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Comment by citricsquid | Hacker News Reader

> No, it doesn't. TPB doesn't provide any content at all. Not only that, but it also provides links to non-copyright infringing material. Eg: Some of Nine Inch Nails recent releases have been legally made available over bittorrent in 24/96 high quality.

And my drug dealer gave $50 to a pregnant woman so that she could get a taxi to the hospital.

If you want to argue why this ruling is wrong you should address the issues of censorship, arguing that The Pirate Bay isn't a site built around copyright infringement (which it is and the founders openly admit this) just does a dis-service to the real problem here (censorship). TPB is a for-profit copyright infringement enabling enterprise, that's why it exists, arguing otherwise is not worth your energy (because ultimately, what does it matter if it enables copyright infringement or not? So do most websites that don't intend on doing that) instead argue that any government should not be disabling access to a website.

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The issue is not with censorship, it's with what they are censoring. Very few people here would take issue with this court order if it was about a site that exclusively hosted child porn. Therefore yes, the context of "is what TBP does illegal?"

To extend your (frankly poor) metaphor, he wouldn't be a drug dealer if all he did was hold up a sign pointing you towards your nearest drug dealers and he never actually gave you any drugs.

Child pornography: illegal Copyright infringement: illegal

censoring child porn websites: right, censoring copyright infringement website: wrong.

Not sure I understand the difference? Either you're for censorship of websites, or you're against it, you can't pick and choose.

Hosting illegal things: bad

Saying where to get illegal things: under dispute

Linking is not a crime.

That's a nice slogan, but it doesn't match the UK law. Linking can be a crime.

Either it is or it isn't. If it is, a lot of search engines are in big trouble. Google links to almost every piece of illegal content on the web.

You also have to think carefully about what a link is. Is a magnet link - essentially a hash of the content itself - a link? If so is posting the checksum of a piece of software copyright violation?

Unfortunately the law isn't so black and white, and depends a lot upon intent. Thinking about the technicalities isn't so important; what matters to the court is whether the individuals involved intended to commit a crime.

Yes, I think the fact the google links to basically everything would work in their defense.

It would be like prosecuting the people who print the telephone directory for advertising drug dealers because some of their numbers are listed.

Upthread people are mentioning images of child sexual abuse.

It's important to mention that in the UK this is an absolute offence. If the image is in your possession then it doesn't matter how or why it's there - intent is irrelevant.

This is important for people responsible for various servers, for example.

Intent still matters. For instance, say someone emails you a image and then contacts the authorities. If merely having such an image in your possesion was an automatic "go to jail, do not pass go", you can be certain there would be a lot of politicians and other unpopular individuals being led away in cuffs.

You either possess the image or you do not. It is a strict liability offence.

There are narrow exemptions - "I did not view the images and I did not know they existed" is one; "The images were unsolicited and I did not keep them" is another.

(See page 4)

(http://www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/3249_Child_pornograp...)

Is that true for CP too?

Lets see: http://4chan.org

I'll let you know if I get arrested.

Probably not, no. In the US, it's more likely to constitute the tort of contributory infringement. Someone should make a "10 Commandments of Nerd Legal Misunderstandings"; #2 or #3 would be "in the law, intent matters hugely".

Child pornography: should be illegal

So if companies wanted to infringe the copyright of GPLed code that should be allowed?

Yes, if in exchange for that everybody is allowed to infringe on their copyrights. And tivoization should be illegal.

That seem kind of arbitrary , you want the government out of one thing but you want them into something else. If there was no copyright or patents then tivoization would be irrelevant anyway as the hardware could be easily copied.

things that I like doing::should be legal

things I don't like other people doing::???

And they should be allowed to infringe on your personal data too because it's digital and therefore easily copied. And now we get to the crux of the argument. Just because everyone will eventually die does not mean you should stop seeing a doctor. Even worse message boards saying you shouldn't even be allowed to go to the doctor!

