7 ms·

Pirate Bay Founders’ Prison Sentences Final, Supreme Court Appeal Rejected

165 points by forza 15y ago

x3c 15y ago
With the ludicrous patent wars going on among the biggest tech players, increasing piracy and ever-increasing cases of countries bending over backwards to placate entertainment industries; the whole Intellectual Property paradigm is ripe for disruption. The sad part is that the prevalent political practices will make it very difficult to come to a reasonable solution, a point of stable equilibrium. Consumer advocacy and freedom rights' groups have a very feeble voice right now and this issue will take a lot of activism and rationality from the common folk before it can reach a sane conclusion. I only hope issue doesn't undo the leaps humanity took when internet was invented (and I'm not exaggerating)!
wyclif 15y ago
The worst part of this is the assorted fines imposed on the founders of TPB. The prison sentences probably won't amount to much...I don't expect brokep to serve time (I have been following his situation for years now), which is good news.
- toyg 15y ago
  They can probably file for bankruptcy. The fame they accumulated means they won't have problems borrowing for their future businesses, so a bankruptcy would be a nice way out (obviously after securing their existing assets). IANASwedishL though.
  - marvin 15y ago
    I don't think it's possible to file for personal bankruptcy in Sweden, or at least I think that doing this doesn't cause the debt to disappear. (Norwegian here). Are there any Swedes who can clarify this?
    - sp332 15y ago
      I'm not a Swede, but it looks like you're right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy#Sweden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy#Sweden It might be better to enter into a debt arrangement called "skuldsanering" - now that sounds curious :)
      - dagw 15y ago
        Skuldsanering is the Swedish option for personal bankruptcy, but differs in a number of significant ways. First of all you send in an application, disclosing all your debts and assets, and I believe there's an interview process as well. If they think you're hiding something, should reasonably be able to dig yourself out your hole on your own or don't think you've tried hard enough to sort your problems out on your own then you'll get denied. If accepted you have to sell of all your assets and spend the next several years making a good faith effort to earn as much money as you can and pay back as much of the debt as you can. I believe that if they think you're not being serious or not trying they can cancel the deal at any time. Only once all that is done will any remaining debts be cancelled.
- yason 15y ago
  Exactly. The best way to obliterate a young adult from the society forever is to slash him with fines that he just can't and won't pay. There are several cases like this in Finland, namely few kids who ran a p2p sharing hub (without sharing any of the files, just running the server, AFAIK). This means the young adult won't ever go to work because nearly everything he would ever make would be deducted to pay off the fines he can never finish up. Thus he will simply not pay the fine, become unemployed, and make the country pay him social security to live. Any work he will actually do will be gray, i.e. unofficial untaxed "pirate" income that doesn't formally exist. Way to go. The TPB guys probably have more ambitious plans as the liberation front of bit-sharing. I bet this might just tip an even larger percentage of Swedish people to support TPB and the Pirate Party. Isn't the only thing that is, in the crowds of conservative government or business, more dangerous than a liberty fighter an imprisoned liberty fighter?
  - roel_v 15y ago
    "Isn't the only thing that is, in the crowds of conservative government or business, more dangerous than a liberty fighter an imprisoned liberty fighter?" Oh please. A bunch of guys who want to download music and videos for free aren't 'liberty fighters'. You can disagree with copyright, or current implementations of copyright, or whatever, but calling activists of marginal issues like this 'liberty fighters' is devaluating the concept of a true 'liberty fighter', much like 'terrorism' has been devaluated to mean pretty much everything that pisses somebody else off.
