TPB Files Police Complaint Against CPIAC for Copying Website

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.

Re:Pirate a pirate

[Beardo the Bearded]

Exactly.

TPB (which does not host any pirated material whatsoever) had their copyrighted site design stolen by a group that has been lobbying the government to put people in jail (for longer terms than rape or murder) for copying copyright material.

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.

Thus, TPB is attempting to hoist them on their own petard.

Re:Win-Win

[MoronGames]

If they lose, they prove a point: copyright laws are only in favor of a few. If they win, they expand their list of successful trolling.

Exactly this. I'd be willing to bet that everyone on TPB side of this complaint knows that it is ridiculous, but, win or lose, they will prove a point.

Missing the point

[Agent.Nihilist]

If you first though is hypocrisy, you've missed the point.
If you believe a tool or process is broken, and have advocated about how it needs to change, then using said tool to directly illustrate how broken something is is far from hypocrisy. In this case they are using it to highlight the hypocrisy of the groups promoting high levels/draconian enforcement of copyright.

There is also the issue of actual content theft. Not the MPAA/RIAA's so called theft, where a distribution control is being breached, but taking content developed by another and claiming it as your own. You know, the thing copyright was actually invented for.
Remember, even the Pirate Party doesn't call for a total abolition of copyright, just a reform to more reasonable terms instead of multiple lifetimes.

Slight problem

[Anonymous Coward]

One slight problem with this complaint is that here in Finland the law is actually pretty sane. If TPB sues someone for copying their css files, what they can win is the value of those files. We are not the USA, you can't win zillions of dollars in damages due to the simple fact that those damages do not exist. You can only win actual real world damages. For some css files you might get a hundred bucks. When TPB's lawyers explain the facts of life to their clients this silliness goes away in a heartbeat. The end result is that the TBP kiddies get to pay a couple of thousand bucks to their lawyers for explaining this to them. Great job shooting yourselves in the foot, idiots.

Re:Security for Costs

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how this ends up working out but there are some interesting prior cases against file sharers in Finland that might or might not apply.

In general, Finnish courts have accepted the inflated "theoretical loss of income" figures from content providers in the past lawsuits. There have been couple of larger cases with a BitTorrent site and a DirectConnect hub where the administrators of those services had to pay 800 000 and 680 000 euros for damages for "making available" copyrighted works and distributing them. The administrators were held accountable for all the distribution of files in those cases.

So how many copies of those files has TTVK distributed already? Just multiply that with some suitable number of euros for damages.

Re:Fair Use

[LilWolf]

There was recently a case in Finland where a person made a parody of a site that offered the opportunity to report childporn sites to an organisation that would then forward them to the police. The organisation sued said person and won. What the copyright organisation is doing here is no different from that so under Finnish law they could be in hot water.

TPB Claim of Infringement Against CIAPC is Valid

[cpaglee]

Making a parody site may be 'fair use', but actually copying CSS and HTML is infringement. If CIAPC wants to create a parody site they can write their own HTML and CSS to mimic TPB look and feel. Actually copying CSS and HTML is a violation of copyright which 'fair use' will technically not protect.

Re:Kopimi... no?

[fatphil]

It also has as the leading paragraph on its "usage policy" page:
"""
Our site (and all of its contents) is free of charge for anyone for personal usage. Organisations (for instance, but not limited to, non-profit or companies) may use the system if they clear this with the system operators first. [...]
"""

TPB do still "want to be copied" (which is all the kopimi indicates, it's not a legal declaration that you are waiving your copyright), as long as it's the right people doing it for the right reasons.

I want to have sex, as long as it's with my g/f rather than Bubba from cell block H.