Copyright infringement should and must be illegal but it also must be put into perspective. Using copyright infringement to justify censorship, deportation of citizens, multi-million-dollar fines and lifetime prison sentences - that's a symptom of a broken judicial system and governments with bad priorities / corruption.

Downloading films + music for personal use? Should get warnings and eventually a small fine if the issue persists (not £X per file downloaded - a download != a sale).

Commercial copyright infringement? Large scale should result in a few years of jailtime at the most + seized profits. Smaller scale should vary but should be lenient with profits seized.

Every argument against copyright infringement assumes there is some evil destitute world on the other side of having it in place.

We have never in the modern age in any modern first world country ever had an extended time WITHOUT copyright to see what would happen. Everyone just assumes every artist, developer, and investor would disappear overnight and everyone would turn to stone as content is freely distributed.

Or maybe we would just go massive kickstarter style (with some kind of contract guarantees unlike the current system) where the funds people have pay people to make the stuff they want, which is then free for everyone to consume since it is free to reproduce.

It is broken to control content at the distribution level when distribution and replication cost nothing. A really, really import thing to consider - the people who consume currently copyrighted material do not have infinite funds to consume. They spend their disposable income on limited selections of copyrighted materials. If they didn't have to pay for them, but knew their funds were needed to see that future works were created, they would not go buy 15 cars over 3 years and have nothing to watch on tv, they would give money to the shows and artists they like.

There MIGHT be a slight recession if that happened though, because without the "need" to pay for the things people want, they might take the time to pay off massive debts they have or get a savings buffer. But they could already do that, they just don't have the self restraint to. And if feeding off the inability of people to manage their own lives effectively is the only way for MAFIAA affiliates to stay in business, perhaps they should fail.

At that, why don't they fail? Of all the industries, film has been subject to upheaval approximately never. For the last century the big 5 have been established and held their power base with an iron grip. Independent film is nothing compared to them, indie games vs publishers is not even close to as bad as that situation. The major movie studios have no competition to theaters besides outside media forces but never to competitive "startups" because they control the market.

I doubt anybody expects artists would dissappear overnight. People just think it's fair to reward creators for the entertainment value they provided, and unfair to rip it off without paying a dime. And copyright is the best, simplest way to protect fairness in this regard.

Not everything has to be 'for the greater good' or for the 'long term benefit of the new age economy' or whatever in order for people to support it.

> Not everything has to be 'for the greater good' or for the 'long term benefit of the new age economy' or whatever in order for people to support it.

Are you saying people who defend copyright. Conciously are only being fair to a small subset of the population. But unfair to the majority. And a net loss to humanity. And still they defend copyright?

I don't think so. It seems to me, those who defend copyright have the opinion that copyright is a net benefit to humanity. After all pros and cons are summed. Which I strongly disagree.

You could see a lot of laws that way.

The point is that it isn't necessarily favoritism as anybody could create copyrighted works so I wouldn't see it as 'unfair' unless you had to apply to the government for copyright or something like that.

Besides copyright is a net benefit if it helps intellectual property get produced.

I am not arguing that IP would not get produced if it were not for copyright as that is clearly not true. However I'm not sure it is to everyones benefit if creatives had to work 8 hours a day at 7/11 and then only produce on nights/weekends or that they had to hope for some kind of handout (which could well just be companies wanting to advertise or politicians wanting to create propaganda).

A lot of the people (me included) defend copyright because it's a net benefit to the individual, and a fair benefit too (not unfair to anyone).

Whether it's a net benefit to humanity, however you measure that, is neither here nor there. It probably is, but those are not the grounds we're arguing on.

It's sort of like defending privacy. You don't defend it cause of some net benefit to humanity. Who knows, maybe the world would be happier if there were no secrets. You defend privacy because it's fair on an individual level.

I'm concerned about individual rights too. In fact, it's my concern for individual rights that leads me to reject overly restrictive copyright, (among other things). I find these rights to be valuable: freedom of speech, freedom of creativity, and property rights. (To be clear, by property, I do not include imaginary property like copyright.)

