Peter Sunde arrested in Sweden

One possible stab towards a response is to observe that the cost for most popular sites is dominated by headcount costs, and TPB didn't have a large headcount.

There's a quote from 2006 saying that their monthly hosting costs where 15k SEK (2k USD). But also, one of the owners of the hosting company was also the one running the tpb site.

What's the point of using untraceable methods to pay for advertising? Won't your name be right there in the ad?

(FYI I didn't downvote you)

The reason I said that it's never going to happen is because they are simply unable to pay that amount back. They can't just pull millions out of thin air correct? So I think it's reasonable to conclude it will probably never get paid, at least not in full.

From my reading of the fastställda tingsrättsdomen I note that they mention this excpetion being granted on a case by case basis, and considering Sunde is not a reformed alcoholic with a debth from a accident caused by his addiction it seems unlikely the case you refer to proves more than the existence of the exception.

In my country you can. There is also a 20 year limit to prison sentences, no matter the crime. The objective of the judicial system is not to punish but to recover dysfunctional society members. As such, it makes no sense to punish anyone with a life sentence, no matter the type (prison or fiduciary).

@sergiosgc: Which country is that?

Preposterous, perhaps, but it also creates a class of people who can afford to break laws.

We have something like that here in the United States... bankruptcy won't clear student loans.

I just tried translating Lithuanian -> English. Yup Google Translate is that good. Even for not wide spread languages like Lithuanian.

No worries! It's not the government that is the major influencer; for example, in 2006, you had Henrik Pontén¹ of the Svenska Antipiratbyrån physically leading the raid against The Pirate Bay host and Jim Keyzer², the lead investigator for the case, was employed by Warner Brothers during the investigation.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Pont%C3%A9n

2: https://torrentfreak.com/warner-confesses-pirate-bay-cop-com...

People downvoting me obviously have no idea who anakata is. Stuff like this is what made him famous long before The Pirate Bay.

There is a very real difference between people voluntarilly sharing the information they have, and breaking and entering into someones personal networks to steal stuff.

When you torrent a file, you are never participating in an involuntary transaction. And very little torrented material is procured through breaking into secure networks - an example of that would be the half life 2 prerelease source break in.

These are people performing legal valid transactions with businesses (be they physical discs, or digital downloads) and then they share the information they now posses, but under copyright do not own (you never own it unless you are the creator or rights holder) with others that want that information.

Like I said, if you break the encryption on someones private network to steal their data that is still a violation of their property rights because you are breaking in. You aren't stealing, but the act of breaking in is still violating their property rights, or in this context their right to security.

In movie terms, it would be fine for a movie studio to create a film, and never distribute it. Then it is theirs, privately, and nobody has the right to forcibly take it from them, even if the encoded information is valuable to someone or useful. But when they start selling DVDs outside the studios front door, and you buy one and go home with it, rip it and share it on TPB, there is never a violation of voluntary exchange or property rights besides you breaking an implied contract with the media distributor that nobody understands exists and thus no market in the world is operating without it. People also break contracts all the time, and that usually doesn't result in a jail sentence, it results in a secession of business. And IP is ridiculous in how you enter perpetual contracts by having a sequence of polarized magnetic splotches on a composite disk.

Hell, when people try to release software public domain (like sqlite) there is a massive legal morass and their disclosure license is pages long just to cover all the corner cases.

Actually no, what I'm saying is that what I choose to say to a friend should not be subject to a third party that demands to listen in. If my friend betrays my trust and shares the contents of that communication, then I can't do much about that.

You're right that I've described a tradeoff and simply assumed the case is closed - I mean, where does this right to privacy come from even? And to me, the answer that settles that question is physics - as long as one-way functions exist, then so does encryption (and it's generally believed that one-way functions exist). So preventing this privacy means restricting general communication, and we all know how that works out.

(PS. It's easier to have an honest debate when you don't knock down straw men with dismissive snide marks like 'Hilarious!'. You might even end up understanding a different point of view - and don't worry, that does not mean you need to agree with it.)

By that standard, one can never condemn any existing state of the world.

I am actually willing to compromise in that nominal imaginary property isn't the worst idea (especially as applied to the commercial realm), but only after its industries accept its limitations and stop attacking anything that prevents them from having iron-clad absolute control (attacking justice by extorting IP addresses, attacking end-user computing via DRM, attacking communications and privacy through six strikes, attacking self-determination by forcing their laws onto other countries, attacking the distributed Internet through streaming).

Until that happens, they are a malevolent pest that must be starved, as any money sent their way just supports destroying the future.

If you search my first name on Google, the first downloads of Programming Android appear on the third page of results. Not convenient enough for you? And what did I say about asking for a review copy?

Wut?

Eh? Music industry sales have dropped off a cliff starting around the year 2000. It's been a bloodbath, they're now at something like a third of what they once were:

http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4d5ea3314bd7c8600a0...

Do you think people listen to a third of the music they listened to ten years ago? No way!

> If I make copies of your personal data (credit card info, address, name, SSN) and pass it around the Internet, is it a victim-less crime? I'm merely making copies of bits onto a webpage (the other effects shouldn't matter..according to your logic).

