Anyone know?

Why they haven't announced their relocation to Antigua yet?

The Borg?

"Let us assure you that we are not worried, we are laughing our asses off at it! Cause we are the future and resistance is futile," they write.

They are not 'The Borg'. They are futile in their legal defence!

So they don't host the data, thats not enough

So they can't be tried/convicted under one aspect of the law, I'm sure they can be tried and convicted for facilitating illegal file sharing. And so they should.

Just because the music / movie / software industry don't provide services at reasonable prices doesn't make it right to steal the products instead.

If you want something, then buy it. If you don't like the price then don't buy it. But don't steal it. If you do, then you deserve to burn in hell.

Isn't Hell a bit OTT for file-sharing?

I though buring in Hell was reserved for paedophiles and the like?

Don't file sharers just get to spend 20 years in Purgatory doing sysadmin on MSDoS 4 boxes before they're allowed into Heaven?

Burn in Hell Mr Millar?

So you believe that someone downloading the odd mp3 deserves eternal damnation, perhaps this is an argument that can be used against the RIAA to explain why a crackdown on pirates isn't necessary, they will burn in the afterlife for it.

Burning in hell

Already doomed I suspect, because of all that home-taping (WHICH IS KILLING MUSIC!) that I did in the 80's.

I do love a good religious nutter - they're always worth a laugh.

scorched..

perhaps we should just have a 'bit of a scorching' or 'a minor burn on the buttocks' instead?

perhaps kenny works for the Holy Order (Extended Section)of the MPAA?

commonly known as MPAA HOES

no offense but calm down

wow thats a bit harsh...

dont you think Mr. Millar... "to burn in hell." for file sharing, seems a bit over the top. i can imagine, sir, with punishments on that scale, come judgment day, you'll just vaporize instantly, leaving behind only a pile of ashes, as i'm sure you have a few skeletons in your closet... much worse skeletons than those held by file sharers..

see, the way i view it is... There is not a man on earth that couldnt stand for trial something, so, until you can part the red sea, or walk across it, you sir, have no right to pass judgment on me.

besides, the pirate bay is only doing its part to battle evil and defend all that is holy... you see, the behavior of the R.I.Ass.A. and M.P.Ass.A. is one of greed, the inanely rich lusting after more wealth and power. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins*... so what the pirate bay is doing is helping to keep that greed in check!

and dont feed me this bullshit that its about the artists, because its bullshit, the artists get screwed just the same as the public does, if the artists got the bulk of the revenue generate by sales, i would be all in favor of the anti-piracy movement, but they dont, they get fucked every time you or i buy an album, in the same way your or i do...

*make no mistake, i am not a religious man, i had to google the seven deadly sins to make sure i got it right...

Purgatory?

Pyromancer,

Didn't the Catholic Church scrap purgatory or did I dream that?

They are just like...

...a search engine, mr. Millar, that's not a crime.

Movie Industry Shill

Would the movie industry shill please stand up, your taxi is here...

@ Dan

Oh OK, so they are not breaking a Swedish law. Are they not contravening EU law? EU law has precedence over 'local' law.

Intellectual Property of Media = Protection for the already well protected

Let's keep this brief:

1. Musicians don't make their money from record sales, their labels do. Musicians make money from touring, merch, and cheezy personal appearances. File sharing will never take these sources of revenue away.

2. I don't feel bad stealing TV shows since the advent of DVR. I don't feel bad stealing movies. I watch movies over and over again, and if its really quite good, I want to see it on a big digital screen with an excellent stereo rather than my tiny comp.

And finally:

3. Variable quality of the downloaded media, possibility of tainted files, and the majority of people who say BT and file sharing in general is "too complicated for them" or "is the domain of computer geniuses" will always provide a ready wave of pod people ready to shove their hard earned dollars into the pockets of those with already full pockets.

@ Andy Barber

So just because the EU made a stupid law means that it suddenly apply to the whole world? Thats like saying that Austrailians should be thrown in jail because in some obsure law in the UK that says you _must_ perform at least two hours of longbow training a week, in front of a clergyman, and we all know that none of us on here have done that...

http://www.dumblaws.com/law/1046

A law ONLY applies to the area that makes it. As such the most that they could do is make it so that the EU routers cannot transmit traffic to the servers, or change the laws in Sweden so that they have to move somewhere else.

