back to article Swedish police claim massive anti-piracy bust

Swedish police raided a location near Stockholm last month where computer equipment containing a huge bounty of alleged pirated material was seized by authorities. The raid was carried out on 9 February, but private copyright advocacy outfit Antpiratbyrån only revealed that the bust had taken place late on Friday. A server …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How have these people still not grasped how torrents work?

    Like the Hydra, remove a single copy of a file shared via the tracker, and two will pop up in its place. Fail.

  2. Mark Wills
    Happy

    Good.

    Piracy is piracy and it is right and proper that their equipment has been seized and I hope full legal proceedings will ensue.

    I note the AC (the first poster) notes it as a fail... So what would you suggest then, AC? Just let everyone rip off music companies, film studios, and software houses as they see fit?

    You'd see it differently if your livelihood depended on selling a product you had strived for and crafted, only to see it ripped off in a million piracy markets around the world.

    You, dear AC are the FAIL.

  3. Jeff

    Based on their obvious lack of understanding of how bittorrent works

    are we really to believe this is actually copyrightable material, and not just .torrent indexes?

    (probably, as it's a topsite, but still?)

    Also there's no reference to any persons being arrested; so are we to assume no-one has been?

    PS. There's no copyrightable material 'on' The Pirate Bay (except for that which is (C) thepiratebay) it might be found VIA the pirate bay.. but that's a totally different thing.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    more details

    "The raid was carried out on 9 February, but private copyright advocacy outfit Antpiratbyrån only revealed that the bust had taken place late on Friday."

    I tried to read the bit above and understand it but failed to do so, can someone help clarify it. Is this a some sort of a government agency that is *working* with copyright holders? or did this private agency take it upon itself to raid the place without any legal authority? or did the police raid the place after been contacted by this agency?

    you can't stop a crime by another crime. Private agencies can NOT take the law into their own hands. If they do and the government does turn a blind eye to them then the government is giving a green light to vigilante justice.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    data "equivalent" to 16,000 movies

    What is that supposed to mean?

    And "Pontén also claimed that the Sunnydale operation was the source of all pirated material found on The Pirate Bay"? Evidently his grand kids have just shown him how to send e-post and browse the cyberwebs, and he's become over-confident in his grasp of technology.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Good

    I think the point was that this is one 'war' that will never be won by the 'good guys' being those who hold the copyrights. One can very well relate this to the 'war on drugs' that has been going on for a looonnnggg time. Many billions of dollars are spent trying to stop pot from being sold. Here, many billions of dollars will be spent on trying to stop file sharing. It won't stop, because there are those willing to provide it, and there are those who want it. The 'good guys' should figure out a way of making it so that those who want it, will want it from them at a price. Until then, everything our governments do is just piling onto the FAIL, and ultimately wasting our tax dollars.

  7. conan
    Stop

    Misunderstanding

    The first poster didn't comment on the righteousness (or lack thereof) of illegal filesharing, they just pointed out that raiding server farms in this way will not bring it to an end. I agree; that approach is definitely a fail. There have been proposed a number of ways to stop people sharing illegally, the most obvious of which seems to me to be to provide a single place where all movies/music can be downloaded (what bittorrent offers) for a fee, instead of for free.

    It seems unnecessary to go calling people names for things they didn't say.

  8. Daniel Palmer

    @Mark Wills

    The original intention of Copyrights was the long term benefit of society; Artists, authors etc can protect their works for a "limited" period of time thus enabling them to fund more and more work.. all of which automatically falls into the public domain after the copyright expires and society benefits... All litigation against "pirates" so far has not been from the people you seem so concerned about no being able to make a living, it has been from massive corporate bodies. You know, the massive corporate bodies that take 90% or more of all the money the actual artist generates. So if anyone is ripping off the little man off it's the labels, publishers et al.

    Software piracy is a little different I suppose. There are lots of people making money from open source though. So work that out. ;)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sorry Mark, you sound like an idiot to me.

    You don't seem have grasped even the smallest part of the argument why the current copyright cartel system deosn't work. I'm happy to listen to different opinions but trotting out these tired old clichés doesn't get us anywhere.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Admission of guilt?

    They are claiming that the Pirate Bay is just a search engine, but then Sunde says this:

    " "More than 800,000 people have uploaded to The Pirate Bay, so I don't believe it's the source of everything. But it is possible that it's a major source," [Sunde] told Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. "

    So the Pirate Bay does store and thus *is* committing theft. Jail them.

