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What percentage of Pirate Bay traffic do you think is legal usage? I'm guessing less than 1%. What percentage of Google's traffic do you think is legal? I woul

What percentage of Pirate Bay traffic do you think is legal usage? I'm guessing less than 1%. What percentage of Google's traffic do you think is legal? I would guess at least 80%. These things matter in court.

jacquesm 18y ago
Exactly. That does not detract from the simple fact that the pirate bay itself does not distribute anything illegal at all, and in that respect they are as legal as any other site that produces pointers to information. The problem here is that it has turned out to be notoriously hard to go after the distributors of the files so now the legal spotlight has turned on the distributors of the whereabouts of those files. I once wrote a bit about this stating in brief that the piratebay is the internet equivalent of saying that you know where there is a bicycle standing without a lock, clearly that should be legal. STEALING the bicycle is illegal.
- jacoblyles 18y ago
  What if someone made a magical index of all the bikes in the city that are unattended and unlocked? Should that be legal?
  - Brushfire 18y ago
    Sure. Its definitely not ideal for the bike owners, but that doesn't mean it should be outlawed. There are many reasons this would be legit information to have and possess, and not all of them are nefarious in nature. Using your logic, should we also restrict websites that track campaign donations, just becuase the campaigners find it painful to their process? The assembly of information is rarely a bad thing. Theft of said bikes is the 'bad thing'. Punish the people stealing, not the people creating maps. Plus many organizations, including many governments, perform equally line-skirting things when collecting credit data, purchasing information, and private information. At least if it is public, you could see that your bike is known to be unlocked, so you could do something about it. The pirate bay is seen/treated differently than all other user-content-generated sites, but it shouldnt be. Fair is fair.
    - netcan 18y ago
      Using your logic, should we also restrict websites that track campaign donations, just becuase the campaigners find it painful to their process? I think you are misrepresenting the logic. The difference here is the difference between a common sense argument & an argument that contains clearly distinguishable definitions. The latter is the kind needed (usually) for legal matters. But a lot of the time we are just trying to find a legally acceptable definition for the common sense argument. 'Illegal if it's mostly for illegal stuff,' is not the kind of law courts would be comfortable with. But I would argue that the issue is with defining an abstract principle. Sometimes these issues are resolved with linguistically. The Pirate Bay's Raison D'Etre is pretty much to do with illegal content. The existence of some legal reasons is a fringe issue. (You might dispute this. In that case, the argument is over this point.) Imagine your unlocked bike list. Or how about a children home alone list. Defining this in an airtight manner that would satisfy the common sense is almost impossible. Specifically defining 'mostly' (as in mostly illegal content) would create a situation where there is a threshold to be met. This shelter could be used as a shield against prosecution. Defining it in terms (eg intent) would create different problems. But these are problems always present in legislation. That doesn't mean you give up on laws. I think that most proponents of Pirate Bay (regardless how clever the arguments) are in the medical marijuana camp. They aren't themselves convinced that Pirate Bay should be there because of possible legal uses. They are themselves convinced by believing that content should be free or that IP laws should be changed or that Government shouldn't take on itself the role of policing this realm.
      - jacoblyles 18y ago