There is a big difference between personally identifying information and copyrighted works. Same goes for passwords or password hashes and so on. Yes, I believe there are specific kinds of data people should be allowed to keep private, and secret. That is why I don't broadcast my credit card info, address, name, SSN or passwords on Hacker News (even though I've told enough about my life so that a very competent hacker could no doubt figure me out!). I also don't put the said information on a CD and sell it to the public.

> The real victims are the people put out of work due to rampant piracy

I do not believe this is actually happening. Piracy might be happening but the reason that such people would be put out of work (if they ever are) is that people don't want to pay (or donate or whatever). Piracy isn't the reason, piracy is the symptom.

> In the end, it's not about 'making copies'.

Yes it is, it very much is.

> You're obtaining entertainment

Right. Obtaining copies of recorded entertainment.

> You're using a service

I might be using the "service" provided by the peers who willingly and voluntarily partake in creating copies, with or without requiring a fee. There is no "entertainer" performing a show. He's not serving me. He's not fulfilling any requests I've made; we have no contract. He doesn't even have a computer serving data for me. He's not involved. He could be sitting on a beach sipping beer. People making copies of someone's past performance doesn't make that someone actively serve you.

> You can perhaps argue that semantically sharing is better likened to 'fare evasion' on public transport

Public transport and fare evasion are interesting subjects. But making copies of something is not at all alike. When you sit in a bus going somewhere, there is a very real service happening that very moment. Someone's probably sitting in the front, driving the bus, trying to get you and the rest of the people to their destination safely and on time. By providing that service, the driver (and other people involved) spend their time providing that service. They also spend fuel. Mechanical deterioration of the vehicle takes place. You occupy space in their vehicle!

If, right now, I made a billion copies of someone's song, the artist won't lose a single second of his life. He won't lose a single penny. His guitar doesn't detoriate, he doesn't get tired, he doesn't get hungry. Most likely he wouldn't even know what's happening. He is not performing a service.

It is not much of a market argument to say "there is this legal framework to artificially restrict information transfer, and if people don't obey it someone might not make revenue from nothing".

Most of the IP abolitionists (myself included) would just argue you should be doing free market information creation, and charging for scarce resources and not erecting some artificial framework mess to destroy a potentially enlightening capability of the information age. If you want to make a movie, seek funding to make the movie. If you want to write software, seek those who want software and ask them to give you money to make it, etc.

That is really inevitably the only way this ends, because IP is incompatible with the modern forms information can take. The ease, rate, and speed of transfer marginal expenses have collapsed to zero, so treating it as a scarce good is only systemically harming society with artificial scarcity.

> In the worst case, it's absolutely possible that you share something with someone, A, which A would have bought and then they don't buy it. In the worst case they don't in the future buy anything from the author/creator etc. In the worst case I'd consider that author/creator a victim in this case, they would have been paid whatever amount A would have paid but now haven't been.

The thing is, what you're describing as a "victim" wouldn't be considered a victim in any other case.

If I set up a muffin stand and sell you muffins, you might choose to buy my muffins, and not the ones from the bakery across the street. But no one would call the bakery a victim, and call my actions, that lead to a decline in the income of the bakery, a criminal or even immoral act. Hell, I might even be using the bakery's generation-old recipe, and thus be profiting from information created/discovered by the bakery (akin to a digital copy of a movie created by a studio).

Well, the prior statement was my case. Your case is probably different. I don't watch TV, just sports for which I happily pay when possible (e.g. NBA) and don't pay and search online-shitty-streaming services when not (e.g. F1).

That said, I'm not sure you're the rule. Maybe neither am I, but either way... Software apart, digital media sharing/copying doesn't equal with stealing in THE REAL WORLD that's why people would always do it.

Imagine if I could steal your car and the owner could find it on the parking the next day ;-)

I'm not 100% sure your point but if you release work under the GPL then yes, you are giving people explicit permission to copy and share your work under those conditions. But, to use that as an example, if you enjoy pirating music and movies then, to be consistent, I feel you should also support violating the terms of the GPL and all other licenses. In other words, you should not be upset when for-profit companies use GPL code and do not give back or comply with the GPL conditions. Because if you do feel that the idea of licenses and intellectual property are bullshit, then everyone should just be able to ignore them and do whatever they want. As long as someone can get their hands on the code then they should be able to do whatever they want with it.

I think that's a messed up attitude personally, but at least it is a consistent attitude towards intellectual property. I could respect somebody for being consistent in their attitude - especially if they themselves are also having their work pirated. Anybody who is pirating music and movies, but they themselves do not tolerate disobeying the license terms of their own work I feel is a hypocrite.

I find both examples unethical. However, I never expressed an opinion on the unfairness of their prosecution. You argue a point that I never made. I don't think they should be treated like murders and neither should a GPL infraction. The degree of punishment is a different issue from whether or not I agree with what they're doing. I don't find that mishmash at all and if you do then that's your own problem.

You do have a unique opportunity to support TPB, though, as all of your books are available there. Maybe you should put your money where your mouth is and replace your amazon links in your profile with TPB links.

The limit is 15. Around this number