Piratebay strikes back
blog.brokep.com
blog.brokep.com
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/63922/pirate-bay-doet-aangifte-te...
(dutch) Update 22.03 uur: Joris van Manen, advocaat voor de stichting Brein, laat in een reactie weten dat het Experian-rapport voor Brein "geen enkele rol" speelt in de zaak tegen de beheerders. Het was destijds bij een brief aan de rechtbank toegevoegd in de zaak tegen Reservella. "We doen helemaal geen beroep meer op dat rapport. Het is ons bekend dat de gegevens erin niet kloppen."
Update 22.25 uur: Tim Kuik zegt in een reactie dat Brein zich inderdaad niet beroept op dat rapport in de zaak tegen de beheerders. Volgens hem is het rapport wel degelijk authentiek en afkomstig van Experian, maar bleek het niet te kloppen.
"Dit is afleiding, het zoveelste rookgordijn. Deze jongens blijven verstoppertje spelen. We hebben genoeg bewijs dat de beheerders verantwoordelijk zijn voor The Pirate Bay," aldus Kuik.
Persoonlijk doet de aangifte hem weinig. "Sunde zégt dat hij aangifte doet. We weten het nog niet. Ach, ik merk het wel. Van die vorige aangifte is in elk geval ook nooit meer iets vernomen."
Translation:
Update 22:03: Joris van Manan, legal council for Brein respons that the Experian report is no longer playing "any role" in the case against the owners [of tpb]. The report was added with a letter to the court in the case against Reservella. "We don't base anything on that report. We know that the data in there isn't correct"
Update 22:25: Tim Kuik responds that Brein indeed doesn't base anything on that report. According to him the report is authentic and it came from Experian, but it turned out not to be correct.
"This is just a distraction, the nth smokecurtain. These boys continue to play hide and seek. We have enough proof that as administrators they are responsible for The Pirate Bay", according to Kuik.
He's not bothered personally by the filing of charges. "Sunde says he's going to file. We don't know that yet. I'll fin out about it. That previous filing was never heard from.".
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That may all be true, but I can't believe that the court is going to be happy with a party that has apparently not retracted a report that it knew to contain false information.
Also, if Experian says they didn't make that report and Brein says they did, where did it really come from ? If it can be pinned on Brein that they did falsify information it is going to hurt them tremendously. One thing they do is continuously harping on being on the right side of the law, if they falsify evidence then that veil is pierced once and for all.
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out over time, but I don't think 'we're not using that report' is going to make this go away.
If Experian can testify to the tune that Brein falsified the report, then they're in for a real ride.
I've actually got an old Thinkpad hooked up to my TV. It works better than you might think. The dock has HDMI and it puts out a full 1080.
It's a T43/p. I believe the /p is important since the regular T43 had a crap graphics card. And I think it's a ThinkPad Port Replicator II (like $20 on ebay).
Getting the drivers for the DVI port just right under Linux took some work though.
As a point of order they would almost certainly tell you it a) depends on the country, b) has been untested in the majority of countries so it is neither right nor wrong and anyway it probably would count as theft in a civil case sense.
However I agree BREIN are a bit crazy - and the video they add to DVD's is inane.
On the other hand better that than suing individuals I suppose :D (even though that happens too :()
Theft is a different crime that has been illegal pretty much for as long as there has been laws.
Pirating a movie is illegal because it is copyright infringement, not because it is theft. Therefore, calling it theft is a lie, as any lawyer can tell you.
Also; they establish a civil crime not a criminal one. Theft laws may still apply here in the UK, as it is I know the only massive obstacle to infringement as theft (here in the UK) is the final article - all about the intention to deprive permanently. There are movements by certain pressure groups to get it clarified where the line is drawn.
And anyway - the point the video is trying to make is that it is a "moral" theft. I think it's fair to say the copyright holder has the right to say they feel that morally a "pirate" is "stealing" from them :)
(Im not defending them or the video - or trying to suggest it should be theft)
The actual problem being that they don't state it that way. They don't state that it's a 'moral' theft and not a legal theft. They just state it as 'theft.' It's a PR campaign, plain and simple. They want to influence people to see stealing a car, or stealing 'candy from a baby' as the exact same thing as downloading a movie without paying for it.
No, it hasn't. Copyright law was pretty much invented with the Statute of Anne which was passed in the UK in 1710. Before that some countries had printing monopolies, but no copyright.
The amount of raw, undistilled incompetence boggles the mind.
Fighting a lost case and losing the case is one thing. Forging court documents and losing everything: PRICELESS.
It also speaks volumes about the mental capabilities of the individuals at work here. How absurdly stupid do you have to be to forge a document that can be trivially cross-checked with a phone-call at the issuing agency? This is not something where you can weasel out later with an "oops, didn't mean to". It's plain out fraud and I don't think judges have much humor in that regard.
Anyways, I think I'm gonna forge me a nice tax-return statement now and sue my state over it...
start-ups take note- controversial is king!
