3 ms·

Swedish Pirate Party Defends Role As Pirate Bay ISP

43 points by cyphersanctus 14y ago

Nursie 14y ago
I'm really amazed it's still up. Especially as we've heard about the likes of newzbin and nzbmatrix shutting up shop in the last few weeks. My only problem with the whole thing is that there's still no service, which many people would gladly pay a subscription for, that can replace them. Come on content industry, give us a decent streaming or download service that releases tv and movies to the world at the same time they're released to the US, and much of this would go away.
- dasil003 14y ago
  And so would their most valuable revenue streams. Until more people cut the cable there's just not going to be a way for any service to approach TPB's breadth.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    True, but I don't think the content producers would have to go all the way to that breadth of stuff... I'm pretty sure there is a revenue stream to tap somewhere there. It's not going be an easy one as the clientèle have become used to DRMless content with no ads, for free and on demand, but it has to be there.
    - dasil003 14y ago
      Well there's iTunes and Netflix. Don't those count? edit: sorry I looked back and realized you meant global day and date releases. All the services want to provide that, but big content is not ready to play ball on that unless you can make a commercial case for it—iTunes is still an order of magnitude away, and Netflix is two orders of magnitude. But where it gets interesting is Netflix getting into the production game, that's an opportunity to route around the greed and jump start the inevitable future. Big content is not stupid and they understand this is going to happen, but at the same time they have no incentive to hasten their paycut.
belorn 14y ago
It's the old discussion on how far Safe harbor and common carrier principles should go. Today however, there are many contradicting exceptions, where for example an ISP is seen as liable if their users infringes copyright or breaks any defamation laws, but not spam, scams or network viruses. ISPs also modify and change traffic (Traffic Shaping, DNS hijacking), but are not yet seen as liable when that modification goes wrong and breaks stuff (Traffic Shaping) or puts users at an increased security risk (DNS hijacking). Case in point, the game League of Legends had a large portion of the Swedish gamers cut off for about 2-3 months because of a broken Traffic Shaping rule, which meant that a large portion of users didn't get the service they bought, and Riot Games lost revenue. Sure, the Pirate Party is testing the boundaries in this discussion, either "winning" points for principle if they get ignored or winning media attention if they get sued. But I for one welcome a more detailed look on safe harbor and how liable ISPs should be. If ISPs are forced to be responsible for anything bad going through their network (copyright infringement and spam/scams alike), maybe they will put some more cash into lobbying against being liable.

43 points by cyphersanctus 14y ago

I'm really amazed it's still up. Especially as we've heard about the likes of newzbin and nzbmatrix shutting up shop in the last few weeks. My only problem with the whole thing is that there's still no service, which many people would gladly pay a subscription for, that can replace them. Come on content industry, give us a decent streaming or download service that releases tv and movies to the world at the same time they're released to the US, and much of this would go away.

dasil003 14y ago
And so would their most valuable revenue streams. Until more people cut the cable there's just not going to be a way for any service to approach TPB's breadth.
- Nursie 14y ago
  True, but I don't think the content producers would have to go all the way to that breadth of stuff... I'm pretty sure there is a revenue stream to tap somewhere there. It's not going be an easy one as the clientèle have become used to DRMless content with no ads, for free and on demand, but it has to be there.
  - dasil003 14y ago
    Well there's iTunes and Netflix. Don't those count? edit: sorry I looked back and realized you meant global day and date releases. All the services want to provide that, but big content is not ready to play ball on that unless you can make a commercial case for it—iTunes is still an order of magnitude away, and Netflix is two orders of magnitude. But where it gets interesting is Netflix getting into the production game, that's an opportunity to route around the greed and jump start the inevitable future. Big content is not stupid and they understand this is going to happen, but at the same time they have no incentive to hasten their paycut.

belorn 14y ago

It's the old discussion on how far Safe harbor and common carrier principles should go. Today however, there are many contradicting exceptions, where for example an ISP is seen as liable if their users infringes copyright or breaks any defamation laws, but not spam, scams or network viruses. ISPs also modify and change traffic (Traffic Shaping, DNS hijacking), but are not yet seen as liable when that modification goes wrong and breaks stuff (Traffic Shaping) or puts users at an increased security risk (DNS hijacking). Case in point, the game League of Legends had a large portion of the Swedish gamers cut off for about 2-3 months because of a broken Traffic Shaping rule, which meant that a large portion of users didn't get the service they bought, and Riot Games lost revenue. Sure, the Pirate Party is testing the boundaries in this discussion, either "winning" points for principle if they get ignored or winning media attention if they get sued. But I for one welcome a more detailed look on safe harbor and how liable ISPs should be. If ISPs are forced to be responsible for anything bad going through their network (copyright infringement and spam/scams alike), maybe they will put some more cash into lobbying against being liable.