
Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?' - butwhy
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-12/11/peter-sunde
======
karmacondon
Many don't agree with the principles of TPB, but Sunde was willing to take
risks for what he believed in. He deserves a lot of respect for that no matter
what people think about the morality of what he helped to create. Most people
go their whole lives without caring strongly about any issue at all, and
almost all of those that do care are willing to sacrifice exactly nothing. I'd
like to think that I would be willing to give up everything for what I believe
is right. But everyone likes to _think_ that. And most of us will never find
out, not how Sunde did.

That said, everyone also wants to be a martyr. TPB wasn't about rights or
freedoms or standing up to government oppression. People used it primarily to
obtain media and software without paying for it. It does sound like a noble
crusade when he expands the context to include SOPA or PIPA or net neutrality,
but TPB isn't really related to those things and served only as a rallying
point for people who feel strongly about them. The ideal of freedom of
information is only tangential to fighting the good fights that he listed in
the opening of the piece.

The truth is that Sunde didn't have to go to jail. TPB's popularity gave him a
platform and helped him to centralize an ideological movement. But there are
other ways to do that, significantly more effective ways. Martin Luther King
(as an example, not a comparison) went to jail too, but he also went to the
right schools, wore a suit and influenced the right people. Creating a popular
and morally dubious website is a quick way to put your ideas into the
spotlight. But it doesn't last, and it doesn't really change anything. His
effort and conviction are genuinely admirable but he's still a long way from
winning the battles that matter.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _TPB wasn 't about rights or freedoms or standing up to government
> oppression. People used it primarily to obtain media and software without
> paying for it._ //

I think there is an issue of rights and freedoms.

With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved
for the wealthy. In other state structures those making the cultural artefacts
that we use to express our selves, to link, to coalesce on common sentiment,
those could be sufficiently supported to make all cultural artefacts free-
gratis and free-libre.

The democratisation of media particularly through availability of music and
film - which are so central to our cultural experience - means that many who
would otherwise be [partially] excluded from participation in today's culture
(for better or worse) can take part.

Moreover, copyright was initially set up with a view to ensuring that
eventually the wealth locked up in shared experience, cultural introspection,
confrontation with new ideas and different aspects of the culture would be
freed in to the public domain.

The actions of media corporations, the use of DRM, these things (amongst
others I'm sure) act to prevent entry to the public domain. DRM in particular
breaks the copyright deal, if we the people aren't going to get our side of
the copyright bargain why should we uphold the side that suits those financial
interested in media production? Usually with a contract if one side breaks the
terms then the contract is nullified - surely this morally should be true too
of copyright.

In short, I think to assume that this is solely an issue of 'people who could
pay to consume media choosing not to' is wrong, that there is a greater depth
to this and that the likes of TPB have made a change to the access to the
culture of the age making it [more] available to those of restricted means. I
think this can make for more cohesion in society. Possibly too it makes for
more homogeneity, that may not be a good thing however if the principle
messages being passed (and shared) in society are those coming from Hollywood.

I feel there's much more to say on this. But I'll stop. /rant

Edit: cleaned up some verbosity.

~~~
forrestthewoods
I'm not sure I agree with much of anything you said.

>With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively
reserved for the wealthy. [...] The democratisation of media particularly
through availability of music and film - which are so central to our cultural
experience

There is always going to be a culture. And there are always going to be things
off-limits to the non-wealthy that would totally be part of the larger culture
if made free. So? I don't think it's particularly important for music or film
to be part of the larger, central cultural experience. If those things aren't
available then something else will take their place. To the best of my
understanding society had a culture 5, 50, 500, and even 5000 years ago.

I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by
other people. I think people pirate because it's safe, easy, and free. I think
most people's participation in piracy can be summed up as "selfish asshole". I
think DRM is a blunt, ham fisted enforcement of the copyright deal and I'm
curious as to why you think it breaks and should nullify the contract.

And on top of all this the maintainers of Pirate Bay are not benevolent Robin
Hood's trying to give culture to the poor. They're making money. Megaupload
network generated $175,000,000 in revenue. I don't think there's a damn thing
honorable about any of these lot.

