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The organisation that reported Thepiratebay and therefore is the reason for this raid is called Rättighetsalliansen (The Alliance of Rights). The Alliance of Ri

The organisation that reported Thepiratebay and therefore is the reason for this raid is called Rättighetsalliansen (The Alliance of Rights). The Alliance of Rights is the same organisation as The Anti Pirate Bureau but with a new name. This is what they say on their website (roughly translated): "The police raided The Pirate Bay today inside an Internet company in the Stockholm region. Rättighetsalliansen is behind the report against The Pirate Bay. - Pirate Bay is an illegal commercial service that makes great sums of money by putting up other peoples movies and music on their site. The producers wont get payed for their work and the legal services growth gets prevented, says Henrik Pontén, lawyer at Rättighetsalliansen." In other words they don't now what they are talking about. Thepiratebay is not putting up any files on thepiratebay.org, the users are (of course nothing is even uploaded, only seeded from user to user). I can recommend the documentary about The piratebay, TPB AFK where you will meet Henrik Pontén from the Anti Piracy Bureau among others. Rättighetsalliansens website and article about this: http://rattighetsalliansen.se/nyhet/118 http://rattighetsalliansen.se/nyhet/118 EDIT: I think their website crashed.

wvenable 12y ago
The piratebay hosts no content and even the torrent files themselves are all served from other users. That's the technical side whether that has any legal bearing is a different question.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  So being an illegal content link index (categorized magnet URI lists) is not illegal ? honest question. Isn't that why Google was forced to unlist torrents from results, otherwise they'd be in the same position as TPB.
  - belandrew 12y ago
    It can be considered contributory copyright infringement if you're knowingly linking to copyright infringing material. In the US, abiding by any DMCA takedown notices is enough to be fairly certain you are not going to be in trouble for contributory infringement. That's how Google covers itself.
  - hahainternet 12y ago
    The problem is that when you start to make things like that illegal, you are actually just banning numbers.
  - ivanhoe 12y ago
    What about Youtube? It streams huge amounts of illegal content everyday, and it's not just indexing it, but actually hosting the content. Frankly, there would be no YT as it is today if it wasn't hosting tones of music videos illegally.
    - agumonkey 12y ago
      Agreed. There was a time when they strictly enforced blocking of new and removal of old illegal content. My account was flagged many times for tiny snippets of classic 80s movies[1]. That made YT stay outside legal problems. But since there's been a new wave of 'full movie' uploads so I don't know where they stand. [1] I'm sure copyright holders benefited more than suffered from this free advertisement of love but anyway.
draugadrotten 12y ago
It's a common mistake by techies to think that technical details make a difference in (Swedish) court. They don't. Technical details are rarely important in Swedish court, where the court is free to consider all evidence, even if it's obtained illegally or just is weird. So called "technical evidence" is rarely "technical" for techies. It's often just HTTP logfile print-outs or a screen shot of a file sharing program. That's as technical as it gets. The judges don't know Excel from Word, and the prosecutor don't know HTTP from UDP. The defense have to work on the judges, not on the truth. And in the end, they judges judge people based on emotion and political opinion anyway. After all, isn't a law but a formal moral opinion?
- gcb0 12y ago
  now explain how that is different from anywhere in the world...
  - bjornsteffanson 12y ago
    It's not different, and I believe that was the point. There is a weird stereotype that I've encountered about Sweden that I wasn't aware of until the first time I lived outside of our country...whenever something like this comes along, there's a notion that some people think "Oh it's Sweden, they'll do the right thing," as if our laws or courts are somehow "more right" or "more just" than others. I think what the preceding comment was trying to point out is that that is not always true.
    - jbaptiste 12y ago
      That's very true. In Europe, Sweden is in our minds like one of the two or three countries where everything seems to be "good". Economics are good, people are nice, unemployment seems low and somehow those countries act as "The goods and respectables guys from the north". That's a very common feeling in EU.
      - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
        Don't forget the "babes". When I think of Sweden I think of http://www.people.com/people/elin_nordegren/ http://www.people.com/people/elin_nordegren/
hasenj 12y ago
Technicalities aside. They're still making money by helping people "pirate" stuff. Assuming ads on their site do actually generate revenue, and that revenue gets forwarded to them. Though I kinda expect the average piratebay user to have adblock installed.
- LLWM 12y ago
  Whether they are making money doesn't matter. Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit. Otherwise the only murderers in jail would be professional assassins.
  - baddox 12y ago
    > Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit. I don't think anyone is suggesting that. But, at least in US law, there is a major distinction between commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement. Both are illegal, of course, but they are treated very differently.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Are you not familiar with the distinction between manslaughter and the varying degrees of murder? Intent plays a huge part in the legal system.
  - hasenj 12y ago
    > Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit. That's decidedly not true. Per your example: > Otherwise the only murderers in jail would be professional assassins. The people responsible for dropping the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima were not considered criminals and did not go to jail or get punished at all. War acts are always rationalized by their consequences and the intent behind them. But this is way off-topic. Someone already mentioned that copyright laws do indeed distinguish between "commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement". Actually, I'd argue that even ethically they are treated differently. If I bought a movie then shared it with my friends, no one would think I'm doing something that's unethical. If I started selling or renting that movie to my classmates, it's more controversial.
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
The court ruling in NL (which lead to a (temporary) forced block from ISP's of the website) was that despite them technically not hosting anything illegal, they are definitely an, let's call it, "accessory to piracy", a middle man so to speak. You know, like how Silk Road was just a middle man for drug deals - the website itself didn't host any drugs. Not that that's technically possible (yet), but you get the idea.
vacri 12y ago
Thepiratebay is not putting up any files on thepiratebay.org, the users are Knowingly and willingly facilitating crime is usually a crime in itself. As a clear example, if you pay a hitman to kill someone, you didn't do the killing, but you facilitated the crime.
- dil8 12y ago
  Cassettes were used to copy music in the past, are you saying that cassette manufacturers were committing a crime?
  - bello 12y ago
    Not really, because one can easily argue that cassettes have "substantial non-infringing use". It's a little harder to argue for that in the case of TPB.
  - nroets 12y ago
    Some people "copied" while others "backed up". I only used them as storage for my ZX Spectrum !
  - vacri 12y ago
    If they willingly put them out there with the intent to facilitate crime, yes.
- mrkickling 12y ago
  Yes, but if you pay a hitman to kill someone, you don't blame the phone company for which you used to contact the hitman.
  - krapp 12y ago
    You might if the phone company not only knew about it, but marketed itself on its willingness to look the other way when callers used its network for illegal activity, and encouraged the idea of using its network for hits-for-hire to the degree that it called itself "Assassins' Telephone and Telegraph" and made a logo of a crosshairs for its website.
PhasmaFelis 12y ago
> In other words they don't now what they are talking about. Thepiratebay is not putting up any files on thepiratebay.org, the users are (of course nothing is even uploaded, only seeded from user to user). If someone were to say in conversation "Yeah, I downloaded Casablanca from Pirate Bay last night," would you immediately reply, "You don't know what you're talking about! You didn't download it from Pirate Bay, but from dozens of different peers, idiot!" You must be fun at parties. (And while we're nitpicking, torrents certainly do involve "uploads" and "downloads". Get your pedantry straight.)
- mrkickling 12y ago
  No I wouldn't, but this is not a party so you're making a really weird comparison. This is about an organisation with great power in Sweden that tries to stop piracy, they should know what they are talking about. Let me make a comparison instead; saying that The pirate bay uploads illegal files to their site is like saying that google uploads thousands of porn sites and torrents to their site, when they are just uploading links. Should google stop displaying links to thepiratebay, streaming sites and Bittorrent and god knows what?

