The Pirate Bay Trial

[Husar]

Does the morality of torrenting change if it's impossible to buy a certain album? If you can't buy it then what harm does it do?

Now that's a different can of worms, for example when people can buy it in one country but not in another I find that very discriminatory unless it's the laws of the country that prevent it from being sold there. It's not that I have a problem with acquiring something and compensating the producer for it and there is indeed something as too high prices but what I have a problem with is just getting it all for free just to save more money for booze, designer clothes etc. which is what a helluvalot of people do, maybe not here on the org but in the whole wide world.
I've had my share of problems with certain things as well, for example I'm not very fond of "owning" a movie for 20-30EUR on a DVD or Blu-Ray and then having to pay an additional 13EUR or more just to watch it on my iPhone in a far lower resolution. I should be able to convert and copy it from the medium I bought it on, after all I bought the right to watch it, not the right to watch it only on one medium. and if I only buy it on iTunes I can't watch it in HD because that's only for appleTV etc. blabla. it's not like I like these kind of ripoff marketing schemes but that does not mean I go and get all my movies for free, just that I watch a lot less movies than I would otherwise. For example I haven't seen Quantum of solace yet, might buy it on Blu-Ray but only for 20EUR or less, otherwise they can keep it. I do however not give them something else to blame by going to pirate bay and getting it illegally from there.

[Lemur]

I'm not very fond of "owning" a movie for 20-30EUR on a DVD or Blu-Ray and then having to pay an additional 13EUR or more just to watch it on my iPhone in a far lower resolution. I should be able to convert and copy it from the medium I bought it on, after all I bought the right to watch it, not the right to watch it only on one medium.

Yeah, the ability to convert media you purchased for your own use should be a given. I can't believe it's illegal in the U.S.A.

[HoreTore]

Yeah, the ability to convert media you purchased for your own use should be a given. I can't believe it's illegal in the U.S.A.

How they've managed to slip these things through the anti-monopoly laws is beyond me.

[drone]

Since this case is just the US government sticking it's nose in another country's business, let's use Congress' responsibility regarding patents and copyrights:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The Sonny Bono Copyright Act (the latest US law on copyright expiration) now has copyright extension to life of the author plus 70 years, or the lesser of 120 years from creation or 95 after publication for works of corporate authorship. I believe the EU has similar timeframes.

There are two parts to Clause 8 regarding art, the need to promote the progress of art, and giving authors a limited time to reap the rewards of their work. The time is limited so authors cannot just rest on their laurels, hence promoting them to get off their lazy artist butts and keep progressing their work. One hit wonders get their chance in the spotlight, but they must continue to produce if they want to make a living at it, just like normal people. Extending copyright past the death of the artist promotes nothing, and is technically an overreach of Congressional power, hence unconstitutional. But the Supremes won't even hear a case on this, probably useless anyway due to corporate pressure by the RIAA/MPAA mafiaa. Copyright needs to get back to 14 years, regardless of personal or corporate ownership (corporations are just people too, right? )

Not surprised about the results of the case, even if the ruling was completely bogus. It would be sweet if they try to take on Google, they offer the same services as TPB, and the lawyers financed by $1.21 Googolplex would chew up the RIAA and spit them out. Hopefully these guys get off on appeal. They aren't complete innocents here, they had full knowledge of what they were promoting, but the precedent should not be set this way.

[Samurai Waki]

Yeah, the ability to convert media you purchased for your own use should be a given. I can't believe it's illegal in the U.S.A.

It's a bs law that nobody enforces, I knew a couple of cops who were rather fond of copying every dvd they got from netflix after they watched them, and then they'd share the dvds with each other, and thats quite a lot more serious an offense than file sharing. So what are you going to do, fine and jail every cop that does it? fat chance the da is even going to look at something like that.

[Fixiwee]

I'm not quoting anyone on purpose, but what I want to say actually connects to a lot of posts that have been said.

While I agree with a lot of more "liberal" views on the issue, the best argument against file sharing connected with the music bussiness was on a alt-rock board. The guy said that he worked for the biz and that he buys every single rock album that he thinks is good. Why? Because every album he buys is a vote against bands like Nickleback and for good and small bands with creativity.
So he said that people who like Nickleback, GnR and such have less ideas about filesharing then people who listen to Tool and The mars volta (just examples). So more people download Tool albums, so the industry doesn't notice bands like them. So it is only logical that they support cash cows like Nickelback instead of supporting young creative bands, because it is exactly those bands that get mostly downloaded.

Now I am just playing the advocate off the devil and this is not my opinion. But I have to say that this was a good argument that let make me rethink quite a lot.

I always did buy the albums of my fav bands, btw.

[KarlXII]

I don't really give a damn about The Pirate Bay or what they "stand" for. When I buy good music, I know these artists put their time and effort into writing and performing these songs. This is their living. I never, and will never, pirate anything that someone put their time and effort into creating. It's a giant double standard, if a man is charged with assisting in the theft of a car, why is it a big deal when a man is charged for providing the ability to steal music? Why can't I steal a car? These car companies make enough money anyway.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I don't really give a damn about The Pirate Bay or what they "stand" for. When I buy good music, I know these artists put their time and effort into writing and performing these songs. This is their living. I never, and will never, pirate anything that someone put their time and effort into creating. It's a giant double standard, if a man is charged with assisting in the theft of a car, why is it a big deal when a man is charged for providing the ability to steal music? Why can't I steal a car? These car companies make enough money anyway.

