The Pirate Bay's stance on the SOPA issue. Awesome read...

Source

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations – it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are. And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe – but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world – because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.

There is no link to this anymore and can't seem to find it. I copied when I read it, and thought it would be up for a bit, but I guess it was up for just a short time.

This letter is amazing, and I wish this would and could become viral. Everything said in it is amazing and true.

The internet is what the world should be like, no boundaries. If the world functioned like the Internet it would be much more efficient.

The world is not about the elite anymore, it's about the common people. We need the power back in our hands and that is what the internet is, our power. We cannot let any of it go, we need it all.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

reply to post by predator0187


What a brilliant statement they have made, congrats Pirate Bay!

They really do lay it out like it is don't they? I personally don't feel one iota of guilt for the many films I download, not ONE!

ETA: Star and Flag of course.

This probably isn't over yet. I found this posted a minute ago.

What people don't know about is the ace: H.R.1981, the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 which is lying in wait. It's not complete. You see, PCIP is not contestable because it's about protecting children. They can, and very well might, copy and paste the full text of SOPA to the end of PCIP.

Link

I'm sure they will try something else.

Excellent by the pirate bay. Im spreading this around and so should you.

reply to post by Badkro


weak moves by the american gov. nowadays.
I'm definatlly glad that pirate bay straight up said that this would not stop them. Hopefully every person in the US realizes this before SHTF

Well, I guess it's not over.

SOPA Not Shelved, Hearings To Continue in February
Well, well, well, well. Just like I, and many others with me, have said: SOPA is most certainly not dead. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith has just pushed out a press release stating that the House debate on SOPA will continue in February, 'unshelving' SOPA only a few days after it was supposedly shelved.

Link

Originally posted by Badkro
Well, I guess it's not over.

SOPA Not Shelved, Hearings To Continue in February
Well, well, well, well. Just like I, and many others with me, have said: SOPA is most certainly not dead. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith has just pushed out a press release stating that the House debate on SOPA will continue in February, 'unshelving' SOPA only a few days after it was supposedly shelved.

Link

Well, there is a typical government maneuver, too much heat, let it cool off, and we will bring it up when the sheep are busy eating other crap we will be pushing out to the media.

As far as I, and sure alot others are concerned, this is not going to cool off until it is dead.

reply to post by predator0187


Big ups for TPB to take on TPTB! Nice statement that cuts to the core. May 2012 bring a shift of power that will release humanity from its slave status...

Originally posted by Badkro
This probably isn't over yet. I found this posted a minute ago.

What people don't know about is the ace: H.R.1981, the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 which is lying in wait. It's not complete. You see, PCIP is not contestable because it's about protecting children. They can, and very well might, copy and paste the full text of SOPA to the end of PCIP.

Link

I'm sure they will try something else.

We can only hope that in case of such a blatant legislative corruption, the realization of the naked emperor would make the crowds demand the king to be sent to the sanitarium!

Originally posted by sir_slide
reply to post by predator0187

 

What a brilliant statement they have made, congrats Pirate Bay!

They really do lay it out like it is don't they? I personally don't feel one iota of guilt for the many films I download, not ONE!

ETA: Star and Flag of course.

edit on 19-1-2012 by sir_slide because: (no reason given)

I have never felt bad for downloading anything. Really the majority of movies or music out there are junk, and if I happen to find a gem, I usually end up buying it anyways. So I just think of it as a testing out process, which we should be allowed to do.

Same thing with games and music, good music of games I buy, why not, some people should be paid as they have talent, and some well just are not worth it and it used to be you would figure that out until you bought their product.

It has been proven time and time again that piracy doesn't cut into their profits, I just think they need something to bitch about, or they want more control.

Pred...

ETA: Also there are plenty of movies thati find on the net that I would never see otherwise. I just watched a movie called 'Carnage' which has a killer cast but yet I had never heard of. It also exposes us to the B and C movie which sometimes make the blockbusters look horrible.

Anything that gives the little indie producer a fighting chance is good to me.

I download as well, but I pay for the things I enjoy. Movies, games, music.


I refuse to pay 20 bucks for a cd with one good song on it, many others feel the same. Which is why itunes store took off like it did.

I refuse to pay the insane prices for a theater, so I download movies. If the movie is good I always buy the blu-ray when it comes out (and the price lowers from the gouged release price).

Ever wonder why companies like EA games refuse to release test versions of their games? Because they hurry games out the door before they are finished and they only care about profit. So yea, I download games too to make sure I'm not paying for garbage. If companies would release shareware versions like they used to their games wouldn't be AS pirated. I just bought maybe 6 games off of steam because I knew the games were good (single player games that I couldve easily pirated btw)

Point is, these companies want to maximize profits with the least amount of effort regardless of quality of product and I and many others are tired of this.You can't crap on your profit base and not expect blowback like this. Produce quality goods and people will buy. The end.

Also noticed that the original quote actually came off the Piratebay BLOG with a few additions and other modifications:

thepiratebay.org...

They can't do anything

Hosting hash files is not illegal !!!!!!!!!!!!

Had to post something anywhere (see above) because I thought I was banned from ATS because I tried to make a reply on the thread about megavideo being shut down. This is the message I got when trying to insert my post :

""""Insert new reply

Formatting reply for insertion...

You do not have permission to post here. (1)"""""

I lost all faith on ATS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

reply to post by Monte-Carlo


This may well have been because the thread was closed as you were writing your reply, often happens when several threads are created about the same topic

reply to post by PrinceDreamer


Ah ok , thanks for the info

fighting fire with fire! Nice!

Despite all our differences here on ATS, we can all agree that SOPA is a danger to all our freedoms, and not only to you guys in the USA, but also to us in Europe, Australia, Asia, the America's, the Middle East and Africa. It is ironic that the defender and propogater of freedom and democracy for the world also wants to take it away from the world.

Originally posted by PadawanGandalf
reply to post by predator0187

 

Big ups for TPB to take on TPTB! Nice statement that cuts to the core. May 2012 bring a shift of power that will release humanity from its slave status...

Lets hope so friend.

TPB worded that rant perfectly, ultimate respect for shoving back in TPTB's face, this will never work.

WHEN WILL PEOPLE REALISE OUR GOVERNMENT IS AGAINST US?

You said you couldn't find the link to this anymore, it's on the pirate bay blog :

thepiratebay.org...

SOPA is international in effect. It is not a civil bill. It is an act of war.