Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Piratebay strikes back

blog.brokep.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 106 posts

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#61

Post by pyre »

anApple wrote: post #42
tjogin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your position, but the thing is that there is no proof for either of the claims you are making: * Not that they own TPB (the Swedish IRS have even concluded that they do not.) * Not that TPB are making any money. While they must have some revenue (from banner clicks), it is not at all certain that it exceeds the costs of running the website. It's possible for both claims to be true, but it's not proven.…

- The Swedish IRS can claim whatever they want. They don't have access to the bank accounts on these islands, so how should they know if some of them are affilated to that company. - It is completely irrelevant if the TPB is making money or not. And I bet it does a hell lot, or otherwise they wouldn't been so keen to go to jail.

> And I bet it does a hell lot, or otherwise they wouldn't been so keen to go to jail.

No offense, but sometimes people are willing to stand up and fight for what they believe in. Just because what they believe in is something that you disagree with doesn't make them any less willing to possibly sacrifice themselves for their cause.

I don't believe that the Middle East should be ruled over by Muslim 'overlords' that use the religion as a form of governance, but that doesn't mean that there are no suicide bombers out there willing to further that cause.

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#62

Post by omail »

tedunangst wrote: post #57
doki_pen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't resist. I'm a freetard and here is my proposal: * Artists(haha, really? is Spears and "artist"?) perform live to earn income I know... it's earth shattering. If people don't think it's worth the trouble of recording, then they shouldn't do it. See how many people come to your live performance without the free advertising that recordings provide. Oh, maybe they won't make hundreds of millions of dollars. Shoul…

How about authors? How much money have you spent, lifetime, to hear an author read his books to you?

By selling their services to others. Musicians can sell live performances. Authors can ghost write, edit, etc. This isn't a big leap of imagination.

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#63

Post by pyre »

trafficlight wrote: post #56
Luc wrote: post #12

BREIN is the organisation that puts inane 'Downloading is theft' (which it a simple lie, as any lawyer can tell you) commercials at the start of movies in the cinema and on DVD - not possible to skip them of course! Talking down to their paying public like they do, it's like they really WANT people to stop paying for movies and pirate them.

It's misguided like most things in the "War against Piracy". The people who really suffer are the ones who legally purchased the DVD. Most DVDs you download have those things stripped out. Same with games and applications.

All that "you can't skip these previews" crap at the beginning of DVDs were be there regardless of pirates. It's all about companies treating customers as an inexhaustible resource to mine as they see fit.

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#64

Post by praptak »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #22
anApple wrote: post #5

To be honest, I hope these guys are going to jail. You must be a fool to believe that they don't own the pirate bay anymore, or are not associated with the keyman islands shell company running the company. Alone mininova disclosed making > 1 million of profit a year, piratebay's profit must be much bigger, all from the copyrighted works of others. Most of you wouldn't support piratebay anymore if your program/source…

I think it would more apt if both sides go to jail, neither is the answer to the future of artistic works. On one side a bunch of cartels that IMO should be investigated by the monopolies and mergers commission and on the other freetards that don't provide a realistic revenue model for artists.

> ... and on the other freetards that don't provide a realistic revenue model for artists.

Gee, I didn't know this "intellectual property" war has gone this far! Is it now a crime not to provide a realistic revenue model for artists?

Just in case it's actually true (I haven't been following the news recently) I am hereby providing a realistic revenue model for artists: get a job.

No, really. I don't believe that being an artist (or an author in general) entitles you to anything. Copyright is a privilege, not a god-given right. Its original purpose was to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", a social contract designed to provide fair compensation for contributing to the public pool of ideas.

Then the suits came and fucked this up with their concept of intellectual "property" and perpetual copyright term extensions. Copyright doesn't serve its original purpose anymore, we should just drop it. If you don't like it, don't publish. It had been this way for most of human history and it worked fine.

