
The Pirate Bay: “The Battle of Internets is About to Begin”  - Uncle_Sam
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-the-battle-of-internets-is-about-to-begin-110509/
======
schrototo
Here's the link to the _actual_ story:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8481330/Alarm-
ove...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8481330/Alarm-over-EU-
Great-Firewall-proposal.html)

~~~
joshes
>“The Presidency of the LEWP presented its intention to propose concrete
measures towards creating a single secure European cyberspace,” according to
brief minutes of the meeting. The secure European cyberspace would have a
"virtual Schengen border", it adds, referring to the treaty that allows
freedom of movement within the EU but imposes controls on entry to the bloc.
There would also be “virtual access points" whereby “the Internet Service
Providers would block illicit contents on the basis of the EU ‘black-list’”,
the proposal says.

Wow. Not only is it a terrible-sounding idea when heard second hand, it is
even worse when heard straight from the horse's mouth. "A single secure
cyberspace" sounds an awful lot like "A single secure SOCIETY!" It's as if
Emperor Palpatine and the MAFIAA elite got together to determine the most
efficient way to deny people of their rights for the sake of greed and power.
How can anyone possibly hear what they are saying in these plans and not
recoil with horror and disgust? It runs counter to all ideals and freedoms
that the West purports to stand for.

Sheer absurdity.

~~~
tomjen3
It is the classic case of what happens when you apply the old rules (stuff
like Schengen) to completely new areas where they don't apply at all.

~~~
joshes
Agreed. The problem with politicians (in places where they are democratically
elected) is that they are concerned only with short term solutions because
they are only concerned with getting re-elected and scoring political points.
So when new and unique situations presents their selves and certain interest
groups and parties feel threatened (especially those with any semblance of
influence), the politicians apply older and inapplicable methods because it
provides the image that they are "at least doing something" about the supposed
threat.

The Internet is still a completely new, ever-changing landscape and
politicians are stuck spinning their wheels in the mud as special interests
(such as the MAFIAA) demand something, anything be done when the new model
does not run parallel to their profit motive. So the easy solution is to just
slap older laws and regulations over the top like an ill-fitting band-aid and
hope it works. MAFIAA wins. Politician wins. Citizenry loses, as per usual.

~~~
calpaterson
There were no elected representatives at this meeting. The LEWP is a subgroup
of the non-democratic council, not of the parliament. That's one of the things
that you have to be careful with the EU - many "politicians" are not elected.

~~~
bluedanieru
Who are the members of the group? Ex-politicians? People from MAFIAA? A mix of
both? If they aren't elected they still might have the instincts of a
politician.

~~~
calpaterson
I think you're misunderstanding me. These people are normal working
politicians but they were never elected to the post. Normally, they are
appointed by the civil service (who obviously aren't elected either) of a
country of the EU but sometimes they are appointed by a government.

The council is the executive branch of the EU, a bit like the President of
America, except with a lot more power (the President of America doesn't have
much power on domestic issues). For example, one of the things that the
Council has the power to do is pass new laws, and they can often choose not to
put it to a vote in the EU Parliament. The EU Parliament is elected, but not
many people vote or really take an interest in it (good luck finding someone
who can name one of their MEPs, or any MEP for that matter).

To say that these people have short-term interests or that they are beholden
to the electorate or something is factually mistaken. There is no such
accountability of democracy.

~~~
bluedanieru
I'm just speculating that, even if they aren't elected to this post, if they
are politicians by trade they may still act as such out of habit or training
(i.e. they will prefer short-term and antiquated or inapplicable methods to
solve a problem, in order to present the image that they are "doing
something").

------
BonoboBoner
"In February, a secret meeting of the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work
Party (LEWP) resulted in a worrying proposal."

How can some small EU working group even dare to discuss my human rights in a
secret meeting without any democratic legitimacy?

~~~
vixen99
This is symptomatic of the whole EU enterprise. You might ask how it is that a
totally non-elected person like Baroness Ashton, the so-called High
Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union
and Vice President of the EU (I repeat, no one elected her bar a coterie of
the elite in the EU) can call for the EU to be given a seat on the UN Security
Council. By the way, the president of the EU is unelected as well. Oh, and the
EU finances have not been passed by the auditors in 13 years.

I apologize for this off-topic comment but a little background for non-EU folk
is useful in considering this latest EU nonsense regarding the internet.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Civil servants, government ministers and heads of state in many if not most
democratic countries are not elected directly by the people. There's nothing
special about the EU in that regard.

