The Pirate Bay - 9 years and still bloody runnin

It's not the ISPs behaviour I find strangest, though, but that the rights organizations have not asked for even marginally more effective measures, such as even asking to have all IPs owned by The Pirate Bay blocked.

Think it through a bit farther. How exactly do they "control the supply of money?"

Hint: try printing your own, and see how that goes.

The DRM argument for piracy is a bit of a straw man.

Music hasn't been sold with DRM for over three years, but it still makes up a sizable portion of The Pirate Bay's offerings. You could say that musicians are being tyrannical by choosing to distribute their recordings in the way that maximizes their profit instead of choosing to give it away. I would reply that some people do choose to give away their work. I'm happy to live in a world where people get to make that choice of what to do with something they've created.

Obviously movies, tv shows, and books are another matter. Personally, I think it's only a matter of time until those go DRM-free too, but a "matter of time" might longer than any of us would wish for. This is more of a matter of business model. There never really was a rental model for music in the physical media era, however, consumers seem to have a demand for a digital version of renting movies. With books, I think the parallel is libraries where you could sign out a book and return it. In any event, consumers seem to prefer paying a lower price for the ability to consume a movie/tv show/book for a limited time window to paying a higher price for the ability to keep it.

It should go without saying in this community that a rental model for media without DRM simply wouldn't work. Because there would be no means to return the movie/tv/show/book other than making the user promise to delete the file, a DRM-free "rental" would become equivalent to a sale. The result would be less consumer choice.

As for when the "sale" option goes DRM-free, I think someone will come along and offer movies in three tiers:

1. rental (with DRM, obviously), for about $4 2. sale, with DRM limiting how many times it can be copied, for about $8 3. sale, DRM-free, for maybe $12

It will be interesting to see how many people opt for #3. Getting a critical mass of people to choose to spend a little more for a DRM-free product is how we'll get to a future without DRM. The number of people using sites like The Pirate Bay won't even be a major factor in those discussions.

BerkShares Inc. has been doing it for years now.

Correct: I purposely did not delve into any specifics, because I was simply trying to demonstrate that "I did not host the file or do the actual infringement" is really not a sufficiently complex argument to actually mean that you are not liable, and even if it means you are not liable under current law, I do not feel it is at all clear that in some larger ethical sense you shouldn't be liable, and I can sympathize with people who have campaigned to add such liability. And certainly, I did not attempt to argue "moral equivalence" between "murder" and "copyright infringement" (and feel that anyone who thinks I did, such as the guy who decided to hide behind the name "howcan", is just being argumentative: it serves no purpose in pushing forward a discussion and just drags down the conversation; you always need to draw parallels: that's how language works).

However, your statement "that's not a thing" is not entirely accurate: the DMCA's anti-tampering clause actually feels quite a bit like a law in the style of "conspiracy to commit copyright infringement". Specifically, it holds people who distribute tools that bypass protection mechanisms culpable, even if the primary use of that tool is not for copyright infringement (not so for the Pirate Bay), even if any and all marketing is for that positive use (not true for torrents: it is a rare torrent client that isn't marketing in a way that makes it clear "you could use this to infringe; in fact, here's a screenshot of another user doing so"), and even if there is a clear moderation effort and stance against piracy (again: certainly not the case with the Pirate Bay).

Of course, neither the Pirate Bay nor torrent clients are protection mechanisms, so AFAIK these laws would not and could not be used, and the DMCA is a US-specific law and these people aren't operating here, so I'm not trying to say they are already breaking this law (another reason to not go into specifics: they really aren't directly relevant, and it then requires this massive hedge to make certain people don't start arguing some nitpick of an example off into the weeds); however, it is a clear example of "conspiracy to commit copyright infringement" as a real law that has been used with real consequences in the real world in situations where people have committed not a single act of piracy.

Note: the closest I have ever gotten to being a lawyer was a role as the off-stage voice of the judge in a college performance of 12 Angry Men; what I know about this subject comes from running Cydia, the alternative to the App Store dealing in everything other than an App for jailbroken iPhones, which has had me deeply involved in the hearings to get DMCA exemptions. I thereby also watched with much interest the results of Sony's lawsuit against GeoHot, who happened to also have been the first person to unlock the iPhone and an instrumental player in various jailbreaks that were released, and his related-but-separate DMCA exemption that is currently going through hearings.

What that does mean, however, is that I'm on the other side of this: so if anyone (like "howcan") wants to make an argument that I'm somehow making some moral stance that contributing, even accidentally, to copyright infringement of others is as problematic as murder, I should really only have to go "seriously? you're argument is that I shouldn't call myself a murderer?". It also means, and I say this quite sadly, that I have a front-row seat to the effects of these laws: if you want to claim that these laws do not have any teeth, or do not take the overall stance that "conspiracy to commit copyright infringement" is a relevant idea, I thereby feel I need to ask how much experience you have in these matters.