Behind the scenes of the Pirate Bay trial
falkvinge.net
falkvinge.net
| By any non-mad definition, Sweden is not a
| banana republic
The prefix "Banana Republic Justice" can also be seen as claiming that Sweden handed out banana republic-style justice in this case, not that Sweden is a banana republic.
"One factor making this case special is that the main crime is not particularly severe, as seen individually they are of limited scope, not organized and not commercial", p43.
"It should be noted that in paragraph 9 in directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights the following is concluded: 'Infringements of intellectual property rights appear to be increasingly linked to organised crime. Increasing use of the Internet enables pirated products to be distributed instantly around the globe.'", p46
"That copyright infringement by illegal file-sharing is a social problem, which in later years spread like wildfire, does according to the court of appeal appear close to a publicly known fact", p46.
"The court of appeals overall assessment finds it clear that the illegal file-sharing quickly reached proportions at which the general preventive considerations must have great importance in the application of the law. According to the court of appeal there are therefore concerning this form of copyright infringement very special reasons to see the crime of such severity that the sentencing should be imprisonment", p47.
So... Judges joins copyright organization. Copyright organization tells judges that file-sharing is bad. Judges sees file-sharing as a huge social problem. Judges sentence defendants to exceptional sentences without being biased?
http://cybernormer.se/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/defavgdok.p...
You have to give those guys props for stamina.
To push on in light of that seems fairly determined to me.
Pretty much every Power That Be <tm> has tried to bring the site down, and it still stands.
That's amazing.
Cheers, Rick
A charged headline will help in bringing the audience to the content, if 'one look' is all it takes for you to dismiss the data as illegitimate and/or suspicious then perhaps I can allay your worries by stating that he's 100% legit:
Suspicious - well, that depends on exactly what you are suspecting.
Cheers, Rick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
A banana republic is a politically unstable country that economically depends upon the exports of a limited resource (fruits, minerals), and usually features a society composed of stratified social classes, such as a great, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy, composed of the elites of business, politics, and the military.
Who in their right mind thinks that describes Sweden?
Also the notion that the Judge in this case somehow picked himself and was corrupt to the bone was completely disproven the last time that site made the front-page on HN on the subject (in the comments section of the article - probably deleted later on).
I frequently publish a story when I'm 98% sure - pretty much every single time, the details will fill in as people come to visit and add it to the comments field, frequently enough enriching the story beyond what I first thought. That one time, it didn't, and I'm still somewhat bitter over my misjudgement.
Cheers, Rick
Cheers, Rick
It is like comparing tires on two cars. The tires on my car seem to be of the same crappy quality as the tires on this yellow, banana shaped truck.
The case presented here is worse than what I would expect from typical banana republics, showing corruption at every step of the way.
Cheers, Rick
Surely someone on HN has his ear? Whisper the idea would you, please.
A documentary film-maker has been filming this since 2008. It scheduled for release in 2013 and will be released as download (cc licensed), but also on Swedish national TV.
The pirate bay did not host nor distribute any pirated files. So where's the crime?
The law recognises intent in most situations, and the Pirate Bay exists to provide access to expensive-to-create content without compensating the people who made it. Hence, they have problems (and justifiably so).
This is how they said Google was not guilty, but the pirate bay was (they mentioned Google specifically in the question and answer).
1. is it legal right now
That I can't say. Ask a lawyer. Most probably not, depending.
2. should it be legal right now
Yes, yes it should. That's the entire point behind "free speech" - once you start drawing lines, shit happens. And the problem isn't with child porn per se, the problem is with the horrific acts that produce it and the mentality of the people who enjoy it, but the image itself should not be in any way illegal. Think of scenes of gruesome manslaughter. There are people who get sexual satisfaction from seeing bloody dismembered corpses. Even so, those images, unsettling as they are to a mentally healthy person, aren't illegal.
The act of living in a society involves the drawing of lines and without those lines you don't have a society.
The difficult question has always been where to draw the line?
So the argument of "they're not distributing content themselves" is invalid. The argument should be about the legality of file sharing, property and ownership.
However, I will try to answer the question on why creating an indexing site called the piate bay should not be illegal.
1) A crime need to first have happened, and then linked to an individual before prosecution. Its the basic idea of all justice system, and without it, justice don't work. You end up with "justice" that say "well, you are the son of So and So, and thus you are going to commit a crime sooner or later". In this case, its "well, someone somewhere is likely encourage by the site's name, so lets throw the creators in jail for that someone somewhere".
