They should go to jail since they are making big money out of other people's copyrighted work.
And hopefully they will.
And hopefully they will.
And they have advertising on their site, hence they are making money from this activity.
It's a pity that everyone calls this 'file sharing' (which sounds so innocent) when the entire purpose of a site like TPB is to allow people to make copies of copyright works.
TPB is just another tool for sharing files, it's people's actions that infringe copyright. They really should be after the folks who rip the content and upload them in the first place.
Get to the source of the incident, not the distribution channel.
"The responsibility lies upon the user to not spread malicious, false or illegal material using the tracker."
which is tantamount to saying that they turn a blind eye to what's happening on their service. On their legal threats page they respond to various letters. For example, in replying DreamWorks who were annoyed about distribution of Shrek 2 they wrote:
"It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ....... morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.
Go fuck yourself."
So basically they either turn a blind eye, or defend the actions of people using the tracker for the copying of copyrighted works without authorization.
If you read the letters they send they claim that they are not breaking the law in Sweden. I guess the court disagreed with that.
"It's a pity that everyone calls this 'file sharing' (which sounds so innocent)"
People call it "file sharing" because it's about, get this, sharing files. What those files are is basically beside the point. I do not have a contract with the RIAA or MPAA to refrain from storing or transmitting data which may be derived from their works; if they can't make money in a world where people can exchange information freely, well, sucks to be them.
It's all moot anyway really. File sharing is a fait accompli. All these court actions are doing is speeding the development of the next generation, and then the war will truly be lost.
So if you wrote a piece of software you wouldn't have a problem with me taking that piece of software and not paying you for it. Right?
Your only concern would be if someone started trying to sell your software and make money from it. Right?
In both cases someone enjoyed the fruits of your labor without compensating you for it.
I write software, and no, I don't care if anyone ever pays for it "properly". Software is buggy enough already without having protection mechanisms in place that could also have bugs (and they do; I have been burned before, with programs refusing to run that were convinced my original disk was somehow not valid).
What labour? I didn't expend any labour at all making a copy of that program. Why should I be compensated? Why should I even know?
Your thesis relies upon an arbitrary, and I would say quite baseless, link between a piece of information of whatever form and some kind of implied reward for its originator. But this system breaks down completely when copies can be made at almost zero cost. The labour and hence reward does not and should not multiply automatically in proportion to the number of copies in existence. How could it?
As an example of how arbitrary and harmful your belief system is, take, say, mathematical theorems. As you know, we have many mathematicians around the world. They work, very hard, on extending mathematical knowledge. And yet, unlike a movie or a song, a mathematical theorem is not copy-protectable.
You use any number of those theorems every day, if not directly then in the products in your life. No mathematicians are being compensated for your use of their labours. No-one suggests that unless mathematics are copy protected (life plus 75), that people will stop doing maths. Why isn't that protected too? Especially considering mathematics is rather more important for our society than a few movies?
Information in and of itself has no "reward" value, zip, zero. It may, of course, have immense "use to society" value - hence the importance of its sharing, as wide as possible and as easily as possible.
More along the "examine your beliefs" theme: why is there such a discrepancy between patents and copyrights? I happen to believe in patents, if done properly. They encourage innovation in manufacturing and technology. They are of immense importance. And yet patents are generally 20 years.
Why so short? To encourage innovation, of course.
Why are copyrights so long? To encourage innovation, of course.
Do you detect any cognitive dissonance in the two above statements?
Right, I'll stop before I go any further off along this tangent : )
Not entirely true. TPB exists to facilitate copying of digital content. Copyright and license fees are irrelevant; if the whole of copyright law as abilished tomorrow, TPB and the BitTorrent infrastructure would still work, exactly the same as it does now.
> And they have advertising on their site, hence they are making money from this activity.
The one doesn't follow from the other; for example, the avertising revenue may not cover the costs of running the site.
> It's a pity that everyone calls this 'file sharing'
I agree, but ont for your reasons. It isn't "file sharing" because the files aren't shared; everyone ends up with their own copy. An accurate term would be P2P file copying.
> to allow people to make copies of copyright works
You probably meant to say "to allow people to make unauthorised copies of copyright works"; making copies of copyright works is in itself perfectly legal; I do it all the time, as does everyone else with a computer.
Personally the biggest issue I have with TPB is:
- They have an anti-establishment attitude NOT a pro-file sharing one. So I dont ever count them as part of the (legit) file sharing community
- They have an attitude problem.. there is no reason sharers cant work with copyright holders. But said holders have no reason to trust sharers when people like TPB tend to be the public face (through creating a media circus).
My problem was that the original parent comment (now deleted) made the claim that TPB was profiting off other copyright holders and therefore deserved punishment.
My retort was that they weren't necessarily hurting copyright holders and may even have helped with promotion.
They might slip into immaturity sometimes (see their "responses to legal threats page", for example) but it's not like the other side are angels either.
Really? Mostly they just fall back on the usual anti-capitalist rethoric. Nothing particularly wrong with that but they certainly dont do it politely from what I have seen :)
In terms of the other side: true both have their faults. But why does that mean we should side with the pirates :) they have done something wrong.
State litigation is built on test cases I think. So there not being a specific law is not en-passe for it being legal.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=566824
"It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ....... morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons. Go fuck yourself."
I suppose this is one of the "responses to legal threats" you refer to.
If you read the whole thing, you'll note that the reason for that tone was that they were annoyed that DreamWorks had tried to send a DMCA takedown notice to a site obviously, and famously, far outside the USA.
As a dirty foreigner myself I can completely understand the annoyance with Americans who blithely assume that US law applies to the rest of the world, so maybe that wasn't the best example to raise. And as an American, I'm sure that if some Swedish company sent you a Swedish "takedown" notice under Swedish law and written in Swedish, you'd probably tell them to go fuck themselves, too.
The argument have 2 (probably even) sides with the majority of us stuck in the middle. Only one is refusing to budge and are acting like "dicks". So....
What makes you think that? They have a big site, without any advertising banners...doesn't sound like a very commercially attractive deal to me.
[edit] Oops, my bad, they do have some banners, my ad blocking tools turned out to be far more effective than I thought they would be. Even if they serve those banners, I really can't imagine they are making "big money". [/edit]
Im sure they dont make a lot of money out of it though (running costs perhaps)
EDIT: @jvdh - heh yeh I only happened to notice because I was using IE (spit) at the time.
This is just quessing, i have no confirmed information.
For a group that list openness and freedom amongst their ideals [sic] I dont see any openness about the revenue TPB generates. They release no figures or data.
Personally I consider that a double standard (and I have to confess I do believe they make a profit: perhaps not a huge amount but... logically they could make quite a bit and I dont see a decent argument for why they wouldnt)
See the 12th paragraph down at: http://torrentfreak.com/news-from-the-pirate-bay-press-confe...