I'm very glad to see these men found guilty.

Downloading copyrighted music (or other materials) without paying, and without the permission of the copyright holder, is theft. It's stealing. It's as simple as that. Theft is against the law. These men set up 'The Pirate Bay', an online service which was primarily used by people comitting theft by downloading music illegally. They knew The Pirate Bay was being used for this purpose. They did nothing to stop it, and happily provided facilities to allow others to break the law.

They broke the law, and they were found guilty. The court has done its job.

but they did not do anything illegial the site didnt host the actual files, and just knowing about a crime isnt a crime, maybe you could say aiding and abetting but even thats a stretch as it would be the same as a van salesman getting arrested because he sold a van to some armed robbers

Allowing others to break the law isn't the same as actually breaking the law. Nowhere in Britain can a driver go at 120MPH, and yet many cars are capable of this. Should we jail car manufacturers for 'allowing' people to speed?

Hereward,
what if car manufacturers were building machine guns into their vehicles and someone used them... would your answer change?

That would break another law though wouldn't it? Various gun control laws. So it isn't really the same. I'm talking about the UK here. I see your point if you lived somewhere with less gun control.

Geez, then use your imagination. How about a car that launches kitchen knives, which I assume are legal in the UK? Its not as black and white as you'd like to make it with your car analogy.

I understand it isn't black and white. Maybe my example was a poor one, what I'm trying to get across is that giving others the capability to break the law...isn't breaking the law.

exactly, btw anyone read the legal threats on pirate bay there a good chuckle

I am on the side of agreeing with the verdict.

As a copyright holder who has had work stolen (plagiarised and blatantly re-attributed) I feel strongly about protection of property (cue Sicarius attack here). My experiences have led me to stop publishing and a lot of material that could have been bundled up nicely has been kept for very private use only. I do sympathise with artists who feel that they no longer want to create.

As for whether the eye-patches behind Pirate Bay broke any laws? The Swedish courts thought so and I will be very interested to see whether the verdicts are upheld on appeal, and also whether the threats of contempt will materialise.

but were not arguing about whether copyright stealing is wrong or right, just that the pb owners did nothing wrong, the trial was a political thing. Out of curiousty flash what kinda work was stolen?

I don't know why they're so confident of success in the face of this verdict, I don't know what the outcome with be for TPB, whether or not I'm supporting them or whether or not their site is legal in Swedish law

I /do/ know that they're kidding themselves if they think they can fight piracy this way

Why would you think that Kestas? Napster went away and illegal downloads of music virtually stopped. (he said deadpan).

who are kidding themselves?

In response to Trim101's response to my original comment, above - if a van salesman provided a van to some armed robbers, fully aware that they needed the van specifically to carry out a crime, then he is an accessory to that crime.

It may be PirateBay's users, rather than the creators, who are illegally downloading stuff, but PirateBay's creators are still doing something wrong because they encourage people to use The Pirate Bay to perform these illegal actions.

Imagine, for example, that The Pirate Bay was being used by people circulating child pornography, the creators of The Pirate Bay knew this was taking place, and they did nothing to stop it, and basically said "yeah, so what?" when they were alerted to the fact that their service was being used for this illegal purpose. Would that be ok in your view?

@trim: educational material...

Original writing for teaching, including scripts and associated materials for listening exercises. HK is and has been for a long time a bad place to try to keep hold of materials. China in general is a lot worse, of course, and Taiwan is simply legendary for its copying of books.

It was a lot of stuff and I had to endure people claiming publicly and for paid courses that the materials they were using were written by themselves. Prosecute? Difficult to progress a case of this sort and there is very little hope of meaningful damages. I would have been out of pocket to the lawyers.

@Kestas: are you saying that TPB did not break Swedish law? I tend to err on the side that if the judge/s could find them guilty, the judge/s will have satisfied themselves that at least one law had been infringed. Not being acquainted with Swedish law myself, I find the only reasonable course to be to assume that the judges had good legal reasons.

@flashman: plagarizartion and re-attribution is really bad - That's the kind of thing that copyright was intended to stop. I'm sorry that happened to you, creativity being stifled by theft sucks.