    Then jails the CEOs of the movies and record companies for operating cartels.

    The jails the various MEPs and civil servants for supporting those cartels.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: How have these people still not grasped how torrents work?

    @AC

    " Like the Hydra, remove a single copy of a file shared via the tracker, and two will pop up in its place. Fail. "

    Errrmmm... no. You sir, have bought the myth of the torrent, and it is *you* who needs to be told how torrents work. Most users don't give back what they download, and for niche material, relying on standard users means intermittent availability as people go on and off line throughout the day. Large servers like this are necessary to ensure that the promised throughput is achieved. Switch them off and user behaviour goes back to the Tragedy of the Commons-type scenario, with everyone leeching whatever they can then switching off before they've uploaded it all back.

    There's a reason that this seizure was announced as a *server* and not just someone's PC....

  12. Paul Murphy

    Interesting contrast

    TPB hosts torrents, files that point to (potentially illegal) files,

    Sunnydale by the sounds of things hosts the very files that RIAA et al are actually trying to get to.

    It's not a question of fail or succeed - it's more about understanding how things work and then targetting your response.

    Now if the RIAA etc found a way of tracking torrents to expose the real locations of those illegally held files ... hmmm

    TPB promotes piracy to the same degre that (TV, radio, etc) advertisers promote irresponsible buying, that alcohol companies promote drunken behaviour, that cigarette companies (used to) promote DIY suicide, that car companies promote dangerous driving and road deaths.

    They're not directly responsible, but then again they don't really help stop it.

    ttfn

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Mark Wills

    You seem to be the one with the failure problem here, considering you have bought the music and movie industry's bullshit about every pirated song/movie being a lost sale. Unless you can prove all those downloads have cost sales then your argument is without merit. Proper, independent studies have even shown downloaders buy more things thanks to being introduced to them via their downloads.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Mark Wills

    I don't know what the original AC's comment would be, but perhaps they wouldn't have the same sort of levels of piracy if they didn't try to sue people out of existance in order to protect a dying business model, rather than embrace new technology and try to find ways of making money from it *before* piracy became socially acceptable?

    Remember: the customer is always right. A large part of the problem faced by the media industry today has been caused by executives that have tried to ignore this. People don't want limitations. They certainly don't want DRM, and they don't want to be told what they can and can't do with something for their own use once they've bought it.

    The media industry (and games too - remember Spore?) helped to make this problem worse. I certainly won't be shedding any tears for them.

  15. dave

    data equivalent to 16,000 movies??

    What the hell does that mean?

    I can have a backup server storing multiple archives that holds "data equivalent to 16,000 movies" but it's nothing more than tax returns!

    If they can't actually say they found 16,000 movies I rather suspect they didn't and the 'data equivalent to" is a smoke screen.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    "Source of all pirated material...on PB"

    "Pontén also claimed that the Sunnydale operation was the source of all pirated material found on The Pirate Bay."?

    Er, surely the source of the vast majority of copyright material ACCESSIBLE via TPB is in the bedrooms of millions of downloading types around the planet. At least (perhaps incorrectly?) I was under the impression that these things were cracked by dozens of groups and individuals, and not by 1 big bad crew in 1 location

    Paris....because she's Paris FFS. Is a reason needed?

  17. Justin Stone

    @AC

    This has nothing to do with torrents. If these servers actually contain pirated software/music/movies then it's flat out illegal, even in Sweden. It's possible the servers hosting the illegal materials ran trackers and seeded, but that doesn't make it about torrents either. :x

  18. AB
    Paris Hilton

    @Mark Wills

    Classic straw man/Aunt Sally. AC never actually indicated approval or otherwise for "everyone [ripping] off music companies, film studios, and software houses as they see fit".

    Paris, because whenever she goes down she emerges stronger...

  19. Ash
    Stop

    @Mark Wills

    "You'd see it differently if your livelihood depended on selling a product you had strived for and crafted, only to see it ripped off in a million piracy markets around the world."

    I guess you must have been living under a rock for the past, well, decade? Not even the RIAA maintains that it's the artists (those who "strive for and create" the product") who lose money from file sharing. Trent Reznor's release of "The Slip" is testament to the fact that file sharing does not harm artists. What it DOES harm is a market of artificial scarcity, created and monopolised by a handful of American corporations, contrary to the good of the consumer and to the detriment of the entertainment industry.

