Pirate bay court case

Phil99 · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:32

"Their big argument in defence is that they are doing exactly the same as Google; that is, simply linking to files.

"The most fundamental legal question to answer is were they grossly negligent if they continued to offer the service once they knew it was being used to infringe copyright.

"It is a hard question and from a legal and political sense the question is to what standard do you ask a prosecutor to show intent?"

Prosecutor Hakan Roswal

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8002938.stm

I'm no expert when it comes to Swedish law, but I can't see the issue with the guilty verdict.

It's quite clear to anyone that they were not hosting any copyrighted material. But that doesn't seem to be what they were found guilty of. It's equally clear that they intended the site to be used for sharing links to copyrighted material and have made this point clear during interviews. If knowingly providing a means to aid copyright infringement is illegal under Swedish law then there's no argument for their innocence that I can see.

That's not to say I agree that a year in prison is the right way to sort this out...

Tefal · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:35

fini said:
Yes, but Google takes down any illegal material complained of within a reasonable time, the pirate bay refused to.

so how come if i type in the name of almost any game +.iso google takes me to hundreds of torrents, newsgroups and other ways of pirating that game?

Tefal · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:37

Energize said:
The difference between google and a torrent site is that google simply lists domain names that could be accessed anyway by typing them into the address bar, torrent sites provide a torrent file that allow you to download the data that you wouldn't otherwise be able to.

Quite a few torrent sites also have the hash code as text on the page google links straight to them so provides you with an instant download of the hash code.

Phil99 · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:39

Tefal said:
so how come if i type in the name of almost any game +.iso google takes me to hundreds of torrents, newsgroups and other ways of pirating that game?

Maybe no-one's complained about those particular instances

I wasn't aware of Google doing this, but short of Google publishing the figures of the number of sites/pages removed from searches it's impossible to determine if those results are 0.1% or 100% of the places the material is located.

Tefal · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:41

Phil99 said:
Maybe no-one's complained about those particular instances...

I wasn't aware of Google doing this, but short of Google publishing the figures of the number of sites/pages removed from searches it's impossible to determine if those results are 0.1% or 100% of the places the material is located.

So why does google link to the pirate bay, and numerous other torrent sites? surely companies have complained about those sites.

Phil99 · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:46

Tefal said:
So why does google link to the pirate bay, and numerous other torrent sites? surely companies have complained about those sites.

I would imagine it's a more complicated process of getting in contact with Google and them blocking the site straight away. If there's no UK law that would find TPB guilty of aiding copyright infringement that may well be one reason the site is still available on there.

I don't really have enough knowledge of the specific laws involved, that's just my take on it.

m4cc45 · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:49

Phil99 said:
I would imagine it's a more complicated process of getting in contact with Google and them blocking the site straight away. If there's no UK law that would find TPB guilty of aiding copyright infringement that may well be one reason the site is still available on there.

I don't really have enough knowledge of the specific laws involved, that's just my take on it.

How can you guarantee the torrents are illegal? Surely you'd have to download them and confirm they were illegal first which brings in even more legalities. To remove a link from google takes time, effort and then lots of checking by various companies that they have a right to take the link down and that the link is indeed pointing to what it says.

M.

m4cc45 · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:51

Energize said:
The difference between google and a torrent site is that google simply lists domain names that could be accessed anyway by typing them into the address bar, torrent sites provide a torrent file that allow you to download the data that you wouldn't otherwise be able to.

Which is worse? Think about it like this. I am contemplating buying a game so go on to google to find all the information I can about it. Google then shows me a list of torrents where I can obtain the game. I didn't even know about these sites until google listed them.

M.

Energize · 18 Apr 2009 at 13:53

Providing the means is worse than providing the knowledge.

Phil99 · 18 Apr 2009 at 14:04

m4cc45 said:
How can you guarantee the torrents are illegal? Surely you'd have to download them and confirm they were illegal first which brings in even more legalities. To remove a link from google takes time, effort and then lots of checking by various companies that they have a right to take the link down and that the link is indeed pointing to what it says.

M.

I would imagine that's one of the biggest (and most realistic) reason why Google still lists them, along with the sheer number of sites/links out there.

fendi · 18 Apr 2009 at 14:04

I'm not a user of TPB but it was a sad read. I used the owners previous torrent site Suprnova for a few years which was excellent.

