"The Swedish legal system - running errands of Hollywood and the recording industries - have decided that helping people to share their digital data across the Internet is illegal. They might be guilty in the eyes of a corrupt court of law and in the corporate press, but in my book they are fine people, caring and sharing. It is the new world against those of old who hold on to their power and money - accumulated through exploitation over centuries and generations..."
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sgbeal
14 years 51 weeks 6 days 18 hours ago
It is native to call the court corrupt in this case.
Declaring that a court is corrupt because it decides in favor of enforcing published, long-standing laws is just plain naive. Obviously, copyright/patent/I.P. law in general is just fundamentally flawed, but the court involved has the job of objectively upholding whatever laws govern their domains. The guys from Pirate Bay are not, whatever anyone says, doing what they're doing only to help people share innocent data. They knowingly try to work around copyright law and flaunt the fact that they do so.
Had the same process been held in the States, as opposed to Sweden, i believe they would have gotten a much harsher punishment, as Big Media (the ones behind the lawsuit) have much more influence in the U.S.
aboutblank
14 years 51 weeks 1 day 17 hours ago
I disagree with assertion
I disagree with assertion that the Pirate Bay is trying to work around copyright law. The Pirate Bay is nothing more than a site that maintains indexes to bittorrent metadata files; all it does is maintain pointers to some computers that do share data and it does nothing more. It is not the Pirate Bay's fault nor responsibility to police potential copyright infringement that could possibly occur as a result of users using the Pirate Bay for it's intended purpose (an index to Bittorrent metadata). Just as it shouldn't be Google's problem for maintaining an index to web sites that are actually intended for unauthorised distribution for copyrighted publications.
The fault in this case lies completely with the unauthorised file sharing participants. The Pirate Bay itself doesn't do any unauthorised file sharing and so, should be nothing more than an innocent party with regards to the unauthorised file sharing.
> Had the same process been held in the States, as opposed to Sweden, i believe they would have gotten a much harsher punishment, as Big Media (the ones behind the lawsuit) have much more influence in the U.S.
It is very disheartening to know that such corporations have such power over the lives of the citizens.
can.axis
14 years 51 weeks 6 days 11 hours ago
RMS on Pirate Bay
RMS: « The operators of the Pirate Bay web site have been convicted of making copyrighted works available without permission. The decision is questionable since their site did not actually do this, but rather linked to sites that did it. They plan to appeal the decision.
This is a victory for the businesses that have launched the War on Sharing, but I think they will find its ultimate effect is to rally people on our side.
Having cited an article that refers to works of authorship as "content", I must point out that the term insults those very works. It presumes their importance is to fill some container — whether filling a DVD with Hollywood crap, or filling a bank account with money.
That may be the attitude of the movie companies which brought this prosecution. We should reject that attitude, and the term "content" with it. »