    This isn't about harming artists, and never was. It is specifically about harming the profit margins of an American cartel who stifle innovation (by destroying the means of content distribution used by independent labels who can't afford large marketing budgets, namely BitTorrent and other file sharing networks) and artificially inflate prices to maximise their OWN pay.

    With the invention of a method of duplicating digital media with no cost whatsoever to the consumer, the business model must change, just like the market for inns and wayhouses changed when the horse and cart was superseded by the automobile. The RIAA / MPAA need to adapt their business model, or die a not so slow death.

    Stop kidding yourself. This isn't about music artists.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Mark Wills

    It is not the artists that prosecute nor are they the ones that profit massively, yet they are the ones that strive and graft. The faceless corporations that over price the media to cream off easy and massive profits that rip off the buying public are. You are truly deluded and are the fail, idiot.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Mark Wills

    "You'd see it differently if your livelihood depended on selling a product you had strived for and crafted, only to see it ripped off in a million piracy markets around the world."

    Unfortunately, if you'd seen the incompetence of those involved in calculating and delivering royalty payments due on a product you'd strived for and crafted, you'd see it differently too. You'd probably also be shocked to discover what a small percentage the artist gets.

    Frankly, I know for a fact that others are making far more from the music I create than I ever will, so as a result I don't give two shits about people pirating it if they want. (For starters, at least pirates are not lying to ME about MY money!)

    Everyone who hears the music is a potential fan and it is fans who buy albums. Pirates can turn into fans (who may decide to buy the next album or pay to go to a gig) but the hard-core pirates never even listen to the music anyway, so it's no skin off my nose!

    Last I looked, Leonardo Decaprio wasn't short of a few bob - despite a string of shite (but massively pirated) films. Bill Gates is also quite a rich man, despite Windows being one of the most pirated (and buggy) products ever.

    So ultimately, maybe it would actually benefit me from having my stuff pirated! It would seem that it could be a geniunely positive thing and would make the music reach a larger audience. If the royalties became larger as a consequence then it would be more difficult to claim that payments were being "rolled together" and other such bullshit. I might even get paid the money I am due. (It might even arrive in a timely manner!)

    So yes, piracy is a minor inconvenience for me since I get paid next to fucking nothing by the redord company for what I do anyway. However, it can be flattering to think that someone has taken the time and effort to search for and download my stuff of their own free will.

    Any financial loss I suffer from piracy certainly doesn't gall me as much as being told that there will be deductions from my future royalties due to a current advertising campaign. Another advertising campaign that seems to be doing me fuck all good, I might add.

    As if I make any fucking money from record sales anyway, it all seems to go to other people :(

    I made more money per CD when I was making them myself on my home computer, so I don't care too much about pirates. They're certainly more honest than the "businessmen" who have fucked me over so many times.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Piracy is seen as socially acceptable to many

    On the other hand I think a significant number of those people who participate in illegal activities would stop, if they didn’t see “Super Stars” earning such ludicrous amounts of money and stuffing it in their matrices. If a significant proportion (50+%) of those profits were being put to good causes, I think you would see the level of piracy drop extremely quickly and sales increase accordingly. There is almost a social kudos for piracy, and the perceived victims are people such as Tom Cruise. If it was Charities and Aid Agencies you were stealing from, these pirates would become social pariahs.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    nothing new to download from PB ever again?

    "Pontén also claimed that the Sunnydale operation was the source of all pirated material found on The Pirate Bay."

    So presumably there has been no new content on piratebay since the raid on 9th feb?

    Funny, it looks like there has been...

  24. Pierre

    (untitled)

    "huge bounty"...."data equivalent to 16,000 movies"

    Where is the rest of the advertised "huge bounty"?

    @ Mark Willis

    "You'd see it differently if your livelihood depended on selling a product you had strived for and crafted," you can't be talking about the RIAA/MPAA or their shareholders now, can you?

    Copyright violation might not be a nice thing to do, but some people will argue that copyright laws are unfair and designed to rip off both the artist and the consumer for the greater profit of a few lazy leeches. Just sayin'.

  25. James
    Thumb Down

    "data equivalent to 16,000 movies."

    "It’s understood the server contained data equivalent to 16,000 movies."

    or

    "It's understood the server contained data equivalent to 11200000 emails."

    at 700MB a movie and 1MB an email.

    If my mate is anything to go by this could all be porn.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    'source of all pirated material found on TPB'?

