PureBasic Forums - English

I'm not sure if people are following it, it sounds interesting to me though

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/16/ ... index.html

Since this is happening in Europe perhaps some of the members of this board have some better articles.

The Swedish court convicted the Piratebay and for me this is an attack on P2P networks. The problem is not P2P networks or ISP's or whatever network because that's only internet infrastructure. The problem is the abuse of such networks by uploaders. It is only because of uploaders that illegal and copyrighted content circulates on P2P networks. In France the court wanted to disconnect illegal downloaders from the internet. Just another example of the world upside down. Like I said, it's the uploaders and nothing else.
Greetings CW.

The Pirate Bay case has ended in a guilty verdict with prison sentences for the defendants, and a shared 30 million kronor ($3.5 million) fine. The Swedish district court decided the operators of the site were guilty of assisting copyright infringement even though Pirate Bay did not host any of the files and other search engines like Google and Yahoo also provide direct access to illegal .torrent files.

For those in Sweeden > http://www.domstol.se/templates/DV_Press____10382.aspx and the complete verdict in Sweedish here > http://www.sr.se/Diverse/AppData/Isidor ... 3/6276.pdf

The problem with this is it validates the claims of big content. And the reason thats a problem is because it allows them to claim at any time that there is infringement where none might really exist in order to stiffle true non-infringing competition. Although I don't agree with piracy, I think the courts decision here was short sighted. This very verdict allows big content to go after anything at all now that they see as infringement. The verdict allows them also to go after places like YouTube, Google, Yahoo, and anyone who posts a link to any type of streaming media as well, like for example - posting a link to hulu for example would be defined as infringing under this ruling (unless you had specific permission to do so from Hulu) and the same could be said for posting a link to anyones video on YouTube - under this ruling (so broadly defined) an individual could go after others for posting that link without permission. Big content could go after a start up operation and tie it up in court for so long that its financial resources would be depleated thus shutting them down and causing them to be out of the running for competition. Even that link to the Sweedish press article I posted might be defined as infringing under this ruling (because they are the content and IP owners and simply posting for the world to see does not imply permission). This ruling effectively defines any .torrent file, infringing or not, as infringing and illegal until proven otherwise. Theres a lot more to this ruling then meets the eye. I expect it will be appealed (do they have an appeal process in Sweeden? - I guess they do).

I really can't decide where I stand on this case.

On one hand:
The content has value, it is built at the expense of people and companies and so to steal it is of course a crime in our laws. Some people say "Why do the police chase downloaders, surely there are bigger crimes!" but if someone stole something expensive from a shop of course we would expect the Police to help. Also, The Pirate Bay makes money from advertisers and sponsorship, they know that if there was no content to be gained via their site, no value-add in searching for movies and games then they would not make money so in a sense the do profiteer off this, even if they spout about anti-copyright freedoms.

On the other hand;
The industry labels and entertainments industry are just a milicious monopoly, they charge exorbitant prices to make a few very rich and profiteer for their shareholders and I sincerely believe that a lot of the freedownloading is due to customer protest to the recommended retail ripoff. Look at the market segregation that happens with DVD and now BD region zones, you can encrypt content without zones, it's about segregating the different ecomonic levels so you can have rich countries pay $30 for a movie and have others buy it at $3 dollars and not be able to take that movie to a rich country. note that they still make a profit on a $3 movie! Movie stars live obsene life styles and stock capital is used to defend it.

Although I think it's wrong legally what the Pirate Bay do, and the courts are not wrong in convicting them, I am not happy about his ruling. Look at all the rules and barriers against MS and it's OS monopoly, I don't see these restrictions happening in the entertainment industry which is one big leach of a family

Part of the claims/arguments I find strange from the big content side were about how much they were losing. Thats simply not true (or at least not factual), the movie industry just posted the biggest profit in their history for box office sales.

yeah, they just claim that every download is a lost sale which is a reach.

> they just claim that every download is a lost sale

Well, if one didn't pay for the content, one has no right to have it.
It's really as simple as that. It can't be sugar-coated with excuses.

Wasn't someone talking about a 50+ GB download not that long ago?

Wonder what that content was?

PB wrote:> they just claim that every download is a lost sale

Well, if one didn't pay for the content, one has no right to have it.
It's really as simple as that. It can't be sugar-coated with excuses.

I'm not saying it's right to take the content, I'm just saying 1 download <> 1 lost sale

there maybe an equation that is correct though, eg 10 downloads = val(1 lost sale) or something and I think the court realises this when they awarded them only 1/5th of the damages they were asking

> Wasn't someone talking about a 50+ GB download not that long ago?

Yeah, but if you recall, they had the same stuff on VHS and DVD anyway,
so no piracy was involved. Maybe you forgot that part of the topic?

I'm in favor of the ruling.

You are after all responsible for the content of your web site and by their name and content they were promoting and even making a profit on piracy.

And yeah, it may attack the torrents and p2p networks but maybe thats a good thing. Those networks need to have some changes implemented to make it harder to use it for sharing content illegally.

Remember Napster? Time to start cleaning up the rest of it.

Hey... I think the largest illegal file sharing should be somewhere in China.

Dunno will this make any difference, but pirating won't seem to be dead for such little frustration anyway....

There's much more interesting things going on in Sweden than this. The 'IPRED-law'.

'European Union's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED)'

Makes it possible for the copyright holders to identify you based on your IP adress and then send you a bill
to compensate them for the damages you have done to them by downloading and shareing copyrighted material.

PB wrote:> Wasn't someone talking about a 50+ GB download not that long ago?

Yeah, but if you recall, they had the same stuff on VHS and DVD anyway,
so no piracy was involved. Maybe you forgot that part of the topic?

If you read or have knowledge of dmca, you'll know it's still piracy

DMCA give you the right to make a copy of YOUR OWN media. It does not allow you to obtain a copy from ANY OTHER source.


cheers

> If you read or have knowledge of dmca, you'll know it's still piracy

Lucky I live in Australia then, where DMCA doesn't apply.

In that other thread, you'll see where I said recording TV shows in Australia,
at the time I did it, was NOT illegal at all. So, no piracy was involved by me.