Why shouldn't I be able to make back-up copies of the DVDs that are bought with good money? Why should the descendants of Tolkien be able to censor any works of art that includes hobbits? Why should Time Warner be able to censor me from singing happy birthday in public? Why should Google be blocked from bringing out-of-print books to the public? Once a work is published, I don't see why an author should be able to control what's no longer theirs, any more that I would expect a plumber to dictate what I'm allowed to do with the plumbing in my house. Both plumbers and artists labour, and they deserve rewards for their labour, but they do not deserve the right to control my use of what I have purchased from them.

For me, the right of sharing culture is a given, and the right to restrict other people from sharing culture is at best a necessary evil.

Nobody gives two hoots about backing up DVDs, singing happy birthday, or painting Hobbits.

I do.

I meant nobody cares to prosecute copyright for trivial, personal activities like making backup copies or fan art, so it's quite disingenuous to continually bring them up when the topic of piracy/file-sharing arises.

Why shouldn't anyone be able to download the game some indie studio bet the farm on and is selling DRM-free for $20, and play it for free?

There's a difference between sharing culture and outright ripping people off; if you think this should be prohibited, you aren't really categorically against copyright, only its current implementation.

You need to take that in perspective. Someone legally purchased the game, and then shared it with someone else. It is the exact same thing people would do with cassette taps 2 decades ago, when the RIAA decried mix tapes would kill music. 2 decades later, that industry is bigger than ever.

The difference is that one cassette is much more expensive than 15 megabytes of magnetic storage, and the gas to go from a friends house to let you copy their tape is much more expensive than the electricity and internet bills to transfer the data.

But it is such a common misconception that it is stealing - it is duplicating bits of data on magnetic storage that, by nature of the physical properties of the device, are extremely easy to replicate.

Yes, it is "hard" to understand the concept that once released, the content is no longer under the control of the creator. But defying the physics of physical storage only causes what we have now - big corporate lobbies are pushing to destroy all personal privacy to make sure no one uses the inherent properties of the technology developed in ways they don't desire.

And that will destroy the internet and society at large if left unchecked. You can't take away personal privacy and expect anything less than collapse. The only solution is to accept the reality that digital content is infinitely reproducible for free, and go from there. The old brick and mortar model just does not work.

The Kickstarter model works fantastically well for creative people that already have a following/track record.For someone trying to connect with an audience the first time, not so much.

Not so: the biggest jolt to the industry was antitrust regulation in the 1940s, as discussed here - though paradoxically, in a way that's vaguely supportive of censorship: http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=178

The Kickstarter model works fantastically well for creative people that already have a following/track record. For someone trying to connect with an audience the first time, not so much.

The restrictive copyright model works fantastically well for creative people that already have a following/track record. For someone trying to connect with an audience the first time, not so much. Even the few musicians who hit it big with a debut album have actually worked very hard beforehand to persuade a record label to sign them, with very little reward.

Not necessarily true. The label era was dominated by intermediaries (managers, A&R specialists), but those intermediaries were constantly in search of new bands to promote. Many musicians (authors, filmmakers, your_medium_here) don't necessarily have the skills or desire to become experts in publishing and distribution, and the breakdown of existing models also means the breakdown of cross-subsidization for less commercially oriented acts. There are pros and cons to both models; I'm just objecting to the idea that the new publishing landscape is in all ways better than the old.

"don't necessarily have the skills or desire to become experts in publishing and distribution,"

They don't have to be experts, they just have to be good enough. If the decision is 100% of profits goto a label or 30% go to Apple if I just learn how to use iTunes, I think they'll choose iTunes...

Publishing means to make public and that isn't anything special any more, it's been commoditized.

> The Kickstarter model works fantastically well for creative people that already have a following/track record.For someone trying to connect with an audience the first time, not so much.

I call bogus. I've only funded a single Kickstarter project, but it was a completely unknown musician I discovered while browsing Kickstarter. There's no way I'm unique in this.