    LOL WUT

    Yet again, these idiots prove they have no idea how bittorrent actually works.

  27. Mike

    Nuggets

    Assuming that this *server* only had one copy of each movie/song/software then taking this server away removes one "seed" as most torrents have several seeds (sometimes over 100) it's not a big hit, I doubt anyone will notice, besides even if there were no seeds (people with complete copies) it's still possible to get the whole file if there's enough leaching (partial copies to make up the whole).

    Pirate Bay by far has more torrents tracked than anywhere else, but when there are torrent amalgamation sites (which I won't list for obvious reasons) it's becomming less and less important, i.e. the data is distibuted, it's a tiny jump to distribute the torrents (a torrent, torrent).

    If society would rather steal a product than buy it then it's not priced correctly, either a new product is required or how that product is delivered needs to be changed.

  28. Hombre sin nombre
    Flame

    RE: assorted @ Mark Willis

    You all just fell for some of the best trollbait I've ever seen.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Peer Guardian

    They should of used Peer Guardian lol

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @AC >I made more money per CD when I was making them myself on my home computer

    So why did you sign the contract?

    There's no compulsion to join a label, you could do all the work they do yourself, or hire people to do it. There are freelance studios, marketing, cd pressing, banks lend money, it's all there.

    You could've even hired someone to run it all.

    So why didn't you?

  31. Doug Glass
    Go

    Alright!!

    Descent among the righteous! Isn't this what caused the fall of Rome, or was it communism? Oh never mind......

  32. Tom

    @ dave

    "data equivalent to 16,000 movies??

    What the hell does that mean?"

    It means that they pulled a really BIG number out of their buts (again).

  33. Paul
    Thumb Up

    Aw, poor baby freetards

    Aw, diddums, some nasty grown-ups want to stop you getting your fwee stuff?

    Hilarious blog in The Guardian last week, holed by Reg's own feature on neo-Nazi links:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/feb/23/pirate-bay-file-sharing

    Worth reading to - or from - the end. Enjoy!

    What cracks me up about these 'sticking it to the man' freetards is that they actually think that record and film companies are 'The Man', you know, the big nasty corporate one out to enslave and impoverish us all - as opposed to the IT infrastructure providers who supply the services they're happy to pay their monthly subs to. 'Information wants to be free, Man.' Yeah right, as long as you pay your ISP every month. But no, they'd still rather impoverish those in the creative media, because people in suits are, like, bad, right?

  34. Richard Fishlock
    Joke

    Peer Guardian

    Should of used Peer Guardian lol XD

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    I call dibs on any

    I call dibs on any massive Swedish pirate busts that anyone else finds.

    fnar fnar oo are

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    @anon 14:24

    He means uploading .torrent files, which contain no copyrighted information. Please learn how bittorrent works before attempting to troll, maybe you will have a little more success.

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    @Doug Glass

    Christianity!

  38. Haku

    "the source of all pirated material found on The Pirate Bay."

    Did anyone else whilst reading that have a flashback to the last series of The IT Crowd when Roy & Moss convinced Jen that a small box with a light on it was The Internet?

  39. Tom

    @Paul

    How much money do think these suits have taken from the real artists? I gave up going to the cinema, and buying records when the cost rocketed and the quality went down.

    A recording artist may be lucky enough to get perhaps 7 or 8 pence from a 99p download.

    Now if that artist was allowed to sell at a reasonable price (cost + a profit margin) they would sell orders of magnitude more copies. But they're not allowed to - the industries get in the way. The internet WILL be the salvation of the artists - once the parasitic suits have been left by the wayside. So the suits are, like, really really bad man.

    We live in age of industrial luddites just trying to save their antiquated ways of making a living.

  40. Vincent Ballard

    Re: admission of guilt

    "So the Pirate Bay does store and thus *is* committing theft."

    You're assuming the elided object of the verb "upload" in Sunde's comment was "films". I'm pretty sure it's actually ".torrent files".

  41. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    @ all the freetards..

    Some of the apparent naivety here is amazing..

    OK, so, you appear to think that the music labels are all massive corporations who do nothing but leech off artists.

    However, who pays for the 10s of thousands of new bands launched in this country each year? Bearing in mind that less than 1% succeed. Someone has to pay for studio time. Someone has to pay for videos, the inevitable promotional website and other promotional stuff. Someone has to pay to have the album(s) duplicated. Someone has to pay for the Cd cover to be designed and printed.