What is all the hubub for?

Why is everyone bashing the RIAA? They are only trying to make money off the people who can least afford it and aren't doing any serious damage. Now if people were selling the music that would be one thing.

Record Industry

To be honest the greed of those in the record industry is the only thing I can see that merits a burning in hell here.

I tend to agree with the Pirate Bay viewpoint, everybody is doing it .....it is the law that needs to be changed to suit the people not the other way round.

And there is no law saying what they are doing is illegal in their country.

love the music

From isohunt.com' newsboard:

"They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band." -- aint that enough?

EU law? What EU law?

The EU doesn't make law. It directs the member states to make law.

That's a bit subtle for some people, but the EU has to cope with the practical details of local legal systems. If they made law, they'd have to specify all the details for every member state--which court hears a case, who investigates, the rules of evidence that apply, even what some words mean.

(English law used to have a quite complicated definition of burglary. The offence was eliminated by the Theft Act, which defines what "theft" is in the eyes of the law. It's impossible for file-sharing to be theft, or piracy.)

It is theft

No matter which way you look at it most Bit Torrent use is stealing. If you are happy with then carry on if not stop.

It's a lot easier than walking into 'Game' or 'ASDA' and nicking a DVD but its still theft.

Plus they don't let me in Game any more.

@marsh

I don't illegally download material from the net. However, I am more than willing to stand up and say that you are WRONG. Copyright infringement is not theft, by DEFINITION. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either confused, mentally defective, or trying to sell a line. Since this has been explained to you multiple times, you can't be confused, so are you a mental defective or an industry shill?

-daniel

Yes it is.

Downloading copyrighted material without paying the fee is thieft.

The orginal purchaser paid for the disc, then illegally made it available for file sharing.

If you then grab a copy of that file then you ARE committing a crime.

If you provide a service where people can find stolen goods for free collection then you are also comitting a crime.

Just because nothing 'physical' was taken doesn't mean it is not theft. It is. You got something for free which was not yours to take, so that makes it theft.

The mentally deficient people here are those that thinks it's ok to take something for free just because it's easy.

Immorality of Official releases.

Bare in mind that the only reason the that the likes of "The Pirate Bay" do not filter out the kiddie porn and other nasties is because, were they to do so, the RIAA and similar organisations would gleefully sieze on this as evidence they were "content providers". Having established this they would use the law to close down the service. The RIAA pay lawyers and technical consultants considerable sums to monitor the services for any such activity, the wages of which are paid for out of revenue garnered from official releases.

The practical upshot of this is that "official releases fund paedophillia". (or at least the preservation of same).

Stealing TV shows?

Wasn't there some pric*k from one of the networks who declared going for a piss or putting the kettle on during adverts during a movie was stealing???

Cutter Unt.

</anorak>

*sigh*

@ Kenny: "Just because nothing 'physical' was taken doesn't mean it is not theft. It is. You got something for free which was not yours to take, so that makes it theft."

No, it makes it a breach of copyright. The act of theft as it is legally defined requires the original owner to be deprived of something that they originally possessed, in order for an act to constitute theft.

Thus, in the chain of events you've described there is never a point wherein theft specifically is committed. The illegal component is breaching the broadcast permissions provided with the CD/DVD/whatever by making it available for anyone to download. You'll notice the punitive damages demanded by the RIAA and MPAA involve stupidly high amounts of money per-song if you view the damages as purely related to downloading the songs. The act of downloading a track itself is not illegal, because the law does not yet require private citizens to verify licences on the media they purchase - the illegal act is the redistribution of the media being downloaded, which is inherent in most P2P clients out there.

It's still not theft though - downloading a copy of an album you haven't paid for does not *take away* the cost of buying that album in a shop from the record label, because you'd never paid for it in the first place. It could only be theft if you handed over the money, grabbed the music, then grabbed your music back and did a legger.

This may appear to be semantics to you, but it's an important distinction in how the law is formulated. Shouting "Piracy is theft" over some allegedly trendy video is not an intelligent way of trying to get the issue addressed, it's a knee-jerk reaction of an industry which has quite a lot of people in it who suddenly see their jobs disappearing as digital distribution threatens to render their jobs obsolete.