2) The pirate bay is a tool with a name. Its like having a crowbar named "heist". A name should not be enough to distinguish a criminal factory producing tools from an illegal factory. An search index, however named, should not be deemed legal liable for its users just because then name is more suggestive than "Google".
Yesterday there was a debate about whether the spewing leaded gasoline fumes into the air was something that should be regulated by the govt or privately litigated. The pro-regulators handily won the votes battle, but this post is an example of why it is bad in a general sense.
The government is a giant complex system. It is also extremely prone to the slippery slope. If you allow the federal govt one new dept. they will make 5; if you allow the govt to increase budget by $1B, they will increase it by $100B; if you allow them to regulate one industry, they will regulate them all.
You can't judge the govt by a single mandate, you have to judge it as a whole. This is why federal regulations are bad in a general sense, because you start with something 'good' (the environment) but you are giving them permission to eventually regulate IP and other areas where more powerful business interests may not allow the regulations to turn out the way you want.
If you want the negative externalities of businesses (eg clean air) regulated by the govt, you have to acknowledge that they now have permission to regulate everything similar. But while the public has limited resources (energy, time and money) to fight for 'good' regulation, the corporations have essentially an infinite amount of each. It is a nebulous, interconnected system and the slippery slope is a very real dilemma here.
So its easy to downvote an anarcho-capitalist because you think the clean air act was a good thing or because private litigation is a bad thing, but you have to look at their underlying reasoning. Every inch you give the state, it takes a foot and in the end you only approve of 1/12 of the moves they make.
Honestly though, Sweden will never be forgiven. I hassle Swedes every time I see them now, and have done for nearly a couple of years. Mostly they are ignorant (particularly the older ones), but some of the young people are on our side (though not necessarily following the issues). Seems their political and legal systems have slipped together in to extremely right wing, corrupt, and US-aligned without anyone in the country noticing.
We might not rely on direct aid but with a small (nowadays) military and an export oriented economy being friends with USA is beneficial.
Well, time to cross that one out of the list. It might just be a small part so far, but since there's nothing to oppose it, it will spread like a disease.
Quickly or slowly, depending on lots of factors. But with nothing to oppose the spread, it is unlikely to stop.
Compared to the US, Sweden is extremely left wing (whether you like it or not).
Or the unrelated, completely warrantless extradition and 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement of anataka, from a third country, with absolutely no legal process?
In fact, this tendency is so common, historically, that it is one of the reasons the US had its revolution, and one of the reasons the form of government created in the USA was so different from the rest of the world, at the time. Many protections were enshrined in the US constitution, designed to prevent exactly these abuses.
However, even in the USA, these protections have become meaningless... because at the end of the day all systems rely on people. When all of the people with power in any system are answerable to the state (And the state only) the system quickly becomes merely an agent of the state's interests... and not a defender of the public's interest.
We see this most starkly with the states demonizing of "terrorism" (when in many cases it isn't actually terrorism it is going after)... with its massive power grabs due to the "War on drugs" (after decades of demonizing drugs) ... and now, lately, after "piracy" (with decades of demonizing "pirates".)
Things will continue to get worse in this regard-- because there is no effective force to counter it. US elections, no matter which party wins, put "anti-terrorist" and "anti-drug" and "anti-piracy" people in office.
Note Obama who promised a "softer war on drugs" picked the Architect of the Drug War, Joe Biden as his running mate and his tune immediately changed after getting elected. Bush was no better, etc.
It has been decades since blatently unconstitutional asset-forfieture laws were enacted under Reagan. Further, in those decades we've had uncountable incidents of police outright stealing property under them, never charging someone with a crime.
I can think of nothing more corrupt than, for instance, florida cops stopping tourists to take all their money. (similar incident happened in texas.)
Despite public awareness and many appeals to the courts over the years, this practice is only growing bigger.
So, what is to be done? They're getting away with it, and show no signs of stopping.... and the alleged methods to hold them accountable: The law, the courts, the supreme court, and elections have all failed.
That's the worst you can think of? Well, lucky you. Even so, a few bent cops don't mean all police officers are like that. Plenty of them are doing the best they can.
> So, what is to be done?