The problem with kickstarter style (under those conditions) is that if you wait long enough you will get it all for free anyway. Unless you have large amounts of money to donate it would be very difficult to get the snowball moving.

For example if you saw something with a $100,000,000 target and $0 in donations, if all you could afford was $20 would you bother to put that in?

Also people are often quite bad at knowing exactly what they want. Let's assume that the iPhone had been a kickstarter project, I'm not sure how much the initial development costs were (for the software part at least) but I'm really not sure whether they would have raised it by just asking people if they wanted a phone with a touchscreen.

> For example if you saw something with a $100,000,000 target and $0 in donations, if all you could afford was $20 would you bother to put that in?

Given that, inherent to the way kickstarter works, it wouldn't actually cost you money unless the target was met, of course I would.

> We have never in the modern age in any modern first world country ever had an extended time WITHOUT copyright to see what would happen.

That's not an argument against copyright, really. As empiricists, we should be automatically skeptical of any social change that hasn't been tested or observed before, since we can't meaningfully predict its results.

The fact remains that while it may be unenforceable to use copyrights to restrict personal use of content, commercial use is a totally different animal. This includes things like film screenings in a commercial cinema, live musical performances, broadcasting, adaptation to other media, and use in advertising. It's not hard to imagine a future where content creators compete to emphasize these over merely selling copies of their work.

> Of all the industries, film has been subject to upheaval approximately never.

Not true. Television and VCR's were major upheavals comparable to the impact of the internet today.

> Not true. Television and VCR's were major upheavals comparable to the impact of the internet today.

And they fought both as if the world would end and, when they failed, they got wonderful profits from both.

What they can't stand is another player controlling distribution channels. They realize they are not in the content creation business - they distribute content.

I disagree with all of your statements.

I disagree with such punishment system. If a society deems something indesirable, it should be punished very harshly. Or not at all, if it's desirable.

I personally, along with a significant portion of the society (and the majority of youth) view copyright infringement for personal use desirable, but copyright infringement for profit undesirable. I would not punish the first at all, while the second should bear the fine of, say, 20% of yearly profits of the company (punishment for the owners), + jail time for the responsible persons (e.g. the president/CEO, or a lower employee if they are proven responsible).

I'm pretty sure the former is criminal (i.e. illegal), whereas the latter is unlawful, hence why businesses have to chase copyright infringement - rather than the authorities doing it for them. The authorities only step in when it becomes a commercial operation or the activities are linked to other crimes.

First off, I'd argue that creating an open space for people to share downloads (that aren't hosted on this open space) is not illegal.

Second, even if by law it is, legality isn't binary. Both murder and stealing a bottle of milk from a shop are illegal, you wouldn't say "either you're for life inprisonment or you're against it, you can't pick and choose" would you? Not only can we pick and chose, our legal systems do pick and chose, and they always have done.

I don't think linking should be illegal, but en mass linking with the blatant intent for people to exploit linked to resources... perhaps it should be? I don't know.

RE: your point that open space for people to link to shouldn't be illegal, is it ok then to create a CP linking website? Would you be OK with this?

>is it ok then to create a CP linking website? //

Strictly speaking I don't think it would be illegal as long as no content on the site itself contravened the law. If you can differentiate it from a search engine that gives the links in SERPs then I'd back it being made illegal though - if you can't then Google/Bing/etc. are illegal if you can make the SERPs return a link to illegal content. Indeed a link site would be useful for the police as they'd have their job done for them to some extent. A site owner with only links would on the balance of probabilities have visited child pornography sites and so, in the UK at least, have broken the law.

This could lead to some verification being required for registering domains. Maybe then only domains verified by a domain registry as traceable to a person would be allowed to be routed. That could be automated.

I'm not saying that's how things should go but it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to think that things could go that way?

What I'd like to see in general is some balance. There needs to be a quid pro quo to tightening copyright restrictions. Giving us fair use privileges in the UK, like being able to make backups, format shifting and such would be a start. A reasonable copyright term, equable to patent terms would be better. If no such effort is made then it's all just business buying laws to suppress the masses AFAICT.