    So, bearing in mind that 99% of those bands are generating little income for the company, who pays for it? Well, the money comes from profits made from the 1% of bands who do make a profit. So, less profit from those bands = less money for other bands.

    Now, I am not saying that Piracy is the main (or even a major) contributor to lack of sales, there is a lot of evidence it is not. But, it certainly does not help.

    The movie industry(at least in Hollywood) works in a similar way. At any given moment, there may be over 100 movies (sometimes up to 150) in production in Hollywood. We only hear of a small percentage of them (at most 5 or 6 a week). That small percentage actually provides finance for the rest of them to be made.

  42. Pierre

    Paul,

    I will forget the fact that you are just trolling and say that you missed the point entirely. This operation will stop no-one from "getting [...] fwee stuff".

    Also, you seem to have a strange definition of "impoverish". And of "creative", for that matter.

    You wouldn't happen to have a few million shares in Universal, would you?

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    @Hombre sin nombre

    Surely falling for a "good" troll (one who is presumably highly skilled at his craft) is not such a bad thing!

    It's replying to an incompetent, blatant troll that would be embarrassing.

  44. Steen Hive
    Thumb Down

    @JonB

    "So why didn't you?"

    Ever try to buy a consumer laptop without windows preinstalled? There you go.

  45. Steve

    Re: Aw, poor baby freetards

    "But no, they'd still rather impoverish those in the creative media, because people in suits are, like, bad, right?"

    When are you fuckmuppets going to get it through your heads? The people being "impoverished" are not those in the creative media, but those who leech from your creativity and claim to protect your interest.

  46. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @Paul

    You may well laugh, but the sight of somebody trying to hold back the tide is equally funny.

  47. xjy
    Paris Hilton

    Free Trade or Protectionism?

    Big Money wants Free Trade as long as it gets more from it, sucking the blood it squeezes out of poorer nations. As soon as it doesn't, it screams out for Protectionism or Corporate Welfare or Billion Dollar Handouts (hardly welfare crumbs there!!).

    Bugger the lot of them. Jump, you bastards, jump!

    The Big Money Media crowd have monopolized films, TV, music etc for far too long. Cartels, trusts, the whole caboodle. And now they've forced legislation on us extending "copyright" for ever. Copyright on the hundred dollar bills they keep raking in to fill their own pockets. Like the casinos in Vegas where it's illegal for anyone to give themselves a chance at winning against the bank in Blackjack.

    Capital is killing itself from inside - it's huge gangrened carcass is yummy dead meat for the maggots to chew up and the parasitical insects to lay their eggs in. And as it swells up with the gore it guzzles, it provides more and more dead flesh for us millions of small grubs to gobble up and hollow it out till there's nothing left but rotting bones and a mange hide. Removing rotten meat and turning it into nourishment is doing everyone a favour. Except for the the rotting leviathan of course. But who gives a shit?

    (Paris, cos I'd love to gobble up her healthy meat, too ;-)

  48. SuperNintendoChalmers
    Flame

    I hate the war on piracy

    I hate it, and you know why? No, you don't and you don't care either but I'll tell you anyway. I hate it because every time there is a damn story about one side or the other it descends into some kind of bitch fight. Piracy is theft, plain and simple, the record companies are big bunch of bastards, plain and simple. People should not be pirating and the record companies should be adapting their business model to the digital era, which began a long damn time ago. CATCH UP YOU BUNCH OF EXECUTIVE IDIOTS. However the best way to get this message across is to both not pay to see/listen to the products and also not to pirate it. From the executives point of view it merely shows demand for their product and they should keep doing what they are doing. I'm not saying its logical viewpoint just the one I believe they have. If no one buys their product, and no one is pirating it, then who can they blame for the lack of sales? Its the only way they are going to stop seeing every pirate copy as a lost sale, when they realise that sales will be lost regardless.

  49. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    Bandwidth?

    Eh, if these boxes were the "source of all illegal material on Pirate Bay" (and that amounts to 10 servers with 65-TB - which seems a tad smallish, IMHO), well, wouldn't they need a really BIG HONKIN PIPE to provide any respectable bandwidth to the thousands/millions of PB downloaders? More than is normally found in a "neighborhood" ISP connection? (although they could be using the word "neighborhood" in a more general sense).

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How to justify theft...