Well, now that you've laid it out this clear, the way forward is obvious: Revolution!!
Obviously they aren't all going out and committing crime, but by not policing each other, they are colluding with those who do.
Police simply don't face the same consequences for violent crimes that ordinary citizens do, and that is because of the culture of policing that all police are to some degree responsible for.
When was the last time you heard the officers who are 'doing the best they can' calling for jailtime for fellow officers found to have abused their authority?
Depends on how you define crime? I see cops who park illegally, speed without turning on sirens, turn on sirens because they don't want to stand at the light, idle their cars for hours at a time, and make illegal right-on-red turns every single day. And guess what? They'll write you a ticket in a second if you did that.
And yes, the fact that they refuse to police each other, as you mention, is the primary cause of this. And of course, we can't police them. That would be a joke, right?
When police officers become more than citizens, when they become things like men in uniform, first responders, etc. then it becomes a problem. They are us. No better and no worse. Until we see them and treat them like us, these problems will just get worse.
"What is to be done" is a question facing all of us who see the growth of these unaccountable systems in an era of plenty and, lacking straightforward answers, it is a quite rhetorical one. Physically moving, generational change, violent revolution, economic collapse of the infected systems, nonviolent civil disobedience, eventual threshold of enough-being-enough, agorism, building new institutions to eventually usurp the broken, and the most important: ________________ (you fill in the blank). All of these things are less than half-answers, but only by letting the indictments and subsequent question stand can we ever hope to find some workable path forward.
Civil disobedience is as good as it gets at the moment, I'll do my bit and I take it lots of others do too. Disney, Sonny Bono and the rest of the good old boys can go jump in a lake as far as I'm concerned.
But I make myself no illusions that there will be a time in our near future when we will abolish copyright because it's for the better. The numbers simply aren't there. It's also not the disaster that it is made out to be, there are far worse things happening than a lack of copyright reform.
Sure that doesn't mean that we should ignore it, and it definitely doesn't mean that Sweden should get a free pass for what they did here (those judges ought to be in the docket themselves for undeclared conflict of interests in the cases they presided over). But to pretend that this is what marks the end of our current civilization and is the pinnacle of corruption is a bit much don't you think?
We already had a peaceful revolution just a year ago: Occupy Wall Street. Did anything change? No, because the state can and will exert its violence against anyone trying to reform it.
Things need to get much worse for people to be willing to take on a violent revolution. I'm sure this will happen at some point, but then the best thing you can do is leaving the country. Most violent revolutions end in tyranny. Think of the Russian or Cuban revolutions. The US Revolution was a lucky exception.
Canadian anarchists are not the right group to jump-start a broadly carried demand for change.
The US revolution was more akin to a war for independence.
The French had a revolution, and it came off pretty good. Unless you were rich, of course.
It really boils down to the US/UK hegemony crumbling, something no small civilian group should be able to effect, which is why this is such a difficult question. As it has been historically, this will almost certainly be due to a combination of a losing war, the rapid economic decline of national economies during a losing war, and finally terrible civil unrest and something like revolution. These will be dark days indeed, whenever they should arrive.
The odds are slim that the new seats of power will be any less abusive/corrupt. An anarchy-leaning person would hope for a largely unfilled power vacuum instead, much like the early Middle Ages in western Europe.
Not trying to be argumentative, but what historical hegemonies do you have in mind that have crumbled like this?
There was a story that made the rounds a while ago…
A felon flees police in a car, and later specifically swerves left to run-over the cop up ahead that is trying to deploy spikes on the road, and ends up running over his legs.
Minutes later that felon crashes the car.
At the same time cops run out on him (while lying on the ground) and (having learned of him trying to kill the other cop), react badly and give him a half-a-dozen or less punches and kicks ... lasts a few seconds.
When the media reported on this, they cut out everything but a man laying on the ground and a group of white cops attacking him.
Everyone had a field-day on the internet saying how this was a police state.
But no one acknowledged that the same exact day, 100s of thousands of cops did their job, stopping crime and protecting the citizens. Some risking their lives to do so.
But none of that makes criminals any less of a problem.
And decent cops stopping crime does nothing to lessen the harm done when other cops commit crimes.
Nobody acknowledged that probably because that is their fucking job. That is what they are getting paid to do and are entrusted with certain powers.