I do think, however, that the RIAA and other corporations are handling this issue completely the wrong way. Piracy will never actually be stopped. However, you can reach the people who would tend to purchase your music, get most, if not all, of them to pay a reasonable price for it, if you simply trust the process. Eventually, in an open model, the only people who will be pirating music will be the people who would never pay for it anyway - and who knows, maybe they'll put it in the hands of more people who will then come back for more , and pay for it.

The guys at TPB are pretty extreme in their anti-copyright stance, but I think the large corporations are culpable in twisting the copyright laws to maintain extremely high profits. They should, instead, be used to protect artists.

You make a valid point about the behind-the-times attitudes still prevalent at the RIAA, Jbalcorn. However you are also right to note the anti-cpoyright stance taken by The Pirate Bay. They knew they were helping people to commit mass breaches of copyright law. Now hopefully they'll pay the price for this wilfully illegal action - in the form of some deserved jail time.

I like to look at the spirit of any law and fairness is high on my agenda. Greedy corporations are certainly culpable but I also believe that the extreme position taken by TPB is unfair to the artists.

From a more cynical point of view, I do believe that they bask in the notoriety they have attracted. It will no doubt be turned into a profit somehow. Filming rights?

I've noticed quite a few people recently wearing 'The Pirate Bay' t-shirts and other merchandise. Presumably that's earning a nice sum of money for someone, too.

I have images of Danny the Red with his business suit and case being interviewed about two years back... He argued a good line for being allowed to live a quiet life and look after his family.

Who is Danny the Red?

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, aka Danny le Rouge,

legendary anti-establishment student leader who, I am sure Sicarius would agree, had an enourmous influence around the Summer of 1968. In later life he exercised what can only be described as a complete sell-out and turned into a pin-stripe executive.

Just listened to a BBC news report on the case. I never realised (not being a user of TPB!) that these guys were making money out of it using the usual Cayman Island type accounts. If that is what was demonstrated effectively to the courts then it really sucks.

The technology here is bit-torrent.

When one uses TPB or Mininova, one is sharing files in a swarm. In other words, person A does not download "Ummagumma" in it's entirety from person B. One takes a bit of the file from many people in the swarm.

Technically, Pink Floyd owns the entire finished product. They do not have exclusive rights to each individual musical note contained within the album.

That's the "pro" argument.

Radiohead has pioneered the new model, with their successful "pay what you can" release. That's the future folks.

Well, I suppose they got what was coming to them. The legal precedent might have been scant for their sort of crime, but it was quite clear to me that it was crime. It's sad though, because I still held them with a Robin Hood-esque esteem, and I'm sad to seem them go. They felt strongly for a cause and were willing to act upon it, and while they did make money off the site, it was definitely more ideologically than financially motivated.

It won't stop pirating. Where TPB has fallen, countless sites will take it's place, like a hydra. If anything, it's another martyr for the cause. The real way to stop piracy is for private business to co-opt it. For example, by offering high quality video or audio available to download from an official site which is funded by advertisement and related merchandise sales, sure it's not as much money as you'd get if nobody pirated, but at least you're making up for a decent fraction of a loss that you can't fight with legal proceedings. This, micropayments, and pay what you can schemes are the more effective means of combating pirating.

People don't pirate music because they don't think the artists deserve the money but because people like music, and for many, buying all the music they want to have is simply not an option. Torrent pirating is an interesting phenomenon, because it completely relies upon the altruism of fellow pirates. In public torrent sites there is no real personal incentive to seed your downloads, or even upload files, except to help out other pirates.

In the end, what TPB was doing was illegal. You can argue technicalities like mapleleaf has done, but common sense will quickly tell you that these are only technicalities and it's plain to see that it's pirating. That said, I would say the people behind TPB are less responsible than major uploaders such as axxo or eztv. Bittersweet justice. I don't think anyone really won out of this decision.

Well, I have to say - I'm very glad.
I think TPB is wrong (and the side matter I bet a tenner they'd go down!)

il take that bet

I'd take that bet too, that they never see a jail cell.

Quite possibly - i made it at the end of a rather heated argument into whats fair and unfair about sharing computer files.

The issue is where do you draw the line. I would think everyone would share a book, and you'd be happy to lend someone a film or game, but if someone else downloads them then it's deemed wrong. I'm not quite sure where I stand either, but its a bit of a mess!