~~~
wvenable
> To the best of my understanding society had a culture 5, 50, 500, and even
> 5000 years ago.

The current availability of books published last century is actually smaller
than the current availability of books published before that. So there is
actually a bit of a cultural hole from the 1900's because of materials are
still in copyright and not published by their owners. Often it isn't even
known who is the current owner of a material. There might come a time where
people know more about culture 500 years ago than 100 years ago.

> I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by
> other people.

I think we've lived with the concept of copyright and patents for so long that
we've forgotten what an artificial construct that it is. We're basically
giving exclusively ownership to ideas. There is a good argument for doing
that, which is why copyright exists, but it's not a universal truth. Locking
way and preventing the sharing, modification, and remixing of ideas has a deep
cultural cost now and future generations.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Not having documentation on what culture was X years ago is different from
there being no culture X years. I don't think your first example is relevant.

Copyright exists to serve the public. I think it largely achieves that goal.
There are fair arguments to be made as to when copyright/patents stop serving
the public interests. I don't think DRM as an enforcement of the copyright
laws nullifies the protection already given. When it comes to copyright the
following quote is long but largely sums of my thoughts.

"A distinguishing characteristic of intellectual property is its "public good"
aspect. While the cost of creating a work subject to copyright protection—for
example, a book, movie, song, ballet, lithograph, map, business directory, or
computer software program—is often high, the cost of reproducing the work,
whether by the creator or by those to whom he has made it available, is often
low. And once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for
these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of
the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged
from making copies, but the creator’s total revenues may not be sufficient to
cover the cost of creating the work. Copyright protection—the right of the
copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies—trades off the costs of
limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to
create the work in the first place. Striking the correct balance between
access and incentives is the central problem in copyright law. For copyright
law to promote economic efficiency, its principal legal doctrines must, at
least approximately, maximize the benefits from creating additional works
minus both the losses from limiting access and the costs of administering
copyright protection." from An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law,
[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html](http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html)

~~~
wvenable
I'm not talking about "documentation". I'm talking about the actual culture:
the books, the movies, the songs, and so on from that period. Look at Disney's
Frozen, a huge movie based on the out of copyright story, The Snow Queen.
Here's some culture from 1800's reproduced in 2014. The same cannot be done
for most culture in the early to mid 1900's. Some things you literally cannot
read, watch, or hear from that era. You certainly cannot adapt it in a new
way. Not unless you want to break the law. That is the situation we are in.

I, however, agree that copyright serves the public and largely achieves that
goal. But I think it did so better in it's original incarnation. Big money
interests have shifted copyright in absurd directions. And I honestly don't
care if Disney retains the rights to Mickey Mouse forever but in lobbying for
that right they've dragged along everything else. So now it's impossible to
reproduce other completely unrelated works.

A big one personally for me is old video games. I grew up in arcades and I
love going through MAME and playing obscure titles that I often don't even
remember until I start it up. Sure, if you want to play Pac-Man there are lots
of legal options but outside of that a huge part of 80's culture is illegal to
own.

------
drzaiusapelord
I'm sorry, but downloading entertainment is not a human right. He didn't
exactly feed starving people by breaking the law. He put up a torrent
aggregator to, mostly, Hollywood movies and shoved aggressive and high-revenue
porn and malware ads into every nook and cranny of that site.

HN and those passionate about internet freedoms deserve better heroes than
guys like Sunde, Dotcom, and Ulbricht. These guys very much enriched
themselves via what was essentially a web based business and any "freedom
fighter" argument is pretty disingenuous at this point.

Personally, I see malware coming from ad networks and other dirty tricks TPB
did as a bigger issue than being able to watch Spiderman 3 without paying.
Honestly, now he's painting himself as a some anti-spying hero when his site
was the #1 vector of aggressive spy and malware onto people's computers? I
mean, it fucking took over the search box when you clicked on it and launched
a download to suspicious-toolbar.exe immediately. What link actually took you
to the torrent? Not the dozen of so "DOWNLOAD NOW" buttons Sunde happily
populated his site with. We need less of that stuff, please.