    1) Gang up on anyone who says what you do is wrong

    2) Ad homonym attacks

    3) Claim that even though you bothered to download something, you were never going to pay for it so that makes it ok (how, exactly? Why did you download it if you didn't want it?)

    4) Call the producers of the product that you steal a big bunch of bastards, because that makes it alright

    5) Ignore the fact that the artists suffer

    6) Suggest that the artists would be better off doing gigs (or if they are actors, maybe on the stage?) with no evidence of this whatsoever.

    7) Make symantic arguments when people don't say exectly what they mean, even though you know exactly what they were getting at.

    8) Suggest that because some actors or bands are very wealthy it is ok to take anything you want.

    9) Ignore the fact that the place that hosts a whole shitload of your torrents is (or at least attempts to be) profit making

    10) Ignore the fact that the place that hosts a whole shitload of your torrents is funded by a fascist.

    Now I'm no big fan of the big recording/entertainment companies, but if you really want to bring down their distribution model, you need to stop consuming their product. If you illigally download movies/tv/music, the companies that make that product will see you as a consumer who doesn't want to pay, rather than someone who wants them to change their distribution model.

    When you download a torrent, there is no 'check here to register your reasons for downloading' There is no feedback to the copyright owners other than a loss of income.

  51. Fozzy
    Happy

    Ah

    Freetards v those other people, never fails to deliver.Nothing like a good flame war to warm the blood on a cold morning.

  52. Bounty
    Linux

    leave tpb up, follow the seeders

    "If society would rather steal a product than buy it then it's not priced correctly, either a new product is required or how that product is delivered needs to be changed."

    Ok then, without any penalty for stealing, I'd rather steal everything. Therefore everything not free is not priced correctly. Or.............. we need to make stealing not equal to free, hence penalties and law enforcement busting people.

    Busting major seeds should slow the network down therefore raising the barrier to free movies by adding time as a cost. Also it will spook some people. So now some will be motivated to buy the 99 cent MP3 instead of stealing it.

    (P.S. Don't bother telling me what stealing is, the concept was around before copyright and includes stealing ideas. It may not be the correct legal term, but I'm mainly refering to those would would otherwise buy the MP3, which would have a similar effect.)

  53. Frumious Bandersnatch
    Alien

    RTFA, CommenTARDS

    From scant reporting ...

    > Pontén also claimed that the Sunnydale operation was the source of all pirated material found on The Pirate Bay.

    it seems a lot of people have jumped to the conclusion that this in some way connected to TPB. There is NO mention of these 167 Tb being made available as torrent files, so in fact no link to TPB at all. Unless, of course, these were being offered as torrents, and the torrents were indexed by TPB. But that is not what the article says. IMO the important thing about this bust is timing. It smacks to me of an attempt to muddy the waters in "Spectrial". A high-profile bust with apparently industrial-scale copying (I'm not going to even use the word pirating, because (a) it's qualitatively different from what The "Pirate" Bay does, and (b) there's those weasel words "equivalent to" in describing what was actually seized).

    Colour me sceptical, but the fact that the prosecution took a full month to announce its bust smacks of an orchestrated PR exercise to me. What's the betting that there'll be another similar announcement (with similarly dubious claims) as the 17th of April approaches?

    Alien, cos that's what all these shenanigans are to me.

  54. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Me a Freetard?

    Hmmmm, maybe.

    But the films I "get" I would NEVER EVER bother to watch at the cinema.

    No, not EVER!

    So, who's missing out?

  55. James Hughes

    Let's face it

    Everybodies right, er, wrong, er, oh whatever.

    I just like the fact that Mark Willis, who posted under his actual name (maybe), got slated by a bunch of people who haven't got the tezzies to do the same. C'mon you cowards, put your money where your mouth is.

    Piracy is wrong, the big record companies are wrong, the big software producers are, er, actually, they are probably mostly OK (I omit Microsoft, who probably are not).

    I'm not going to talk about music/film - I stopped buying it years ago, and don't go to the cinema, just buy the occasional DVD (Pah, Children), but software...now that stuff IS expensive to write (I know because I do it), and some of the bigger apps out there cost a huge amount of money to develop, and the company needs to make money. Even a mobile phone takes a year of software development by a big team, and they only make money because of the huge quantities sold. But what about the smaller software producers who stuff gets ripped, because 'its too expensive'? So don't use it, or write your own. Oh, you NEED it? And it would take 3 years to WRITE IT? Oh, that makes the price a bit more acceptable now does it???

