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Comment by schrototo | Hacker News Reader

None of this is any excuse if the intent is so clearly to profit illegally off of other people's content. Trying to paint Pirate Bay as this altruistic organization that just wants to distribute some Linux distros is such bullshit. The information wants to be free brigade always seem to overlook the tons of sleazy ads and malware that accompanies all of these file sharing sites.

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Well, large corporations using political influence to extend copyright terms effectively forever to prevent works from ever entering the public domain against the express intent of the Founders (at least in the U.S.) aren't exactly the white knights in this story either.

Look, I'm a filmmaker. I believe in copyright (for limited terms), and I believe in using the law as a mechanism to enforce the interests of copyright holders. But making it a crime to link to a page that contains unlicensed material is going way too far IMHO.

(BTW, the sleaze and malware make pretty effective deterrents for the general public to use the PB. You may have noticed that Hollywood is still in business despite the fact that the PB is still operating.)

> Well, large corporations using political influence to extend copyright terms effectively forever to prevent works from ever entering the public domain against the express intent of the Founders (at least in the U.S.) aren't exactly the white knights in this story either.

Exactly this. Get back to me when we have a sane copyright regime in the US and, for that matter, the rest of the world. Until then, pardon me if I'm not bothered when people pirate content.

"large corporations using political influence to extend copyright terms effectively forever"

Yup. However, don't forget that it takes two to do the crony capitalism tango -- private- and public-sector actors. :-)

Intent is the key word here.

Profiting off illegal content is already illegal by itself and all these special cases should be left to courts to decide instead of throwing around overly broad blankets

And this case is exactly to provide a framework for lower courts to decide intent. In fact, it was a court that asked this question to the CJEU to be able to judge a specific case. It's much better to have clear rules what is allowed and what isn't than operating in a grey area and being dependent on courts deciding in your favor without being able to asses the risk beforehand.

> Profiting off illegal content is already illegal by itself

That is not so easy and depends on your definition of "profiting".

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