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Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

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Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#181

Post by baddox »

knutsen wrote: post #82
zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the only goal of forcing someone to eat something they consider immoral is to punish. Prison is punishment first, rehabilitation second (and it's pretty bad at that considering the percentage of recidivists). Of all the consequences of breaking the law, being forced to eat something you don't like certainly sounds pretty mild.

> Prison is punishment first, rehabilitation second That is not a society I want to live in. Prison should protect the remaining population and rehabilitate, punishment should be a consequence of the means necessary to do so. Prioritizing in that order (protect -> rehabilitate). In my opinion anyways..

I think you dismiss the deterrent effect of punishment too hastily. I actually think that should be the primary purpose of prison (apart from forcing criminals to work to compensate their victims, but that one's probably too radical).

Rehabilitation should obviously be another goal, but for violent crimes I don't think there's a good way to predict recidivism that couldn't be gamed. If someone could theoretically be rehabilitated in a year for mass murder, should they be released? I don't think so, because that would drastically reduce the deterrence against murder.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#182

Post by baddox »

UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #174
baddox wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you test the depth of one's convictions on the morality of various diets? Do you think that people can willfully choose their own convictions?

People can willfully choose their own religion too but it is considered unethical to force a group of people to convert to your preferred religion. In fact that can be considered a form of ethnic cleansing in some situations. FYI - i personally am a vegetarian (for over a decade) for ethical reasons and being forced to eat meat would be extremely horrific for me. And i don't think that i would be able to eat fish at…

> People can willfully choose their own religion too but it is considered unethical to force a group of people to convert to your preferred religion.

That's why I asked for a test procedure. Someone can claim that they genuinely believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster and therefore must wear a colander on their head, and without a test, how do you distinguish that from a clothing restriction from a major world religion? You either need some internal test on the mindset of the individual (e.g. a polygraph, if those worked), or an external test on the claimed religion (e.g. a minimum number of global followers).

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#183

Post by new299 »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #100

It's pretty rich that almost this entire thread is arguing about the prison not respecting Sunde's vegan wishes and his personal wealth and ideals. There are more than ninety comments here and all of them hang off nearly-dead comments. The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime. Louis CK has a bit about this in one of his recent specials: ...but we really need…

    wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime
I wouldn't say that is the sole role of prisons. They kind of have 3 functions:

1. To remove a troublesome individual from society. 2. To rehabilitate an individual. 3. To disincentivize crime (as you say).

In our society they are often talked of as having a further role to "punish" an individual. I guess this may actually effect policy, which I guess is effectively revenge. This doesn't seem like a useful notion however.

I'm not sure that prisons being nicer would really make me consider crime as a more viable option. It sounds pretty bad even if I don't consider the culinary options.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#184

Post by tashi »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #171

Does anyone know which state prisons have a gluten free option? I need to figure out where to commit my next offense.

Sure. If you have celiac disease, try California. Your doctor can write you a note so that you don't have to eat food that could be debilitating or life-threatening.

Simple health issues aside, it's a weird fact I have trouble wrapping my head around that there's an uncrossable chasm between people who think prisoners should be given some measure of dignity and people who find the very idea laughable.

I would just wish for you (and for us all) a moment of vivid imagination and empathy. Imagine that the meat on the menu is dog or cat or human. Not just something you find distasteful, but something that provokes genuine sadness, and whose consumption you don't want a part of. By being convicted of a crime, should you lose the ability to say no to something you find morally unconscionable?

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#185

Post by saalweachter »

Goronmon wrote: post #6
ohyesyodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you are not the only one, but why wouldn't the prison do that?

Why should a prison accommodate a prisoner who is a vegan any more than one who wants to eat filet mignon for every meal?

From a purely practical point of view, food is something it's very easy to hunger-strike over.

I'm willing to bet there have been a number of hunger strikes over a lack of kosher of halal foods. It wouldn't surprise me if there have been a few prisoners who have refused to eat animal products behind bars, even when the vegetarian products were not nutritionally sufficient.

I would be highly surprised if there were any sustained hunger strikes over lack of gourmet food.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#186

Post by geofft »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #100

It's pretty rich that almost this entire thread is arguing about the prison not respecting Sunde's vegan wishes and his personal wealth and ideals. There are more than ninety comments here and all of them hang off nearly-dead comments. The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime. Louis CK has a bit about this in one of his recent specials: ...but we really need…

> Debating the prison's respect for Sunde's vegan wishes misses the forest for the trees.

