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Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

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Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#131

Post by PhantomGremlin »

jbaptiste wrote: post #92
bjornsteffanson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not different, and I believe that was the point. There is a weird stereotype that I've encountered about Sweden that I wasn't aware of until the first time I lived outside of our country...whenever something like this comes along, there's a notion that some people think "Oh it's Sweden, they'll do the right thing," as if our laws or courts are somehow "more right" or "more just" than others. I think what the pre…

That's very true. In Europe, Sweden is in our minds like one of the two or three countries where everything seems to be "good". Economics are good, people are nice, unemployment seems low and somehow those countries act as "The goods and respectables guys from the north". That's a very common feeling in EU.

Don't forget the "babes". When I think of Sweden I think of http://www.people.com/people/elin_nordegren/

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#132

Post by renaudg »

bjornsteffanson wrote: post #77
gcb0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now explain how that is different from anywhere in the world...

It's not different, and I believe that was the point. There is a weird stereotype that I've encountered about Sweden that I wasn't aware of until the first time I lived outside of our country...whenever something like this comes along, there's a notion that some people think "Oh it's Sweden, they'll do the right thing," as if our laws or courts are somehow "more right" or "more just" than others. I think what the pre…

This is indeed the good image that Sweden has for more southern Europeans. Although the whole Assange case has shown that even there, politics can be stronger than justice.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#133

Post by [deleted] »

GuiA wrote: post #86
draugadrotten wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common mistake by techies to think that technical details make a difference in (Swedish) court. They don't. Technical details are rarely important in Swedish court, where the court is free to consider all evidence, even if it's obtained illegally or just is weird. So called "technical evidence" is rarely "technical" for techies. It's often just HTTP logfile print-outs or a screen shot of a file sharing program…

Relevant link: "We record the judges’ two daily food breaks, which result in segmenting the deliberations of the day into three distinct “decision sessions.” We find that the percentage of favorable rulings drops gradually from ≈65% to nearly zero within each decision session and returns abruptly to ≈65% after a break" http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889

[deleted]

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#134

Post by WildUtah »

rayiner wrote: post #126
gcb0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now explain how that is different from anywhere in the world...

In the U.S., you have strict evidentiary rules and the opportunity to get expert testimony into the record. If the judge doesn't know HTTP from UDP, you get a Stanford PhD expert witness to explain it. If your opponent mischaracterizes the distinction, you comb over the transcripts and get your expert to submit a declaration picking apart each instance of mischaracterization. Everything goes in a voluminous record th…

"... in the U.S., courts rarely get technology straight-up wrong."

Except, of course, the patent courts -- the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and their pet district courts in East Texas. In those courts the judges have a personal career interest in how technology is regulated by the patent system. The result is that judges are competent but motivated to use reasoning to reach personally beneficial conclusions rather than ones rooted in objective law and reason.

That's why software patents keep expanding and more tech savvy judges just keep making them expand more when you might think they would keep them under control.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#135

Post by mullingitover »

api wrote: post #90
gargantian wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Times change, and technology changes value. Scored music "screwed" street performers, then recordings "screwed" concert performers, then the internet "screwed" recording artists. Plenty of artists have successfully adapted and are doing great. Others have sheltered behind curators and promoters like labels. Others have failed to deliver what people want and they are screwed. That's capitalism at work. I don't underst…

"I don't understand why we should hold back progress"... I don't think we should hold back progress. I'm not arguing for legislated compulsory DRM or shutting down the Internet. I'm just saying I don't have a lot of love or sympathy for people who build businesses on the appropriation of peoples' hard work against their will. I feel the same way about jerks who take OSS software closed without authorization or credit…

> Like I've said, we've gone from a system where there was some opportunity -- albeit in a shitty model with shitty record labels -- to a system with no opportunity outside touring and merchandise sales.

> You can squeeze by on that, but you can't build a career on it.

Steve Albini strongly disagrees with your theory [1]:

"...As a result fans are more ardent for this music. They are willing to spend more on seeing it played live. They are willing to buy more ephemera and eager to establish a personal relationship to the people who make the music. Gig prices have escalated as a result. And the merchandise tables at gigs are universally teeming with activity. Back home, gigs that used to cost five or six bucks are now 20 or 30. Over here the ticket inflation has been more pronounced, with club gigs going for $80 or more. As a result gig income for bands has increased exponentially. My band has been playing a lot of the same places for the entirety of our existence, over 20 years now. I guess you could say we’ve saturated our audience, no matter how long we stay at it. Some of these perennial gigs are now paying an over of magnitude better than they were 10 or 15 years ago. That’s right, some places where we used to earn four or five hundred dollars we now earn four or five grand."

