Pirate Bay file-share case starts

Pirate Bay file-share case starts

news.bbc.co.uk

The founders of a website which carries links to unauthorised copies of music, films and TV programmes go on trial in Sweden on charges of copyright theft.

The Pirate Bay is the world's most high-profile file-sharing site and is being taken to court by media firms including Sony and Warner Bros.

On Sunday, two of the four defendants said the site was "100% legal".

The men face up to two years in prison and a fine of $143,500, if convicted.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is the second Legal battle against Piratebay
with the first one being a failure

filesharing has been around before Piratebay and i doubt if they even succeed in this they would solve their problem,

when they start doing what most companies do and start going with International releases at the same time and not make others wait couple weeks/months then people are going to source it from somewhere else.

i see this as another failed attempt

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Even if/when the Pirate Bay ceases to exist as we know it, 10 other websites just like it will rise up in it's place.

I often wonder just how much they really are losing through piracy, because I know that any of the things I have obtained that way have been absolute crap that I would never have risked wasting my money on.

If there was some kind of quality-control with entertainment, then I'd have no problem forking out my hard-earned cash, but as most of it is banal #, I don't buy it.

Thus, the manufacturers are losing nothing, because I would never have given them anything in the first place.

It's not just about the copyright, it's about fighting peer to peer networks, which hold the potential to change the world forever.

Peer to peer networks put the information into the information age and this naturally is unsettling for those that make their fortunes on other people's ignorance.

Although I use PirateBay exclusively to find torrents, they are just one of many websites that compile torrents.

If and when they go down, another will slide into there place.

The main issue of this thread should be net neutrality. When I pay my 20/month I want what was advertised in the deal. Not a throttled 1/10th speed during peak hours. Thats like buying a car that goes 200 km/h and having Ford put a limiter in at 100 km/h. Yes it is illegal to go over 100 but its not up to Ford to enforce the law. Give us what we pay for.

Also, the contract with most ISP's states they will not give out your information unless under a court order. They've broken that law 3 times with me, giving my info to Electronic Arts on 3 instances.

EA should be unable to send me an email asking me to cease & desist downloading there products. They should only see an ip address, not my info. Countless ISP are in breach of contract.

A true artitst knows his art should be free. An artist does not live in a vacuum and the world around them deserves just as much credit for inspiring them to create "said" art in question.

Until we realize that, the stagnation in our art/music will continue, as we replace "love for the art", with "love for the dollar".

STICK IT TO THE MAN.

Peace

I don't see how they could really convict them. They don't actually have the files, but basically a gateway per sa. They just are really an information hub. Basically, they just say go here for this movie, or there for this song.

Also, it you look at the bottom of the page, they have tons of legal threats, and the responses are classic.

Like people have said before, someone else will pop up in their place. Look at napster, then Kaaza, LimeWire, BearShare, etc. came in its place.

reply to post by jhill76


they closed down TVlinks even so they didnt store the Videos
but gave links to them, so they were helping in promote piracy
but thats UK law for you

reply to post by jhill76


Kazaa, Limewire and Bearshare all utilized the same underlying technology "The gnutella network".

I believe Australia is in talks about banning torrent use altogether, when that happens other 1st world countries will follow suit.

Now, I only use them for downloading copyrighted material but I do know that most linux distros are distributed across torrents. This would be another kick in the nuts from Micro$oft to Open Source lovers.

Something new will pop up, its just that torrents were so damn efficient.

Before Bell gave me the boot I was averaging 200 gb/month (downstream), now that's some solid technology.

Peace

as long as they dont authenticate anything i think they will be ok

Originally posted by Zepherian
It's not just about the copyright, it's about fighting peer to peer networks, which hold the potential to change the world forever.

Peer to peer networks put the information into the information age and this naturally is unsettling for those that make their fortunes on other people's ignorance.

I couldn't have said it better. Common folk cannot be allowed to become "peers" to one another across the Earth. That is the gravest threat which the Powers That Be have ever faced. Also, they know they can't fight it though that won't stop them from wasting their energies trying.

P2P will never go away for two reasons:

1: Information wants to be free.

2: Humans want to be peers to each other rather than having masters.

This is the fraudulent problem with these cases.
They base there case on theoretical lost revenues.
Yet 90% of the stuff they say people should have paid them for, they would not have paid for legally in the first place.
Mainly due to it being sub standard, or because the people don't possess the capital and income to pay for it.
And the company has lost nothing, has had not a physical thing stolen from it.
So there case of course is complete lies.
They should have to prove the ability to pay the said lost revenue's of every single user that downloaded it.
Of course they couldn't do that.
They try and make it the same as stealing a loaf of bread, yet they don't lose a loaf of bread.
I find that a little disrespectful to genuine victims of theft.
Its a complete con job.
Why weren't they doing this 20 years ago?
When people were copying video cassettes and records and tapes?
Its because the internet offers them massive more profits from non existent customers.
And they want the non existing customers to be there customer, by FORCE!
It is greed is why they do it.

um honestly, the nets too big, torrents will never go away, even if they "ban" the use of torrents

see for everyone 1 of them who come up with something genius to block programs or help their side of things

10 other little 13 year old hackers come up and destroy what they tried to do

the nets to big to rid it of torrents and even if they do, another file sharing technology will be up before the law is even signed

what they should do is find a way to embrace the file sharing and use it to work to their advantage

how you say? well i dont know

but im sure they could pay someone a couple mil to figure that out, and i bet if they offer any of us a couple mil im sure we could help em find a way

reply to post by bodrul


Whether you support file sharing or not, you must support the piratebay. I say that because technically they haven't broken a law. They shared torrents, which contain absolutely no information other than directions.

