Prosecutor sets date for Pirate Bay showdown

a good thing

Pirate Bay is a great site, even if you are not into BT, just reading the letters they have had from lawyers is a hoot.

We need people like this to defend our freedom, most of the demands from lawyers are unfounded and merely amount to corporate bullying.

With any ongoing legal situation those in the right, in this case PB, (previously Novell in the SCO case, etc) tell the other to put up or shut up. This will give the law a chance to be used and demonstrated and the RIAA alikes to be told they are out of line!!

YARRRR

As Anon says, they're not gonna win this one. Even if they win the legal battles, there are plenty of places left in the world that'll happily host em.

Avast!

An attempt to change Swedish law

Added to which 1st 'anonymous coward', they haven't broken any Swedish laws.

This can only be an attempt to bring the case before a Swedish court as an effort to change the law in Sweden.

@ They havent got a chance

You're ignoring sweedish law. No matter what their profile is, if Sweedish law says its legal, then its legal. This will be a good test case to see what happens to similar sites in the future, as sweedish law seems to be very pirate-search-tool friendly.

LOAD THE CANNONS!

This is by far and away not the first attempt that 'the man' has tried to shut them down using bought or leant on stooges in the Swedish government / legal system.

There's a reason it hasn't worked sofar... Sweden has no intellectual property law, so how the hell they think that NOW it's going to work I don't know.

I suspect that the major players like RIAA and the MPAA have realised that they are utterly impotent with regards to shutting these boys down and have settled for making life as difficult as possible, dragging them through the courts etc, and the dirty tactics they got caught using recently.

Nice to see people sticking up for themselves

As jeremy said above, these companies just throw lawyers and threats at the 'small time' site admins in the hope they'll close it out of fear but it's refreshing to go on PB and see, not only a site that is ballsy enough to stay running but knowledgable enough to say 'We know the law, we have community support and we will see you in court if you can face the humiliation in which that will result, bring it on!'

I say, swill down yer grog and give a hearty Arrr to the good ship PirateBay

Surely therre is room in Davey Jones' locker

for the likes of the RIAA and MPAA. These groups have done nothing to improve the entertainment industry only made it harder for us to enjoy it and given someone a second gold-plated Hummer. At what point will they just give in and realize the majority of people are tired of paying for someone else to live a life of luxury. The spirit of The Pirate Bay can never be destroyed and will survive long after it is gone.

Oh

Oh the last possible month under Swedish Law as the court allowed time extension runs out or else it will be confined to the circular file case permanently !

But given how weak the case is apparently or so it would seem , along with the fact they nicked the entire servers for the ISP in question and thanks to the case being undermined by the media defender leaked emails it will be an interesting case to watch !

Barratry?

@ jeremy: "most of the demands from lawyers are unfounded and merely amount to corporate bullying."

@ Tim Lake: "these companies just throw lawyers and threats at the 'small time' site admins in the hope they'll close it out of fear"

@ Stone Fox:: "RIAA and the MPAA ... have settled for making life as difficult as possible, dragging them through the courts etc,"

Pirate Bay could, in principle, turn the tables on all the lawyers involved by accusing them of abuse of the legal system: barratry is the word, I believe. Hang a few prominent IP lawyers by their heels from lampposts (a la Mussolini and so to speak), then stand back and watch the roaches scuttle for cover.

[I may misunderstand "barratry" but it still smells to me like significant abuse of the legal system that any honorable judge should step on toot sweet. Of course, the phrase "honorable judge" is more and moe becoming an oxymoron.]

@Fraser

"is it morally acceptable if the media is copyright and the owners of the copyright state that they don't want you to offer it for free?"

<shrugs> Dunno. But morality is not the same thing as law. It may or may not be immoral, but it's legal. What you are sugggesting is dangerously close to the viciously dishonest abuses some copyright holders have been attempting recently: the dishonest argument that copyright gives them rights to control not just their work, but what other people say /about/ it, used in several recent attempts by large corporations to censor negative reviews. I'm not willing to concede one inch in that battle, so as far as I'm concerned, TPB have the right to say what they like about other people's copyrighted material - whether that's "Love it", "Hate it", or "It's over there, go get it" - either way, it's their right of free speech and not something someone else can have copyright rights over.

As for the taking money from whoever dilemma? Well, as Mycho points out, shops do it all the time. Political campaigning organisations do it too: you don't accept money only from the hard-core of your grass-roots supporters, as after all any really broad campaign hopes to achieve support from as much of the political spectrum as possible. If what you're campaigning on is a general point of principle rather than a party-political line, there's no inherent contradiction or hypocrisy there.

hope they fire a broard-side

I think the ‘Prosecutor is about to sink =)

I don't see how they could win this one..

@ Fraser

If your concerned about people accepting money from immoral supporters or people with obviously conflicted views, try looking at your political parties funding roster some time. I guarantee you will find a lot of money coming from sources which really would seem to have no business supporting a mainstream political party!

Whats good enough for the politicians is good enough for TPB, no?

By the way, what exactly makes this Carl Lundstrom guy a neo-facist? Supporting an organisation which works to disseminate information to the masses (music and movies primarily i'll admit but its still information) and which stands up to and fights against authority doesnt sound like any facist ideal ive ever heard of...

But...

If they take out puretna I might not have to buy more hard drives as often.

@ Fraser

Well your wrong,

here's why

Morality is relative to the culture and or individual, Morality is a subjective value;

In 1920's america forces sterilization of alcholics was law in certian states and many people percieved this action to be morally correct

In 16th Century South America many civilizations believed that it was morally imperitive to sacrifice members of the community to keep the sun from falling down.

In 19th Century Britain it was morally acceptable to many men to refuse women the right to vote.

The list could go on .

Here is the modern dilemma;

Some people believe that it is morally acceptable as middlemen to charge extortionate prices for copyright materials and then to only give a small percentage of the profit back to the artist.

Others believe in response to this Privateering that it is morally justifiable to download free versions of this copyrighted material because they are unwilling to be exploited.

Whatever you believe is right is your opinion not Law, or absolute moral truth because there is no such thing as moral truth and moral relativity. As for me i am of the persuasion that if someone does not have the money to afford DVD's and the like but are constantly being remined through marketing and social interaction that other people can have these things but they can't by virtue of their deprived upbringing (itself caused by wanton corporate profiteering and wealth centralization) in psuedo-liberal democracies then they have every right to 'fight the power' .

What sort of world...

What sort of world is it where a liberal (in the classic sense) party that calls for reduced government powers can be called fascist? SD want to return immigration control to the swedish government and let the swedish people decide on it, rather than have it dictated to them by the EU. That's it.

@ Fraser

So your still a member of your political party after the "Cash for Honours" debacle? And dont claim your party wasnt involved because all of the major british parties were involved! That inappropriate funding went on for quite a while too so where was your protest then?

(This assumes that your in Britain, if your a seppo i merely laugh at your statement that your party doesnt receive funding from inappropriate sources!)

And just to clarify, my previous post was purely in response to your comment about the morality of accepting funding from someone with different views to you, not about the morality of torrenting in itself.

But by your statements in the above post i would read that sites such as ebay are as morally repugnant as TPB because a) they are providing a place where people can sell stolen or fake stuff and b) they remove part of the ability of the original distributors of items to sell to the marketplace. 2nd hand sales of items do not give any money to the artist and in fact stop money reaching the artist as the person who bought of ebay should have bought from a proper distributor. Thus they are taking money away from the artist just as torrenting does. That puts ebay in the same boat as TPB, by your logic does it not?