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/17/steve-albinis-k...

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#136

Post by bigphishy »

eyeareque wrote: post #94
arenaninja wrote: post #56

Funnily enough, for the past year I've been using TPB pretty much for finding very specific versions of Linux distros

Do they come with very specific pieces of malware too? kidding aside, I hope you check the ISO checksums.

I would hope most linux users knows how to use checksum.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#137

Post by ObviousScience »

thirsteh wrote: post #124
baddox wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a common mistake by techies to think that technical details make a difference in (Swedish) court. Or, you could say that it's a common mistake by courts to think that technical details shouldn't matter.

It's a mix of both. There are judges that don't care about the technical details -- that's wrong. But there are also people who think they won't be convicted of a crime because of an irrelevant technical detail. The fact that you disclosed the existence of a secret warrant by removing your warrant canary, for example, is highly unlikely to make a judge think you did nothing wrong. The argument that the Swedish judges…

Warrant canaries actually are a relevant distinction: the state has the ability to compel you not to reveal something, but rarely if ever the ability to compel you to speak, outside of testifying (at least, in the US).

Dismissing them trying to exercise a different power than the one they're granted by the law as a "technicality" is a disservice to the rule of law. It's not a mere technicality, it's a fundamentally different kind of action.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#138

Post by graeme »

GuiA wrote: post #86
draugadrotten wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common mistake by techies to think that technical details make a difference in (Swedish) court. They don't. Technical details are rarely important in Swedish court, where the court is free to consider all evidence, even if it's obtained illegally or just is weird. So called "technical evidence" is rarely "technical" for techies. It's often just HTTP logfile print-outs or a screen shot of a file sharing program…

Relevant link: "We record the judges’ two daily food breaks, which result in segmenting the deliberations of the day into three distinct “decision sessions.” We find that the percentage of favorable rulings drops gradually from ≈65% to nearly zero within each decision session and returns abruptly to ≈65% after a break" http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889

Actually, this isn't as relevant as it seems. The parole judges in the study are given a steady stream of cases, without deliberation. There's also a clear default: "no"

Some court decisions fit that mold, but many do not. Often, court decisions have no default, and the judge retires to consider the arguments.

The study in question was very important for showing that humans are often not guided by rationality. But it's not necessarily a great demonstration of how all legal decisions are made.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#139

Post by res0nat0r »

gargantian wrote: post #115
api wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't understand why we should hold back progress"... I don't think we should hold back progress. I'm not arguing for legislated compulsory DRM or shutting down the Internet. I'm just saying I don't have a lot of love or sympathy for people who build businesses on the appropriation of peoples' hard work against their will. I feel the same way about jerks who take OSS software closed without authorization or credit…

This is actually a great apology. I agree with you that it's troubling that a new model for monetizing free work isn't coalescing -- in art, open source, writing, and more. I've personally felt the sting of all of these. However, I don't blame the downloaders or the Pirate Bays. People want what they want, and Pirate Bay managed to provide that to people: a download index for the price of an ad or a drive-by download…

> I think if you can't convince people to hand over money for what you've made, then what you've made simply isn't valuable.

They aren't paying because there is pretty much a zero percent chance of getting in trouble for downloading it illegally.

If magically somehow tomorrow every illegal download came with a bill for 250$ for each infraction at the end of the month things would change and more people would move back to legal purchasing. People are cheap and if they can take something for free without consequence they are going to do so.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#140

Post by belandrew »

agumonkey wrote: post #97
wvenable wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The piratebay hosts no content and even the torrent files themselves are all served from other users. That's the technical side whether that has any legal bearing is a different question.

So being an illegal content link index (categorized magnet URI lists) is not illegal ? honest question. Isn't that why Google was forced to unlist torrents from results, otherwise they'd be in the same position as TPB.

It can be considered contributory copyright infringement if you're knowingly linking to copyright infringing material.

In the US, abiding by any DMCA takedown notices is enough to be fairly certain you are not going to be in trouble for contributory infringement. That's how Google covers itself.

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