The Pirate Bay Trial

[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?

[Samurai Waki]

Sasaki Should have said "How can you justify spending an obscene amount of money on music when people are starving in africa?"

The Record/Movie Industries are big bloated animals, that have such a fat wad of cash that they can afford to give their contracted agents a lifestyle way beyond whats necessary, and healthy for them, which in turn makes the artist's music stagnate.

Which is exactly why a lot of really successful bands go independent. I don't advocate piracy, but I also don't advocate buying the :flower: music that they so often produce.

[KarlXII]

So I'm going to steal a car. The Car Industry is a fat animal anyway, what's one car to them? It's not like someone worked to make it or anything .

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Just email me a porsche then.

[Lemur]

So I'm going to steal a car. The Car Industry is a fat animal anyway, what's one car to them? It's not like someone worked to make it or anything .

Heh, this is a common error. Copyright violation is not exactly like property theft. If I steal your Porsche, you no longer have a Porsche. In the case of file sharers, it's more like you make your Porsche available to me and I make an exact copy. So you are not deprived of your Porsche, but the value of your Porsche is diminished by dilution, and the manufacturer gets stiffed.

So yes, it's theft, but comparisons to property crime are ... inexact.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Making a copy of a file and saying it is stealing is like saying I am stealing if I were to look at my neighbors car, get enough scrap and build a completely identical car. "Officer, he built an exact copy of my car! Arrest him!"

[Sasaki Kojiro]

How is this relevant?

Well, you were talking about morals...

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?

[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?

[Jolt]

The real big driving force behind European colonialism and world surpremacy was...Mozart.

[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.

[HoreTore]

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.

They won't be suing Google because google doesn't help piracy, they're not suing google because they will lose. Google has an army of lawyers, it's much easier to sue some random people.

[Husar]

They won't be suing Google because google doesn't help piracy, they're not suing google because they will lose. Google has an army of lawyers, it's much easier to sue some random people.

You can take off those red commie glasses.

[drone]

You can take off those red commie glasses.

He's right.

Same reason why the RIAA's filesharing campaign against colleges somehow avoids the Harvard campus. It's harder to extort someone who is able to fight back.

Without Google's backing, YouTube would have been sued into oblivion by now. As it stands now, things are civil between the *AAs and YouTube and takedown notices are issued and complied with. Without the gaggle of high-priced lawyers, the *AAs would have gone with the standard bullying approach and we wouldn't have a place to see footage of people doing stupid stuff.

[Husar]

Without Google's backing, YouTube would have been sued into oblivion by now. As it stands now, things are civil between the *AAs and YouTube and takedown notices are issued and complied with. Without the gaggle of high-priced lawyers, the *AAs would have gone with the standard bullying approach and we wouldn't have a place to see footage of people doing stupid stuff.

Well, that might be true to an extent but you also say that takedown notices are complied with, I've seen quite a lot of videos being taken down but I have also seen music videos posted by the record companies themselves, usually smaller companies but I guess the record companies have less of a problem with youtube, where quality is rather bad anyway, than with a site that helps you download high quality files and does not comply at all, in fact even indirectly spits into their face.