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#65

Post by pyre »

ErrantX wrote: post #55
henrikschroder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the crime is copyright infringement. Almost all countries have signed the Berne Convention treaty, and made copyright infringement illegal according to national law. Theft is a different crime that has been illegal pretty much for as long as there has been laws. Pirating a movie is illegal because it is copyright infringement, not because it is theft. Therefore, calling it theft is a lie, as any lawyer can tell y…

Actually the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty is the more applicable one :) (it's an extension to the Berne treaty to make it cover software). Unfortunately whilst both treaties are very specific in some aspects they are unchallenged very unspecific in other important areas. Also; they establish a civil crime not a criminal one. Theft laws may still apply here in the UK, as it is I know the o…

> And anyway - the point the video is trying to make is that it is a "moral" theft. I think it's fair to say the copyright holder has the right to say they feel that morally a "pirate" is "stealing" from them :)

The actual problem being that they don't state it that way. They don't state that it's a 'moral' theft and not a legal theft. They just state it as 'theft.' It's a PR campaign, plain and simple. They want to influence people to see stealing a car, or stealing 'candy from a baby' as the exact same thing as downloading a movie without paying for it.

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#66

Post by pyre »

dschobel wrote: post #59
berntb wrote: post #47

Charging people in courts far away... the defendants not even knowing about it (or even two courts with hearings at the same time!) Isn't that what the Scientology church do?

It happens. You can even serve legal notice "by publication". So if you can't track someone down and the judge approves it, it's perfectly legal to serve notice by posting an ad in the local newspaper (which of course the recipient will never see). If this weren't the case, screening your mail judiciously would be the ultimate legal defense against all civil litigation.

Isn't that why there is a business to serving subpoenas? Couldn't this be utilized in the same way?

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#67

Post by Sapient »

eli wrote: post #27
aerique wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Not being able to skip that (and other) crap on DVDs is infuriating! It's really one of my pet peeves.

If you don't mind using a PC as a DVD player, AnyDvd strips all that stuff out (along with region coding and most other DRM)

A program which is itself illegal...?

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#68

Post by pyre »

vizzy wrote: post #16

well, it's good to believe Reservella is not connected to TPB, but it must be run and owned by someone. TPB claims that the ownership was transferred to this company in 2006. Now how they can be continually discussing a sale of TPB if they don't own it? Anonymous offshore companies are useless under the scrutiny they get. Sooner or latter it will be known who controls it and in this case, I believe, to our major disa…

> Now how they can be continually discussing a sale of TPB if they don't own it?

So far as I know none of the people that are being charged here stand to gain any money from the sale of ThePirateBay. The company that owns it is the one that stands to profit. This was my impression ever since I heard about the possible sale.

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#69

Post by tjogin »

tedunangst wrote: post #57
doki_pen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't resist. I'm a freetard and here is my proposal: * Artists(haha, really? is Spears and "artist"?) perform live to earn income I know... it's earth shattering. If people don't think it's worth the trouble of recording, then they shouldn't do it. See how many people come to your live performance without the free advertising that recordings provide. Oh, maybe they won't make hundreds of millions of dollars. Shoul…

How about authors? How much money have you spent, lifetime, to hear an author read his books to you?

You've got a point, but the e-book market is vanishingly small compared to the regular paper-book market. Paper-books don't get pirated. You can pretty much write that off as advertising.

Of course, their market will implode once we get thin and light screens that can deliver the crisp of type printed on paper.

Re: Piratebay strikes back

#70

Post by tjogin »

vizzy wrote: post #16

well, it's good to believe Reservella is not connected to TPB, but it must be run and owned by someone. TPB claims that the ownership was transferred to this company in 2006. Now how they can be continually discussing a sale of TPB if they don't own it? Anonymous offshore companies are useless under the scrutiny they get. Sooner or latter it will be known who controls it and in this case, I believe, to our major disa…

You don't have to own something to discuss a sale of it.
Post reply on HN