How can you justify spending money on music when people are starving in africa?

[KarlXII]

How can you justify spending money on music when people are starving in africa?

How is this relevant?

[Husar]

How can you justify spending money on music when people are starving in africa?

People need music to make them happy, if noone bought any music then we would have a lot more suicides, our economies would shrink and we would starve as well, do you really want EVERYONE to die instead of just people in Africa?

[Boohugh]

It's a giant double standard, if a man is charged with assisting in the theft of a car, why is it a big deal when a man is charged for providing the ability to steal music? Why can't I steal a car? These car companies make enough money anyway.

Does that mean we should go around locking up everyone who makes crowbars? They help people break in and steal things afterall, so they give the ability to carry out theft.
There is a huge difference between providing the ability to do something (when it has legal uses too) and actually doing it yourself.

On a purely technical point, The Pirate Bay didn't host anything illegal themselves, they just gave people the ability to share things so technically it isn't their fault people chose to use it for illegal purposes. I know I'm simplifying the matter as there are questions of whether they encouraged illegal use and whether they could stop it but the basic point still stands, giving someone the ability to do something illegal shouldn't be a crime in itself.

Personally I find parts of the verdict very humerous:

"The court first tried whether there was any question of breach of copyright by the file-sharing application and that has been proved, that the offence was committed."

So by this conclusion, they surely need to now go around and find every photocopier, every CD/DVD burner, etc that has ever been used to copy anything that breaks copyright? They are saying the fact the tool has allowed copyright to be breached is against the law, why are they not actively pursuing all these other tools that allow copyright to be breached?

If you want double standards, there they are.

"The court then moved on to look at those who acted as a team to operate the Pirate Bay file-sharing service, and the court found that they knew that material which was protected by copyright but continued to operate the service,"

This is really the important part. The Pirate Bay knew its tool was being used to break copyright and it is really a question of to what extent they could stop it. Going back to my first example, it isn't really possible for a crowbar manufacturer to stop their tools being used for illegal purposes, however it may have been easier to stop people sharing downloads against copyright law. I honestly don't know much about the technology so I don't know how easy it would have been to stop people, but if they were going as far as actively encouraging people to use their tools to download copyrighted material and made no attempt to stop it, then they do deserve a guilt verdict on this particular charge (whether the trial as a whole should be going ahead in the wider context of music companies/piracy is a different question of course).

Just my anyway.

Edit: link to the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

[Husar]

Does that mean we should go around locking up everyone who makes crowbars? They help people break in and steal things afterall, so they give the ability to carry out theft.

That's the whole point of this trial, intent.

Crowbars are not made especially for stealing, if you sold a crowbar under the name break-in-bar and advertised it to thieves, then that would be a different story.

the site is called pirate bay because it's meant for piracy which is illegal and that's one of the reasons they lost the trial AFAIK. Google can also find you links but Google isn't called poirate search and it's primary purpose is certainly not to support piracy and that is why they didn't drag google before a court. so in a way it was the in-your-face attitude which backfired and I must say it invokes some Schadenfreude in me as well.

[Ironside]

I'm not quoting anyone on purpose, but what I want to say actually connects to a lot of posts that have been said.

While I agree with a lot of more "liberal" views on the issue, the best argument against file sharing connected with the music bussiness was on a alt-rock board. The guy said that he worked for the biz and that he buys every single rock album that he thinks is good. Why? Because every album he buys is a vote against bands like Nickleback and for good and small bands with creativity.
So he said that people who like Nickleback, GnR and such have less ideas about filesharing then people who listen to Tool and The mars volta (just examples). So more people download Tool albums, so the industry doesn't notice bands like them. So it is only logical that they support cash cows like Nickelback instead of supporting young creative bands, because it is exactly those bands that get mostly downloaded.

Now I am just playing the advocate off the devil and this is not my opinion. But I have to say that this was a good argument that let make me rethink quite a lot.

I always did buy the albums of my fav bands, btw.

The problem with this is that the big bands is almost never becoming big without the help of the music industry in the first place, as exposure is needed to reach out. I mean, not many would buy a CD from an artist they heard nothing about.

Downloading or stuff like myspace helps then a lot, as smaller artist gets a lot more exposure, thus expanding their fan-base. So even if the records sales become less, smaller artist are probably gaining more on concerts for a larger audience for example.
Then if you combine it with proper legal means you can cut out that big leech that takes about 90% of the profits (Itunes gives 9% to the artist) and still give the artists money and much cheaper music for the rest of us.
Using Itunes as an example, they can cut the prices by 66%, double the artist fee per album and still run with about 50% profit per album. As mentioned above they might still have uses, but their era of being almost essential is over and the sooner they realize it, the faster we can go back to a society where we don't have laws that almost everyone breaks, due to them being archaic.