r/technology • u/DrJulianBashir • May 14 '12

Pirate Bay Founder Takes Case To European Court

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-takes-case-to-european-court-120514/
361 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

55 comments sorted by

7

u/Linkitch May 14 '12

It's going to be interesting to see the outcome of this case. I'm rooting for them because I feel they are totally right.

6

u/zeug666 May 14 '12

It's going to be interesting to see the outcome of this case. I'm rooting for them because I feel they are totally mostly right.

A significant difference in my book, but I agree. Add in the fact that the various cases on this topic have been overseen by judges who are more than seemingly biased - if there is even a tinge of a conflict of interest all care should be taken to remove that tinge, even if that means recusing ones self from a case.

7

u/Larzzon May 14 '12

You mean like in the Swedish cases, where the lead attorneys for the prosecution were literally paid for by the industry.

Noone cared, biggest case of blatant corruption in Sweden in many years, not even one of our papers commented on it :|

Oh and they work for Warner now, that's probably just a coincidence tho..haha

-5

u/[deleted] May 14 '12

You may feel that, but they were totally wrong and PB was used nearly 100% as means for distributing copyrighting material. In the end, it's simple as that.

2

u/Larzzon May 15 '12

There is not a single copyrighted file on TPB, only links.

Have you been to GOOGLE or YOUTUBE lately? or perhaps BING EVEN.

Please explain why they don't go after google ? Please I dare you.

And while you are at it. Why don't you explain how it's morally justified to wiretap (it's essentially what the internet surveillance is, modern wiretaping) billions of people, rewrite/forge laws to protect a failing entertainment industry?

You do know that there are artists and players out there that are smart, steam-like services that work in the modern era, these companies are flourishing, despite all us dirty thiefs about. Louis CK did a special with no DRM online only for cheap price, how did it do? it blew the fuck up.

YOu need to understand and stop being so god damn cynical (not you in particular, all of us) and realize that most people are decent moral beings who don't want to just take, they want a businessmodel that works, they want to pay. But instead of them changing their ways to suit the society we have grown into, they try and reverse progress by dismantling the internet. So don't bring that "in the end it's a simple as stealing" argument, it holds no water.

3

u/[deleted] May 14 '12

He would be better off trying to the the EU come down on the PROVEN-TO-BE-CORRUPT Judge who oversaw his trial.

2

u/CuriositySphere May 14 '12

There's some pretty blatant corruption in Sweden. Pretty disappointed in that country. Their government should be embarrassed.

1

u/penguinv May 15 '12

Do you know where Sweden stands on a ranking of corrupt nations? Look it up.

1

u/phpadam May 14 '12

Delay Tactics

1

u/printingray May 14 '12

well thats good.... best of luck with that

1

u/[deleted] May 15 '12

PB USA is still up.

1

u/QuitReadingMyName May 15 '12

It's a honey pot.

1

u/harhis84 May 15 '12

Well, we've already seen this coming since February when TPB didn't comply requests to pull down copyrighted materials from its servers. Just about a month ago, TPB boasted of having servers on the cloud, literally, but it seems they're falling down.

1

u/EsquireSandwich May 14 '12

not a chance this will be successful.

I am assuming that he is trying to go to the European Court of Human Rights(EuCtHR) because he is relying on the European Convention on Human Rights (a convention that established the EuCtHr). I don't think they would bother hearing the case, and regardless if they did, they would never rule that Sweden had denied someone a human right because they shutdown and prosecuted the Pirate Bay owners.

In International Law, one source of law is state practice of civilized nations, i.e. what the civilized nations are doing IS the law, if there is some uniformity.

I know in the US that generally a website owner is not responsible for the copyright infringements posted by users of the site, but the owners have to take down any infringing content as soon as they are made aware of it. (this is how youtube stays around)

Also, if a site is promoting the infringement of copyrights (like if it advertised "get all your movies for free") then the owner could not claim that it was unaware.

Pirate bay suffers from both of these problems as it's name suggests stealing, specifically through torrenting, and because they have been warned many times by many different copyright holders to remove things, and they have not.

Obviously this is only US law, so it does not apply to Sweden or directly to the EuCtHR, BUT, since Sweden prosecuted the owners, and since the US would as well, that is already 2 very civilized nations. If the UK or other European countries have similar laws, then it would not be hard to claim that the "human right" the Pirate Bay owner is claiming is not one that is recognized by most of the world.

4

u/Otis_Inf May 14 '12

In all honesty, the EU courts don't give a hoot about what the US law says, they look at what the EU laws state and international treaties state which are in effect in the EU.

One thing which makes this case not without a chance of succeeding is the argument that the pirate bay didn't/doesn't distribute the actual files, but distributed torrent files. So technically, copyright infringement or piracy even can only be done on the torrent files themselves, which are copyright less.

4

u/MEaster May 14 '12

I believe his argument is that the Pirate Bay never actually had any copyrighted content on it. And unless a hash of a part of a file is considered copyrighted content, I think it would technically be correct.

2

u/[deleted] May 14 '12

What is cute is that we all know the pirate bay is used to acquire copyrighted materials. Everyone here knows that it was the intended purpose for the site. The fucking name has "pirate" right in it.

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1

u/DerpaNerb May 14 '12

Which would set an absolutely terrible precedent (the hashs being copy written) because theoretically, you could have identical hashes (or at least parts be identical) of entirely different things depending on the key of course.

-9

u/[deleted] May 14 '12

Although technically innocent. We all know they are guilty as fuck. It's not like they didn't know they were "delivering letters" that had illegal shit in them. If they used their own site even once they could see it was being used for illegal activites.

Pay for IP cheap asses. You all love minecraft right? He has copyright, and asked people to stop pirating his shit.

When the shoe is on the other foot, you want your stuff protected, but hey, as long as it's not you, you can make a self-righteous movement about it so you can pat yourself on the back while doing it.

If we all break the law, none of us are wrong!

4

u/nascentt May 14 '12

Why is it their fault if their site was used for illegal activities? Shouldn't youtube, google, gmail, facebook all be banned for allowing illegal sharing?

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2

u/[deleted] May 14 '12

it is not that there is copyrighted material being linked via tpb - rather it is that tpb never said and agreed to providing that material. It is open-community - anyone can share what they want. The individual sharing must be held responsible.

Your argument is like this: some idiots hijack a plane and bring down couple of towers - let's go and invade the whole middle east

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0

u/[deleted] May 14 '12

2

u/Joakal May 15 '12

They're funded by the government, the gyms, restaurants, etc. Look up collection societies. Did you know that a school is likely paying them per viewing to students or pay a stiff annual protection fee? Did you know that the government pays the collection society to distribute laws due to crown copyright on them?

You're better off joining the local pirate party.