The forest is big and scary and honestly a bit abstract. I've heard about it from childhood; I don't know where it begins and where it ends. I'm supposed to stay away from it, so I do; it serves a useful function, or so I hear.

But a single tree I can see at once. I can walk up to it, look at exactly how tall it is, imagine getting trapped under it, fear just how dark its shade is.... and then I can understand just how dangerous the forest is, in a way that my parents could never convey to me from the safety of my home.

You've been lost in the forest, so this isn't new to you. But for me, appreciating the enormity of a single tree is one of the few ways I can actually begin to comprehend the terror of the forest.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#187

Post by PhasmaFelis »

MichaelGG wrote: post #138
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's still unelegant and inconsistent. If I claim my diet requires high-quality food determined by me daily, that gets ignored. Wardens are not robots and are capable of applying common sense and judgment. If a prisoner claims that his morals require him not to eat animal products, he's likely to be telling the truth. If he claims his morals require Kobe beef daily, he's probably lying.

Why is my claim that I must have Kobe beef (because I'm divine, and I say so) any less valid than the claim I can't eat pork because God said so?

Because one of them is an earnestly held belief and the other is you lying to get special treatment, and humans are capable of telling the difference. See the bit above about using common sense and not being a mindless rule-applying robot.

Also, because people who request kosher, halal, vegetarian, or vegan diets in prison aren't generally demanding higher-quality food, just different food. When accommodated, they generally still get low-grade prison fare. Thus there's little motivation to lie about it.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#188

Post by belorn »

johansch wrote: post #20
adamnemecek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running servers costs money. And IIRC they were actually losing money even with the ads.

That's all their claims. They were not able to show that they were losing or making money in court. There were no records, at all. However, they would have to been incredibly incompetent not to make millions off the advertisment, based on their amount of traffic. This was key in the procedings. I mean.. right now thepiratebay.se is at top 90 in the alexa ranking. More traffic than e.g. nytimes.com, ebay.co.uk, redtub…

Economics 101, things are only worth what others on the same market are willing to pay.

Ask what market tpb advertisements are on. Is it more similar to those of nytimes, or to a spam network using botnets to send emails?

A botnet that send spams can easily reach more eyeballs than any top 90 ranked website, and thanks to security researcher, we do actually have a good idea how much they earn. Unsurprisingly, its far far less than a nytimes.com makes per eyeball.

What people are willing to advertise on tpb, and what are the competitor on that market. My guess: spam networks. based on that, revenue from tpb is going to be very similar to the hosting cost, or even below that.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#189

Post by alexbecker »

thret wrote: post #148
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #100

It's pretty rich that almost this entire thread is arguing about the prison not respecting Sunde's vegan wishes and his personal wealth and ideals. There are more than ninety comments here and all of them hang off nearly-dead comments. The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime. Louis CK has a bit about this in one of his recent specials: ...but we really need…

I strongly reject Louis CK's assessment. I don't believe there has ever been anyone who has reconsidered murder because of the law. If anything the law protects the murderer - without it, retaliation would be far more appealing.

What? You really don't think there would be a single additional murder if murder were legal?

> If anything the law protects the murderer - without it, retaliation would be far more appealing.

...which contradicts what you just said.

Re: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

#190

Post by MichaelGG »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #187
MichaelGG wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is my claim that I must have Kobe beef (because I'm divine, and I say so) any less valid than the claim I can't eat pork because God said so?

Because one of them is an earnestly held belief and the other is you lying to get special treatment, and humans are capable of telling the difference. See the bit above about using common sense and not being a mindless rule-applying robot. Also, because people who request kosher, halal, vegetarian, or vegan diets in prison aren't generally demanding higher-quality food, just different food. When accommodated, they ge…

So before I go to prison, I should earnestly develop a sincere desire for, say, pancakes every day, then it'd count?

I understand that law interpreters are not mindless robots. However it seems very arbitrary to support kosher and halal, but not Pastafarian diets.

It's as silly as only granting conscientious objector status to "real" Mennonites.

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