Charges Likely To Be Filed Against The Pirate Bay
from the the-game-of-whack-a-mole-continues dept
While the Pirate Bay has been known for quite some time among many people, the moment that really got them the most attention was when (thanks to pressure from the US) Swedish officials took the site down and began an investigation. It only took a little while for the site to come back up, after which traffic shot up in large part thanks to the press attention from the recording industry declaring “victory” over the site being down. The Swedish investigation, however, has apparently had a tough time figuring out if The Pirate Bay actually breaks any laws. After all, it’s really just a search engine for content. The company doesn’t host any of that content itself. Admittedly, plenty of content you can find from The Pirate Bay is unauthorized, but some of it is perfectly legitimate. The people who are making content available may be breaking copyright law, but simply indexing and pointing people to that content should be perfectly legal.
It seems hard to justify going after the Pirate Bay for anything, and it’s taken Swedish investigators well over a year to come up with charges it can throw at the operators of the site — though it sounds like they won’t be filed for a few months. Oddly, it seems that part of the strategy isn’t just to go after the folks who run the site, but also one of their employers, who is apparently a politically controversial figure. Torrentfreak suggests that this move is designed to move public sympathy against the site, though until the evidence is presented, it’s difficult to assume anything. No matter who is charged and for what, get ready for the next case to watch in the ongoing global game of legal whack-a-mole by the recording industry.
Filed Under: bittorrent, copyright, file sharing, lawsuits, music, sweden
Companies: pirate bay
Comments on “Charges Likely To Be Filed Against The Pirate Bay”
“….though until the evidence is presented, it’s difficult to assume anything.” funny that’s never stoped techdirt before.
“It seems hard to justify going after the Pirate Bay for anything, ….” is not an assumption then ?
Police above the law?
Ok, here’s a serious thought… If storing information about the location of this information (aka ‘linking to downloads’) is somehow wrong, aren’t the enforcement agencies all breaking the same ‘laws’ as they surely track this information themselves? (And if they don’t, shame on them.) Couldn’t this site also be used as a policing tool to help locate IP offenders? It does seem short sighted to take down the search engine.
(Disclaimer: I’ve never visited the site, so my thoughts are purely based on my understanding of the site’s content from this article.)
Re: Police above the law?
I think that’s an interesting point (and a good idea for authorities). Instead of just forcing these site to shut down they could be using it to track down people who are making illegally content available. Shutting down this site and sites like this doesn’t do much of anything because the content is still out there and people are just gonna use another method to find it.
Re: Re: Police above the law?
Shutting down this site and sites like this doesn’t do much of anything because the content is still out there and people are just gonna use another method to find it.
actually, it’s worse than that. every time you shut down a site, you fragment it into two or more smaller pieces and sometimes cause the community to upgrade it’s technology and techniques. the population stays the same, but now you have more groups to keep an eye on.
a good example was napster that was replaced by gnutella clones bearshare and limewire, which were replaced by morpheus, kazaa, soulseek, which were ultimately replaced by bittorrent. today the ecosystem is made of hundreds of general purpose public trakers, thousands of specialized public trackers and tens of thousands of private trackers.
so, the people who want to police content can shut down a big site/popular technology, but then they have to locate the numerous other sites that will take it’s place and then master a new technology. all the while doing nothing to curb unauthorized downloading.
the net effect is to cause a temporary disturbance in the distribution of content (like a matter of days maybe, sometimes just hours) and to instantly make it tougher for the authorities to track what’s being downloaded.
if the trend continues, the number of trackers will continue to increase, making the community even more decentralized, more fault tolerant, and faster to recover from major shutdowns, while making enforcement slower, weaker, and more expensive.
Re: Re: Re: Police above the law?
Like a Hydra…
Blame the Messenger!
So, can Google be shutdown if someone uses Google Maps to locate a bank which they then rob… and use Maps to plan their escape route?
Can the author of a chemistry book be jailed if the information therein is used to construct a bomb…
Guns don’t kill… it’s the people who use them illegally…
Now why don’t they just take everyone to court and let the judges sort it out? Sort of like (kill em all and let god sort em out ). Sue the tel-coms the subscribers and anyone who has ever been on the internet. Might as well include Techdirt too, as I am on my way to the piratebay for some illegal downloading. BTW, it is only illegal if you get caught!