    - mikehuffman 15y ago
      Perhaps he means liberty in the sense of freedom from being America's lapdog. One might be considered a "liberty fighter" for wanting to be held accountable by their own country's morals and mores, and not at the insistence of another country. The method "free music and videos", might be irrelevant to that perspective.
itmag 15y ago
Good luck finding them. https://www.flashback.org/t402278 https://www.flashback.org/t402278 For those of you who don't read Swedish, it's a thread about how anakata, one of the founders, talks about going AWOL from the Swedish bureaucratic system. Utan känt hemvist == no known place of residence.
- toyg 15y ago
  That would be the worst response. For the justice system they are now low-profile, minor white-collar thieves, it's all just a bunch of paperwork and bribes, with a bit of lawyering they probably won't even do time. Once they start absconding, they become fugitives and show up on all the wrong radars. Offenses start piling up automatically, and unless they manage to run to Santo Domingo (which would involve more felonies), they will be caught and sent away for years, not months.
  - krig 15y ago
    It did backfire for the guy who is hiding. The others got their sentences reduced in the first appeal but since he wasn't present for the appeal, his original sentence stands. So he'll basically either have to stay away from any country with an extradition treaty with Sweden for many, many years, or spend a year in Swedish prison (plus, I'm sure, additional time/fines for running).
  - hobin 15y ago
    "they will be caught" That's debatable. Not that I'd want them to run, but getting caught is in no way a certain thing.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      If you play russian roulette with four friends, it is in no way a certain thing that someone will lose, but given the odds and the stakes, it's best to assume it as a near-certainty.
      - hobin 15y ago
Tooluka 15y ago
At least that was Swedish court. Had it been in the USA they could have faced 4, 6 and 10 years of imprisonment, and $6.8 trillion damage to the RIAA and MPAA.
- andrewfelix 15y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. I know prison isn't a wonderful place to be. But I think dotcom would be stoked with a 4-10month sentence. Having said that, it's still over the top for posting links.
  - hessenwolf 15y ago
    I'll just leave this here: Israelis enjoying life in Swedish prison Three Israelis jailed in Scandinavian country turn down offer to continue serving their sentence in homeland, explain 'here we are treated with steaks, sex and private television airing World Cup games for free' http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3261698,00.html http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3261698,00.html
    - dchest 15y ago
      Hehe, there's this Russian comedy movie "Хочу в тюрму" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167231/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167231/) where a guy, after losing his job, sees a TV documentary about European prisons, and decides to go to the Netherlands from Russia specifically to try to get into prison.
- kevinh 15y ago
  Oh please. $6.8 trillion damages? I thought HN was supposed to be free of hyperbole. This sort of speculation is meaningless.
GigabyteCoin 15y ago
This is oddly opportunistic timing.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  MPAA and RIAA must be trying to change the public's and the politicians' opinion that these "piracy" sites really are really guilty, so they might as well give them the laws they need to bypass due process and "streamline" the whole process, so they don't "waste time" fighting all the similar sites which now we "know" are guilty. Anyway, it's really sad this verdict was given. Linking should not be a crime under any circumstance. And if the current judges think it is, then the laws must be changed to reject that assumption immediately.
rplnt 15y ago
For hosting file hashes and connecting people with same hashes. For free (only search engine was polluted with ads, you didn't have to use it though). In no way is this comparable to what Megaupload (and others) were/are doing.
rickmb 15y ago