        The law handles ambiguity all the time. See Judge Learned Hand's negligence rule for example. He famously stated that a defendant is negligent (say, a shop owner whose customer slipped on some ice on his steps) if the cost of taking precautions is less than the product of the magnitude of the likely damage and the probability that such damage will occur. In our example of the shop owner, spreading salt on one's steps is very cheap and the expected magnitude of damages is a bit larger, so a shop owner must keep his steps free from ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence This is an ambiguous standard, but it gives the judge a guideline to make his ruling. Similarly in criminal cases, intent must be present for criminal act to have occurred. This is another fuzzy rule, but probably a good one. Law is never hard and fast. Don't believe me? Ask a lawyer.
  - jacquesm 18y ago
    Absolutely, since it clearly has several legal uses that I can think of, and only one illegal one: illegal: - thieves could use it to go and steal those bikes legal: - bike owners could monitor the index and know they've left their bikes unlocked so they had better go and lock it - law enforcement could monitor those bikes because they know they are at extra risk of being stolen - law enforcement could use the index to take the bikes in to protective custody, to return them to their owners upon presentation of proof of ownership.
    - dandelany 18y ago
      How do any of these even remotely relate to file sharing? I think the media industry has learned that once something has been torrented, there's no way to go lock it up again. That's kind of the point.
      - jacquesm 18y ago
        well, for one the pirate bay gives you a nice list of the infringers, you could simply go after them. And if that is not feasible or legal that does not make the pirate bay illegal, it just means you have a real problem.
- gravitycop 18y ago
  saying that you know where there is a bicycle standing without a lock, clearly that should be legal. Do U.S. lawmakers know that (facilitating crime should be legal)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term) In some jurisdictions, criminal "facilitation" laws do not require that the primary crime be actually committed as a prerequisite for criminal liability. These include state statutes making it a crime to "provide" a person with "means or opportunity" to commit a crime, "believing it probable that he is rendering aid to a person who intends to commit a crime." [...] The U.S. criminal code makes aiding and abetting a federal crime itself a crime [...] The elements of aiding and abetting are, generally: (1) guilty knowledge on the part of the accused ( the mens rea);
  - jacoblyles 18y ago
    Exactly. Driving a friend around town is perfectly legal. Driving a friend around town who just robbed a bank is not. Saying "I have a bomb" in a school play is perfectly legal. Saying "I have a bomb" to a bank teller is not.
    - narag 18y ago
      In some countries in Europe (at least in Spain) it isn't a crime to download music or movies, much less to provide links. Another question is if it's illegal (crimes are a specific kind of illegal act). In fact, it isn't illegal at all if there is no money involved. Copyright holders are compensated with a "private tax" on recording media, including SSD. I don't know about Sweden or Denmark, but anyway I suggest not to jump to conclusions unless you know more about the laws in those countries.
      - jacoblyles 18y ago
        Well, if sharing copyrighted content isn't illegal, then obviously nothing I said matters. Go ahead and do it in the light of day and post stories about your exploits to the internet. I just find the argument "we weren't really doing anything illegal, we were just helping you do something illegal by getting you 90% of the way there; so we should be legal." to be tedious and unconvincing. No, this is not about "freedom of speech".
akd 18y ago
For a hyperbolic analogue, what % of death row inmates do you think are innocent? I'm guessing less than 1%. I find the concept of that 1% very disturbing though.