------
ChuckMcM
Its interesting that they don't mention Usenet.

For those of you to young to remember, what you now call "The Internet" was
originally "ARPAnet" (and then DARPAnet) which was funded by the Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA) but they had lots of rules about what you
could and could not do on their network (as was their perrogative).

Some folks who wanted to be on the network didn't "qualify" because they were
either too small, or not germane to the research goals. Other folks chafed at
the restrictions.

My first encounter with the ARPAnet was in 1978 when I started at USC which
had a node on the net (USC-ECLC) which was a DEC KI-20 running Tenex. When I
graduated and went to work at Intel they weren't connected to the ARPAnet but
they were running a 'usenet' node via modems and software called 'netnews'.
The node, intelca, and the guy running it (Ken Shoemaker) were in my building
at Intel. Since Ken was open to having the 'new guy' help out so I took on
some fairly simple tasks of keeping it running.

Usenet was a simple store and forward network where nodes would call each
other periodically on the phone and exchange data which was destined for other
sites. Addressing was in the form of 'host!host!host!host!user' where each
'host' was a hop and if you could move something along you did.

Anyway, today, it is entirely possible (see the TOR network) to build a
network which runs across the existing communications structure but uses a set
of protocols that are 'invisible' (in the sense of firewalling and monitoring
etc) to the host network. It makes building something which does what Usenet
did (create a network with less authoritive oversight) much easier than it was
in the past. I would not be surprised if such networks already existed
although I am not aware of any at this time.

~~~
jwm
Fascinating, and interesting similarities.

I did not know much about Usenet, so I went to the Wikipedia page and found
this:

 _ISP-operated Usenet servers frequently block access to all alt.binaries.
groups to both reduce network traffic and to avoid related legal issues._

This was the case years ago on the old news.iol.ie server; forgot all about it
till now. That whole <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Legal_issues>
section is quite interesting in light of the above; a recommended short read.

\--

In general it seems that the network on which any system runs is pretty
vulnerable to legal challenges. If not the ISPs, then maybe those pesky fibre
and copper owners between them, for aiding and abetting copyright theft! Or
maybe the ISPs might be coerced to only permit "Accepted" packet formats (ie
inspect-able) to be used.

So far ISPs seem to not be caving in _too_ quickly, but there have been some
awful exceptions: the recent DNS seizures in the US, and a little closer to
home our backbone-less Eircom being the only ISP in Europe to cave into the
demand a few years ago to block access to piratebay.org (ex govt, careful).

However I shudder at the idea of a seperate darknet, it just seems so...
unnecessary! Not to mention: "What are you doing honey?" "Oh I'm connecting to
the Darknet." "Gee, isint that for pirates, hackers and perverts?". Though the
ability for the common Jane to download mp3's and movies on it might have
everyone secretly supporting it... hmm. I can only wonder at what the Internet
will look like in 20 years time.

Personally I hope we all get UN mandated rules for unregulated Internet -
China, North Korea and Iran being some of the leading examples for why this is
so important.

------
FrojoS
Already, to some extend, Europe is not a part of the Internet anymore. At
least here in Germany, I personally consider it fraud when Internet Service
Provider offer "Internet access". Wrong label!

After returning from the US I got extremely frustrated that I wasn't able to
listen to Pandora anymore (I'm even paying) or watch many of the best Youtube
videos that happen to use popular music as background.

When I recently got access again, over my US friends University VPN, I felt a
bit like a former east German, who managed to tweak his radio so he can listen
to "west stations".

~~~
kalleboo
Conversely, Americans can't listen to Spotify, or watch many of the european
broadcaster's online streams (e.g. Eurovision)

~~~
viraptor
> can't listen to [...], or watch [...] Eurovision

Don't worry - you're not missing anything worth spending the time on...

------
ErrantX
They will sell this with "think of the children" thing again, I am sure.
Pisses me right off.

We fought this in the UK in the disguise of deep-packet filtering at the
ISP's, that one floundered from the off but dragged out its demise for a good
while before being sheleved.

Then France gave it a go with Loopsi, and unfortunately they seem to have
managed to set a precedent for filtering/monitoring/blocking. It was only a
matter of time before the EU got involved.

------
aphexairlines
The "copyright lobby"? Where is the technology lobby? I'm disappointed in our
industry, especially given the enormous market caps of tech giants.

------
rmc
Clarification: The Pirate Bay is not totally blocked in Ireland. The largest
broadband supplier (Eircom with about 80% residential market) block it. No
other ISP in Ireland block it. Several others (eg UPC) are actively opposed to
blocking it.

------
citricsquid
meh. I think this proposal is bad, but why can't a site that is not screwing
others over come forward and be the public face of "championing" it?

Thepiratebay being a large voice against it will just harm the cause, "oh
thepiratebay is breaking the law and losing musicians money and they are anti-
censorship so censorship must be good to stop that illegal stuff".