wvenable 12y ago

The piratebay hosts no content and even the torrent files themselves are all served from other users. That's the technical side whether that has any legal bearing is a different question.

agumonkey 12y ago
So being an illegal content link index (categorized magnet URI lists) is not illegal ? honest question. Isn't that why Google was forced to unlist torrents from results, otherwise they'd be in the same position as TPB.
- belandrew 12y ago
  It can be considered contributory copyright infringement if you're knowingly linking to copyright infringing material. In the US, abiding by any DMCA takedown notices is enough to be fairly certain you are not going to be in trouble for contributory infringement. That's how Google covers itself.
- hahainternet 12y ago
  The problem is that when you start to make things like that illegal, you are actually just banning numbers.
- ivanhoe 12y ago
  What about Youtube? It streams huge amounts of illegal content everyday, and it's not just indexing it, but actually hosting the content. Frankly, there would be no YT as it is today if it wasn't hosting tones of music videos illegally.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    Agreed. There was a time when they strictly enforced blocking of new and removal of old illegal content. My account was flagged many times for tiny snippets of classic 80s movies[1]. That made YT stay outside legal problems. But since there's been a new wave of 'full movie' uploads so I don't know where they stand. [1] I'm sure copyright holders benefited more than suffered from this free advertisement of love but anyway.

draugadrotten 12y ago

It's a common mistake by techies to think that technical details make a difference in (Swedish) court. They don't. Technical details are rarely important in Swedish court, where the court is free to consider all evidence, even if it's obtained illegally or just is weird. So called "technical evidence" is rarely "technical" for techies. It's often just HTTP logfile print-outs or a screen shot of a file sharing program. That's as technical as it gets. The judges don't know Excel from Word, and the prosecutor don't know HTTP from UDP. The defense have to work on the judges, not on the truth. And in the end, they judges judge people based on emotion and political opinion anyway. After all, isn't a law but a formal moral opinion?