The Copyrights, Designs & Patents Act 198 has "fair dealing" clauses which specifically permits back ups (Section 50(A)) and time-shifting (Section 70). I'm not aware of any case law that limits these permissions; the Copyright & Related Rights Regulations of 2003 does forbid you from circumventing a technical protection measure, which is in opposition to CDPA.

UK fair dealing is much tighter than US fair use.

At the moment "format shifting" (but not time shifting) is still illegal, but no-one enforces it and it's going to be changed. (I haven't kept up; maybe it has already changed.)

As you say, being allowed to make backups is tricky if you're not allowed to circumvent technical protection measures.

SS50(A) in CDP as amended refers to backups for computer programs. I'm thinking backups of media, DVDs, CDs. Time-shifting is allowed as you note but it limits you to view a single recording a single time, so you can watch a recording of a TV show but you must never "deal with" the copy once you've viewed it; moreover this only applies in domestic settings.

To consider UK "fair dealing" anything akin to US "fair use" is to not understand the scope of either IMO.

In the UK you need to prove beyond reasonable doubt to get a criminal conviction. Balance of probabilities is just for civil cases I believe.

I would think though that it could be seen as advertising child pornography if you provided the links that were all to child porn or that the links were labeled as child porn.

Making, distributing, or possessing images of child sexual abuse is a criminal offence. It's also an absolute offence.

Child pornography has REAL VICTIMS: children that are being exploited and their lives are RUINED FOREVER. There is no such thing for copyrights: did J.S. Bach write music in anticipation of licensing revenues? Is he a victim because he had no licensing revenue at that time? Is that comparable to an exploited 7 year old child?

You're thinking in legal terms, but in this case, the argument is one of morals.

CP and CI are galaxies apart morally, imho. Also, people's views on copyright infringement seem to immediately swell when it's their copyright being infringed upon.

Very few people here would take issue with this court order if it was about a site that exclusively hosted child porn

Yes, you're right. I have no problem with censoring child porn. However I have a problem censoring the Pirate Bay.

The response of the courts should be proportionate and based on reason and facts. We shouldn't censor any website that dedicated to explaining how to litter (which is also a crime). We don't give the same prison sentance or the same fine to all crimes. Our courts have a long history of different crimes requireing different responses.

I have a problem with the censorship of child porn. 1) because it will and has been used as an excuse for more censorship 2) because a lot of non CP has en censored by the filters. They could censor virtually anyone with little to no risk.

Also, from reports I've read it is both ineffective and doesn't actually get rid of the root problem, but the politicians can sleep better at night thinking they did something about it. All censorship does is push the content underground and quite possibly makes it harder to combat.

The child porn argument also strikes me as an appeal to emotion.

Oh, message board legal debates; how would we occupy our days without you? I love you most of all, "If I just did X, they couldn't charge me with Y" argument!

    18 USC § 2 - PRINCIPALS

    (a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States 
    or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures 
    its commission, is punishable as a principal.

    (b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if 
    directly performed by him or another would be an offense 
    against the United States, is punishable as a principal.

Net net: I'd burn that stupid "DRUGS R HERE" sign.

Agreed. To be fair, though, the USC does not apply to civil claims.

No, which is why both the UK and the US adopted "contributory infringement" torts. (It's fuzzier in the UK.)

I know it's getting tricky to tell but, in theory at least, 18 USC shouldn't apply to the UK.

You are a Wikipedia paragraph away from knowing how irrelevant that objection is. Finding it (I'm staring at it now) is left as an exercise for the reader.

Another fun quirk of message board legal arguments, besides the propensity for participants to sincerely believe that only computer programmers possess the ability to reason about rule-based systems, is the belief that laws they don't like (or, more likely, that are inconvenient to their arguments) must be some terrible quirk of the fucked up US legal system. Sorry, no!

No one is saying nor implying that computer programmers possess a superior moral compass to make judgements on the rule-based systems as you have stated.