~~~
AJ007
Are you one of those people who believes that the damage done by intellectual
property "piracy" exceeds its benefits?

How is the Pirate Bay screwing anyone over more than draconian copyright laws
which have been extended decades and decades beyond what the law originally
intended while criminal enforcement is provided by free thanks to taxpayers?

~~~
citricsquid
If someone creates content it is their choice whether or not it's given away
for free or if people must pay for it. If you create a song you can give it
away for free, sell it for $0.99 or sell it for $900, that's your choice. I
agree some of the copyright laws that exist are silly, but it should still be
the content creators choice what happens with that content (or if they sell
the rights then the new rights holder etc etc). Your desire, my desire or
anyone else's desire for that content (be it music, video, game, program,
image) is not more important than the wants of the person who created it.

Anyway my point was just that TPB is not a good voice against this, it would
be like having Hitler being against anti-freespeech laws, it would make it
much easier to justify those laws because of Hitler.

~~~
danenania
If what you're selling is just a long string of bits, securing it against
_copy_ (not theft) is your problem, not the state's.

IP is just a way for established players to be lazy and avoid finding business
models that acknowledge reality. Unfortunately, their laziness and greed also
cost us civil liberties since freedom to copy a string of bits is
indistinguishable from free speech.

~~~
rick888
Since were going with the "songs and music and anything digital are just
bits...".

What about identity theft? It's just words on a piece of paper representing
you as a person. Should we say the same thing when someone "steals" (just like
with digital items, nothing is actually stolen) your identity?

What about your bank account? In most banks it's just numbers representing
money...but it's just 'bits'..right?

Currency is also just ink and paper. Like digital goods, it's only as valuable
as what people are willing to pay. Why should I be put in jail for copying ink
that is on a piece of paper?

"IP is just a way for established players to be lazy and avoid finding
business models that acknowledge reality. Unfortunately, their laziness and
greed also cost us civil liberties since freedom to copy a string of bits is
indistinguishable from free speech."

You want to talk about greed? The greedy people are the ones that download
music and movies for free and devalue the work of people that put hundreds and
thousands of hours to make it.

~~~
danenania
If something tangible is stolen as a result of copying, that is an issue of
fraud, not IP. 'Potential profits' are not tangible.

The people who put hundreds and thousands of hours into making content aren't
the ones who benefit from IP laws. It's the big cartel-ish companies with a
zillion lawyers and friends in government who own rights to the IP and pay
artists small royalties that rake in all the cash. IP is not necessary for
artists and content-producers to make money. This should be fairly obvious by
now after the success of the Grateful Dead, the rise of the indie recording
industry, free and open source software, etc.

I'm not necessarily arguing that copying content isn't a skeevy thing to do in
some circumstances. It's definitely a lot more noble to support an artist. But
IP laws inject the state's jurisdiction deep into our private lives, and the
result is things like continent-sized firewalls and searching of laptops at
borders. In this case the solution to the problem is much, much worse than the
problem itself. It doesn't even have to be a problem at all--a smart producer
can use copying as an advantage.

~~~
rick888
"The people who put hundreds and thousands of hours into making content aren't
the ones who benefit from IP laws. It's the big cartel-ish companies with a
zillion lawyers and friends in government who own rights to the IP and pay
artists small royalties that rake in all the cash."

hmm..so who gives the big cartels the rights to their music? that's
right...the artists. If the artists are getting scraps and you are illegally
copying their stuff and as a result, they lose contracts, it's hurting them in
the process.

Copyright infringement is not theft, it's closer to counterfeiting. If it's
not stopped, the value will eventually be $0 because people will not be
willing to pay for it. see: music, newspapers, books, and eventually movies.
Its happening to anything that can be digitized.

"IP is not necessary for artists and content-producers to make money. This
should be fairly obvious by now after the success of the Grateful Dead, the
rise of the indie recording industry, free and open source software, etc."

Free and open source software is a bad example. OSS uses copyright law to
protect it from being used in proprietary software. With no IP laws, most big
companies would either create very expensive software (so anyone that buys it
would not be willing to share it) or they would all go to service based apps
(this is already starting to happen).

The grateful dead has had a following for many decades. What about new artists
that want to make a living? Bar gigs don't pay anything, so the only real way
to make a living is to sign with a recording company. In some ways, sharing
music forces artists to go with a recording company, because they don't have a
chance at making a living any other way.

After 10 years of popularized piracy (I know it's been available for much
longer than this, but Napster mainstreamed it), the youth of today feels
entitled to free things on the Internet and are becoming less and less likely
to pay for digital media.

This is the danger of piracy and why all of those industries wanted to stop
it.

"It doesn't even have to be a problem at all--a smart producer can use copying
as an advantage."

I no longer make applications, only services. So the direct result of piracy
is that people that normally would have to pay a one-time fee for my software
now have to pay me every month.

