
Pirate Bay Founder Held In Solitary Confinement - nsns
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-held-in-solitary-confinement-write-him-a-letter-today-121020/
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morsch
I found this interesting (by user Jenny on the linked page):

 _No, he did NOT ask for protective custody (and I know as I'm in contact with
his mother), this is how Sweden treats everyone being held pre-trial. There is
a case right now where a guy who has been locked up like this for TWO YEARS is
trying to get the supreme court to rule about his treatment. There is no time
limit on how long anyone can be held like this, it can (and in many cases it
has) go on for years. Amnesty and the European Council have criticized Sweden
for this in the past._

~~~
walru
..and this my friends is why Julian Assange wants nothing to do with being
extradited there. Of course, there's also the fact that he'd be shipped to the
US once they actually found him again.

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tptacek
It is no easier to extradite Assange from Sweden than it is from the UK, where
he currently resides; both countries are parties to the ECHR. In fact, it's
probably harder, as the consent of _both_ the UK and Sweden would probably be
required to extradite once he was removed to Sweden.

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tisme
This is most likely false.

You are stating this as a fact but there is some proof to the contrary: Sweden
has already extradited people to the US in cases where they really shouldn't
have whereas the UK has so far been quite reluctant to do so, see the Gary
McKinnon case recently.

More info here:

<http://justice4assange.com/US-Extradition.html#WSJA>

~~~
tptacek
It looks like maybe you didn't read my whole comment.

~~~
vidarh
The "double consent" requirement is irrelevant all the time Sweden has in
recent history violated their own laws as well as international treaties to
hand political asylum seekers to the CIA for shipment back to the very regime
they were fleeing from.

Meanwhile, the UK actually relatively regularly refuse extradition requests.

If I worried about the US government, I know very well where I'd rather be,
and Sweden would be _far_ down that list.

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dclowd9901
So this person is in jail for facilitating the ability of others to share
restricted patterns of 1s and 0s. I hope this is as absurd to everyone as it
is to me.

~~~
ntumlin
I don't agree that he should be in jail, but the "restricted patterns of 1s
and 0s" bit is like saying that murdering someone with a gun is just
facilitating the journey of a piece of refined earth that just happens to go
through some watery carbon mass.

~~~
shard972
That analogy is stupid, When you "pirate" something all you are doing is
sharing files, nobody looses anything tangible when this happens and nobody is
harmed.

When you kill someone you take away their life. Can you see the difference?

~~~
alexqgb
The analogy highlights the rhetorical technique of abstracting something to
such a degree that opposition seems unreasonable. It's like saying "I was
arrested just for being myself!" when in fact you were arrested for flashing
people on the bus. As an approach, this kind of extreme reframing is both
abusive and dishonest.

When @ntumlin says "it's just a bunch of ones and zeroes" he completely
disregards the intangible but very valuable order existing within them. Smash
a glass to smithereens, but keep every one, and you still have "a bunch of
atoms". Their arrangement, however, is very different - and far less valuable.
Focusing only on the atoms to evade responsibility for the value lost in
smashing the glass suggests you don't recognize the value of the unbroken
glass, which is nonsense. Of course you recognize the value, which is why
framing the situation to suggest otherwise is dishonest. And expecting others
to go along with an obvious charade is abusive.

Beyond your dishonesty, @ntumlin, there's also real harm in your actions
(assuming they reflect your thinking). The thing you have failed to
acknowledge is that that, when you make a copy, you create an obligation to
pay the holder of the copyright a specific amount of money. In other words,
when you make a copy a portion of your money stopped being yours and became
the author's. He now has a claim (albeit a small one) on your wealth. In the
event of a failure to pay, the thing stolen is not the file itself, it's the
money. THAT'S what you're stealing. Not the music, the money.

"Ok" you say "but I deleted the file". That's irrelevant. You're legal
obligation isn't connected to having the file, it's connected to making it.
Obviously, there are fair use laws that specify a range of situations in which
making a copy doesn't trigger a corresponding obligation to pay. But if you're
operating outside those parameters, then you're on the hook.

There's no scarcity of files. But there's a real scarcity of people with the
time, talent, and resources to make really worthwhile content. And it's the
arrangements - not the bits - is what constitutes our culture. At present,
there's no reasonable way to enforce people's obligations to share the cost of
what they otherwise "share" freely. That's where you find the deprivation - in
the money that is no longer changing hands. And, if you think that a person
who goes bankrupt because they can no longer charge for their work isn't
harmed, you need a new definition of "harm".

One more thing: saying - as you do - that "it's just a bunch of ones and
zeroes" to a person who may have sweated blood and tears for years to produce
the arrangement that actually attracted your attention is just awful. It's an
attitude that reflects something deeply rotten about you as a human being.
Just understand this: culture thrives in spite of people like you, not because
of them. In addition to the money you owe directly to artists, you own a debt
of gratitude to those who did get them paid when you refused to do the same.

~~~
icebraining
_When you make an unauthorized copy a portion of your money stopped being
yours and became the author's. He now has a claim (albeit a small one) on your
wealth._

How much do I owe you?

 _That's where you find the deprivation - in the money that is no longer
changing hands. And if you think that a person who goes bankrupt because they
can no longer charge for their work isn't harmed, you need a new definition of
"harm"._

How does that _not_ apply to second hand sales? Have I robbed RHCP when I sold
my album on Ebay? After all, and unlike in P2P, the buyer was demonstrably
willing to fork money for it, and so it's more likely that (s)he would have
bought a new CD if I hadn't sold him/her mine.