Wow. This is has probably been one of the most corrupt legal processes Western Europe has seen since WWII. Unbelievable how a foreign industry has made a complete mockery out of the justice system of a sovereign nation. The damages alone are an insult. Yeah, let's not look at actual damages, let's just use Hollywood fictional bookkeeping. Today also happens to be the day I've lost access to the Pirate Bay through my ISP because a corrupt judge decided Hollywood profits trump my civil liberties. It is so very depressing to see how Hollywood has completely corrupted our legal and political systems to the point were civil liberties are being gutted. This can no longer be tolerated.
- andrewfelix 15y ago
  I agree it's a crappy verdict, but what makes you say it's corrupt?
  - gitarr 15y ago
    Maybe because the facts speak against the verdict? TPB has hosted torrent files, they were not hosting content, so what they did was perfectly legal. The verdict of this case, which ignores the facts, shows clear signs of US pressure on the Swedish legal system and politicians there. There is no other explanation.
    - CJefferson 15y ago
      Why are you sure it is perfectly legal? I don't know Swedish law, but they were convinced of aiding copyright infringement. To me, it is clear they are guilty of that, the whole site is designed for that sole reason of copyright infringement (except perhaps 1% of torrents). Further, the admin do extensive "cleaning" of torrents they deem inapproriate (for example files put in the wrong section), but never clean up copyright infringing files. Now, you might think that aiding copyright infringement shouldn't be illegal, but if it is, how do the facts speak against the verdict?
      - DrCatbox 15y ago
jopt 15y ago
Now that these three have been charged with "paying back what was stolen," all our file-sharing is off the hook, right?
sgentle 15y ago
It would appear that it's a mistake to commit white collar crime without being an American bank. [1][2][3][4] [1] "70% of early payment defaults had fraudulent misrepresentations on their original loan applications" - http://www.anu.edu.au/fellows/jbraithwaite/_documents/Articles/diagnostics_white_collarcrime.pdf http://www.anu.edu.au/fellows/jbraithwaite/_documents/Articl... [2] "half of all the loans called sub-prime, were also liars loans. Liars loans means that there was no prudent underwriting of the loan" - http://www.neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/09/william-black-why-nobody-went-to-jail.html http://www.neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/09/william-black... [3] "how many criminal referrals did the same agency do, in this crisis. Remember it did well over 10,000 in the prior crisis. Well the answer is zero. They completely shut down making criminal referrals" - ibid [4] "In 2003, Freddie Mac coughed up $125 million after it was caught misreporting its earnings by $5 billion; nobody went to jail. In 2006, Fannie Mae was fined $400 million, but executives who had overseen phony accounting techniques to jack up their bonuses faced no criminal charges. That same year, AIG paid $1.6 billion after it was caught in a major accounting scandal that would indirectly lead to its collapse two years later, but no executives at the insurance giant were prosecuted." - http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216?page=4 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-stre...
- bad_user 15y ago
  Well, don't you know that copyright infringement is responsible for this economic depression? The pirates are upsetting Mikey.
- VMG 15y ago
  This is very interesting and disturbing, but I fail to see what this has to do with a lawsuit in Sweden. As far as I am aware these two events are unrelated.
  - sgentle 15y ago
    Only related in the sense that they reflect US government priorities for white collar prosecution. Their state department has been leaning on Sweden for some time to clean up The Pirate Bay [1]. And there's, of course, the recent MegaUpload news. Copyright enforcement is a critical issue for them, corporate malfeasance is not. [1] http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/03/09STOCKHOLM141.html#par12 http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/03/09STOCKHOLM141.html#par12
trebor 15y ago