The laws are fucked up because of pervasive unethical political practices in the U.S. (and the entire world for that matter) where laws are made from the top down by those with the most money as opposed to the bottom up as our founding fathers intended via our representative democracy. (Side note, the internet is changing all of the above through the forums you denote as irrelevant as well as social media)

In regards to programmers calling the shots, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a group of people as intellectually capable percentage wise to make unbiased judgements on the nature of our laws.

They are certainly more capable that the majority of clowns in Washington.

I swear to god I read this comment after I wrote that last comment about nerds and the law.

You don't think maybe lawyers, who are actually versed in the frameworks on which the laws are built, are more capable than a group that by and large doesn't even seem to understand the difference between different kinds of intellectual property?

Someone needs to start a site where we can submit HN comment links and then bet on the responses that they're likely to generate.

A HN prediction market?

I'm not sure that comments have a long enough shelf life for people to bet.

Well you won't make any money on these endless copyright circle jerks.

Of course they are more capable. But are you saying that these opinions aren't worth listening to as well? "Without understanding your opponent's argument, you can't fully understand your own." If nothing else this can be an educational experience thanks to you and tptacek.

I guess it depends on how much time you have to listen. Based on the evidence on display in HN comment threads, I think on average most programmers' opinions on the law are probably a little bit better-informed than those of a Starbucks barista, but not enough so that I'd give somebody's opinion deference just because he knew C++.

Most programmers' opinions on the law (like most people in general) fall into one of two categories: fundamentally mistaken (e.g. "sharing an encrypted file can't be copyright infringement because they didn't copyright the encrypted form") or merely indignant. That's not to say a programmer can't be well-informed, but just that it's hubris to think that programming knowledge alone can give you some keen insight into the law without actually studying the law.

On the other hand, I definitely stop and read when I see something by, say, grellas — because I know what he'll have to say is very likely to be the result of study and careful analysis.

(And for the record, I don't pretend to know a lot about most aspects of the law. I'm not trying to act high and mighty here. And that's why I feel so apprehensive about blindly trusting programmers about this sort of thing — I know how much I don't know.)

Sometimes nerd opinions about the law are worth paying attention to. Sometimes they aren't.

Part of what put me on my recent CISPA jihad is that CISPA is a case where I think nerds actually had a chance of collecting the context required for informed debate; unfortunately, the CISPA debate got hijacked by militant activism.

But there are cases where nerds clearly have little to offer. Look at the old Reiser threads if you want to groan about very smart people looking dumb talking about the law. "There's no such thing as circumstantial evidence! If you can't find a body, you have to acquit!" Similarly, in most cases revolving around computer hacking and unauthorized access, nerd mentality does more harm than good; nerds tend to fall back to arguments like "if it's common knowledge how to bypass some control, then bypassing that control can't reasonably constitute unauthorized access".

It seems to me that the most appropriate role for domain experts (including computer science) is anticipating results in that domain. For example, my primary objection to SOPA was not the original justification for the law, but merely the likelihood of unintended consequences and broadening of the law beyond reasonableness. The ramifications of a law on a technical domain (like DNS, say) seem more appropriate for expert commentators.

Would you agree?

To an extent. I think tech experts have a tendency to get carried away with consequences, and I think some tech/legal issues are deceptively legal-heavy and tech-light, such as unauthorized access.

I was correcting a bad metaphor and pointing out that the question of legality is important, not just the question of whether censorship is ever OK, I wasn't arguing for or against the legality.

Regardless, what's wrong with discussions about legality. A huge feature of any discussion board is that people can share opinions, debate, and correct each other when wrong.

I'm not sure if I'm mis-remembering you or if you used to have a different attitude on here, because in my head when I see your username I think of someone who's helpful and a good contributor to HN, but lately the comments I've seen from you are snide, snarky and not useful. I hope that either I'm just seeing the bad ones and missing the great ones, or that you're just going through a patch and will be back to your old self. Or perhaps I'm just wrong and being unfair to criticise you, but just calling it like I see it - if it was someone unknown making these comments I just feel they'd be getting downvoted to hell and for the most part ignored.