~~~
danenania
"hmm..so who gives the big cartels the rights to their music? that's
right...the artists. If the artists are getting scraps and you are illegally
copying their stuff and as a result, they lose contracts, it's hurting them in
the process."

More artists go with indie studios every year, and for the most part these
studios have learned to use copying to their advantage instead of fighting it.

There's never been any definitive research that shows artists lose money from
copying, even the big studio artists. The math isn't simple--even if you grant
that fewer albums are purchased due to copying, a wider fan base could lead to
higher concert and merchandise sales. Of course, this may also mean that
copying can _increase_ album sales if it boosts popularity enough through
network effect. One copier who likes an album may tell 10 of his friends, 2 of
whom buy the album; that is profit directly attributable to copying.

"With no IP laws, most big companies would either create very expensive
software (so anyone that buys it would not be willing to share it) or they
would all go to service based apps (this is already starting to happen)."

If this is really how it would play out, I don't see the problem. If copying
bits makes shrink wrapped software untenable (which I question), then so be
it. Business models change all the time. It's not the end of the world.

"The grateful dead has had a following for many decades. What about new
artists that want to make a living?"

The Grateful Dead started small like any band. One of the factors that led to
their explosive growth was letting people freely distribute recordings of
their live shows.

"After 10 years of popularized piracy (I know it's been available for much
longer than this, but Napster mainstreamed it), the youth of today feels
entitled to free things on the Internet and are becoming less and less likely
to pay for digital media."

I see it more as people feeling entitled to communicate and share with each
other freely, which is a good thing. I hope the trend continues.

"I no longer make applications, only services. So the direct result of piracy
is that people that normally would have to pay a one-time fee for my software
now have to pay me every month."

So? You adapted to the circumstances and are still providing the world value
and getting paid for it. What's the problem?

------
mahrain
One of the issues is that "we" as internet community tend to protest online,
for instance by blocking a site (DDOS) or sending tweets to politicians.

Europe doesn't realise this and might mistake the lack of angry people in the
streets for "not caring" or "no problem", while complaining about "hackers"
taking down web sites.

I'm afraid that there are only two options, either this gets blocked by the
European Human Rights Court (article 10, freedom of speech) or we are going to
get into a situation where we're China: internet filter plus many many tools
to circumvent it.

I guess it's our first response to develop the latter and claim "we'll just
use Tor / Freenet / VPN" but IMHO preventing the instatement of a filter in
the first place would be a more noble struggle.

------
Sandman
So what if they do erect this "virtual wall"? People will just access those
sites through some non-EU based proxy. Unless they block access to each and
every non-EU based proxy, of course.

~~~
halfasleep
Where would you put your proxy to be clear of both "think of the rights
holders" and "think of the children" as valid reasons to filter your access ?

~~~
Sandman
So, what you're saying is that EU countries would block access to the proxies
in other countries because of these reasons that you mention? Possibly. They
might try to do that, but I'm not sure that they would succeed. There are too
many proxies, and new ones pop up practically ever day. Unless they block
access to any non-EU server, in which case EU becomes North Korea.

------
eitland
Seems like focusing on pirates now would be like running a campaign against
burglary in 1939 /instead/ of mobilizing against nazi Germany?

------
robbles
this just might be the most elaborate example of Godwin's Law I've ever seen.

------
boscomutunga
The religious war between pirates and copyright will always continue.

~~~
pjscott
Did you read the article? The issue here is internet censorship; the Pirate
Bay guys are just getting involved because they tend to also be opposed to
censorship.

