
Court affirms jail time for Pirate Bay founders - forza
http://www.thelocal.se/30454/20101126/
======
kevingadd
“In two years, this type of piracy will be over. After a ruling like this and
all the pioneers start to get older and have children and families, piracy
won’t occur to this extent.”

The only way I can see this type of piracy being over in two years is if the
media industries up and die so there's nothing left to steal.

I wonder how much this case actually cost the media industries to litigate.
The actual fines involved are relatively small, so it would be interesting to
know whether the record companies will be able to use the fines to cover their
legal fees.

~~~
sophacles
Copyright infringement is not stealing.

Stealing happens when I take resource from you in a way that denies you that
resource, e.g. taking money or property, using your time without paying an
agreed price.

Copyright infringement happens when I don't follow your artificial scarcity
rules. You aren't denied any resource you had before my infringement.

Please stop calling copyright infringement stealing. It is not. Doing so is an
oversimplification of the issue designed to induce unwarranted feelings of
guilt in people (due to western notions of Stealing is Wrong).

~~~
michael_dorfman
Sorry, but no.

If you jump the fence at a concert, or sneak into a movie theater, you are
guilty of "Theft of Services". Note that this type of theft does _not_ deprive
the original owner that resource.

If you want to pretend you are not stealing something when you infringe on
copyright, that's up to you; I'd suggest that this is _an oversimplification
of the issue designed to induce unwarranted feelings of innocence_

One last thing: since when is "Stealing is Wrong" a "western" notion? The
Buddhist prohibition on stealing is even more extreme in its condemnation of
the type of behavior you are defending.

~~~
sandal
First of all, there is no such thing as a Buddhist 'prohibition' of anything.
The precepts are trainings that describe skillful ways to live, and are much
more like guidelines which can vary wildly from person to person and must be
worked out individually

Secondly, while I can't know for sure, I think the 'Stealing is Wrong'
mentality is not a statement about whether stealing is good or bad, but how
strongly it is stigmatized in the west. So, likening some other unrelated
activity (such as copyright infringement) to theft has a powerful mental
effect.

Finally, if you sneak into a movie theater or jump the fence at a concert, you
are actually taking up a seat or space that could have been used by a paying
customer. This isn't the same thing as downloading digital goods, in which
your use of these goods has no impact on the producer _unless_ it prevented
you from purchasing something you otherwise might have.

Copyright infringement is not an innocent act, but all acts of infringement
are not considered equal. Honestly, I feel like you're the one oversimplifying
things.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_First of all, there is no such thing as a Buddhist 'prohibition' of anything.
The precepts are trainings that describe skillful ways to live, and are much
more like guidelines which can vary wildly from person to person and must be
worked out individually_

Umm, no. Some modern Buddhist traditions may treat the precepts as "guidelines
which can vary wildly from person to person", but that's a fairly recent
innovation. The precepts (including the lay precepts) are described in painful
detail in the Pali canon, the Agamas, and some Mahayana Sutras, and although
the details of the prohibitions differ somewhat between various traditions,
all of them go far beyond "guidelines". Trust me on this one.

Second: I ask again-- do you know a non-Western culture where theft is _not_
stigmatized?

Finally: taking up space or a seat is not a factor in the legal definition of
"theft of services"-- theft of Cable TV holds as well. The salient
characteristc (which coincidentally agrees with the Buddhist precept) is
"taking that which is not given."

I understand that you'd like to divorce copyright infringement from the notion
of theft, based on the physical deprivation of goods, but the legal notion of
theft is (and as far as I know, has always been) a great deal broader than
that, however inconvenient this happens to be to your conscience.

~~~
sandal
_Trust me on this one._

Okay, I trust you now. Congratulations, you've won an argument on the
internet, and you didn't even need a citation.

~~~
michael_dorfman
My point was, I'd rather not provide the citations, but I could. I'm just
finishing up an M.A. in Buddhist Studies, and as part of a Buddhist Ethics
course I recently did some work on the scriptural bases of the precepts in
five different canons, but I really didn't think anyone here would be
interested in the details. I was hoping that you'd be willing to just take my
word on the issue.

