also for one of the parties within that side.

Each voter can optionally nuance his vote further, by voting not only for a party, but also for one individual within the party that he votes for.

(The way this works is, by voting for a party you vote for a list of representatives, and optionally you can also mark one of the members of the list. Members with many such individual votes get precedence.)

* Thank you furbearntrout for that link. [slashdot.org]

Re:Second biggest?

Australia has a fishing party. :)

Unfortunately we dont get to hear much from them. They are usually out fishing.

Re:Second biggest?

Oh, and speaking of the Pirate Bay investigation, Pirate Bay operator Anakata confessed to this crime under interrogation. The Palme assassination, that is. He was 5 years old at the time. Interrogators were not amused.

Ask Slashdot?

Shouldn't this be posted under 'Ask Slashdot', in order to mobilise the world's best legal minds?

Re:Ask Slashdot?

Shouldn't this be posted under 'Ask Slashdot', in order to mobilise the world's best legal minds?

Your suggesting a Slashdot user will read a 4,000 page article? RTFA? You must be really new here.

Re:Ask Slashdot?

mines smaller than yours! ... err... wait..

Re:Ask Slashdot?

After looking at TFUID, you _are_ new around here.... =)

On the bright side

they could have been smart and used recycled iPhone bills for the paper. 3 of them, anyway.

Not so surprising

Murder's a pretty simple issue compared to copyright. I don't know about the Swedish legal system, but if the prosecution dropped 4000 pages of paperwork on a defendant right before some deadline in the US system, the defendant's lawyers would ask the judge for more time, and get it (unless the fix was in).

Really?

Murder's a pretty simple issue compared to copyright.

That's true. Most murder cases can be proved in a single 18 minute sitcom slot but the infinite losses caused by PIRATES of Imaginary Property can never be explained so easily outside of soundbites like "pirate" and "thief". These soundbites must be repeated, Shining style, over 4,000 pages of manually typed pages to even begin to understand the nature of the current case.

Re:Really?

I note that our game's up on The Pirate Bay for people to download (http://www.caravelgames.com). So, uh, it's not just the big bad RIAA that they're thumbing their nose at, it's everyone who tries to make some kind of money from content. They don't care who they hurt.

I mean, it's not like we're even being that unreasonable. The engine's open source under the MPL (http://www.caravelgames.com/sourcecode.html), and the 'demo' has no time-limit, contains the game's editor and can export and import the hundreds of free levels the game's fans have created. The only thing we're selling is the media we've actually created to sell, 'premium content' if you will. Really, the only reason you'd have to pirate the game is to take away a sale from a bunch of guys who wanted to make the sort of game they don't really make any more. It's a dick move.

It's a shame that the Pirate Bay are being set up as these renegade folk heroes, but I guess that's what happens when a smaller villain tweaks the nose of a larger one.

Re:Really?

I note that our game's up on The Pirate Bay for people to download (http://www.caravelgames.com). So, uh, it's not just the big bad RIAA that they're thumbing their nose at, it's everyone who tries to make some kind of money from content. They don't care who they hurt.
...

It's a shame that the Pirate Bay are being set up as these renegade folk heroes, but I guess that's what happens when a smaller villain tweaks the nose of a larger one.

While I agree with you that a game licensed in that fashion shouldn't be pirated, it's not really fair to blame The Pirate Bay for the fact it is. The torrents on TPB are added by users. I won't blame TPB for hosting specific material as they don't add it themselves and don't have the resources to investigate torrents to see how friendly the content's license is.

Re:Really?

Life's pretty tough for developers. Same for the end user though. I can think of one particular simulator I've spent USD1000 on where the developers turned around and treated me like dirt for daring to make suggestions that their anti-piracy makes their software very difficult for me to use (large software dongle, version specific, and I want to use this r/c sim on the train so i have to pick which version in advance and carry a second bag to use it). They even picked sides with people who were hurling all kinds of abuse at me and ended up banning me. Their board of course, but I'll never touch their software again. Screw 'em.

Clearly if I'm spending so much (and I do know how to get around their crappy protection at least for earlier versions) I'm not busy downloading the content off pirate bay. So why am I posting this? Because the copy protection gets in my way as a legitimate user, and because just as users can treat developers badly so to developers can treat users badly.