It is funny how the tables were turned and the baseline was reset. Now somehow cops who don't fuck up need to be acknowledged and sent a fruit cake. The hidden assumption here is perhaps that everyone starts to accept that there a lot of corruption and screws up by cops (this is indicative by the focus on "well there are a still some good cops, right, right...?")
> Most of the stories I see that claim how the US is some type of a corrupt police state are selectively filtering and misreporting reality.
This is just the normalization of reporting. Before these stories were not reported and were covered up. If it weren't for citizens with cameras (phones) we would have not seen a lot of police brutality videos.
When US is claimed to be a corrupt police state that is often in comparison with its propaganda image or the image people imagine US should/could be.
Nobody is surprised if North Korean cops take bribes or torture someone. Nobody believe it is a state with the "rule of law" in it. But a lot of people are surprised if a cop in US does, because people (fortunately) still expect more from US law enforcement.
But as I pointed out that starts to change.
I don't think so. I would assume people in all jobs abuse their power, not just police, and not just in the US.
Here's another selective filter: if a cop wants to shoot a taser at me and electrocute me, the worst he's going to get is a disciplinary hearing. If I as much as touch a police officer on the shoulder, I could be arrested for assaulting an officer (and will probably take the taser shot as well).
The fact is, some cops are more willing to risk a civilian's life to protect their own than to risk their lives to protect a civilian. That's what it means when they decide to shoot a woodcarver to death because he's holding his carving knife. And when there is zero tolerance for cop killers while killer cops walk free, we have a problem.
When a cop murders a civilian, there's a very plausible reason: He felt his life was threatened, and is authorized to use lethal force in that situation.
We've got a system where you have to prove guilt "beyond all reasonable doubt". The threat of violence against police officers is a pretty big and common "reasonable doubt", when talking about killings with a police officer as the defendant, and a significant part of that is assholes like you who seem to think that violence against police officers is justified.
The cop never gets his day in court. Go on, look it up. Almost no cop-on-civilian homicides ever go to trial. Charges are never filed. It's not in the interests of prosecutors to cross law enforcement.
By the way, look up Randy Weaver. He was acquitted of murdering law enforcement officers on the basis of self-defense. Unfortunately, the FBI sniper who shot his wife in the head while she was holding their baby was never charged.
> When a cop murders a civilian, there's a very plausible reason: He felt his life was threatened, and is authorized to use lethal force in that situation.
It's the right of everyone, not just cops, to defend themselves with lethal force. The difference is that I, as a civilian, would not get away with shooting a woodcarver to death just because he was holding a carving knife. Someone who volunteers to protect civilians for a living should have an equal or higher bar for self-defense, not a lower one. It's the duty of a police officer to risk his life to protect a civilian, not the other way around.
> a significant part of that is assholes like you who seem to think that violence against police officers is justified
I don't think violence against police officers is justified, you fascist pig. I think what's justified is for killer cops to have their day in court, not just suspension without pay followed by a graceful early retirement.
At root this is a philosophical problem, coming down to what people believe is true or false, good or bad. Now, many people will instinctively react very negatively to this remark -- see my last paragraph.
The US was never on a very firm philosophical base, but it was on an improved philosophical base. The thing is, while this may get an improved government going, unless you fix the philosophy of the culture, it's going to degrade over time.
Our problem is that our institutions, which are funded and therefore controlled by government, do not permit the right kinds of philosophy to flourish, and they promote the wrong kinds.
Remove humans from such positions and replace them with small Perl scripts, or something.
A direct democracy where moderators are assigned randomly for random intervals of time. Where reputation is gained based on the intelligence and acceptance of positive contributions. Where the best ideas, not the best orators, can prevail.
Where budgets, and distribution of taxes, are wholly transparent. Where the benefits and drawbacks of policies can be debated and discussed at length. Where the moderated masses can revise content. Where decisions are made based on the best scientific evidence at hand, not on the ill-founded misunderstandings of ignorant, or corrupt, politicians.
In this digital era where more people are connected to the Internet than contribute to voting for the electorate, we need to consider whether we want to continue to vote by paper ballot in 50 years. The environmental impact alone may well be worth going to a direct, digital democracy.
This sounds like a great way to turn the law making process into Reddit. Reddit attracts a certain type of person and drives away others. A Digital Democracy would do the same.
"Where decisions are made based on the best scientific evidence at hand"
I don't see how this is possible. Whether in person or online, most decision making processes are based on emotion and not logic.
