"The Pirate Bay has always argued that it's a tracking site, not a hosting site."

That's not so much an argument as a statement of fact. If they were hosting, they would have been charged after the last raid.

acording to pages on there legal threat page

http://thepiratebay.org/legal

they said that under the law in there country you have to prove damages to clame it this clame is obvoiusley a load of bonley

"who read "The International Federation of the Pornographic Industry""

nope

and was I the only one who was disapointed when I re read it?

But isn't that just the problem? The fact that somehow institutions like the RIAA have been able to twist the long acceptable technical difference between hosting and tracking into being the same thing in the eyes of governments, the law and often even the media?

I remember years ago back in the mid to late 90s you'd get laughed off the internet if you said someone had broken the law for linking to copyrighted material hosted elsewhere. It was clear a link was merely a reference and not itself copyright infringement but somewhere between them and now the lines got blurred.

From what I remember (and this is hazy so apologies if I'm wrong on some of the facts) it started with the idea that if you linked to an image as part of your page but that was actually hosted elsewhere it was actually classed as infringement, whilst I don't agree that using other peoples images in this way without their permission is exactly moral, I also don't think it should be copyright infringement or whatever it is classified. At the end of the day if you put a picture on an open web server unrestricted then you're giving permission to people to access that, if others link to it there are technical countermeasures available to prevent specific or entire groups of sites accessing it without going through your site first. Of course when these kind of precedent got set however it wasn't much of a stretch for the likes of the music industry to start applying it to links from say a US site to say a Chinese site actually hosting pirated content where at the time pirated content wasn't illegal to be hosted in that manner via HTTP in that country.

Of course the age of peer to peer followed and then again it wasn't a far stretch for the same figures e.g. the music industry to apply this same line of thinking to peer to peer.

The reason Sweden still treats linking as legal is because it does have technically competent regulators being a very high tech. country that understand the issue on a technical level, however even Sweden looks to be at risk now to idiocy and corruption getting it's way over intelligence and common sense.

I think there's a lesson to be learnt here and that's when it comes to enforcing new laws on the internet the default should be to default to the option that offers most freedom to the general masses as if you give even a little leeway to those willing to control the internet it wont be long before they extend that and start applying it much more broadly. A similar example is in some countries where filtering of child porn sites is being abused to filter sites governments don't agree with, whilst it's nice to think that child porn should be filtered it's not as clear cut when that could lead to censorship abuses. This is particularly the case when you factor in the argument that filtering child porn doesn't actually magically make child molesters go away and point out that perhaps it'd be better if police actually went and found child molesters rather than simply masked the problem over with a filter.

no content required

Posted on April Fools...... never take blog posts seriously on April 1st! :)

If I recall, the indictment is for 'medhjälp' i.e. 'aiding and abetting' or being an accessory, rather than the primary copyright infringement itself.

That may hold up ... but I doubt the damages will. Surely the person or persons who were aided and abetted must carry the main responsibility and hence damage

How can the PB be accused of aiding and abetting over the supply of information?

So, if on a night out I were asked by someone where they are most likely to find the local dealers* and told them, would I be aiding and abetting that person? If some 16 year old* (even though I don't know his age) asked me where such and such a bar is would I again be guilty of aiding and abetting? If someone were to use Google maps to find the exact location of a Brothel* (after being given the address by someone else) could Google be implicated in the aiding and abetting of prostitution?

Surely then every parent/guardian/relative that bought their child/relative a computer that gets used to download unlicenced, copyrighted material would surely fall foul of aiding and abetting?

Everytime I let someone into my house I am making my physical CD collection available to that person (which, if they were so inclined, they could steal a coupe without me knowing) would that make me guilty of aiding and abetting or making available?

* Not that I know any dealers, under-age drinkers or brothels!!

The Dewey Decimal Classification also lets people find things also