~~~
humanrebar
> I'm sorry, but downloading entertain is not a human right.

Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right. Maybe certain
entertainment business models aren't sustainable in the internet age. It's not
like we'll run out of entertainment. Most cat-based YouTube videos are better
than the Real Housewives of Schenectady anyway.

And to extort and imprison people for the sake of a business model is
terrible.

~~~
pdabbadabba
>Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right.

No, but at least in the U.S., and most of the rest of the world, it is a
_legal_ right. Does that count for nothing just because we're on the internet?

~~~
humanrebar
Human rights exist regardless of whether a particular legal framework honors
them. _Everyone_ has the right to speech, including the right to the private
transmission of data, the right to assemble to pursue common interests, etc.
Those rights have limitations when it comes to harming people, but people
aren't being harmed by any particular copy of Duck Dynasty S06E03.

The thing being harmed here is a business model. I vehemently disagree that
someone should be fined or imprisoned in the name of a business model,
especially an entertainment one. If the law says that's what happens, the law
is unjust.

That being said, copying things that aren't yours without permission is a jerk
thing to do. That shouldn't make you a criminal, however.

~~~
pdabbadabba
Do business models not pay people's salaries? Is this not an interest worth
protecting? I think you're view is in trouble (or at least, extremely radical)
if it depends on the premise that no law that protects only financial
interests can result in imprisonment.

I think this is actually the one (perhaps only) point where copyright
infringement is actually analogous to theft. Why do we prohibit shoplifting?
Because shoplifting prevents a business owner from profiting off of the thing
he had intended to sell, in addition to depriving him of his investment in the
inventory (of course, no business owner cares much about his inventory for its
own sake, he cares about it because it represents potential profit).

As many will be eager to point out, intellectual property is not finite. But
this only means that you're depriving the IP owner of less profit than you
would be if it were a tangible good, not that it deprives him of none. You
might just as well say, oh well the thief would never have bought that DVD
anyway, and the business owner has millions of them (and insurance!), so it's
not really something the law should worry about... Also see mc32's sibling
comment with some other excellent examples.

~~~
the8472
grandparent said that he disagreed with people being imprisoned or fined for
copyright infringement.

Those are punishments.

Asking the violator to cough up the retail price of the pirated product on the
other hand wouldn't be a punishment for criminal acts, it would be solving a
civil dispute.

Of course making this work at scale is not something that can be done in
courts. And making unilateral claims sufficient to require someone to pay up
is a bad idea too.

That's why some propose a general copyright levy, or a "culture tax" that gets
redistributed to producers.

~~~
zanny
> That's why some propose a general copyright levy, or a "culture tax" that
> gets redistributed to producers.

Except then you have to have a great big state bureaucracy to arbitrarily
allocate tax funds.

No, the correct solution is still free information - but all it takes is a
change of perspective and mindset on the parts of content creators.

You _have_ a valuable, scarce, useful asset. It is not the infinitely
reproducible digital information at the end of the process that you use a
legal framework to restrict distribution of. People _want_ that, but
information is no longer scarce, and to try to restrict it is unethical.

The valuable resource you have is your creativity. Your ability to _produce_
that digital information is a scarce resource that few possess. The current
model that most creators pursue is that an investor of some sort seeks to take
advantage of the arbitrage the artificial implications that copyright imparts
upon free markets to profit off the perpetual legal ownership of information,
and pays you either a fixed salary or a fraction of the returns to actually
produce the work, in exchange for the up front funding.

Kickstarter, patreon, gittip, etc are demonstrating the ability for consumers
of information to also pay the scarce resource - the creation - themselves.
And it would make a lot more sense for consumers to just pay for the culture
they want to be made directly, and then everyone can experience it - rather
than having some state institution doing it.

No, those current platforms are not appropriate to replace copyright. Of
course they are not. They exist _under_ copyright. We cannot conceive of what
it would look like to have a legitimate free culture patronage service because
one cannot exist right now. But I wrote this post and a bunch of others and
keep debating the topic because I fundamentally have _faith_ it would work,
and that the ongoing cultural death of western civilization since the advent
of perpetual copyright is much more detrimental to society than the free
availability of Jersey Shore.

------
k-mcgrady
He went to jail for creating a website that enabled people to download music
and movies without paying for them. Jail is a harsh punishment IMO for that.
ACTA/SOPA etc. are all terrible things that we can't allow and we can't allow
the internet to become more centralised/controlled by government. But that's
not why he went to jail. Enabling illegal downloads of content has little to
do with those causes.