We have something in America called "being an accessory" to the crime. This means that you stood by without attempting to stop the crime, even though you learned that it was about to happen. Say that you're riding in the car with a friend when he suddenly pulls over. He looks at you and says, "I'm going to rob that bank over there." If you do nothing to stop him you become an accessory to that crime—and can be convicted by the judge for it. What is claimed in the discussion here is that TPB is an accessory. They had knowledge but did nothing about it, and cannot be held accountable for their users, right? Arguably, since TPB created a site to share torrents on and had no piracy policy (but taunted everyone that complained) they become accomplices! They help the end-pirate find where to get his contraband. We aren't talking about MegaUpload. At least with MegaUpload they can argue that there is no description of the file, and no way for them to inspect the data. No, we're talking about a site where it FLAT OUT SAYS that "this torrent has the cracked version of ..." or of a movie that hasn't been released yet. Did you ever see a warning banner for piracy? Or a "warning, you must be 18+ to pirate these files?" So TPB can't be an accessory, and they can't be uninvolved. Just like you'd be held accountable if you handed a bully a baseball bat. Oh, yeah, but that's US law. And US pressure on a foreign power. I agree with the anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA and anti-Hollywood sentiments expressed ... but when it comes down to a foreign country harboring pirates and saying, "Sorry, we can't do anything about it: it's legal here." Do you think that ANY world power would just drop it? Of course the US pressured Sweden to prosecute a group harming its economy/trade interests. I can't believe how many here are defending TPB.
- rickmb 15y ago
  We have something outside America called "sovereignty". This means foreign powers are not supposed to dictate what we consider a crime or not.
  - trebor 15y ago
    Rick, I understand that you're upset. But shouldn't you be more upset with the Swedish government than with the US government? Who caved? The Swedes! Countries have pressured other sovereign powers before, and the US is just following in the global-political norm. The fact that pressuring a foreign power is done should not upset you as much as the fact that the Swedish government caved to it. Expecting the US government/embassy not to pressure a foreign power over something that it perceives as being illegal, and if not illegal then something exceedingly close, is illogical. Politics is looking out for one's own interest. And it is in the interest of the US government to push prosecution of foreign pirates, whether they are digital or Somali, so that a "US industry" can thrive. I personally hate Hollywood and watch less than 10 movies a year (most of them are older and gotten from the library). However, I can't disagree with my government in that the founders of TPB got what they justly deserved. Globalization of corporations and corporate interest profits the corporations, not the citizens. Not ever.
Evernoob 15y ago
With SOPA, ACTA, PIPA, the MegaUpload situation and now this, these really are dark times for the internet.
pwthornton 15y ago
Am I the only one who doesn't feel bad for these guys? The Pirate Bay was always set up to try to infringe copyright, and I don't consider it a legitimate form of civil disobedience. I don't like the MPAA, RIAA and others either, but sites like the TPB are not helping matters.
- grecy 15y ago
  > The Pirate Bay was always set up to try to infringe copyright You're missing the point that TPB is a global thing. Sure, what they're doing is illegal in America, and an American would be in big trouble and the site would have been shut down long ago. That's great. Good for America. TPB represents the rest of the world standing up and saying "You know what America, stop coming over to our countries and telling us what to do. We're sick of it." Before TPB, every foreign site would give up and co-operate at the tiniest threat from the American legal system and law enforcement. For years TPB was the only site/group with the guts to stand up and say "no thanks" when threatened. For those of us outside America, that really means something. I honestly think sites like wikileaks, etc. would not exist without the guts and determination shown by TPB

