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Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

wired.co.uk

121–130 of 372 posts

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Please link to online repository of everything you've ever produced, under any circumstances, for any purpose.

Why? Nobody is saying that copyright holders should be forced to distribute their work for free. Only that people, after having acquired copies, should be able to share it with others. If you want to distribute copies of all the work I've ever published, or work made by me and published by the company I work for, you're free to do so. It's all under Free licenses.

I specifically said everything produced, under any circumstances. Not just work. Everything. After all, if you believe in the free sharing of information...

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#122
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "I support TPB's cause. I believe that non-profit sharing of information should be free." And how should the people who take the time to create that 'information' be compensated?

How are the people who created Facebook compensated? I see no reason why ad-based free distribution couldn't be used for e.g. music and movies. People want convenience more than they want free - nobody uses Diaspora, everybody uses Facebook. Also, there is a lot of money to be earned by selling concerts, cinema performances, memorabilia... (I also wouldn't oppose some reasonably short copyright term, e.g. from a few…

You can't have everything be ad-based, in the end someone has to actually sell something to make money that pays for the ads. I always felt that this is a flaw in the ad-based model, you try to compensate for you own product not having any value by pushing other peoples products.

Anyway, if we're purely taking music, downloading it of TPB or listing to it on Spotify more or less makes the artist the same amount of money.

Software and books are different, because you can't really compensate for lose of sales with performances. Movies I'm unsure of, cinema could make the money needed to cover the prodution cost, but I don't know if that's viable.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Nobody is saying that copyright holders should be forced to distribute their work for free. Only that people, after having acquired copies, should be able to share it with others. If you want to distribute copies of all the work I've ever published, or work made by me and published by the company I work for, you're free to do so. It's all under Free licenses.

I specifically said everything produced, under any circumstances. Not just work. Everything. After all, if you believe in the free sharing of information...

You're still confusing "freedom to share" with "obligation to share". Being for the free sharing of information and choosing to not publish some stuff is completely coherent. Nobody says copyright holders should be forced to publish their works.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#124
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have it backwards. You don't have some inalienable right to government-backed control over what I do with my copy of some code. The original will always be yours, but my copy is mine, and actually I do have a close-to-inalienable right to do whatever I want to with my own property.

So then does the same apply to the copy of your emails that travel across the internet? Once the NSA obtains a copy, do they then have a close-to-inalienable right to do whatever they want with what is then their property?

Yes they do. I would argue for privacy laws, specific exceptions to that right, just as I support trade secret law. But it would be an exception, a deeply unnatural change to the legal norm, and I would have to make the case on its merits that the value to society of such privacy laws was worth that extraordinary curtailment of the NSA's usual rights.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically said everything produced, under any circumstances. Not just work. Everything. After all, if you believe in the free sharing of information...

You're still confusing "freedom to share" with "obligation to share". Being for the free sharing of information and choosing to not publish some stuff is completely coherent. Nobody says copyright holders should be forced to publish their works.

So you support spreading the hacked nude photos of celebs? Once someone obtains a copy they should be free to share?

And "Nobody says copyright holders should be forced to publish their works." should be a warning flag to you. Once you get to a position that twisty, you should think to yourself there's probably something wrong with it.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're really stretching it there. Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them. Not sharing hashcodes to copyrighted works over the internet.

Somehow you see "links to hashes" as stretching freedom of speech and the ability to arbitrarily ban hashes in strings as the way it's supposed to be? I believe you and the parent post have fundamentally different views of what's right, just and moral, and any discussion between you and him/her or anyone else with the same views will lead to nothing.

When people have fundamentally different views of what's right, just and moral, and when outcomes of creating things like tpb could land one in prison, what does one do if they want to live in an environment where creating things like tpb wont land them in prison?

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#127
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Pirate Bay isn't some noble cause Consider it as a litmus test for free speech. Providing links to pirated content, not even the content itself, can easily be seen as free speech.

I think you're really stretching it there. Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them. Not sharing hashcodes to copyrighted works over the internet.

> Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them.

Why do people confuse the concept of free speech with some specific political or legal idea?

There are many other ways in which a reduction of free speech is extremely harmful. Look at the great firewall of China blocking democratic content, look at reviews being censored by websites or posters afraid of lawsuits.

Free speech is important and extends far outside of politics.

So please, tell me, is this number illegal to possess or distribute? What sort of disturbing thought or speech crime is that?

1272705567343948816021070860118743823207760906496

I don't think I want to live anywhere where it's illegal to possess or distribute a number.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#128
post #59
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is simply no legal way to get a movie/tv show on the Internet. Yes, how dare someone not sell their widget everywhere! If Ford won't sell me a car in Argentina, I'll just go steal it! It's a freedom issue! I must be able to legally watch Friends!

How is that stealing? If they won't sell you the wiget then why should they get to claim copyright? Copyright only exists to promote selling content, take that away and copyright vanishes right along with it.

No, copyright exists to say, I made this, I get to control how it's distributed.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#129
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> sharing of information But what TPB mainly distributed, was not information, it was products. And they are not essential products, you can live just fine without TV series or movies. People don't die because they can't play their favourite video game. It's like saying designer clothes should be free. Information should be shared without profit, yeah, that's what wikipedia is doing fine. But video games are not in…

> It's like saying designer clothes should be free. I wonder if it's not more like "designer cloths shouldn't be copyrighted" - which is actually true in the fashion world. And because of that tens if not hundreds of millions of people can get "cheap cloths" that look good.

Well, yes, but you can't download clothes using torrents ;)

Similar idea would be that ideas of movies and video games should not be copyrighted. IANAL, but there are many many similar movies and video games and don't think there are any copyright infringements unless you create a video game with almost identical name, etc.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#130
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Manning went to jail for revealing government secrets about government crimes. And Snowden cannot return home because he revealed that people are being spied on. It's very easy to say, "he went to jail because what he did was illegal". It's harder to say "he went to jail despite what he did was right". I support TPB's cause. I believe that non-profit sharing of information should be free.

I wouldn't put Sunde in the same category as Snowden and Manning. The Pirate Bay isn't some noble cause like the latter two. It did have a minor effect of disrupting the industry and accelerating the inevitable change in business model for the film and movie industry.

For the wellbeing of civilization over the next century, copyright and freedom of speech will probably affect everyone to a greater degree than war crimes, or even pervasive spying.

Also consider that Sunde has made a number of comments which are critical of TPB and how that project has turned out. So while TPB isn't necessarily the ideal, maybe more of a failed or partially-failed attempt.

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