~~~
tomp
And Manning went to jail for revealing government secrets about government
crimes. And Snowden cannot return home because he revealed that people are
being spied on.

It's very easy to say, "he went to jail because what he did was illegal". It's
harder to say "he went to jail despite what he did was right".

I support TPB's cause. I believe that non-profit sharing of information should
be free.

~~~
gedrap
>>> sharing of information

But what TPB mainly distributed, was not information, it was products. And
they are not essential products, you can live just fine without TV series or
movies. People don't die because they can't play their favourite video game.
It's like saying designer clothes should be free.

Information should be shared without profit, yeah, that's what wikipedia is
doing fine.

But video games are not information, so are TV shows, movies, etc. They are
products which cost money to produce. It doesn't make economical sense to give
it away for free hoping to get money from ads or whatever. Mobile games do
that, and mostly they are unplayable without purchasing credits, etc. Even
then, the quality is often very poor.

You can point to open source, but people producing open source software are
minority of all engineers.

What you are saying might be morally 'right' but unfortunately being morally
right doesn't pay the rent, bills and food.

~~~
tomp
Your argument is implicitly based on an assumption that piracy/sharing reduces
income/profits. I'm not so sure this assumption is correct; at least it hasn't
been demonstrated as true (AFAIK). A strong argument speaking against it is
the fact that there are _many_ examples that say the contrary; Avatar is one
of the most pirated movies and also one of the most successful ones, and
earned a huge amount of money just on cinema tickets. You have e.g. Zynga,
King and Rovio who have earned lots of money on free games.

I used to pirate stuff much more when I was younger (a poor student). Now, I
often pay for music that I really like, to support the artists! Other music I
just watch on YouTube. If I was sure that Netflix would provide a better
service than downloading (i.e. good quality, little wait time, superb
selection, offline viewing, no geo-restrictions), I would subscribe.

~~~
mike_hearn
_Your argument is implicitly based on an assumption that piracy /sharing
reduces income/profits. I'm not so sure this assumption is correct; at least
it hasn't been demonstrated as true (AFAIK)._

It's absolutely been demonstrated to be true, many many times. Do you think
game studios, console makers, movie studios etc put money into DRM because
none of them understand their own business?

There are lots of people who spoken either on or off the record who say the
same things: the moment their copy protection fails, sales fall off a cliff
and you can see it in the data. For video games it's even worse. The general
figure I see for video game piracy on the PC platform is around 90-95% of
players are not paying for it, yet, often they are still consuming resources
on e.g. multiplayer servers.

Movie studio executives have graphs of sales and you can see the point at
which high quality rips were uploaded to the internet.

Example:

[http://www.develop-online.net/news/lgc-2013-sports-
interacti...](http://www.develop-online.net/news/lgc-2013-sports-interactive-
reveals-shocking-impact-of-piracy-on-football-manager-2013/0185951)

~~~
0x5f3759df-i
[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-
Gabe...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-
Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem)

------
jfaucett
I think the problem is that no one realizes the internet we grew up with and
loved is changing fundamentally and we can't be passivist users of the medium
anymore.

If you are you're basically saying you're okay with a future where governments
regulate which services you can use and ISPs control how fast you can download
bits based on whether you're using their sponsored services or not.