    What about OSS, that's FREE. Excellent..is there an OSS version of the software you need? No? Oh dear. See previous point.

    The music business needs to change, but the software business - not sure what can be done there.

  56. Paul

    re poor baby fweetards

    Pierre, Tom, AC, Yeah, I wuz trolling. Needed to let off a bit of steam after reading that hopelessly naïve Jemima Kiss piece. Have a look at the link in my post and you’ll see what I mean. (Though I’m disinclined to generate hits for The Guardian – sorry – Autotrader.)

    Funny how these freetard arguments invariably end up talking about the music rather than film industries, and I’m going to compound that: yep, the music industry is screwed, in part because it attempted protectionism for too long in a very myopic, ostrich-like way. Threatened and actual lawsuits meanwhile must have had industry prs clutching their foreheads and sending their CVs off to a less troublesome sector – like pharmaceuticals. They had twenty+ years of overpriced CDs as a cash-cow, mark-ups that benefited retailers too – big factor in Woolies’ lost profits, that.

    So yes, they hastened their own demise by taking the piss – a more fairly priced product might have slowed the exodus to digital. And of course, they should have monetized it from the start, instead of resisting, but no one in those days foresaw relatively secure internet payment systems, and consumer confidence in them. Anyway, since the ‘home taping is skill in music’ days, the industry has never seen the shop-window value of peer-to-peer sharing in the way that other industries where you can’t duplicate the product – like books – do. For book publishers, word of mouth is a holy grail. They don’t see it as a bad thing when people lend each other the product because they know that wider seeds are sown by this. The music industry has been very foolish to see a pirate copy as necessarily a lost sale. Yes, it should have given to get.

    Meanwhile, I also hate the new-found inflexibility of the once-holy PRS of all people, and the way that they are hassling small and medium businesses these days over music played in workplaces, just to add a revenue stream.

    So no, I’m not sticking up for the music business – every recording artist ultimately realised that it is they who are paying for the champagne and flowers – but it is ridiculous to eulogise file-sharing sites as in some way heroic. This is just business – and very sharp business. TPB in particular are opportunists, not public servants. A plague on all their houses.

    AC, I’m not sure which tide I’m supposed to be holding back – digital delivery is not in question, but surely the future is one of logged isps and secure payments rather than an experience like the Napster days.

    Steve, freetards are just doing the work of telecoms giants. If I’m a fuckmuppet then you’re a furvert.

  57. Mike

    Theft?

    I believe, for something to be considered theft there has to be some loss to someone (oddly enough, so does the legal system).

    If someone downloads a film is there a loss?

    NO

    If the person was never going to pay to see it (cinema or DVD etc.)

    YES

    They would have otherwise paid for for the film (cinema or DVD etc.)

    PROBABLY

    They distibute it to somebody else, if this film is distributed to anyone would would have spent money on watching it.

    If you download a film via bittorrent and you seed any part of the film then you could be contributing to loss, therefore you are contributing to theft regardless of your intention to pay for it or not. If you watch a film illegally and then tell someone else not to watch it because you don't think it's very good, again you have caused a loss.

    The only way you can justify "no theft" (to yourself) is to download the film without sharing any part of it, watch it and do not distribute or comment on it, it would be impossible to prove that you had no intention to go to the cinema or buy it on DVD as the mere fact that you downloaded it means that you wanted to watch it so loss [must be] implied regardless of your intention, if you wanted to use this defence in court, apart from having a snowballs chance in hell, you would have to prove your intention (either by having no money or a signed, witnessed statement of intention) there is a possibility of a test case, a child perhaps with no income but access to internet and computer equpment, but remember you must also never share a single byte of the film with anyone.

  58. Crumplecorn

    @Theft?

    "If you watch a film illegally and then tell someone else not to watch it because you don't think it's very good, again you have caused a loss."

    Similarly, if you watch a film in the cinema and convince a friend who was going to go not to because it is rubbish, you have caused a loss. And since you equate causing a loss with theft, this is theft too.

    This is probably why people who know what they are talking about differentiate between copyright infringement, download=lostsale, and actual physical theft. If you start to equate them, you end up in ridiculous situations where a bad review of a film is theft on a grand scale as it convinces many people to not pay to see the film.

    Similarly with uploading, we differentiate theft and unauthorized distribution, because otherwise we end up with possible situations such as you being a thief for uploading a copy of a film to your friend, even if your friend decides later on to buy the DVD due to enjoying the film, thus gaining the producers a sale.

