

The Pirate Bay Trial - A Spectrial - swombat
http://trial.thepiratebay.org/

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mixmax
In denmark all access to thepiratebay has been blocked by the major internet
providers. When you go to any piratebay page you get this:
<http://www.maximise.dk/temp/STOP.htm> (translated:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.maximise.dk%2Ftemp%2FSTOP.htm&sl=da&tl=en&history_state0=&swap=1))

It's based on a court decision where IFPI (association of record companies)
sued Danish Internet providers, claiming that since illegal content could be
downloaded from thepiratebay all access should be blocked. Unfortunately they
won, meaning that I can't read this post (Well, I can, but non-tech savvy
users can't) and that I can't get linux torrents, and other legal content.

Looking at the court case Google, youtube, and many other sites should also be
blocked since they also give a user the possibility of locating and
downloading illegal content. But I guess these targets are too big...

It's absolutely appalling and a clear breach of free speech.

~~~
jacquesm
I think the largest factor in targeting the pirate bay is that they are not
pretending to be anything but a source of pointers to possibly illegal
information, google, youtube and so on can spend millions on their defense and
have a clearly legal use as well. The pirate bay has a much harder time making
that case and is a softer target.

~~~
mixmax
I have two problems with this case:

1) Thepiratebay's blog is also covered, thus making it impossible for them to
state their case to the people. Effectively their voice is censored by the
ban.

2) Thepiratebay isn't illegal in Sweden. Banning something that isn't illegal
borders on totallitarian.

~~~
jacoblyles
> "Thepiratebay isn't illegal in Sweden. Banning something that isn't illegal
> borders on totallitarian."

I'm confused. I thought you said it was banned in Denmark, not Sweden. What
does Swedish law matter if you're a Dane?

~~~
gustaf
It's not banned by the Danish state but by the Danish ISP's.

The piratebay is not illagel in Sweden (yet) in the sense that last time there
was a court case about the legality of linking to copyrighted material it was
found to be legal. I think this was in 1995 or something.

If The Piratebay is found illegal then the ISP's will not go after the site
but they will go after ISP's and force them to block the URL like they have in
Denmark

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jacquesm
The funny thing is that the pirate bay strictly speaking does not spread
illegal content, the torrents are _pointers_ to possibly illegal content, but
unless you download a file and verify its contents there is no way of being
sure that it even contains whatever it is labelled with. And the download will
not take place from any servers owned by or associated with the pirate bay.

------
m_eiman
"Support The Pirate Bay, change your Twitter profile picture"

[http://www.johnsjolander.com/2009/02/support-pirate-bay-
by-c...](http://www.johnsjolander.com/2009/02/support-pirate-bay-by-changing-
your.html)

There have been so many "mistakes" (aka abuse of power) made during this whole
process that I'm ashamed to be a Swede. This sort of thing really shows that
equality before the law is a pretty relative concept. Like they said in the
Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others.

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ktharavaad
This is the reason why we need a decentralized p2p solution to share files
which is: 0) easy to use 1) robust to file pollution 2) give incentive to
people to upload instead of them being leechers 3) protects the anonymity of
its users

Many protocols/networks ( ed2k, kazaa, bittorrent, gnutella, freenet ) satisfy
some of these requirements but not all of them. I believe with all these BT
sites getting shut down and banned, its a ripe time for another disruptive
technology in the area of p2p file distribution to take hold.

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liam64
May I make a point here? Youtube, Google video, Rapidshare etc all host
copyrighted material of some sort so why is the pirate bay being targeted
here?

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ars
LOL: "At 1130, a spontanous gathering will take place"

New meaning for spontaneous? Perhaps the different spelling has a different
meaning? :)