165 points by forza 15y ago

x3c 15y ago

With the ludicrous patent wars going on among the biggest tech players, increasing piracy and ever-increasing cases of countries bending over backwards to placate entertainment industries; the whole Intellectual Property paradigm is ripe for disruption. The sad part is that the prevalent political practices will make it very difficult to come to a reasonable solution, a point of stable equilibrium. Consumer advocacy and freedom rights' groups have a very feeble voice right now and this issue will take a lot of activism and rationality from the common folk before it can reach a sane conclusion. I only hope issue doesn't undo the leaps humanity took when internet was invented (and I'm not exaggerating)!

wyclif 15y ago

The worst part of this is the assorted fines imposed on the founders of TPB. The prison sentences probably won't amount to much...I don't expect brokep to serve time (I have been following his situation for years now), which is good news.

toyg 15y ago
They can probably file for bankruptcy. The fame they accumulated means they won't have problems borrowing for their future businesses, so a bankruptcy would be a nice way out (obviously after securing their existing assets). IANASwedishL though.
- marvin 15y ago
  I don't think it's possible to file for personal bankruptcy in Sweden, or at least I think that doing this doesn't cause the debt to disappear. (Norwegian here). Are there any Swedes who can clarify this?
  - sp332 15y ago
    I'm not a Swede, but it looks like you're right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy#Sweden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy#Sweden It might be better to enter into a debt arrangement called "skuldsanering" - now that sounds curious :)
    - dagw 15y ago
      Skuldsanering is the Swedish option for personal bankruptcy, but differs in a number of significant ways. First of all you send in an application, disclosing all your debts and assets, and I believe there's an interview process as well. If they think you're hiding something, should reasonably be able to dig yourself out your hole on your own or don't think you've tried hard enough to sort your problems out on your own then you'll get denied. If accepted you have to sell of all your assets and spend the next several years making a good faith effort to earn as much money as you can and pay back as much of the debt as you can. I believe that if they think you're not being serious or not trying they can cancel the deal at any time. Only once all that is done will any remaining debts be cancelled.
yason 15y ago
Exactly. The best way to obliterate a young adult from the society forever is to slash him with fines that he just can't and won't pay. There are several cases like this in Finland, namely few kids who ran a p2p sharing hub (without sharing any of the files, just running the server, AFAIK). This means the young adult won't ever go to work because nearly everything he would ever make would be deducted to pay off the fines he can never finish up. Thus he will simply not pay the fine, become unemployed, and make the country pay him social security to live. Any work he will actually do will be gray, i.e. unofficial untaxed "pirate" income that doesn't formally exist. Way to go. The TPB guys probably have more ambitious plans as the liberation front of bit-sharing. I bet this might just tip an even larger percentage of Swedish people to support TPB and the Pirate Party. Isn't the only thing that is, in the crowds of conservative government or business, more dangerous than a liberty fighter an imprisoned liberty fighter?
- roel_v 15y ago
  "Isn't the only thing that is, in the crowds of conservative government or business, more dangerous than a liberty fighter an imprisoned liberty fighter?" Oh please. A bunch of guys who want to download music and videos for free aren't 'liberty fighters'. You can disagree with copyright, or current implementations of copyright, or whatever, but calling activists of marginal issues like this 'liberty fighters' is devaluating the concept of a true 'liberty fighter', much like 'terrorism' has been devaluated to mean pretty much everything that pisses somebody else off.
  - mikehuffman 15y ago
    Perhaps he means liberty in the sense of freedom from being America's lapdog. One might be considered a "liberty fighter" for wanting to be held accountable by their own country's morals and mores, and not at the insistence of another country. The method "free music and videos", might be irrelevant to that perspective.

itmag 15y ago

Good luck finding them. https://www.flashback.org/t402278 https://www.flashback.org/t402278 For those of you who don't read Swedish, it's a thread about how anakata, one of the founders, talks about going AWOL from the Swedish bureaucratic system. Utan känt hemvist == no known place of residence.

toyg 15y ago
That would be the worst response. For the justice system they are now low-profile, minor white-collar thieves, it's all just a bunch of paperwork and bribes, with a bit of lawyering they probably won't even do time. Once they start absconding, they become fugitives and show up on all the wrong radars. Offenses start piling up automatically, and unless they manage to run to Santo Domingo (which would involve more felonies), they will be caught and sent away for years, not months.
- krig 15y ago
  It did backfire for the guy who is hiding. The others got their sentences reduced in the first appeal but since he wasn't present for the appeal, his original sentence stands. So he'll basically either have to stay away from any country with an extradition treaty with Sweden for many, many years, or spend a year in Swedish prison (plus, I'm sure, additional time/fines for running).
- hobin 15y ago
  "they will be caught" That's debatable. Not that I'd want them to run, but getting caught is in no way a certain thing.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    If you play russian roulette with four friends, it is in no way a certain thing that someone will lose, but given the odds and the stakes, it's best to assume it as a near-certainty.
    - hobin 15y ago

Tooluka 15y ago

At least that was Swedish court. Had it been in the USA they could have faced 4, 6 and 10 years of imprisonment, and $6.8 trillion damage to the RIAA and MPAA.

andrewfelix 15y ago
I was thinking the same thing. I know prison isn't a wonderful place to be. But I think dotcom would be stoked with a 4-10month sentence. Having said that, it's still over the top for posting links.
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  I'll just leave this here: Israelis enjoying life in Swedish prison Three Israelis jailed in Scandinavian country turn down offer to continue serving their sentence in homeland, explain 'here we are treated with steaks, sex and private television airing World Cup games for free' http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3261698,00.html http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3261698,00.html
  - dchest 15y ago
    Hehe, there's this Russian comedy movie "Хочу в тюрму" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167231/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167231/) where a guy, after losing his job, sees a TV documentary about European prisons, and decides to go to the Netherlands from Russia specifically to try to get into prison.
kevinh 15y ago
Oh please. $6.8 trillion damages? I thought HN was supposed to be free of hyperbole. This sort of speculation is meaningless.