~~~
alexqgb
The Doctrine of First Sale is like Fair Use in that it sets specific limits to
the number and nature of situations in which publishers and authors can demand
recompense for copying and / or redistributing their work.

So no, you haven't robbed anyone in the case of a second hand sale, since the
law never recognized an obligation for buyers of second hand media to pay
authors and publishers in the first place.

This underscores the extent to which the determination of theft depends not on
the making of copies itself, but on the parallel (and completely artificial)
institution that attaches legal obligations to the act of copying in certain,
specific cases.

~~~
icebraining
But the fact that I have a legal right to deprive someone doesn't mean I'm
not. My first question stands: am I depriving and inflicting harm on RHCP by
selling an used album?

~~~
alexqgb
To the extent that you've diluted the market for new copies in some small but
real way, then yes, you have theoretically harmed the author.

However, the law doesn't recognize that harm as significant enough to be
legally actionable. To the contrary, it recognizes that always placing the
interests of authors above those of the public would do the public intolerable
harm, and that the author is going to have to live with a less-than perfectly
controlled market if he wants any control at all. What the author of a
desirable work CAN expect is that there will be a reasonable volume of
exchanges in which unavoidable obligations to pay do arise. Based on these he
(or, more likely, his publisher) can invest in production accordingly.

If your copies and exchanges take place outside this range, then there's no
way for the publisher to claim he's being unreasonably harmed by them, since
the law gave him no reason to expect that he'd profit from these transactions
in the first place. But if they take place within the parameters of demand
that the law allowed him to bank against, then the illegal dilution of his
legally recognized market constitutes very real harm.

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rohern
Write him good letters as this situation is terrifying.

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande)

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TheAmazingIdiot
So, speaking as a citizen of Indiana, what do we do with these people?

What is the ideal prison system?

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ekianjo
Locking people up should only be reserved for people who are a physical threat
to other people around them. Once you apply this kind of rule, you would
basically remove a large number of currently jailed people.

~~~
rorrr
And what would you do with thieves, people who destroy property, hunters who
kill animals illegally, and a million other non-violent categories that get
jailed?

~~~
vidarh
Community service. Fines. Putting them in prison only delays re-offending.
Treatment outside prison is generally more likely to prevent them from
committing further crimes.

I might not want to go quite as far as ekianjo, but prison is in general
horrible for rehabilitation. I'm Norwegian. The Norwegian prison system has a
far better rehabilitation rate than most, and this to a large extent has
followed a gradual softening up of the prison system from one that was every
bit as inhumane as the US system, but is now regularly described as "holiday
camp".

Imprisonment is used far less, and the tendency is to reduce it further. For
those who do end up in prison, sentences are generally far shorter, coupled
with education and work (you can choose, but you need to do one or the other)
in prison. Prisoners often get granted early limited parole (you can start
getting weekends out of prison etc. long before a full parole, or monitored
time outside the prison - e.g. a famous convicted murderer was recently
interviewed at a cafe while she was out on parole, accompanied by a police
officer...).

The result is a system that fits far better with the reality of the
psychological effects one would presumably _want_ a criminal justice system
that cares about rehabilitation to have on a prisoner.

A large part of the problem with most prison systems is that they are based on
emotions and demands for vengeance rather than an evidence based approach to
actually minimizing harm to society.

Sweden has similar success with rehabilitation, though Sweden and Norway also
unfortunately shares similar flaws to Sweden when it comes to pre-conviction
detention.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
It would be nice if people in the US cared about rehabilitation.
Unfortunately, it just seems to be justice they (mostly) care about (and by
justice, I mean vengeance and/or punishment).

And our political parties are so screwed up right now that trying to do
anything about it would be a death sentence to a politician's career.

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jpxxx
So Sweden tortures. Cute.

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scelerat
He is, what amounts to, a political prisoner.

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Kiro
I have friends who have been in solitary confinement and they say it's nicer
than jail (which is very nice in Sweden compared to other countries). It's not
what you think it is or like how solitary confinement works in the US.

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seivan
They don't even treat convicted rapists this harsh...

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scotty79
I don't get what's so wrong about solitary confinement. Being left in peace
for 23 hours a day sounds perfectly fine to me especially if they give you
stuff to read. I'd probably hate 1 hour when I'm not left alone than 23
remaining ones.

Is there some part of monkey brain that is supposed to kick in and cause me
some distress on some lower level?

~~~
icelancer
All research says people suffer greatly from this. You might be one of the
very few sociopathic people who could stand it, I guess.

~~~
scotty79
Maybe it gets worse after few weeks. The only effect I've noticed after not
interacting with people for few weeks is that it's harder to speak for a short
while after that.

~~~
norswap
We're talking about no-one AT ALL. Except maybe three words with the warden.
No going online either.

~~~
scotty79
Yeah. That was before internet. Just me, books and games. Probably TV. I was
watching TV before internet.

Best holidays ever. :-)

Maybe it's not so much because of the "solitary" part but more about being
bored out of your mind.