The fact that it's my product is unfortunate, but ultimately, I have to compete with them. I can only do that if I can make it easier to deal with my company than with the Pirate Bay. (Which is exactly how iTunes and Spotify work, for instance. You can compete with free: you do it by being convenient, and by finding ways to add value where it wouldn't otherwise exist.)
I've downloaded quite a bit of stuff from various torrent sites, but you know what's funny? I've never downloaded anything that I could have purchased from the copyright holder instead. Whose fault is that?
You must be a fool to believe that they don't own the pirate bay anymore, or are not associated with the keyman islands shell company running the company.
Alone mininova disclosed making > 1 million of profit a year, piratebay's profit must be much bigger, all from the copyrighted works of others.
Most of you wouldn't support piratebay anymore if your program/source code showed up there, except if it's opensource.
It was, I think, a distinction.
Source code available on pirate bay is useless unless someone spends a lot of time / money on figuring out how it works. This is why people can write in scripting languages without worrying about the "openness" of the source.
I think the truth is more nuanced than that, but you have a perfectly valid opinion.
The current model isn't working if it's so easily subverted. The solution is to figure out a model that's pirate-proof. They exist.
A few of the models I'm going to be experimenting with: Raising money before you release an album, with certain perks given to people that pay the money for release. Offering special exclusives that people can choose to pay for, that most people interested in just music won't bother pirating. That's why I'm excited for the iTunes LP: It's an idea that's worth money even after you own the music, that appeals to fans and less to casual criminals.
I'm currently thinking of launching an ARG with a future music project. I think that launching a video game through an album distribution would be really fun and potentially really profitable.
Not all pirates are freetards, i'm talking about the two ends of the spectrum here. I am a pirate for example but I also subscribe to EMusic and make a point of buying direct from artists when I can and seeing bands live. Some people however are loathe to do this as well and believe that content should always be free.
As it stands both models are somewhat flawed and neither are the way forward in their present state.
My policy is, I buy from artists who I feel aren't big. I bought Joanna Newsom's album for a friend of mine after I downloaded it, and I just got a song from Pomplamoose, which is a crazy duo I found on Youtube. When I feel like my money's going to a good cause, then I pay.
* Artists(haha, really? is Spears and "artist"?) perform live to earn income
I know... it's earth shattering.
If people don't think it's worth the trouble of recording, then they shouldn't do it. See how many people come to your live performance without the free advertising that recordings provide.
Oh, maybe they won't make hundreds of millions of dollars. Should I give up my rights so "recording artists" can be filthy rich? I think not. And also, I don't give two shits about all the administrative ppl in the recording industry. They can all live in the streets for all I care. The current system is worse then welfare.
Of course, their market will implode once we get thin and light screens that can deliver the crisp of type printed on paper.
At this point the author (or the publisher) is seeing NO money. Is there a real reason why I can't just take a copy of the book, put it to PDF and distribute it for free? The people that were involved in the production of the book have essentially abandoned it, but they will definitely jump out of the woodwork to try and cash in on it if someone were to 'make it profitable again' (which includes suing a person for distributing it).
I see these as the moral equivalent of submarine patents. (Patents where you wait until something becomes popular, and then pop out of the woodwork to sue the biggest companies that you can find for millions or billions of dollars)
(Interlibrary Loan is awesome.)
It's a fallacy that most recording artists are "filthy rich", not mention how much they make is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. What "right" are you giving up?
* The right to share * The right to modify * The right to use in anyway I want
Gee, I didn't know this "intellectual property" war has gone this far! Is it now a crime not to provide a realistic revenue model for artists?
Just in case it's actually true (I haven't been following the news recently) I am hereby providing a realistic revenue model for artists: get a job.
No, really. I don't believe that being an artist (or an author in general) entitles you to anything. Copyright is a privilege, not a god-given right. Its original purpose was to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", a social contract designed to provide fair compensation for contributing to the public pool of ideas.
Then the suits came and fucked this up with their concept of intellectual "property" and perpetual copyright term extensions. Copyright doesn't serve its original purpose anymore, we should just drop it. If you don't like it, don't publish. It had been this way for most of human history and it worked fine.
* Not that they own TPB (the Swedish IRS have even concluded that they do not.)
* Not that TPB are making any money. While they must have some revenue (from banner clicks), it is not at all certain that it exceeds the costs of running the website.
It's possible for both claims to be true, but it's not proven. I, for one, do not wish people who haven't been proven guilty to go to jail. I certainly don't think that your hunch that they probably do own it should suffice.
As a bonus, keep in mind that the crime they're charged with is is something as flimsy as "aiding" unspecified crimes against copyright — that's right, the copyright crimes that they are supposed to have aided are unspecified, and nobody has been accused of committing those.
What? That makes no sense what so ever. How does TPB's hypothetical revenue increase the chance that the accused own TPB?
No offense, but sometimes people are willing to stand up and fight for what they believe in. Just because what they believe in is something that you disagree with doesn't make them any less willing to possibly sacrifice themselves for their cause.
I don't believe that the Middle East should be ruled over by Muslim 'overlords' that use the religion as a form of governance, but that doesn't mean that there are no suicide bombers out there willing to further that cause.
