1) I’ve been able to write ‘miscellaneous’ without the help of my spell checker.

2) Writing ‘filetype:torrent’ at the end of a search is a hundred times less effective than simply adding the word ‘torrent’.

3) It is a generally accepted principle that when a law or a regulation is ignored by the vast majority of the population, that law or regulation is wrong. We have to revise the notion of intellectual property itself.

4) In less than 5 minutes Googling I found out how to make a pipe bomb, in details, with video examples; how to make a nuclear device; how to poison somebody without leaving too many traces; how to go around the law to mount a pyramid scheme; how to make borscht … the take down policies of most if not all the torrent search engines make it much more difficult (but not always impossible) to find the same information using their tools.

happy torrents!

the pirate bay was too cocky about it, openly flouting copyright law.

I agree with your points completely, especially point 3. Given such a large number of people find the copyright laws too stupid to accept, then they act in accordance.

TPB is really an expression of this thinking. The outcome of their appeal will be very interesting.

I’m curious as to what the naysayers will do if it turns out that the TPB are vindicated and the decision is overturned. Will they call come back and say “Oh well, there you go. What they were doing WASN’T really illegal!”?

I doubt it.

If these companies spent more time on what the community was interested in, they’d find more support and make a better fist of their business future. As it is, they’re sticking their fist in places I’d rather not discuss and their finger in the eye of the community at large.

The ‘evidence’ that TPB’s activities help cheat anyone of money is far from proven and in some research it is contradicted entirely.

I’d say to them “Get with the 21st Century and bring your business model up-to-date or you will merely go the way of the steam train and telegram.”

http://tinyurl.com/cb3ura

Mark

it might also (and mostly) be about hosting torrent trackers (i.e. providing the service which tracks locations of a given ressource, the torrent file is then a kind of key to a specific service, not more).

Sorry if it was already well known, but the content of the article and the subsequent comments suggest it is not perfectly clear to everyone.

Two years ago Romanian President Traian Basescu flat out told Bill gates that piracy helped build their IT industry. And it’s true! In those post-soviet and developing countries people cant afford the bajillion dollar M$ products.

Piracy Worked for Us

Romanian IT folk (and hackers) are some of the most proficient in the world.

LOL. You’re a genius. Seriously, I was like “that other guy is screwed when he reads this.”

What bizarre world do we live in where “copyright” means the right to censor everyone else?

It’s all about intent. Yes, Google can be used to search for torrents, but that wasn’t the intended use of the service.

So you’re in favor of thoughtcrime?

Intent is nebulous and therefore irrelevant. Technical reality (i.e. human action) is all that can be assessed, and there for relevant.

The Pirate Bay committed no copyright infringement; they merely ran a search engine. They did nothing wrong.

Isn’t the problem with the Pirate Bay also that they operate a tracker? That’s something google doesn’t do.

A tracker is a search engine.

.torrent files are actually just fancy URLs.

You can try to twist and justify things all you want, but in the end you have to admit that pirate bay was in the wrong.

Just as the Underground Railroad was “in the wrong” in actively undermining the legal institution of slavery in the United States?

Actually, it’s this bogus government-granted monopoly of “copyright” that’s wrong.

Here’s my take on things:

http://julianmoore.net/?p=3

“I have that exact same blouse!”

“It looks better on him.”

You just threw out a huge chunk of established legal precedent in an entire spectrum of law fields.

Good luck convincing a judge.

the pirate bay was never ordered to shut down. the site is still up and running. in fact, the number of daily hits it recieves has increased substantialy since the trial.

Maybe you should meet Cory Doctorow?

You just threw out a huge chunk of established legal precedent in an entire spectrum of law fields. Good luck convincing a judge.

Agreed. However, law is merely a social convention. In reality, the means have yet to exist to assess intent. Reality trumps social convention. To (apocryphally) quote Galileo at his Inquisition, “It moves all the same.”

Of course, Galileo didn’t convince his judge either.

i.e. their published intent is not to break the law. If you want to prove intent in court you’d have to find some proof.

If they wrote down their ‘secret plans for stealing movies’, and you find that document then you can prove intent. But if you’re just assuming intent from what the users of the site do, then you’re into the thoughtcrime prosecution Zuzu is talking about.

Of course, these people aren’t all suggesting that Google should start to block torrent sites or anything similar – but you’d better watch what disparities you highlight. Eventually someone will look at Google and start trying to pressure them into moderating their searches. Small wins like that against the TPB embolden the bastards.

Are you saying that it’s illegal to trade any and all TV shows?

I don’t know about the jurisdiction you’re in, but several countries have tax-funded TV stations and shows, which usually means that citizens are entitled to store and swap the content in any way they please, as long as they don’t charge for it.

Heh. Well said.

And now, since you’re letting me know where I can get pirated TV shows, you’re committing the same crime as the Pirate Bay.

I think that’s pretty ironic.

Do you agree that you should receive a one-year jail sentence and a huge fine?
Or do you argue that your information-sharing is somehow different?

And we’ve moved from fixing intellectual property law to redesigning society from the ground up. And some wonder why these movements don’t gain more popular traction…