GigabyteCoin 15y ago

This is oddly opportunistic timing.

nextparadigms 15y ago
MPAA and RIAA must be trying to change the public's and the politicians' opinion that these "piracy" sites really are really guilty, so they might as well give them the laws they need to bypass due process and "streamline" the whole process, so they don't "waste time" fighting all the similar sites which now we "know" are guilty. Anyway, it's really sad this verdict was given. Linking should not be a crime under any circumstance. And if the current judges think it is, then the laws must be changed to reject that assumption immediately.

rplnt 15y ago

For hosting file hashes and connecting people with same hashes. For free (only search engine was polluted with ads, you didn't have to use it though). In no way is this comparable to what Megaupload (and others) were/are doing.

rickmb 15y ago

Wow. This is has probably been one of the most corrupt legal processes Western Europe has seen since WWII. Unbelievable how a foreign industry has made a complete mockery out of the justice system of a sovereign nation. The damages alone are an insult. Yeah, let's not look at actual damages, let's just use Hollywood fictional bookkeeping. Today also happens to be the day I've lost access to the Pirate Bay through my ISP because a corrupt judge decided Hollywood profits trump my civil liberties. It is so very depressing to see how Hollywood has completely corrupted our legal and political systems to the point were civil liberties are being gutted. This can no longer be tolerated.

andrewfelix 15y ago
I agree it's a crappy verdict, but what makes you say it's corrupt?
- gitarr 15y ago
  Maybe because the facts speak against the verdict? TPB has hosted torrent files, they were not hosting content, so what they did was perfectly legal. The verdict of this case, which ignores the facts, shows clear signs of US pressure on the Swedish legal system and politicians there. There is no other explanation.
  - CJefferson 15y ago
    Why are you sure it is perfectly legal? I don't know Swedish law, but they were convinced of aiding copyright infringement. To me, it is clear they are guilty of that, the whole site is designed for that sole reason of copyright infringement (except perhaps 1% of torrents). Further, the admin do extensive "cleaning" of torrents they deem inapproriate (for example files put in the wrong section), but never clean up copyright infringing files. Now, you might think that aiding copyright infringement shouldn't be illegal, but if it is, how do the facts speak against the verdict?
    - DrCatbox 15y ago

jopt 15y ago

Now that these three have been charged with "paying back what was stolen," all our file-sharing is off the hook, right?

sgentle 15y ago

It would appear that it's a mistake to commit white collar crime without being an American bank. [1][2][3][4] [1] "70% of early payment defaults had fraudulent misrepresentations on their original loan applications" - http://www.anu.edu.au/fellows/jbraithwaite/_documents/Articles/diagnostics_white_collarcrime.pdf http://www.anu.edu.au/fellows/jbraithwaite/_documents/Articl... [2] "half of all the loans called sub-prime, were also liars loans. Liars loans means that there was no prudent underwriting of the loan" - http://www.neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/09/william-black-why-nobody-went-to-jail.html http://www.neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/09/william-black... [3] "how many criminal referrals did the same agency do, in this crisis. Remember it did well over 10,000 in the prior crisis. Well the answer is zero. They completely shut down making criminal referrals" - ibid [4] "In 2003, Freddie Mac coughed up $125 million after it was caught misreporting its earnings by $5 billion; nobody went to jail. In 2006, Fannie Mae was fined $400 million, but executives who had overseen phony accounting techniques to jack up their bonuses faced no criminal charges. That same year, AIG paid $1.6 billion after it was caught in a major accounting scandal that would indirectly lead to its collapse two years later, but no executives at the insurance giant were prosecuted." - http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216?page=4 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-stre...