“Admittedly, plenty of content you can find from The Pirate Bay is unauthorized, but some of it is perfectly legitimate. The people who are making content available may be breaking copyright law, but simply indexing and pointing people to that content should be perfectly legal. “
That’s like saying “I don’t actually provide criminals with guns, I just tell them who they can get them from”. I know that they aren’t legally liable because they actually don’t host any content; but, it seems like today everyone wants to defer responsibilty to someone else.
Also, let’s be real. The pirate bay solely exists to distribute copyrighted material. The small percentage of uncopyrighted material is just a by-product. Don’t act like their mission is so simple that they are surprised that most of their users’ content just happens to be illegal.
Re: Re:
Let’s be real. Guns are used to kill living things. Sure there may be some number of gun owners that use their guns for other legal reasons, but that is just a by-product of a gun’s real intention.
Therefore, every gun store owner and gun manufacturer is liable for every murder or gun related assault anywhere in the world.
Re: Re: An Obvious Anti Gun Nut
So using your convoluted, twisted, and distorted logic:
Any one who makes any type of item, that is later used in the premeditated death of another is also guilty of their death.
Citreon makes a car, it is used by a jew to run over and kill an arab the auto maker is also responsible for the arabs death.
Or to use your death analogy, a maker of vermin poison, where the poison is used to kill people is now responsible for the death of the people killed.
And to further extend your analogy (I like the word ANALogy)the shopkeeper who sold the vermin poison is also responsible for the deaths of anyone killed by the poison anywhere in the world weather it went through his hands or not.
Did I tell you that I liked the word ANALogy?
Re: Re: Re:
I suppose that auto manufacturers are somehow responsible for ever death as the result of an auto accident no matter how responsibly the auto’s owner was using said auto? No, they are not. Gun companies supply a tool and it is up to the owner to use that tool responsibly. Just like in this case, Pirate Pay supplies it’s customers with a tool and it is up to those customers to use the tool responsibly. End of discussion. If this case goes to court it will set an unacceptable precident for the future of our world and there should be a suit filed against the goverment for setting such a precident. There, I said it!
Regards,
someone smarter than you.
Re: Re:
So by your logic, SBC should be sued and run out of business for publishing the yellow pages and smartpages.com both of which list the Name, address, phone number and website of every business regardless of whether that business is doing business legally or illegally.
Google, Ask.COM, Altavista, Yahoo and others should be shut down for linking to pirating sites, crack sites and warez sites.
That’s just plain stupid! And let’s be real, none of those sites, the yellow pages OR Pirate Bay for that matter exist to distribute copyrighted material. If they did, there would be a legal basis to have them shut down. It’s people who think like you that allow governments, corporations and other groups to trample all over civil rights and civil liberties.
Re: Re: Re:
You guys are really dense. That’s his whole point. If you want to take the logic that pirate bay is responsible for copy infringement then you can take that silly logic and apply it to other things.
But the really sad thing is guns, alcohol, tobacco etc. all have a very REAL cost for society. Copy infringement has NONE. It only affects fat studio execs, if that’s even true.
PR for authorities.
To Anonymous Coward:
It doesn’t matter if 99% of the content hosted “points” to illegal content. You miss the point. What Swedish authorities are doing is akin to book burning. For example, it is not illegal to own a copy of “The Anarchists Handbook.” It is, however, illegal to do some of the things that this book displays.
The real truth is: Authorities don’t want to go after individuals because of the backlash.
Dangerous path
Dangerous path these prosecutors are going down because once you start expanding the classification of “guilty” beyond the direct participants (in this case the uploaders and downloader’s) you can end up including people you would never have imagined, so if PB are guilty for facilitating people to find and obtain copyrighted material then with barely any stretch the following would also apply:
PB’s Hosts would be just as guilty because without them no one would be able to download the material
Backbone ISP’s would be just as guilty because without them no one would be able to download the material
The receiving individuals ISP’s would be just as guilty because without them no one would be able to download the material
Telco’s would be just as guilty because without them no one would be able to download the material
File sharing program makers would be just as guilty because without them no one would be able to download the material
OS makers would be just as guilty because without them no one would be able to download the material
PC manufactures (and PC part manufactures) would be just as guilty because without them no one would be able to download the material
Hell one could even including the power company, because without power no one would be able to have a working pc to get illegal content
Re: Dangerous path
You forgot about blaming Mom and Dad, food/water, and of course you could probably easily blame mother Earth, the Galaxy, and so on.
At the end of the day, it is the person that copies the file that has the responsibility for their actions.
