8 ms·

Some say this is infantile like the previous poster said, some think it's awesome. I'm not sure it's either, I can't decide if this is civil disobedience or a w

by nop 17y ago

Some say this is infantile like the previous poster said, some think it's awesome. I'm not sure it's either, I can't decide if this is civil disobedience or a weird form of vandalism. I'm by no means on the fence on the issue of piracy and I think the ruling in the case was absurd but I can't bring myself to take part in this action. Maybe if this action was targeted at the plaintiffs rather than the law firm I'd think differently but it's destructive to punish those who choose to represent those we don't agree with. I just can't shake the feeling it's wrong, I don't like it.

TallGuyShort 17y ago
I think what makes it wrong is that most of us think that they didn't do anything against the law, and even though the law had to be bent for that conviction to go through, what they're advocating now is basically lawlessness. As funny and clever as I think it is, I think it's crossing the line.
mseebach 17y ago
The lawfirm is hardly at fault. What exactly will be achieved by harassing them?
- ciupicri 17y ago
  The law firm could have chosen not to take this stupid case. Before thinking that I'm exaggerating or infantile or whatever, I would ask you to think about Richard Stallman and his "obsession" for free software and freedom in general.
  - eli 17y ago
    The law firm could have chosen not to take this stupid case. Everyone deserves good lawyers. Even people you disagree with. What if it was the other way around and the MPAA was hassling law firms who defend file sharers?
  - paulgb 17y ago
    What's "stupid" about the case? I've been following the case when topics came up on HN, but I still can't understand why everyone is siding with TPB, an organization that advocates piracy. Yeah, they weren't hosting the material themselves, but they encouraged their services to be used to illegally distribute content that did not belong to them, did they not?
    - cousin_it 17y ago
      I side with TPB because I consider them a great example of civil disobedience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Exten... "The Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier."
      - paulgb 17y ago
        The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension is a U.S. law. Sweden was actually life+70 before the Sonny Bono act. I'm not a big fan of life+70 myself, but I don't see what the Pirate Bay case has to do with copyright terms. The infringements claimed are on works like Walk the Line and Harry Potter, which are far from the end of their copyright terms, Bono act or not. Rosa Parks was a great example of civil disobedience. To me this just looks like people who don't want to have to pay to watch Prison Break.
        cousin_it 17y ago
        No, it's civil disobedience. The Pirate Bay wasn't started to facilitate watching Prison Break to couch potatoes, or to make money, or even to fix such "deficiencies" of copyright as life+70. It was founded by an activist group explicitly against the whole institution of copyright. That's why they go to court where couch potatoes would have surrendered already.
    - nop 17y ago
      Well whatever you think about if TPB is illegal or not the ruling was also against the the fourth person a 45 year old business man Carl Lundström. He had no involvement with the tracker after consulting a lawyer who warned that it might not be legal before getting into buissness with them. Also the €2.7 million in fines is unheardof as we don't do punative damages in Sweden (now you might think that's absurd but that's an issue on it's own). The verdict is also about accessory to spreading a handful of copyrighted material and not about the site in general. Then there's the whole issue with the judge possibly being biased, the police investigating the case getting a job at the movie industry, an entity in the European Union announcing its support for a verdict against TPB, the plaintiffs lawyers knowing the verdict long before anyone else including the accused did, the original raid on TPB took all the servers the webhost had (which was a lot) not just TPB servers and I don't think they ever got to the bottom of if our old minister of justice Thomas Bodström had told the police to perform the raid to begin with (it's highly illegal for a minister to directly order or otherwise use his influence). I happened to think what TPB is doing isn't illegal however I'm not a lawyer and I do place my trust in the Swedish legal system, so if the case is found to be illegal in the last instance it can appeal to then obviously it is. It would be nice however if this whole thing didn't ooze of corruption so much it's disgusting.

by nop 17y ago

TallGuyShort 17y ago

I think what makes it wrong is that most of us think that they didn't do anything against the law, and even though the law had to be bent for that conviction to go through, what they're advocating now is basically lawlessness. As funny and clever as I think it is, I think it's crossing the line.

mseebach 17y ago

The lawfirm is hardly at fault. What exactly will be achieved by harassing them?

ciupicri 17y ago
The law firm could have chosen not to take this stupid case. Before thinking that I'm exaggerating or infantile or whatever, I would ask you to think about Richard Stallman and his "obsession" for free software and freedom in general.
- eli 17y ago
  The law firm could have chosen not to take this stupid case. Everyone deserves good lawyers. Even people you disagree with. What if it was the other way around and the MPAA was hassling law firms who defend file sharers?
- paulgb 17y ago
  What's "stupid" about the case? I've been following the case when topics came up on HN, but I still can't understand why everyone is siding with TPB, an organization that advocates piracy. Yeah, they weren't hosting the material themselves, but they encouraged their services to be used to illegally distribute content that did not belong to them, did they not?
  - cousin_it 17y ago
    I side with TPB because I consider them a great example of civil disobedience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Exten... "The Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier."
    - paulgb 17y ago
      The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension is a U.S. law. Sweden was actually life+70 before the Sonny Bono act. I'm not a big fan of life+70 myself, but I don't see what the Pirate Bay case has to do with copyright terms. The infringements claimed are on works like Walk the Line and Harry Potter, which are far from the end of their copyright terms, Bono act or not. Rosa Parks was a great example of civil disobedience. To me this just looks like people who don't want to have to pay to watch Prison Break.
      - cousin_it 17y ago
        No, it's civil disobedience. The Pirate Bay wasn't started to facilitate watching Prison Break to couch potatoes, or to make money, or even to fix such "deficiencies" of copyright as life+70. It was founded by an activist group explicitly against the whole institution of copyright. That's why they go to court where couch potatoes would have surrendered already.
  - nop 17y ago
    Well whatever you think about if TPB is illegal or not the ruling was also against the the fourth person a 45 year old business man Carl Lundström. He had no involvement with the tracker after consulting a lawyer who warned that it might not be legal before getting into buissness with them. Also the €2.7 million in fines is unheardof as we don't do punative damages in Sweden (now you might think that's absurd but that's an issue on it's own). The verdict is also about accessory to spreading a handful of copyrighted material and not about the site in general. Then there's the whole issue with the judge possibly being biased, the police investigating the case getting a job at the movie industry, an entity in the European Union announcing its support for a verdict against TPB, the plaintiffs lawyers knowing the verdict long before anyone else including the accused did, the original raid on TPB took all the servers the webhost had (which was a lot) not just TPB servers and I don't think they ever got to the bottom of if our old minister of justice Thomas Bodström had told the police to perform the raid to begin with (it's highly illegal for a minister to directly order or otherwise use his influence). I happened to think what TPB is doing isn't illegal however I'm not a lawyer and I do place my trust in the Swedish legal system, so if the case is found to be illegal in the last instance it can appeal to then obviously it is. It would be nice however if this whole thing didn't ooze of corruption so much it's disgusting.