bad_user 15y ago
Well, don't you know that copyright infringement is responsible for this economic depression? The pirates are upsetting Mikey.
VMG 15y ago
This is very interesting and disturbing, but I fail to see what this has to do with a lawsuit in Sweden. As far as I am aware these two events are unrelated.
- sgentle 15y ago
  Only related in the sense that they reflect US government priorities for white collar prosecution. Their state department has been leaning on Sweden for some time to clean up The Pirate Bay [1]. And there's, of course, the recent MegaUpload news. Copyright enforcement is a critical issue for them, corporate malfeasance is not. [1] http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/03/09STOCKHOLM141.html#par12 http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/03/09STOCKHOLM141.html#par12

trebor 15y ago

We have something in America called "being an accessory" to the crime. This means that you stood by without attempting to stop the crime, even though you learned that it was about to happen. Say that you're riding in the car with a friend when he suddenly pulls over. He looks at you and says, "I'm going to rob that bank over there." If you do nothing to stop him you become an accessory to that crime—and can be convicted by the judge for it. What is claimed in the discussion here is that TPB is an accessory. They had knowledge but did nothing about it, and cannot be held accountable for their users, right? Arguably, since TPB created a site to share torrents on and had no piracy policy (but taunted everyone that complained) they become accomplices! They help the end-pirate find where to get his contraband. We aren't talking about MegaUpload. At least with MegaUpload they can argue that there is no description of the file, and no way for them to inspect the data. No, we're talking about a site where it FLAT OUT SAYS that "this torrent has the cracked version of ..." or of a movie that hasn't been released yet. Did you ever see a warning banner for piracy? Or a "warning, you must be 18+ to pirate these files?" So TPB can't be an accessory, and they can't be uninvolved. Just like you'd be held accountable if you handed a bully a baseball bat. Oh, yeah, but that's US law. And US pressure on a foreign power. I agree with the anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA and anti-Hollywood sentiments expressed ... but when it comes down to a foreign country harboring pirates and saying, "Sorry, we can't do anything about it: it's legal here." Do you think that ANY world power would just drop it? Of course the US pressured Sweden to prosecute a group harming its economy/trade interests. I can't believe how many here are defending TPB.

rickmb 15y ago
We have something outside America called "sovereignty". This means foreign powers are not supposed to dictate what we consider a crime or not.
- trebor 15y ago
  Rick, I understand that you're upset. But shouldn't you be more upset with the Swedish government than with the US government? Who caved? The Swedes! Countries have pressured other sovereign powers before, and the US is just following in the global-political norm. The fact that pressuring a foreign power is done should not upset you as much as the fact that the Swedish government caved to it. Expecting the US government/embassy not to pressure a foreign power over something that it perceives as being illegal, and if not illegal then something exceedingly close, is illogical. Politics is looking out for one's own interest. And it is in the interest of the US government to push prosecution of foreign pirates, whether they are digital or Somali, so that a "US industry" can thrive. I personally hate Hollywood and watch less than 10 movies a year (most of them are older and gotten from the library). However, I can't disagree with my government in that the founders of TPB got what they justly deserved. Globalization of corporations and corporate interest profits the corporations, not the citizens. Not ever.

Evernoob 15y ago

With SOPA, ACTA, PIPA, the MegaUpload situation and now this, these really are dark times for the internet.

pwthornton 15y ago

Am I the only one who doesn't feel bad for these guys? The Pirate Bay was always set up to try to infringe copyright, and I don't consider it a legitimate form of civil disobedience. I don't like the MPAA, RIAA and others either, but sites like the TPB are not helping matters.

grecy 15y ago
> The Pirate Bay was always set up to try to infringe copyright You're missing the point that TPB is a global thing. Sure, what they're doing is illegal in America, and an American would be in big trouble and the site would have been shut down long ago. That's great. Good for America. TPB represents the rest of the world standing up and saying "You know what America, stop coming over to our countries and telling us what to do. We're sick of it." Before TPB, every foreign site would give up and co-operate at the tiniest threat from the American legal system and law enforcement. For years TPB was the only site/group with the guts to stand up and say "no thanks" when threatened. For those of us outside America, that really means something. I honestly think sites like wikileaks, etc. would not exist without the guts and determination shown by TPB