It's like arresting the owner of the field a car boot is being held in when the seller has knock of dvd's.

EDIT

Just realised this sounds like i was having a go at you bodrul sorry I just clicked reply to reply to the thread not saying you're against or for the pirate bay or anything

I remember the good old days before peer2peer was common knowledge. Back in the days of DC and DC++ and programs like that. The thing is it is absolutely impossible to stop someone using a program like DC. If you magically blocked torrents people would go back to the old days of having private hubs at home. These are often based in countries where they won't be prosecuted and often require you sign an agreement before logging on stating you are in no way associated with law enforcement or anything of that nature.

I like torrents, not for the illegal content but for the very legal content that exists on the networks! Why is it they are demonising the technology when the technology itself is not illegal. I have had cable engineers have a go at customers for having utorrent on their desktop. The program is not illegal, the program can and is used for perfectly legal sharing.

Imagine a day when people are making small low budget movies and sharing them over torrents in vast amounts. This has happened already but only to a small degree. If it became mainstream we may see more choice in film and hopefully some improvement to the trash that hollywood generally pumps out.



[edit on 16-2-2009 by ImaginaryReality1984]

you would think that with the economy messed up. children starving. criminals...criminalizing. these countries decide to bring these guys to court.

they are gonna win no doubt but this isnt about piracy. piracy can ultimately raise sales. and another thing. i personally have never seen more then 10000 peers on a signal torrent. out of the 300 million people in america do 10 thousand people who wont buy the movie really matter? especially if they tell all their friends its a good movie and they all end up going to the movies together?

the music industry purposely leaks tracks so that when the album comes out more people buy it. this whole torrent # is ridicuolus

o and if you are getting e-mails try peerguardian 2. it basically stops banned ips from connecting to you. banned ips include mediasentry and other people that want use to pay 30$ for a terrible movie only worth watching once

reply to post by N. Tesla


No need for peer guardian, I'm in Canada. All they can do is send emails and watch as I pile Terabyte upon Terabyte of movies onto my massive collection.

I also go through a company that rents out the infrastructure from Bell, they provide you with a proxy to go around Bell's throttling. They also provide there users with a free virtual PC under linux so I can dload onto my 100gb virtual account with there direct connection to the internet (2000 - 5000 kb/sec) and dload from my Virtual Account using HTTP.

SCREW BELL!!!!

Peace

Remember children, these torrents clog the tubes... the internet isn't a big truck.
Sorry, couldn't help myself.


You are all correct in the assumption that one torrent site banned breeds dozens in it's place.
The trick is to open these torrent sites offshore.
There are a few countries that don't go after internet hosts within their borders.


If you live in Canada, you can download all you want, just don't let them catch you uploading again. It follows the same rules that you can photocopy pages of a book, but you can't re-distribute the copies as if they were your own work.

The problem there though is most torrents require you to seed at a 1:1 ratio as what you've downloaded. Which makes it difficult to stop your torrent program from re-sharing the material without preventing you from downloading the files in the first place.


Linux and Linux programs are also commonly shared on torrent sites, and that IS 100% legal as it's covered under the GPU License.
However there's also repository servers in charge of hosting much of that content as well.


Sure, no matter what we say, these torrent sites (at least those hosted from within your borders) will continue to be targeted for law suits.
But regardless of how many cases they file, it will always remain futile.

The more the government and agencies attack the hosts, the further undercover and offshore they will go.

Eventually, making it utterly useless to attempt to track anyone or anything on them.

Theres an old oil rig around the UK. It is classed as a seperate state, has it's own money and passports that have to be accepted. I'm desperately trying to remember the name of it but never mind it's gone from my head.

Point being is they could easily allow piratebay to host from there. There is always a country that will happily allow it. I think though that this is becoming such a massive issue that governments are putting pressure on entire countries and those countries bend to the will of the bully.

Is sovereignty dying?



[edit on 16-2-2009 by ImaginaryReality1984]

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


The place is called 'Sealand'. I was actually reading about it the other night it's a pretty cool read:

en.wikipedia.org...

Official Sealand Website

Originally posted by Kryties
reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

 

The place is called 'Sealand'. I was actually reading about it the other night it's a pretty cool read:

en.wikipedia.org...

Official Sealand Website

AHA! Thank you very much i'm sure i had read about it somewhere. See now piratebay could set up there and never be touched. Sadly though other countries would no doubt send out some kind of embargo or something. That's the problem at the moment, no matter where they are hosted they get chased down.

I wouldn't mind but the piratebay has broken no law, they simply provide the doors to the information, it is your choice, the user to step through those doors.