"Where reputation is gained based on the intelligence and acceptance of positive contributions."
How? Is there somebody deciding how intelligent and how positive the contributions are? Or are we going to rely on upvotes? Those upvotes are going to be based on emotion, not logic. It's a great way to determine how popular an opinion is, but not how intelligent or constructive.
A problem with condensing a complex arena into a few terse paragraphs is that many details must be abandoned favouring a broader scope. You have raised a number of issues, and I would encourage you to think about my response not in terms of absolute answers but in terms of possibilities that, while imperfect, would move us closer to an ideal policy-creation system than what currently exists throughout the world.
Debate Mentality
Where you see Reddit, I see StackOverflow, complete with a system of reputation and moderation. Unlike Reddit where anyone can post a comment, this policy-creation system is akin to StackOverflow where a person must achieve a certain amount of reputation before making a moderated post. With moderators selected at random, for a random interval, there is little chance for hive-mentality to fester.
Scientific Evidence
I understand that you don't see how it is possible to infuse scientific evidence with policy review. Especially given how politicians today seem to shun science. Part of the problem is that there is no centralized location for public discourse on a subject that brings together all vantage points. Fortunately, we can leverage DOI links on a policy while debating it, and include a wiki for each benefit and drawback. Consider:
Facts must be backed up by research by linking to a scientific paper using a DOI. Evidence can also be submitted using a wiki-style format, such as:
This could include video evidence, calculations, budgetary impacts, and other details necessary to make an informed decision on whether the benefit or drawback is sound. The culmination of benefits and drawbacks are succinctly summarized so that people can still make an informed choice without delving too deeply. (But people can go deeper if they want, assuming the topic interests them.)
Opinion vs. Fact
Part of the issue here is that I think you're looking at the system from "opinions" being presented. The system caters more to facts than opinions, in the same way that StackOverflow emphasizes correct answers over opinions. The example I gave illustrates how this would work: "Some consider marijuana use to be morally wrong." This is an opinion, which is easily countered with: "Enforcing the status quo morality may reflect and reinforce deep-rooted prejudices," with a citation.
Reputation
There are a number of ways reputation can be earned in a given subject-matter: For a presenting a fact that gets a large number of up-votes; for graduating an accredited university; for proposing drawbacks and benefits that pass moderation; by attaining up-votes on drawbacks and benefits. Reputation can be lost by casting down-votes or by receiving down-votes.
Institution
I believe you assumed that this system would be initially available to the general public, but that need not be true. It could, to start, be opened to politicians, lawyers, and scientists, who have a vested interest in ensuring the system does not get abused. Effectively as a means to facilitate the communications process around proposing and accepting policies. This would eliminate your concerns regarding a Reddit-style law.
Self-Referential
The system could be made self-referential whereby changes to the system can be proposed using the system.
Conclusion
Pointing out the flaws in a system is a great way to open discussion, and I thank you. Pointing out how the system can be improved to eliminate or mitigate those flaws is even better.
Though it's quite natural for people facing unjust trial to surface more often, it might just do good to the world if we can see faces of agents pushing the case for say RIAA, SOPA and so on... wouldn't it?
360 degree transparency will help if this is truly in the interest of public (as any Government claims).
The types of crimes committed in suppressing the pirate bay are orders of magnitude more alarming than the notion of some 15 year old somewhere downloading a Brittany Spears CD and listening to it on his ipod. This has nothing to do with fairness, it has everything to do with taking a step to own the internet and every bit/byte that travels across it, why? So you can tax it.
Congressmen need to curry favor with entities with lots of cash, and you can't get them on your team unless you can threaten them with restrictive legislation. The congressman is like a parasite with tentacles into the host's brain. The parasite's power is only as great as it's ability to convince the host that it is in the best interests to feed the parasite. What we see here is the parasite trying to drill a hole and insert another tentacle into the host. You don't ask for lower regulations, you must forcibly remove it with a weapon or surgical instrument. You do not ask a parasite to stop regulating.
> "As soon as a name becomes known, all sorts of political shifting occurs. They've got several layers of scapegoats and fall-guys to take the hit when abuse of power, corruption and treasonous behavior are provable."
After political shift/transfer bring out the new profiles and names. I am sure their number wouldn't be more than let' say - Facebook? :)