jacquesm 18y ago

Exactly. That does not detract from the simple fact that the pirate bay itself does not distribute anything illegal at all, and in that respect they are as legal as any other site that produces pointers to information. The problem here is that it has turned out to be notoriously hard to go after the distributors of the files so now the legal spotlight has turned on the distributors of the whereabouts of those files. I once wrote a bit about this stating in brief that the piratebay is the internet equivalent of saying that you know where there is a bicycle standing without a lock, clearly that should be legal. STEALING the bicycle is illegal.

jacoblyles 18y ago
What if someone made a magical index of all the bikes in the city that are unattended and unlocked? Should that be legal?
- Brushfire 18y ago
  Sure. Its definitely not ideal for the bike owners, but that doesn't mean it should be outlawed. There are many reasons this would be legit information to have and possess, and not all of them are nefarious in nature. Using your logic, should we also restrict websites that track campaign donations, just becuase the campaigners find it painful to their process? The assembly of information is rarely a bad thing. Theft of said bikes is the 'bad thing'. Punish the people stealing, not the people creating maps. Plus many organizations, including many governments, perform equally line-skirting things when collecting credit data, purchasing information, and private information. At least if it is public, you could see that your bike is known to be unlocked, so you could do something about it. The pirate bay is seen/treated differently than all other user-content-generated sites, but it shouldnt be. Fair is fair.
  - netcan 18y ago
    Using your logic, should we also restrict websites that track campaign donations, just becuase the campaigners find it painful to their process? I think you are misrepresenting the logic. The difference here is the difference between a common sense argument & an argument that contains clearly distinguishable definitions. The latter is the kind needed (usually) for legal matters. But a lot of the time we are just trying to find a legally acceptable definition for the common sense argument. 'Illegal if it's mostly for illegal stuff,' is not the kind of law courts would be comfortable with. But I would argue that the issue is with defining an abstract principle. Sometimes these issues are resolved with linguistically. The Pirate Bay's Raison D'Etre is pretty much to do with illegal content. The existence of some legal reasons is a fringe issue. (You might dispute this. In that case, the argument is over this point.) Imagine your unlocked bike list. Or how about a children home alone list. Defining this in an airtight manner that would satisfy the common sense is almost impossible. Specifically defining 'mostly' (as in mostly illegal content) would create a situation where there is a threshold to be met. This shelter could be used as a shield against prosecution. Defining it in terms (eg intent) would create different problems. But these are problems always present in legislation. That doesn't mean you give up on laws. I think that most proponents of Pirate Bay (regardless how clever the arguments) are in the medical marijuana camp. They aren't themselves convinced that Pirate Bay should be there because of possible legal uses. They are themselves convinced by believing that content should be free or that IP laws should be changed or that Government shouldn't take on itself the role of policing this realm.
    - jacoblyles 18y ago
      The law handles ambiguity all the time. See Judge Learned Hand's negligence rule for example. He famously stated that a defendant is negligent (say, a shop owner whose customer slipped on some ice on his steps) if the cost of taking precautions is less than the product of the magnitude of the likely damage and the probability that such damage will occur. In our example of the shop owner, spreading salt on one's steps is very cheap and the expected magnitude of damages is a bit larger, so a shop owner must keep his steps free from ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence This is an ambiguous standard, but it gives the judge a guideline to make his ruling. Similarly in criminal cases, intent must be present for criminal act to have occurred. This is another fuzzy rule, but probably a good one. Law is never hard and fast. Don't believe me? Ask a lawyer.
- jacquesm 18y ago
  Absolutely, since it clearly has several legal uses that I can think of, and only one illegal one: illegal: - thieves could use it to go and steal those bikes legal: - bike owners could monitor the index and know they've left their bikes unlocked so they had better go and lock it - law enforcement could monitor those bikes because they know they are at extra risk of being stolen - law enforcement could use the index to take the bikes in to protective custody, to return them to their owners upon presentation of proof of ownership.
  - dandelany 18y ago
    How do any of these even remotely relate to file sharing? I think the media industry has learned that once something has been torrented, there's no way to go lock it up again. That's kind of the point.
    - jacquesm 18y ago
      well, for one the pirate bay gives you a nice list of the infringers, you could simply go after them. And if that is not feasible or legal that does not make the pirate bay illegal, it just means you have a real problem.
gravitycop 18y ago
saying that you know where there is a bicycle standing without a lock, clearly that should be legal. Do U.S. lawmakers know that (facilitating crime should be legal)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term) In some jurisdictions, criminal "facilitation" laws do not require that the primary crime be actually committed as a prerequisite for criminal liability. These include state statutes making it a crime to "provide" a person with "means or opportunity" to commit a crime, "believing it probable that he is rendering aid to a person who intends to commit a crime." [...] The U.S. criminal code makes aiding and abetting a federal crime itself a crime [...] The elements of aiding and abetting are, generally: (1) guilty knowledge on the part of the accused ( the mens rea);
- jacoblyles 18y ago
  Exactly. Driving a friend around town is perfectly legal. Driving a friend around town who just robbed a bank is not. Saying "I have a bomb" in a school play is perfectly legal. Saying "I have a bomb" to a bank teller is not.
  - narag 18y ago
    In some countries in Europe (at least in Spain) it isn't a crime to download music or movies, much less to provide links. Another question is if it's illegal (crimes are a specific kind of illegal act). In fact, it isn't illegal at all if there is no money involved. Copyright holders are compensated with a "private tax" on recording media, including SSD. I don't know about Sweden or Denmark, but anyway I suggest not to jump to conclusions unless you know more about the laws in those countries.
    - jacoblyles 18y ago
      Well, if sharing copyrighted content isn't illegal, then obviously nothing I said matters. Go ahead and do it in the light of day and post stories about your exploits to the internet. I just find the argument "we weren't really doing anything illegal, we were just helping you do something illegal by getting you 90% of the way there; so we should be legal." to be tedious and unconvincing. No, this is not about "freedom of speech".

akd 18y ago

For a hyperbolic analogue, what % of death row inmates do you think are innocent? I'm guessing less than 1%. I find the concept of that 1% very disturbing though.