I don't think these sites will ever truly go way, they will just reappear and evolve as time goes by.

High five for anyone using private trackers. I love the one I am on, it is a closed/small community, I won't go into detail as these gems are best kept private. Granted I don't download much anymore, but I do enjoy the forums

.

Fingers crossed TBP owners won't go to prison.

J1234 · 18 Apr 2009 at 14:14

I like the little bit they're added to their home page:

"Don't worry - we're from the internets. It's going to be alright. :-)

"

Skeeter · 18 Apr 2009 at 14:49

http://www.canadianmanufacturing.co...trol/article.jsp?content=20090417_160302_4912

Interesting reading..... TPB have been charged with breaking copyright laws by indexing the trackers of torrents.... but this is effectiely exactly the same thing as search engines do... does this set a presidence for any website that indexes torrent files or sites, or for that matter, anything illegal, to be shutdown? Interesting thought. TPB has always defended itself saying to doesnt host the illegal content, only point people to it... but this, it seems, is no longer a valid excuse....

meghatronic · 18 Apr 2009 at 14:57

Skeeter said:
http://www.canadianmanufacturing.co...trol/article.jsp?content=20090417_160302_4912

Interesting reading..... TPB have been charged with breaking copyright laws by indexing the trackers of torrents.... but this is effectiely exactly the same thing as search engines do... does this set a presidence for any website that indexes torrent files or sites, or for that matter, anything illegal, to be shutdown? Interesting thought. TPB has always defended itself saying to doesnt host the illegal content, only point people to it... but this, it seems, is no longer a valid excuse....

The entire episode has been done for the media/warning I feel.

Google lost s01e01 for instance, and you'll have hundreds of downloading options. It isn't much of a stretch to go from what TPB are doing to search engines

m4cc45 · 18 Apr 2009 at 14:58

Skeeter said:
http://www.canadianmanufacturing.co...trol/article.jsp?content=20090417_160302_4912

Interesting reading..... TPB have been charged with breaking copyright laws by indexing the trackers of torrents.... but this is effectiely exactly the same thing as search engines do... does this set a presidence for any website that indexes torrent files or sites, or for that matter, anything illegal, to be shutdown? Interesting thought. TPB has always defended itself saying to doesnt host the illegal content, only point people to it... but this, it seems, is no longer a valid excuse....

Well not quite. As the guys from TPB said the ruling may as well have been written by the prosecution (and it looked like it was). This is only the first hearing the second one will hopefully be a little more technical as how a none-technical person can judge on a technical issue isn't correct.

I'm sure true justice will be given in time as written by the Swedish law and not some made up crap by the music industry.

M.

m4cc45 · 18 Apr 2009 at 15:00

Just noticed that quite a few people are offering private VPN's to the back end - guess this is going to be the future of the internet really as the tunnel will be encrypted and the ISP's won't be able to monitor the data as they're used massively for workplaces as well it means they can't really rate limit them.

M.

Energize · 18 Apr 2009 at 15:39

I use a vpn, funnily enough they have recently seen a large surge of customers, possibly because of this ruling.

Skeeter · 18 Apr 2009 at 16:03

Energize said:
I use a vpn, funnily enough they have recently seen a large surge of customers, possibly because of this ruling.

The TPB court case has co-incided with a massive rise in users signing up to TPB's encryption thing that gets around Swedens new ISP monitoring software (ive forgotten what its called, TERMinator or something random), and also seen a massive rise in membership to the Swedish political party the Swedish Piracy Party (3000 in 7 hours yesterday) making them now bigger than 3 of the 7 parties who currently hold seats in Swedish parliment. I expect the hits on the site have gone up too, and Google Trends show its increasing in popularity (check out the news hits! lol)

http://www.google.com/trends?q=the+pirate+bay&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2009&sort=0

All in all this has been a highly successfull marketing campaign by TPB, and $3m is probubly cheaper than employing a professional marketing company to do that kind of marketing for them

Tombo · 18 Apr 2009 at 16:54

The torrent files themselves are perfectly legal though.

osc89er · 18 Apr 2009 at 16:56

Energize said:
The difference between google and a torrent site is that google simply lists domain names that could be accessed anyway by typing them into the address bar, torrent sites provide a torrent file that allow you to download the data that you wouldn't otherwise be able to.

You also don't understand how either google or TPB work. Do yourself a favour and don't come back until you understand what both of them are doing - as you have described neither site correctly.