That's true in most European countries, but in the U.S. and certain other areas, it is in fact possible to have a company with not just anonymous ownership, but NO owner.
You can structure a company such that all stock works something like a bearer bond: whoever happens to hold the piece of paper is the owner.
So far as I know none of the people that are being charged here stand to gain any money from the sale of ThePirateBay. The company that owns it is the one that stands to profit. This was my impression ever since I heard about the possible sale.
Bittorrent is possibly the best distribution system ever. There is no DRM, there are no checks to see if you're in the right country, there's nothing stopping you from getting exactly what you want.
Movies for example...some people hate the extra/bonus features on DVDs and just want to see the damned movie while others like them. Why don't movie companies distribute two different versions? Also, what about letting people in all sorts of countries download or watch things? This is possibly the worst thing for me because I'm Canadian.
Oh, the irony.
(I could "just do without", but why should I suffer for the studio's mistakes?)
I am very against DRM on content I have purchased, and I've admittedly "sampled" music that I may or may not have purchased later. But I've never violated digital rights because I felt like I had some sort of privilege to do so. I would love to see an overhaul of the industry, but until we do, we can play by their rules, or at least be genuine about it when we don’t.
If you can't watch a movie, what does that serve? The public is clearly not getting anything. And the creator isn't getting anything either. Everybody loses. This isn't the same as simply not being able to pay either.
Basically, I don't take issue with copyright law. I take issue with producers "managing" my rights for me. Tell me my rights, trust me to abide by them, and sue me for transgressions.
There is a rational basis for opposing copyright controls without simultaneously supporting piracy, but sadly, most people seem to advocate from the latter camp.
Sorry, but k5 was never in that chain. reddit, perhaps, is/was the next step after Slashdot.
Because it's a lie? "Piracy" isn't theft. Abortion isn't murder. You can argue that they're wrong, but this kind of misrepresentation is the lowest possible way of discusion. In fact it's an admission that people doesn't look at copyright infringement as wrong, so it must be tagged with a stronger word.
This debate is not going away, because that's the politics of our time. So please, at least let's keep it a little more intelligent than that.
abortion at 8 months 29 days is undoubtedly murder. abortion at 8 months 28 days is undoubtedly murder. Now work backwards, when is it no longer murder?
As for the debate being "grey", of course. That's my point. "Piracy is theft" is black and white. And wrong.
If a barman sells tobacco to someone who's just turned 16 it's legal. Why wasn't it legal yesterday? Laws need this kind of hard limits. Abortion is legal in many countries within certain weeks of conception. Abortion is illegal (but not murder!!) simply before birth. Penalties are different, that's the law.
I'm very happy to have laws, even if I don't like all of them, because they're way better than someone's sense of morality.
It's basically "because you can't provide an EXACT line that separates these things there's no separation at all!"
But that's plainly not a convincing argument.
what a weird comment!
It doesn't mean that abortion and file sharing are connected in any other way.
Also there's a number of material differences that justify that different treatment.
Theft removes the object from someone. Copyright infringement does not.
Theft (as tipified in my country, opposed to "hurto" or "apropiación indebida", sorry don't know how to translate those) means certain quantity, violence on persons or things.
Even if the same laws were applied to digital content, there would be impossible to convict anybody without specific laws, because taking something from someone without violence, dameges and not depriving the owner would amount as a small fine, not worth the legal costs.
There is a concept in penal law over here that's called "punibility". The idea is that certain behaviours can't be controlled using criminal law because it's impossible to keep an eye on everybody: "behaviour that's socially accepted". If you need a policeman on every citizen, that also needs to enter your home to see if you're acting bad... then it's a bad idea to criminalize. The punishment isn't uniformly applied so it's even more unjust.
The first has zero cost to the owner of the car, they keep their car and Google keep their [Google's] picture of it, plus I get my copy.
The second denies the owner their original and any possible use of that original.
The distinction is physical, not metaphysical. The clue is in the terms property and intellectual property. One of these is ethereal and almost impossible to steal [at present], can you guess which?
Whether you believe the murder of the child is justified is a separate question. But even if you believe copyright infringement is wrong someone doing it will not stop the original creator from have access to their [original] copy.
Abortion is not murder because the law says so. Laws and beliefs are two different things. Murder and abortion (except the cirscumstances in which it's permitted) are two legal concepts. There are also "popular" meanings, but the ones that matters if you want to do something about a behaviour are the legal meanings. You can't sue people because of your beliefs.
Wrong and right are "moral" or "ethical" concepts, so different persons have different notions of right and wrong. But there is only one law (in each country, at a given moment).
Natural law is a dead idea. Of course moral concepts are often the motivation for people to try to crate and change laws. But only when the ideas take the form of law, they become a common ground.
BTW, have abortion and murder the same punishment in the USA? I mean illegal abortion. Even performed against the woman's will. I can assure you that it's not the case in many other countries.
Isn't that what the Scientology church do?
If this weren't the case, screening your mail judiciously would be the ultimate legal defense against all civil litigation.