Your team should put a notice in the about screen (and even if you must in some in game advertising) about paying for the product. Hell you could even make it part of the media content. However you do it don't make it obnoxious though. Then ACCEPT the fact that some maybe even many people will pirate it. The trade off for a smaller less well established company is you get more exposure. Think of the cost of your advertising. Most of the users downloading off TPB aren't the types who are going to buy your software anyway. As infuriating as it must be you lose very few sales in letting them use it. Focus on the users who do support your development instead of trying to lock your product down.

Try asking nicely.

Have you tried asking nicely?

No, I'm not kidding. What I'd do is post a comment to the torrent with that software saying that if people liked it, they can support you at http://www.caravelgames.com/ [caravelgames.com] You might be surprised, I imagine some people would support you as a result. Those who won't wouldn't anyhow.

Re:Try asking nicely.

Pure fucking urban legend. My games are there too, I asked very nicely, they didn't do shit, or even bother replying. It's pure fantasy land bullshit put around by TPB themselves that they give a fuck whose copyright they are breaking. They spread that bullshit about just asking nicely to make them seem like the good guys, but its just a big fat joke on the people who worship them. They make a fortune in advertising, and then have the cheek to ask people for money to buy an island, which no doubt went straight to a Swiss bank account.
Believe me, those guys don't give a damn whose business they are wrecking, they only care about their own bank balance. it's truly sad to see so many people fall for it.

Re:Really?

Except that they're not a "Robin Hood" because the people they're giving to aren't exactly the oppressed and poor.

Har! Wrong, matey. That is exactly what most of them are. I don't know too many rich people who bother to download games/movies/music. Why should they? The ones who most object to paying for a 'free' copy of something are the ones who have to work at some shite job that they can't stand doing, where they are counting every minute of every hour until they can escape from their wage slave existence.

Of course, you have to have money at least to some degree to have a computer and an internet connection. Most of the poor people I have met in the third world have neither. The computer alone is often more than a year's salary.

Robin Hood is actually an excellent analogy. The people they/we are 'stealing' from are pretty much about as rich as you can get. I mean they ain't exactly Bill Gates, but most do make more in a week than I make in a whole year. And for accomplishing very little of any real value to the world. You can argue about the relative wealth of the recipients, but the wealth of the 'victims' is indisputable. And the story does play like a sort of geek folk tale, a David-Golaith story where we all know who ultimately is going to win.

I don't believe that 'information' is something that can be stolen. I do believe in copyright actually (and it is like a religion), but I don't believe it is ethical to enforce against anyone who is not actually making a profit from it. thepiratebay doesn't make a dime of profit from the copyrighted files they help distribute. Might as well throw all the postal services in jail. And thepiratebay folks barely even qualify as messengers anyway. If you don't like the precariousness of selling binary data, go do something else. I dunno. Learn how to cook or something. You can't copy a hamburger. Then you won't feel so cheated when nearly perfect (except for the cracked binary) copies of your hard work are given away to anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

Re:Really?

even one life is worth more then all of their music sales ever, and all sales they will ever make.

Distributed legal processing & response

Assuming that Pirate Bay's fans include more that a few legally ept people, this 4,000 page document could be distributed for scoring, summarizing, and response. If a 1,000 people each read only 40 pages, than each page would be reviewed by 10 different sets of eyes.

I could imaging publishing the 4,000 pages as a Wiki and recruiting "editors" to analyze the document and mount a response. (Hopefully this would not attract too much Slashdot-style IANAL legal advice)

Do what any decent pirate does...

Parlay? *grins*

Easily Fixed

Send back a 20,000 page vague summary reply.

I think this sums it up perfectly

From TFA:

thanks to the threat of a high-profile legal action, plenty of free advertising.

Given:
1. There's little, if anything, the prosecutors can do to TPB.
2. The vast majority of the Swedish people sympathize with them, if not are down right on their side.
3. Their name and "product" will gets tons of new airtime at now charge to them (it's happened before [wikipedia.org]).

If you ask me, getting sued is the best thing that may happen to The Pirate Bay since the invention of broadband!

Misleading comparison

Criminal cases, murder in particular, tend not to involve a whole lot of paper. In fact, relatively little evidence is ever admitted. I don't know if this is a criminal or civil procedure (or if Sweeden has different distinctions) but IP litigation tends to involve tons of paper. Let me tell you, I'm a paralegal and I printed some 2000 pages today alone. A major case can involve a couple million pages. Really. 4,000 pages is actually 2-3 normal sized boxes worth.

Re:Misleading comparison

You really should get your boss to read his emails on the screen.