Interestingly, one person copies a copyrighted work and they are a criminal, millions or billions copy it and it changes the business models even if the RIAA and others haven’t realized it yet.
hey mike…
ok. it appears that you are against illegal file sharing, but on the other hand, you don’t seem to be for shutting down sites that promote/allow illegal file sharing.
i base this statement on the numerous comments that you’ve made regarding the various attempts that have been made to go after sites that push file sharing, where the content is “illegal”.
in these cases, your feeling appears to be that either the company/organization doesn’t get the web, or they have a failed business model, or that the law as written shouldn’t be that draconian (in the case of the woman who was convicted).
so, i’m flat out asking you, are you against file sharing of files that the content owner hasn’t said should be shared, or are you basicqally saying people can do whatever they want to with content/files?
if you’re up for a sane, articulate, well balanced conversation, then let the words flow!!
as an aside, i think it would probably be a great experiment, if someone put together a site to allow content owners (sotware/books/music/etc…) to come together and to be able to vote/express their thoughts on this entire issue…
or me peraonally, i think the owner of the content gets to decide how he/she wants to the content to be treated.
peace..
Re: Re:
Sam, I think you’re misunderstanding Mike’s position. He isn’t saying he’s for file sharing, he’s simply saying that this is absolutely the wrong way to fight file sharing.
The issue is that The Pirate Bay and others are search engines. They do not provide the content, they do not ‘pirate’ content. They simply provide a way for people to find what they’re looking for. Shutting down TPB be completely pointless (as history have shown, other trackers more difficult-to-control sharing method will appear in its place). Meanwhile, a dangerous legal precedent will be set up that would make a system like Google illegal.
Content providers should either a) go after the people actually setting up the trackers or, ideally, b) face the fact that this is the wrong thing to be doing and compete.
Re: Re: #18 - PaulT
Hi Paul…
Ok…
assume that mike is saying this is the wrong way. I’m asking him flat out, what’s his approach/solution to fighting illegal file sharing, short of just telling the content owner, fins another way to make revenue!!!
put up, or shut the f* up!
peace…
Re: Re:
ok. it appears that you are against illegal file sharing, but on the other hand, you don’t seem to be for shutting down sites that promote/allow illegal file sharing.
Just as I’m against burning down someone’s house, but I’m not against someone teaching you how to light a fire.
in these cases, your feeling appears to be that either the company/organization doesn’t get the web, or they have a failed business model, or that the law as written shouldn’t be that draconian (in the case of the woman who was convicted).
Not quite. I do often feel that the laws are too draconian and don’t serve their originally intended purpose. But on this particular issue (shutting down sites like the Pirate Bay and others) it’s purely a liability issue. You don’t blame the phone company when someone uses the phone in a crime. You blame the people who committed the crime.
Yet, you seem to want to blame the phone company instead. Doesn’t that seem wrong?
It’s an important point. You blame those actually committing the crime — not the tools they use.
so, i’m flat out asking you, are you against file sharing of files that the content owner hasn’t said should be shared, or are you basicqally saying people can do whatever they want to with content/files?
Yes, I believe that you should not make use of files that the creator of those files doesn’t want you to use… up to a point. Just as when you buy a chair, the original creator of the chair no longer has any say in what you do with it, why isn’t that true of digital content? If you’ve received the content legitimately, I think you should be able to use it however you please.
But I want to be quite clear on this: I think your question misses the point. IF the creator of that content could do much BETTER for themselves by letting you use those files however you wanted, then wouldn’t everyone be better off? In other words, the question of what the creator of the content wants to do becomes totally moot once people realize that everyone can be better off by letting the content go free.
So, I agree that people shouldn’t use files from those who are too clueless to understand how it benefits them, but the more important point is that those who create the content really should learn how to use free sharing to their advantage — because it’s absolutely possible.
A third point that’s important here too: is that if you look at the marketplace, you would realize that this is a genie that’s out of the bottle. Those trying to resist it are going to find it’s even harder than just embracing the free content and using it to their advantage. So, it seems like a dumb move to resist it. In fact, as we’ve clearly seen, every effort to stop these practices has only made the situation worse for copyright maximalists. Why would you want to continue that process?
or me peraonally, i think the owner of the content gets to decide how he/she wants to the content to be treated.
You start to go down a slippery slope here. Where do those rights stop? If I have a legitimate copy of a song, why do you still get to control what I do with it? Imagine if you couldn’t sell or paint anything in your house without first getting the manufacturer’s approval? That’s ridiculous, right?