Criticize me as much as you want! I don't take it personally. If you end up being right, I'll benefit from it --- no matter how you choose to phrase it.

I'm sorry you feel I'm being snide. I don't intend to be. Regardless, each successive HN "legality" discussion drives me further towards some conclusions (here I'll use 'nerd' as a shorthand for "people such as myself who come from a tech background and like to argue on HN"):

* Very few nerds have taken the time to learn even basic facts about how the legal system works

* To a nerd, the legal system resembles a rule-based system, like a Sendmail configuration file

* Nerds feel entitled to reason through rule-based systems on nerd terms; in particular, nerds feel entitled to demand that all rule-based systems manifest themselves and are evaluated in the same terms that a programming language is

* Nerds generally feel pissed off when they inevitably discover that no legal system works on nerd terms

* As a result, nerds rarely read actual laws or statutes, and can generally be counted on to read only the first paragraph of any Techdirt story involving the law, enough to confirm their suspicion that the law is a gigantic broken computer program that is being systematically exploited by giant corporations to screw them out of free DVD rips.

Nerds are mostly wrong about this stuff.

MEANWHILE, 'citricsquid isn't even wading into that particular debate. Rather, he's making an argument that nerds should find colloquial. "Don't bullshit us", he says, "because we all know what The Pirate Bay is. We're nerds, for Pete's sake. Most of us could easily build The Pirate Bay ourselves." NO NO NO, says the rest of the thread. Whuh? WE SAID NO, the thread continues, BECAUSE IT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO CAPTURE THE GREATER TRUTH THAT THE LAW IS AN EVIL SCHEME TO SCREW US OUT OF FREE DVDS.

Thank you for putting into words exactly what frustrates me about the legal system! You've exactly captured how I find myself reasoning about the law, and now that it's so explicit, I see that that's clearly wrong.

This is similar to an epiphany I had when reading a blog post explaining intellectual property through an analogy of the "color" of a portion of code. How intention and legal action shape the color, whereas software people tend to think only of the actual bits that represent it. Why independently coming up with an arrangement of bits could be fine while possessing that exact same arrangement from a different source is not. (It's the color of those bits.)

I just tried searching around but unfortunately could not find that post. I'd like to reread it. Anyone know what I'm talking about and have a link to it?

Google: [law color bit copyright]. First hit. :)

For your clicking pleasure: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

Regarding your last point: You're not the only one to make this observation.

1. the site is not hosted in the US. (or UK)

2. The decision is for ISP. So no argument regarding the piratebay is valid at all.

3. The ISPs are not fitting into any of those rules.

4. If ISPs must block access to the pirate bay, then it must block access to every connection that would infrige a law if the territorial barrier were removed. In this case, a US/UK person accessing something that is illegal in the US/UK but not illegal where the pirate bay is being hosted.

consequences of number 4 would include:

AT&T DSL will have to block access from California residents to http://dmv.ny.gov/, as that site promote speed limits and GPS placement on the windshield that are illegal in california.

I wasn't directly addressing this particular judgement; a judge already addressed it. Exactly what makes you sure that (4) is how the law is going to work in this case, though?

isnt't that the reasoning for forcing a ISP to block a particular site?

if it's interpreted as that once, thanks to incentives from the recording industry, why can't it then be called out later?

(this is base on watching law&order, not real life, that's why i'm discussing it here)

Technically TPB enables copyright infringement, it doesn't engage in it. It's the users who upload torrent files (now magnet links), and the users who download material.

Giving someone a loaded gun doesn't make the gun maker a killer. It's the sites users who do the illegal horse work.

Ignoring the fact cutting access to the TPB is censorship, and law makers are bending to the will of companies, and the fact studies have shown that pirated material promotes and increases profits, people will always find a way. Bringing a hard drive to a friends house will allow me to pirate far more than downloading ever could.

Yeah, come on. Let's not pretend this site is something other than what it so clearly is.

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