FusionMods

It’s just been a couple of days since four members of The Pirate Bay have been found guilty and they are already finding immense support.

The Verdict called for each member to spend one year in prison and pay fines totaling $905,000 each.

According to TPB’s official Blog, they do not want any donations made other than support, buy a shirt, and seed their torrents is their official message. They’ve already appealed the case and aren’t expecting the have to pay the fines in the end anyways.

While the Movie and Music industry are celebrating this small victory, they really should be rethinking their strategies. With each legal action they take, they only boost support for TPB and associated groups. The Pirate Party in Sweden has held protests and taking new members. Their membership just jumped from 15,000 to 20,000. They hope to get a seat at the European Parliament later this year.

Above and beyond the political support, probably the most damaging the the movie and music industry is the fact that they left the site out of this ruling and went after only the individuals behind it (a very odd move overall, but i suppose, why take down the source of $$, lol). Membership on The Pirate Bays site membersip has jumped 20% as a result of the recent publicity, and it’s still rising.

Above all is what will come this ruling. Another writer made an excellent point that I had brought up before, both ehre and other sites is what who will be next? In the end, The Pirate Bay didn’t itself commit any crime. Their site indexes torrents, both legal and illegal. They don’t put the files there themselves, people upload them. They don’t force people to download the content, people do that on their own. So we really have to ask the question, when will google, yahoo, or mircosoft have their lawsuites filed? Since just like these sites, The Pirate Bay only indexes information. Probably the only difference is that TPB doesn’t spider the internet as a whole to collect information, they allow it to be submitted to them. This in one view makes Google and Yahoo, ect more liable for content they link to than TPB. One theory could be just the the Music/Movie industry are testing the waters with someone very unpopular, after all, could anyone even imagine this being successful with google? People would laugh if they were served for “providing links to content that you don’t host through an automated system”. But as a web developer, these cases are a bit of an eye opener, because it takes us one step closer to being punished by association. If I link to a site that it later found to be criminal, what types of penalties can I expect? Like I said before, this is a pretty major lawsuite, and this first hearing won’t be anywhere near the last we hear of it.

From my few posts, I think it’s easily understood that I’m a supporter of p2p technology. I do want to say that I’m not all about piracy though. I think there are a lot of legitimate uses for p2p technology that would more than likely already be in use if it wasn’t branded with such a negetive connotation already. Honestly, I feel a war on piracy will be just as successful as a war on drugs, lol. We’ll spend a ton of money, time and resources, and in the end, it’ll always be around, and if nothing else, it’ll just become more organized.

With that bit said, I thought I’d give an update on ThePirateBay trials. These are going on in Sweden, so while it doesn’t directly effect the US, if the content owners win, you can almost gaurentee it’ll be cited repeatedly in US courts.

They’re currently on day 8 of the trials. So far things keep looking better and better for TPB. A lot of the prosecution seems to just have an incredibly poor understanding of technology, and a lack of ability to really cite their resources when they claim “a study said…”

Currently the case is working around professional witnesses (well I’d assume thats their positions). The big question as i said being called into play is their level of technical understanding. One of the largest pieces of evidence so far have been a series of screenshots. Although these are more circumstancial than anything because they don’t really point the finger in a very direct motion.

Now I’m a web developer and stick mostly on the programming side, and while I don’t have the worlds biggest understanding of the innerworkings of how networking hardware works, I do atleast know that hardware logs are a great thing to have, and while screenshots look nice, they really don’t say much. Screen shots can be incredibly easily tampered with, just google that, you’ll find countless results I’m sure.

So with a lot of the media corporations losing their momentum, the next move being called into play has been how they rate their damages. This is a pretty interesting topic for anyone with the time. There are a lot of opinoins and they’re almost all nearly impossible to prove. A lot of people believe piracy boosts sales. A lot of people also just say that people who download the music weren’t likely to pay for it in the first place. like I said, almost all theories on this are almost impossible to prove. The best arguement I’ve heard in the trial reportings so far has been that while sales on movie premieres are down, Sweden just had its most profitable year. The other arguement I’ve heard for a long time now is how the use of p2p technology really helps independant artists become known. These are the guys that the music industry hasn’t decided to pick up a label for, but become popular. And a final note, google just how much of the RIAA lawsuite money makes its way back into the artists hands. Since the music was stolen, and there’s been over 30,000 cases, most ending in settlement favoring the RIAA, some of that money should go back to the artists that had his talent stolen right?

Day 7 Follow Up: http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-trial-day-7-screenshots-for-evidence-090224/
Day 8 Follow Up: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-day-8-090225/

and I know I keep dragging this out, but also research a little on Nine Inch Nails and RadioHead and the success of their albums after they dropped their record labels. They both instituted a “Pay what you want, if you want” policy, and it was reported to be a giant success.

What is everyone elses thoughts on piracy? p2p technology or even our copyright system? does it benefit the common person? or has it really been put in place by big industries?