Re: Re: - Not Sam
I think that you are confused here on actual ownership of the music. When someone purchases a CD they are purchasing the physical copy of the CD. This person owns the CD. However, they do not own exclusive rights of the content on the CD. I know a lot of people are going to get upset about that, but it is the truth. It is just like how if you purchase Microsoft Windows you are purchasing the copy of the Windows CD and the right to use Windows.
It is weird concept, because we are such a ownership based society.
Following down the line
You could theorhetically go down the line blaming everyone at each step as an accomplice.
Anonymous Coward
“The pirate bay solely exists to distribute copyrighted material.”
The Pirate Bay is nothing more than a search engine. It provides links to trackers which link to data which may or may not be copyrighted. That’s really no different from what Google does. You can actually find more bittorrent trackers on Google than you can on Pirate Bay.
the sillyness goes on...
Arrrrrrr, leave them Pirate Bay fellows alone, it’s hard enough getting out of bed every morning, the last thing they need is more legal headaches!
Even if they were to disappear, people will still be able to share/swap files with each other, especially with all of the new private p2p apps that are popping up, which are both safe and legal…GigaTribe is an excellent example of a private p2p application that will always be around: http://www.gigatribe.com
These arguments often fall to the absurd, and this one quicker than usual.
So it’s completely the responsibility of the individual who commits the actual crime? So, with that logic; I should be within my rights to pile Uzis on street corners across from playgrounds, free for the taking, with tons of ammo. I should be able to deliver weapons directly to ex-convicts homes, along with maps to banks and guard schedules. And the only defense I should need is since I didn’t actually pull a trigger, the crime obviously had nothing what so ever to do with me.
Except that in law the world over, many societies have acknowledged the concept that, provided a high enough level of facilitation, a person will be induced to commit a crime. That’s functionally what entrapment law is; the state induced an otherwise law abidding citizen to break the law. So are we actually arguing that that concept is a fairy tale, that when it’s made easy and consequence free enough, that otherwise normal people won’t commit a criminal act? Or are we arguing that even if that is the case, is a non-state actor induces criminal behavior, society has no reason/right to hold them in any way responsible for the resulting crime? Just so we’re clear and consistent.
Re: Re:
However, you piling Uzis on street corners is a crime in itself.
Re: Re:
Let’s use your Uzi example. Do you have the legal right to own an Uzi? Do you have a legal right to leave it out in front of your house unprotected? No I don’t think you do. You are providing the illegal weaponry. To continue your example, The Pirate Bay is like me asking you where I can get one and you say you know a guy down the street. You did not do anything illegal. The Pirate Bay is you just pointing, the seeder is the guy who sold me the gun and I’m the downloader. Get it strait.
Some of the comments I here are just dumb, there is a flipside to everything. For instance the person on guns who says there made to kill living things and every gun store owner is responsible for every death, do you give them the flipside credit for when they save lives in the wilderness from animal attacks or a city robbing? No you do not Or the people who say its only their to host illegal content, do you give credit to the shareware and freeware that may help people, no you do not. And on it goes, if we outlawed everything that may have a bad or illegal consequence we couldn’t do a single thing. So quit trying to legislate every damn thing. Truth is money makes things move, and money wins in court. Thats why the movie and music industry keep getting what they want. And why the US even cares about the pirate bay. Mark my words they will try to sue the pirate bay for every frivolous thing they can find to beat them into submission. Thats not the way the law and justice is supposed to work.
the fact is the “chosen people” know full well that they don’t host anything illegal but pursuing those who DO deal in it (seeders) is nearly impossible and hideously expensive pursuing. They want the Swedish Govt. to become a gatekeeper for their potential future revenue stream of extorting people to settle for thousands voluntarily.
I wish the courts and governments would just stop catering to these scumbags hiding behind their supposed moral superiority.
They cannot win
Illegal or not, file sharing is here to stay. The only way to stop it is to:
1) take down the Internet. Yep, the whole thing. Just turn the whole thing completely off. There, that takes care of that.
2) Turn off the power. This will have ancillary effects like planes falling out of the sky, economies crashing, etc. So what? File sharing — stopped.
3) Confiscate all computers — whew! who needs computers anyway. You can get by on the slide-rule and abacus. Come on people, innovate!
