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

Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

torrentfreak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 173 posts

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#81

Post by cortesoft »

Moru wrote: post #68
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…

Seriously, why is people pirating that crap? Throw out the TV and stop going into that what is just a bad copy of every other movie out there already. The same goes with games. They just get more and more shallow as the grafics get pumped up. Every shared movie/game is another proof for the producers that they are creating something that people wants. If people finally would vote with their wallet instead of going fo…

Obviously a lot of people think they are of sufficient quality to be worth watching/playing.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#82

Post by shock-value »

wuliwong wrote: post #63
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…

I seriously doubt that all judges in Sweden do not know the difference between Excel and Word. I know you are trying to make a point but you are doing it poorly.

It's obviously hyperbole.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#83

Post by gargantian »

api wrote: post #76
hasenj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technicalities aside. They're still making money by helping people "pirate" stuff. Assuming ads on their site do actually generate revenue, and that revenue gets forwarded to them. Though I kinda expect the average piratebay user to have adblock installed.

Exactly. They may or may not have actually broken the law, but they are certainly in spirit a service that makes money through the unauthorized monetization of other peoples' works against the wishes of those works' creators. Even if it doesn't make them criminals, it certainly makes them assholes. It's already hard enough to make a living as an artist, musician, etc. without being kneecapped by opportunists. We've g…

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 understand why we should hold back progress so that existing artists can be sheltered from needing to adapt and provide a product people want to pay for.

I say this as a former small-time producer of club tracks and a current software developer.

Additionally, you should ask artists who's screwing them before you start pointing fingers. Many artists would kill to have their music downloaded. Much of the screwing comes from the big labels that reap almost all of the profits.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#84

Post by tomp »

hasenj wrote: post #48
mrkickling wrote: post #32

The organisation that reported Thepiratebay and therefore is the reason for this raid is called Rättighetsalliansen (The Alliance of Rights). The Alliance of Rights is the same organisation as The Anti Pirate Bureau but with a new name. This is what they say on their website (roughly translated): "The police raided The Pirate Bay today inside an Internet company in the Stockholm region. Rättighetsalliansen is behind…

Technicalities aside. They're still making money by helping people "pirate" stuff. Assuming ads on their site do actually generate revenue, and that revenue gets forwarded to them. Though I kinda expect the average piratebay user to have adblock installed.

You mean, like Google? Of course, they remove the results that are DMCA-d, but in the mean time, 10 new links appear.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#86

Post by GuiA »

draugadrotten wrote: post #47
mrkickling wrote: post #32

The organisation that reported Thepiratebay and therefore is the reason for this raid is called Rättighetsalliansen (The Alliance of Rights). The Alliance of Rights is the same organisation as The Anti Pirate Bureau but with a new name. This is what they say on their website (roughly translated): "The police raided The Pirate Bay today inside an Internet company in the Stockholm region. Rättighetsalliansen is behind…

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

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#87

Post by tomp »

api wrote: post #76
hasenj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technicalities aside. They're still making money by helping people "pirate" stuff. Assuming ads on their site do actually generate revenue, and that revenue gets forwarded to them. Though I kinda expect the average piratebay user to have adblock installed.

Exactly. They may or may not have actually broken the law, but they are certainly in spirit a service that makes money through the unauthorized monetization of other peoples' works against the wishes of those works' creators. Even if it doesn't make them criminals, it certainly makes them assholes. It's already hard enough to make a living as an artist, musician, etc. without being kneecapped by opportunists. We've g…

The for profit part is only because it's not allowed to be financed by legal means. I'm sure that sharing was free for non-commercial purposes, there would be not-for-profit organizations that would run websites and only gather enough money (via ads, subscriptions, etc) to cover their operational expenses.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#88

Post by soci »

hasenj wrote: post #48
mrkickling wrote: post #32

The organisation that reported Thepiratebay and therefore is the reason for this raid is called Rättighetsalliansen (The Alliance of Rights). The Alliance of Rights is the same organisation as The Anti Pirate Bureau but with a new name. This is what they say on their website (roughly translated): "The police raided The Pirate Bay today inside an Internet company in the Stockholm region. Rättighetsalliansen is behind…

Technicalities aside. They're still making money by helping people "pirate" stuff. Assuming ads on their site do actually generate revenue, and that revenue gets forwarded to them. Though I kinda expect the average piratebay user to have adblock installed.

ExoClickπ[1] was one of the ad networks (if not the only one) used by The Pirate Bay to monetize.

[1] https://www.exoclick.com

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#89

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

api wrote: post #76
hasenj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technicalities aside. They're still making money by helping people "pirate" stuff. Assuming ads on their site do actually generate revenue, and that revenue gets forwarded to them. Though I kinda expect the average piratebay user to have adblock installed.

Exactly. They may or may not have actually broken the law, but they are certainly in spirit a service that makes money through the unauthorized monetization of other peoples' works against the wishes of those works' creators. Even if it doesn't make them criminals, it certainly makes them assholes. It's already hard enough to make a living as an artist, musician, etc. without being kneecapped by opportunists. We've g…

Exactly. People are just good at rationalizing their behaviour. I don't judge anybody who uses such sites, but what really pisses me off are the guys who like to shout some self-aggrandizing bullshit about fighting for freedom etc. Theres a basic lack of empathy.

Re: Swedish Police Raid the Pirate Bay, Site Offline

#90

Post by api »

gargantian wrote: post #83
api wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They may or may not have actually broken the law, but they are certainly in spirit a service that makes money through the unauthorized monetization of other peoples' works against the wishes of those works' creators. Even if it doesn't make them criminals, it certainly makes them assholes. It's already hard enough to make a living as an artist, musician, etc. without being kneecapped by opportunists. We've g…

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, or who scrape peoples' blog posts and use them for their own click bait sites without even linking to the original author. TPB is in that sort of category.

"Additionally, you should ask artists who's screwing them"...

I have, and trust me... nobody has any love for record labels except maybe some of the indies.

The trouble is that the new model -- the promised land -- is not appearing. There is no new model. The new model is you give your work away for free and starve.

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. Great art requires years of dedication. That means making it a sustainable career, a vocation. Squeezing out a few tunes in between your two day jobs just won't lead to great art.

It also means you're basically a consultant -- a glorified service sector employee. Why is it that programmers are allowed to build equity in startups, but artists are forbidden from building equity in a portfolio of copyrighted works? It's the only vehicle for equity building they ever had. Without some opportunity to build on your work in a non-linear fashion, you are just a wage slave forever.

I guess we're going to reward all those artists and musicians who enriched our lives by making them eat dog food when they're old...?

Sonny Bono always gets bashed for saying copyright should be "forever and a day." I still don't agree with him-- I think that position is too extreme. But I understand where he's coming from now. He understands economics and business.

To build an industry that can pay actual wages, benefits, and invest in new things, you need to build capital. You need some way of building a portfolio of enduring value that can produce recurrent revenue over a long period of time to fund new things and to support the vast overhead that a real profession demands.

Nobody should understand this more than the HN crowd, which is why I have such an uncharitable interpretation of the down votes I always get for pointing these things out.

Post reply on HN