gcb0 12y ago
now explain how that is different from anywhere in the world...
- bjornsteffanson 12y ago
  It's not different, and I believe that was the point. There is a weird stereotype that I've encountered about Sweden that I wasn't aware of until the first time I lived outside of our country...whenever something like this comes along, there's a notion that some people think "Oh it's Sweden, they'll do the right thing," as if our laws or courts are somehow "more right" or "more just" than others. I think what the preceding comment was trying to point out is that that is not always true.
  - jbaptiste 12y ago
    That's very true. In Europe, Sweden is in our minds like one of the two or three countries where everything seems to be "good". Economics are good, people are nice, unemployment seems low and somehow those countries act as "The goods and respectables guys from the north". That's a very common feeling in EU.
    - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
      Don't forget the "babes". When I think of Sweden I think of http://www.people.com/people/elin_nordegren/ http://www.people.com/people/elin_nordegren/

hasenj 12y ago

Technicalities aside. They're still making money by helping people "pirate" stuff. Assuming ads on their site do actually generate revenue, and that revenue gets forwarded to them. Though I kinda expect the average piratebay user to have adblock installed.

LLWM 12y ago
Whether they are making money doesn't matter. Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit. Otherwise the only murderers in jail would be professional assassins.
- baddox 12y ago
  > Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit. I don't think anyone is suggesting that. But, at least in US law, there is a major distinction between commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement. Both are illegal, of course, but they are treated very differently.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Are you not familiar with the distinction between manslaughter and the varying degrees of murder? Intent plays a huge part in the legal system.
- hasenj 12y ago
  > Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit. That's decidedly not true. Per your example: > Otherwise the only murderers in jail would be professional assassins. The people responsible for dropping the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima were not considered criminals and did not go to jail or get punished at all. War acts are always rationalized by their consequences and the intent behind them. But this is way off-topic. Someone already mentioned that copyright laws do indeed distinguish between "commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement". Actually, I'd argue that even ethically they are treated differently. If I bought a movie then shared it with my friends, no one would think I'm doing something that's unethical. If I started selling or renting that movie to my classmates, it's more controversial.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago

The court ruling in NL (which lead to a (temporary) forced block from ISP's of the website) was that despite them technically not hosting anything illegal, they are definitely an, let's call it, "accessory to piracy", a middle man so to speak. You know, like how Silk Road was just a middle man for drug deals - the website itself didn't host any drugs. Not that that's technically possible (yet), but you get the idea.

vacri 12y ago

Thepiratebay is not putting up any files on thepiratebay.org, the users are Knowingly and willingly facilitating crime is usually a crime in itself. As a clear example, if you pay a hitman to kill someone, you didn't do the killing, but you facilitated the crime.

dil8 12y ago
Cassettes were used to copy music in the past, are you saying that cassette manufacturers were committing a crime?
- bello 12y ago
  Not really, because one can easily argue that cassettes have "substantial non-infringing use". It's a little harder to argue for that in the case of TPB.
- nroets 12y ago
  Some people "copied" while others "backed up". I only used them as storage for my ZX Spectrum !
- vacri 12y ago
  If they willingly put them out there with the intent to facilitate crime, yes.
mrkickling 12y ago
Yes, but if you pay a hitman to kill someone, you don't blame the phone company for which you used to contact the hitman.
- krapp 12y ago
  You might if the phone company not only knew about it, but marketed itself on its willingness to look the other way when callers used its network for illegal activity, and encouraged the idea of using its network for hits-for-hire to the degree that it called itself "Assassins' Telephone and Telegraph" and made a logo of a crosshairs for its website.

PhasmaFelis 12y ago

> In other words they don't now what they are talking about. Thepiratebay is not putting up any files on thepiratebay.org, the users are (of course nothing is even uploaded, only seeded from user to user). If someone were to say in conversation "Yeah, I downloaded Casablanca from Pirate Bay last night," would you immediately reply, "You don't know what you're talking about! You didn't download it from Pirate Bay, but from dozens of different peers, idiot!" You must be fun at parties. (And while we're nitpicking, torrents certainly do involve "uploads" and "downloads". Get your pedantry straight.)

mrkickling 12y ago
No I wouldn't, but this is not a party so you're making a really weird comparison. This is about an organisation with great power in Sweden that tries to stop piracy, they should know what they are talking about. Let me make a comparison instead; saying that The pirate bay uploads illegal files to their site is like saying that google uploads thousands of porn sites and torrents to their site, when they are just uploading links. Should google stop displaying links to thepiratebay, streaming sites and Bittorrent and god knows what?