Taking down the Pirate Bay or making the use of the bit-torrent protocol illegal will not solve the “problem”. Someone will just invent a new protocol, or tunnel it through http, ssl, or hide all of their traffic in moving jpegs. Come on, people, this is computer science, not rocket science. As long as computer systems are made by people, there will be people who are capable of exploiting them.
The reason piracy exists is a) the content exists and b) people want it.
The only way to stop piracy 100% is to stop producing content. Message to RIAA/MPAA: please cease and desist production. You have made nothing but crap for the past 10 years anyway. The world will not mourn your loss.
> The only way to stop piracy 100% is to stop producing content.
There is another way. Content producers can change their stupid outdated business models. Embrace the new technology and figure out how to monetize it. This continued discussion of “piracy” being equated with “file sharing” is completely off base. Piracy is the shit going on in China where they have massive DVD and CD duplication. Joe Teenager sharing a song with his friends is a potential new pipeline for introducing new music. Someday this will all make sense, but only when people get tired of big brother government intrusions.
What's in a name?
Apparently everything. If they hadn’t called themselves the pirate bay, the idiot who started this ball rolling wouldn’t have been able to find them on google. Such types can’t think beyond media buzzwords and almost never find the real thing. The pirate bay is the worst site out there if you’re actually looking to download anything useful.
However, you piling Uzis on street corners is a crime in itself.
Only because the government regulates how weapons may be distributed, by whom, and to whom. If we were to take that example to this case, the state would be within it’s right to regulate who even got to distribute copywritten material and the act of doing so without permission would be the crime.
Let’s use your Uzi example. Do you have the legal right to own an Uzi? Do you have a legal right to leave it out in front of your house unprotected? No I don’t think you do. You are providing the illegal weaponry. To continue your example, The Pirate Bay is like me asking you where I can get one and you say you know a guy down the street. You did not do anything illegal. The Pirate Bay is you just pointing, the seeder is the guy who sold me the gun and I’m the downloader. Get it strait.
First off, see the above. Your argument proceeds from a point of less freedom of choice, not more.
Second, it’s completely wrong. In most of the US, I could own a semiautomatic Uzi, legally, within half an hour. I could own a fully automatic one, legally, through a class III dealer and a more extensive background check. Most places, I can sale either weapon legally, the former with no paperwork, the later via a dealer transfer. Further, I could forgo most of that, again quite legally, by supplying the weapon as parts, or the receiver as plans and tools. So there are many way’s in which I could legally supply someone with a weapon. I don’t even have to supply the; as pointed out, I could simply tell the weird guy down the hall were he could find such items/instruction.
Further, if someone asks you were to buy a gun, and your answer is some guy down the street, in most US jurisdiction you DID commit a crime; criminal facilitation at best, aiding and abetting, or accessory before the fact if someone’s feeling lucky. If your answer had been “a legal and state licensed gun dealer”, that’s one thing. But some guy down the street, you just sent him off with the knowledge that in all likeihood he was about to commit an illegal firearms sale; that’s a crime.
Which is the point. In most other aspect of life, you help, aid, or induce someone with a criminal act and you catch some portion of the responsibility for it. Yet, people are claiming that going after a company that facilitates illegal activity is inherently wrong since that facilitation is a non-issue. Since the facilitator didn’t directly commit the crime there’s no culpability, regardless of whether their actions increased the probability of a crime occurring in the first place. So either all such laws are wrong, there’s some distinction that no one is making, or a bunch of people that want free stuff are rationalizing theft.
P.S. I’m not saying that I don’t DL stuff. It’s just when I do I call it what it is; “stealing”.
Re: Re:
“P.S. I’m not saying that I don’t DL stuff. It’s just when I do I call it what it is; “stealing”.”
That’s kind of stupid as even the “law” classifies it as copyright infringement and not stealing. But hey if you want to invent your own laws go ahead.
“So either all such laws are wrong” Why must they be? Laws apply differently to different things. The whole point is the only different between TPB and Google is TPB focuses mainly on searching for copy-infringed work.
But does that matter, because yahoo, google, etc. are all capable of finding that material. So surely they should all be outlawed as well? Unless it’s ok to search for everything so long as you dont focus on 1 particular thing?
If that’s the case take down every specialised search engine and we’ll just use google etc.
One last point you Americans always seem to miss. US law does not eqaul world law. Get over it!
Who's Suing Who ?
Hold on, I thought the latest chapter in this saga was that TPB was suing music industry firms and their investigative firm in Sweden. Isn’t that still happening ?!