Arial 48

Enough said.

Related article

This article, linked from TFA, is interesting, and was written BY a member of the Swedish Parliment:

http://sigfrid.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/decriminalize-file-sharing/ [wordpress.com]

Re:Related article

Well, he is not just a member of the Swedish parliament. He is also a member of the largest party in the current coalition government. And he is far from being alone. Last time I checked 13 MPs from his party had expressed similar viewpoints in mainstream Swedish media.

And young people seem to understand the issues at stake here a lot better. The youth organizations of all the parties currently in the Swedish parliament have similar viewpoints.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

They shut down napster and I said nothing. Then they killed allofmp3 and I said nothing. Now they have come after thepiratebay and.. Wait! Now they're fucking with my pr0n god dammit!!

FTFA...

One group that remains unconcerned in the face of possible prosecution is the administrators of The Pirate Bay. Last November, Peter Sunde told Ars that, should charges come, he's sure of a legal victory. "I'm quite confident we're gonna win and I was expecting this to happen," he said. "[Swedish prosecutor Håkan] Roswall is also a very biased man, so I'm glad to take it to court instead of letting him dig around my personal life for no apparent reason. Actually, it's kinda funny."

This just about says it all. The IFPI is fairly clearly not on the right side of Swedish law here. But, then, why is this happening? Ah, TFA goes on!

The antipathy towards copyright enforcement extends far beyond the Pirate Party in Sweden. Seven members of the Swedish Parliament from the free-market friendly Moderate Party (which is a member of the governing coalition) recently penned an op-ed piece in a Swedish tabloid calling for the complete decriminalization of file-sharing. "Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution," the MPs wrote. "It's the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet."

and

Sunde also accused Roswall of having a vendetta against The Pirate Bay. "The prosecutor decided before the raid that he was going to charge us," Sunde said. "He has until the last of January to press charges."

Ah, enlightening. Apparently not only is the IFPI swimming against the political views of almost all of Sweden, but they are running out of time, too. Thus, the prosecutor is still continuing, despite the magnitude of his earlier failure; it's the last chance, for him, and his backers, to justify their actions. It reeks of desperation, and probably won't get them very far.

4 Rules of Acquisition

My Rules of Acquisition You MAY acquire a copy if: 1. it is not available in your State or Country. 2. the local price, ignoring taxes, is more than 50% higher than the Amazon US Dollar price 3. the TV show is on free-to-air (network) television in a prime time slot, heavily hyped, then shifted to an 11:30pm slot. Either the show is good or the show is crap - make up your mind before wasting my time. You MUST buy a legitimate copy if 3. You enjoy it to the point of watching it more than once. 4. You recommend the series to your friends and family. Rules 1 & 2 are about punishing Copyright Holders for being idiots by treating their customers like idiots. Rule 3 & 4 are about rewarding Copyright Holders for making enjoyable content and showing some respect to their customers.

Easy solution

Put a cover page on it that says "Harry Potter and the Torrents of Azkaban" by JK Rowling. Run it through a document feeder and post it on The Pirate Bay. Wait about ten to twenty hours, then check Wikipedia's plot synopsis. Problem solved!

Re:I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property?

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property...but I have three stories on Slashdot's front page.

SHHH! Don't discourage him. He's doing swell, so far.

Re:So what?

TPB are clearly in violation of the law, and will likely face all sorts of penalties for moving their operations out of the country. Whether or not the law needs to change might be another issue, but I don't think there's any debate here that what they're doing is illegal...

Is this one of those things where you think that the whole world lives under US law?

Actually, even in the US, what sort of penalties could you possibly face for "moving operations out of the country"?

Re:So what?

Actually, even in the US, what sort of penalties could you possibly face for "moving operations out of the country"?

You'd get a massive tax break to entice you to move operations back in?

Re:So what?

I don't think there's any debate here that what they're doing is illegal.

Actually, what their doing is almost certainly legal. They have been operating for years without being successfully prosecuted. They hold that they are acting within the law.

If it was clear they were breaking the law, then it would not have taken so long to start a prosecution, now would it have required so much paper work. Everyone knows exactly what they do, and they have never denied it.

If you think that they are acting illegally, please tell us exactly what law they are breaking.

Re:Obvious question. Answer 700,000 at bottom...

The article states there are 700,000 pages of documents.