@Kevin Dwyer

Purgatory is distinct from Hell. And IIRC, the Catholic Church changed it's stance on whether or not unbaptised children go to Purgatory first, or straight into Heaven.

@ Mahou Saru

My previous comment was meant to be sarcastic. Sorry for the confusion.

On that note, I agree with the view that CD prices are bloated and end up lining the pockets of corporation vultures. Yes I said vultures. The price of a blank CD is dirt cheap for me to buy. How much cheaper is it for a company to buy them in bulk? The software used to burn a CD is cheap and even free for some open source Apps. Mass producing them is mostly done mechanically. What do you suppose the profits are and for whom?

I'm not condoning "theft". I'm merely pointing out that big wig executives pay

themselves first and the pay rate is whatever they set for themselves. Not that this concept is unique because most major corps work this way but by the very nature of the way in which it is easy to circumvent and given the fact that a lot of people only like a few songs on a CD and they are easy to find on P2P, what do the RIAA and the rest expect? The nature of the format ENABLES people to share and if people are smart about it they will never get caught.

So, who gets caught? The little guy with no smarts of encryption, the parents of teens who are responsible for their kids actions and so on. Why is it that most super peers who share never get caught? It's called encryption and that's why the powers that be take down a whole site instead of the file sharers, because it's too hard to catch most of them. So now little Johnny's parents are stuck with a huge fine which they would probably never be able to pay.

Am I breaking a law when I download a song from overseas where it's legal to do so? Or do I need to visit the country and use a friends computer to do so, then bring the CD home with me? Would that satisfy the legal requirements? And if so, am i breaking a law by copying my free and legal copy and giving them away as gifts? The only difference here is that I'm not spending a fortune visiting a foreign country.

I do believe in copyrights, don't get me wrong but like I stated, the very nature of the beast makes it too easy for ANYONE with a PC to take advantage of it. Copyright protection coded into a CD is a joke as well. It's all too easy to break the protection. So little Johnny downloads a few songs and who gets stuck with an outrageous fine?

Should parents be responsible to pay? Well of course, since Johnny can't. Now what happens if Johnny jacks your car? The parents may be guilty of not teaching him well.... or maybe they have.... but it's Johnny who pays one way or another for the physical theft.

Either the laws need to be changed to reflect peoples wants or the format needs to be . Since any format can be broken given time, I think the law takes on the job of change. The recording industry is only fooling themselves and they need to take a serious look at the whys and wherefores of what they have done to ENABLE what they don't want to have happen.

My meager $0.02 USC.

@Rodrigo Rollan

"downloading copyrighted material is illegal and that is for sure"

Well Rodrigo, I've given people permision to freely download material from my web site. I own the copyright to that material. Do you still think it "is for sure"?

It is only illegal : IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THE PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER.

I'm guessing you ANAL.

Oy! LIMBO.

Unbaptized babies use to go to limbo, not purgatory.

Limbo != purgatory.

Limbo is a circle of hell where unbaptized babies go. Purgatory is where souls rest until judgment day. I swear, you people wouldn't know the difference between Candyland and the Xanth. You'd probably confuse the doctrine of the virgin birth with the doctrine of the immaculate conception.

Learn your myths. Angels have wings, demons have horns, God has superpowers and is almost as powerful as Santa, and seven, EXACTLY seven, angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Theft?

Repeat after me: "Loss of alleged future profit is not theft of actual property."

@Gordon

I don't know whether you're a shill for the BPI/RIAA/MPAA, or whether you actually believe the rubbish you're spouting is in some way true.

(1) Find a lawyer.

(2) Ask them what the LEGAL definition of THEFT is.

(3) Stop swearing when they tell you that copyright infringement in the UK and EU (and at this point it is necessary to emphasise) IS NOT THEFT, it is copyright infringement.

However much you, or who you work for would like it to be, in the UK and EU copyright infringement is copyright infringement, not theft. Yes, it's illegal. No, it's not theft.

People may take your arguments seriously if they think that you actually understand the law. Otherwise, you're hardly in a position to attempt to defend its use/abuse/misuse.

Who Cares?

Let's confirm a couple of things:

1) Yes, it's illegal

2) Yes, it's wrong

But if my chances of getting caught/punished are so slim, what does it matter?