~~~
sandal
This is quite interesting and I think that rather than saying 'trust me', by
providing a bit of background it makes it much more likely for us to have a
productive conversation. But for what it's worth, while I don't have an
academic background in it, I'm a Buddhist practitioner.

Every retreat I've been on, and every book I've read has presented the
precepts as a set of mindfulness trainings, and specifically distinguishes the
concept of precept from the concept of 'commandment' or law.

We talked past each other, but to say that Buddhist ethics are stronger about
things like 'not taking anything which is not freely given' is indeed correct.
But equating that with theft is still not meant to be taken literally.

If we were to go down that road, much of what I've read about the precept not
to commit murder also applies to speaking harshly to someone. I've always
understood this as figurative, and valuable. But I am not going to call
someone who harms someone through their words a murderer.

I feel like you are emphasizing too much on the words you are reading and not
the intent or meaning behind them. That was the point I wanted to make, and
hopefully I've done that now.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_Every retreat I've been on, and every book I've read has presented the
precepts as a set of mindfulness trainings, and specifically distinguishes the
concept of precept from the concept of 'commandment' or law._

Let me guess: Thich Nhat Hanh?

Personally, I find the notion of "precepts as guidelines and not laws" to be
attractive; I suppose a lot of Westerners do, too. Unfortunately, this is a
very modern notion-- if you look at the (pre-20th-Century) literature, you'll
find that the precepts _are_ treated as laws, and that they go into explicit
detail, and leave very little to personal judgment.

 _We talked past each other, but to say that Buddhist ethics are stronger
about things like 'not taking anything which is not freely given' is indeed
correct. But equating that with theft is still not meant to be taken
literally._

I disagree (as you might guess.) I'd argue that "taking that which is not
given" is, literally, theft, and vice versa.

 _If we were to go down that road, much of what I've read about the precept
not to commit murder also applies to speaking harshly to someone. I've always
understood this as figurative, and valuable. But I am not going to call
someone who harms someone through their words a murderer._

I've never come across that reading of the precepts; usually, the prohibition
on lying is taken to include non-skillful speech. That is quite a figurative
reading, indeed.

 _I feel like you are emphasizing too much on the words you are reading and
not the intent or meaning behind them. That was the point I wanted to make,
and hopefully I've done that now._

I'd suggest that in your attempt to separate the words and the intent, you run
the risk of redefining words to mean what you wish them to mean.

You'd like to make a distinction between copyright infringement and theft,
based on a physical analogy; but, as I've pointed out, the notion of theft has
always been broader than that. The intent is clear: you're not permitted to
take that which is not given-- whether it is a physical object, or a service,
or a copyrighted work.

~~~
sandal
Please show some examples of pre-20th-century Buddhist literature that goes
into very explicit detail about the precepts leaving little to personal
judgment.

I've been reading from modern teachers, because Buddhism is a living religion,
not something that was laid down in absolute terms centuries ago. But I have
read a bit of the older texts through English translation and just have not
seen the sort of strictness that you are implying.

Providing some specific excerpts would really help move this discussion
forward.

~~~
michael_dorfman
I'll be happy to. I'm at home now, and my texts are at my office, but I can
email some references to you tomorrow, if your contact details are on your HN
profile.