  59. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    I hope

    I hope that Pirate Bay's legal team has a suitable teflon coat with asbestos based protection and are advising their clients with at least a modicum of common sense.

    Pirate: as well ...

  60. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Nerdtastic!

    I could never understand what the theft of a ship or its cargo had to do with the unlicensed duplication of an intangible sequence of ones and zeros ...

  61. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @stuart

    "However, who pays for the 10s of thousands of new bands launched in this country each year? Bearing in mind that less than 1% succeed. Someone has to pay for studio time. Someone has to pay for videos, the inevitable promotional website and other promotional stuff. Someone has to pay to have the album(s) duplicated. Someone has to pay for the Cd cover to be designed and printed.

    So, bearing in mind that 99% of those bands are generating little income for the company, who pays for it? Well, the money comes from profits made from the 1% of bands who do make a profit. So, less profit from those bands = less money for other bands."

    I understand this argument perfectly. This does not mean that I have an understanding for why the argument is relevant. Why exactly should companies pay for launching new bands? Sorry but I do not see the need to get all the nonsense subsidized! As far as I know most of the bands and artist whose records I have bought appear to have made a name for themself before they got a contract by a big name record company in the first place. Why record companies should subsidize non-artists efforts in "becoming" (?) artists on other peoples behalf is not to me justifiable. Sorry it is one thing to be rich and to promote some thing as a matter of cause or personal preference (yes I do sometimes buy things that I like even if other people do not share my taste) - it is however a completely different issue to complain that such a promotion strategy cost money and therefore must be justified as a business model... Having been a member of a band myself which released a record without asking for support from a big name record company I have no compassion what so ever for your argument. If you can create music which is worth while paying for you do not need subsidies from big labels. If you look many bands who have made it big - their relationship with record labels is more similar to an investment not a subsidy. If what you create is not of interest to people - perhaps it is not relevant to be marketed as part of a sustainable business model either? I do not believe that the defining of "what is art" or "what is good music" etc is up to self proclaimed "artists" - or their promoters! Certainly I would not support that kind of activity as a business model which needs to be protected expecially and differently from how other activities are dealt with in the world.

  62. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    How to justify abusive corporate behaviour

    How to justify theft...

    1) Gang up on anyone who you think MIGHT be stealing your work - just in case.

    2) Ad homonym attacks

    3) Claim that even though you have no idea if or what they download that "something", it is most certainly theft of "your stuff" - the accusation (without any substantiation) makes it ok (how, exactly? Why do you accuse people of stealing from you if you have no idea what they do - just because they could have done something - they surely must have done it?

    4) Call your target audience and customers thieves and parasites without due cause because that makes your abusive behaviour and unsubstantiated accusations look alright.

    5) Ignore the fact that not all of your customers are thieves.

    6) Suggest that your customers would be better off if they are not able to control how they play the music they legitimately payed for (or if they have bought the music on a CD, lobby against legalising customers right to upload their own CDs to their own music player) with no evidence of this practice harming the artists what so ever.

    7) Make symantic arguments when people don't say exectly what they mean, even though you know exactly what they were getting at.

    8) Suggest that because some thieves exist it is ok to take anything you want from all of your customers.

    9) Attack the fact that a place that hosts a whole shitload of torrents (which you do not own) - is (or at least attempts to be) profit making

    10) Ignore the fact that the whole foundation a significant part of the film making businesses (which you represent) was based in hollywood originally for the purpose to be able to continue to steal other peoples ideas (patents) and use them without licence or legal right (read up on the history of how the major hollywood film labels started and did not want to respect their legal obligations to people like Edison et al).

    When you download a torrent, there is no 'check here to register your reasons for downloading' - there is no need for constant surveillance as there may or may not be any copyright owners of all and every piece of downloaded material. All and every download activity does not by definition represent a loss of income. To register your reasons is commonly not an accepted request in normal interactions or transactions. We do not expect to have to register our reason to call friends on our phones. We do not expect to have to register our reasons to send photographs or messages to our friends etc. We do not even expect to have to register our reasons for interactions with strangers (yet). There are exceptions in many countries, for example when buying guns and or medicine etc. However I see no reason for why buying the right to listen to music should be treated as a special case relationship between customer and business compared to others. I certainly see no reason for giving corporate agents a carte blanche by society to behave as they please and bypass common consumer right regulations and contractual obligations valid in most other business areas.

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