Cut and paste;
"The cost of the investigation stands at SEK 350 million, EUR 38 million or USD 45 million as of February 25, 2006.[12]
The total number of pages accumulated during the investigation is around 700,000.[13]
The reward for solving the murder is SEK 50 million.[14]

Re:Wow! Top 10??

I really don't know what to say.... Are you really suggesting that the Pirate Party is an influential and relevant political force? Based on that??

At the moment Sweden has 7 parties in parliament. 4 out of these are in a very narrow coalition government which won the last election by about 1%. The pirate party got 0.63%. The limit to get seats in parliament is 4%. They have more members than the green party , which HAS seats in parliament. If Sweden can prohibit public funding for research on nuclear power due to the demands by the Greens, then I can very well imagine that a party which has even more members can be politically influential.

Re:Oh dear

Hmm, I'm not sure that they'd want to pay for all the bandwidth to have thousands and thousands of people download a 4000-page document from their web site. That would probably cost a lot of money.

If only there was some way that they could start it out on the internet - say, "seed" it - and then those interested in it could share it amongst themselves, using the "seed" as a guide. I'm sure that would save them some bandwidth costs. If only there was technology to do so, and I could somehow inform TPB of the existence and benefits of this technology.

Re:Not another stupid Pirate Bay article

I find the "mafiaa" tag amusing given that the Pirate Bay is actually organized crime.

No it's not, that's the whole point. Nothing TPB is doing is a violation of the law.

Re:I'm always disturbed

Copyright violation is a violation of someone's property rights. It might not be as bad as stealing someone's car, but it is stealing, and people that make piracy their business are still criminals.

No, it is breaching a government mandated monopoly. It is morally equivalent to using Skype in a country where the government has granted one operator a monopoly on telecommunications.

Re:I'm always disturbed

But, let's not kid ourselves, it is breaking real legitimate laws.

Last time I've checked, distributing information on from whom to get a certain piece of a file is not against any law in Sweden, the same way it is not against the law to sell someone a firearm that could be used to kill another human being in the USA.

There's a certain crowd that believes that piracy is somehow noble.

I find piracy highly immoral. Plundering on the seas and taking over ships near certain parts of Africa results in losses of life and property. Of course I know that you were talking about copyright infringement, but I just wanted to hilight the fact that using the wrong expressions can cloud an issue and mislead people. There is no such thing as piracy of copyrighted works. There is no such thing as intellectual property, except as a misleading umbrella term to refer to copyright, patent and trademark law under one title.

There's a certain crowd that believes that piracy is somehow noble. This is nonsense. It's not the worse thing in the world, but it is definitely a crime.

I think people should question laws more often. A law in the best case is the codified morality of society's majority, while still respecting the minority. In the worst case it is a tool of power, for those in power. There is nothing inherently moral about laws and immoral about committing a crime. A lot of unjust laws have been created over time and some are still in existence today. It is enough if we think about the 19th century's slavery related laws: could we claim that it was immoral for a black person to break the law when he/she sought freedom?

I don't think copyright law is based on morality, but I don't think it is a strongly immoral law either. I would say it is immoral to the extent a particular person values the freedom of information.

Copyright violation is a violation of someone's property rights. It might not be as bad as stealing someone's car, but it is stealing, and people that make piracy their business are still criminals.

Copyright deals with information, regardless of how the information manifests as atoms. Property is of atoms, tangible material or of a part of tangible material. Stealing is undefined on information, because stealing can only manifest itself on property, which information is not. You cannot steal information in the sense that you relocate material under your own control and deprive someone else of those same atoms. Copyright infringement is a civil matter in a lot of countries around the world.

Additionally, as a software developer those are *my* property rights that are being violated some of the time. If I want my software to go out as freeware or open source, I'll do so, but no one has the right to just take something of mine for free that I only offered them for sale. That's just theft.

You do not have property rights on information, that is an impossibility. Information cannot be taken from you, so that no longer have it unless you lose all physical representation of that information, including the copy that exists in your brain. What you describe as something taken from you in reality is information that a third party transmitted to a fourth party, information on how one person may align bits in his storage equipment.

We have things called rights, which are basically ideas that we strongly believe make for a better society. These rights evolved over human history and there is nothing in them that is inherently obvious. Specifically, private property in relation to material turned out to be a good idea for the human species. It very well might be that private property is entirely undesirable for another sentient species, because for example that species is much more hive minded.

Someone had the idea to try to apply property terminology to information, so copyright was born (I'm not suggesting that the