Its bullshit but its what's happening. At its core though, I think its a
hardware problem. We REALLY need a decentralized networking solution to
replace ISPs and DNS and if we don't get it, the road is going to be really
hard going. This still doesn't solve the problem of intercontentinal
networking, and I have no idea how we could solve that one without some
monopoly/govt controlling everything.

~~~
Swizec
It's not a hardware problem, it's a convenience problem. People _like_ that
there's somebody else worrying about this. They are willing to do almost
anything it takes so they don't have to worry about issues of basic
infrastructure.

We already do this with water, electricity, and other infrastructure. Anything
it takes as long as I can get water/power/trash-taken-out just by flipping a
switch and paying a bill.

We, as a society, do _not_ want to think about this. As long as the internet
is there when we open a laptop or a phone, we don't care how it got there.

~~~
ep103
I don't think we as a society don't want to think about this. I think that
society at large just assumes that the internet IS regulated as a utility. Up
until now, the major ISPs haven't taken an active role in speeding up, shaping
or censoring content that non-geeks even really know about. When you explain
things like the current FCC debacle, when they finally understand the context,
they get enraged because its so obviously different and worse than how they
thought the system worked.

------
tomp
I feel this is a very important article with a very important message, but I'm
just not sure what I can do to help! They have money, guns, political support,
media and very powerful, highly emotional rhetoric. The only thing I can do is
hack on software, but most people don't care enough about "geeky stuff". I
feel that the only way this issues will get resolved is if they get much,
_much_ worse first (i.e. high-profile people jailed for what they say,
internet controlled China-style, disappearance of middle class, ...).

~~~
scrrr
Well you can always hack on decentralised, encrypted, hidden peer to peer
chat, or other open software alternatives of high quality for all the services
we use every day and so forth. If media is a problem, work on solutions for
anonymous publishing etc.. if the software is good enough (including having a
good ui and whatnot), it's less geeky. After all, people adopted BitTorrent,
which is quite geeky!

~~~
the8472
Providing technical workarounds for broken policy can only do so much. It
doesn't fix policy. It can only help avoiding enforcement.

Which might lead to court cases where they try to make an example of a poor
sap they have caught. This has already happened to some extent with peer to
peer file sharing.

a) only few individual users get caught and dragged through the courts, but
they get slapped with damages in the hundred-thousands[1].

b) there is no big mafia boss responsible for everything they could hold
accountable. So now they go after companies making software[2] or after sites
such as TPB. Not on the premises that they did anything illegal themselves but
that they enabled others to do so.

So who says that the net of what's illegal won't get cast even wider in the
future if someone were to develop something that's even harder for them to
prosecute? Or one could even argue that evasion through technology leads to
policy becoming even more restrictive, even if that restrictive policy remains
largely ineffective except for those few that actually get hit by it.

I'm not saying that the technology shouldn't be developed, I'm just saying
that it doesn't automatically make society more free by itself. It just
provides an underground in which one may move.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thomas...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thomas-
Rasset) [2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_Ltd).

~~~
verroq
Non technical users also don't care about encryption/security and what not.

~~~
EStudley
I wouldn't say that. I'd say they care about encryption/their personal
security, but they don't care in the slightest what the implementation is.

------
thetmkay
I don't agree with all (or most) of the principles of TPB, but I can
appreciate his criticism of slacktivism. He had his beliefs, stood by them
against the law, and served his time for it. It's unjustified to criticise a
lack of action on his part.

My only concern with his methods would be if he hurt people in the process
(indirectly through TPB). Also I fail to see how it was an effective protest
against the things he mentioned in the article (SOPA, PIPA etc).

------
josefresco
Last paragraph was biting and very powerful - side note: Who sends a copy of
1984 to Peter Sunde in prison?

"My feeling of some life-altering insight might be nothing but rants on the
spoiled, lazy and naive parts of our internet community. And maybe I'm using
those terms just to piss people off a little bit more. But hey. I went to jail
for my cause and your TV shows. What did you do? You want that copy of
Orwell's 1984 returned? I'll take one of the 25 copies I got sent to me in
jail and send it back to you. Maybe you'll read it instead of just sending it
to someone else to take care of."

------
lorddoig
When did stealing other peoples' life work segue from a guilty necessity to a
noble cause? I missed that.

~~~
butwhy
You could say the same thing about Youtube in the beginning. Except for the
fact that Youtube was even worse because people were uploading copyrighted
material there and it was actually hosted by them and existed in the US.
Whereas TPB was in Sweden and only linked to files.