In the mean-time, the Wikipedia page on the Patimokkha
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patimokkha>) lists the monastic precepts for
the Theravada tradition; even in schematic form, you can see that they are
quite detailed. When you add on Buddhaghosa's commentary in the
Kankhavitarani, things get quite detailed indeed.

~~~
sandal
From everything I've read and heard from teachers, the practices for monastics
are extremely finely detailed specifically because it forces those who go that
route to be mindful of what they are doing each and every moment.

But this is a voluntary practice and has to do with amplifying some basic
foundational ideas of non-harming and mindfulness so that you can see them in
minute details. Nowhere have I ever seen Buddhist teachings that imply that it
should be the goal of the laypeople to take on the monastic precepts. Even
throughout history the vast majority of Buddhist practitioners were bound only
by the 5 lay precepts.

Again, I think that if you're a non-practitioner, from the outside it might
seem strange that such things are meant as 'trainings' and not 'rules'. That
having been said, there are certainly cases where these rules are taken very
seriously. You can read the book 'Turtle Feet' for a contemporary look into
how political and bureaucratic the Tibetan monastics can be.

What I've been told is that the Buddha taught in many, many different ways
depending on his intended audience. So when he was speaking to plain, common
folks, he gave them simple instructions to follow. For some devotional types,
he constructed elaborate and complex rituals to help with practice. I think
that you may be studying the more complex end of things and missing some of
the less academic teachings.

I think that there are two phenomena here that we should distinguish with
modern Buddhism. One is the sort of new-age culture that has taken the words
of Thich Nhat Hahn and the Dalai Lama and turned Buddhism into a sort of 'feel
good' spirituality that isn't very deep. This isn't the fault of the teacher,
but of a mass audience hungry for some good feelings.

But then there are also people like Jack Kornfield, Steve Armstrong, Larry
Rosenberg, Henepola Gunaratana, Pema Chodron, and many others who have taken a
more westernized, but still faithful way of representing Buddhism in the West.
This is again speaking from the viewpoint of a non-academic, but I'm also not
just a 'true believer', so I've done enough of my homework to feel like you're
making too strong of a statement about what precepts are meant to express.

------
nhangen
30 million kronor is around 4.2 mil USD. I'm guessing that's not going to
happen.

I lost track of the story shortly after they were found guilty. Did they get
scooped up by the police or are they in refuge somewhere?

I applaud these gents for standing so tall against their attackers, even
against the threat of a judgment like this.

It's just a shame that the music industry is still wasting time on issues like
these. Thank god I wasn't arrested for sharing cassette tapes in my early
teens.

~~~
FrankenTan
In Sweden, I think the punishment isn't actually enforced until final verdict
has been given.

There's still one more instance (and possibly EU court after that one) to
appeal through.

~~~
mzl
True. For many cases, the dates of the jail-time to serve can even be
negotiated to some extent.

~~~
gst
That's also true for other European countries. And it also makes sense.

------
swombat
And the RIAA lands another awesome strike of the sword into the ocean.

The more they fight piracy in this way, the further they push file trading
into completely untrackable recesses of the internet.

It's actually a good thing in the long run, I suppose. Between this and the
Homeland DNS grab, soon we'll have an alternative internet where everything is
encrypted, routed through ZKS systems, untrackable, and completely outside of
government control.

~~~
zzzeek
as long as its limited to the edges of the technical community and not 80% of
high school kids, they're more or less "fine" with that

~~~
tomjen3
'Cept it won't be for long - as soon as a program is written that works like
freenet but allows you to download songs like napster did, any teen-age kid
will get their hands on it, and it will replace napster as the worlds most
used program.

~~~
elai
Freenet has serious speed issues to resolve before anything like it would be
viable.

~~~
swombat
I'm sure an influx of a few million well-connected nodes on college campuses
(running on standard ports of other services and disguised to look like valid
packets of those services) would help sort out the speed issues.

------
cskau
As a citizen of neighbouring Denmark, I find this a truly grim day. How can
something like copyright infringement result in a prison term ?

And don't even get me started with the whole "A torrent tracker is copyright
infringement" argument. Jeez!

~~~
forza
Good question. The verdict actually states that you normally shouldn't be
sentenced to prison for this type of crime. Instead the court motivates the
prison sentences with upholding "law-abidingness" as file-sharing has become
"a problem for society". Which is a bit scary if you ask me.

If you read Swedish, this conclusion is on the top of page 47 in the verdict @
<http://fildelning.se/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/TPB.pdf>

------
jacquesm
Murdering bits (deleting them) will get you nothing, but copying bits
(creating more of them) will get you a jail sentence. And in this case it's
allowing access to bits that allow _other people_ to copy bits,

It's a bizarre world, and I think stuff like this is a direct consequence of
subscribing to legal fictions.

------
spiffworks
Between rulings like this and the pressure that these companies are exerting
on small websites, it would be impossible for a Youtube to emerge today.
What's more, this has a sort of chilling effect, with more and more companies
shying away from potentially dangerous ideas and moving to safe, consumer
internet applications like a million twitter clients that bore you to death. I
fear for the future of the internet as I know it.

------
dmix
TorrentFreak article: [http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-appeal-
verdict-101126...](http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-appeal-
verdict-101126/)