~~~
icebraining
Well, lots of people did say the same thing about YouTube. That's why they
were sued.

------
Htsthbjig
This is a complex issue.

While I believe copying without compensation is bad, and not something to feel
proud of, I also understand the position of a Chinese or a person from Ghana
that have to work 15 times more to be able to access the same item than an
American.

The West has used countries like Ghana to dump technological trash that make
children get malformations and cancer.

Think on this for a moment: what does 20 dollars means for you, now multiply
it x15.

Now if you want to access an important resource for you or your family like a
book, what do you do? You pirate it.

Most of the people in this world economic power is closer to the people of
Ghana that to the people in California.

Copyright is out of control, it should be like patents 20 years, with the
extensions it is becoming eternal and making impossible to reuse any work
legally.

------
danielalmeida
> "What people reveal, what people fight for, are major causes. Freedom of
> information. Liberty. Democracy. Governmental transparency and due process."

I have a really hard time trying to link this with my experience on TPB. It's
all about downloading stuff without paying for it. Honestly, that's it. I'm
not proud of that, I'm not saying it's a noble thing to do. I really don't get
what trying to "determine" what should or shouldn't be free by sharing other
people's stuff without their permission has to do with freedom.

~~~
reubenmorais
Torrenting is an answer to bad service. I want to look up a movie I want to
watch, choose between different quality/file size options depending on my
bandwidth/hard drive space needs, download an MP4 with decent speeds, watch
it, then store it to watch again if I feel like it.

I can do this legally for games via GOG or Steam, I can do this legally for
(most) software I use, I can do this legally for music (limited artists) via
Bandcamp, but there's NO option for movies, TV series, or most mainstream
music. I literally cannot legally watch the latest episode of any of the shows
I follow, because when they do have an online offering, it's restricted to the
US.

So for me, downloading a movie on TPB is first about convenience, I want to
get to the movie and TPB is the means to it. But implicitly it's also sending
a message to the gatekeepers of content that I'm interested in their product.
The other part of the message is making a habit of looking for and paying for
convenient, DRM-free content when it's available.

~~~
danielalmeida
I fully understand what you mean. I saw you're from Brazil too, so you know
how awful Netflix is around here and how much we pay for games, for example. I
download mostly due to the reasons you mentioned. As much as possible I avoid
downloading books and I try to pay for music when I can (some stuff is just
too expensive to import and many times really hard to find). I also rely on
Steam and digital copies to avoid stealing (I have no problem calling it that)
games.

But by the end of the day, despite being hard to find or expensive or
unavailable, it's not mine to take. I understand I have no right to just rip
The Flash S01E09 and make it available for free, IMO. Even though I downloaded
and watched it yesterday.

~~~
rjaco31
Why? It's not like the most downloaded TV series are also the ones making the
most money.

------
gglitch
I see many people in this thread debating (1) whether Sunde is some sort of
freedom fighter, and (2) the ethics of intellectual property law. In my
interpretation Sunde is mainly arguing that people who are criticizing him for
not defending TPB should instead get their hands dirty and make something that
sidesteps the established internet control structures, for better or worse. I
don't think that's such a controversial idea.

------
agumonkey
The man choosed to do what he did, but when they were heavily fined I already
felt an obligation to pay a part of it, as I was a regular user before that.
About the future of the web and other larger social questions, I find it hard
to believe.. when it's mostly movies and tv shows (even though there was some
hard to find vintage content on it sometimes). Lastly, as for anything, when
technology N is unavailable, we go back to N-1. We won't stream the latest
show from the other side of the planet right from peers in real time but well.

~~~
rjaco31
>We won't stream the latest show from the other side of the planet right from
peers in real time but well.

Ain't that what Popcorn Time is doing?

~~~
agumonkey
But Popcorn relies on public trackers to do, or is it fully distributed ?

------
jqm
He mentions Snowden and Manning, but he left Dread Pirate Ulbricht off the
list of comparative figures. A real shame because that may actually be a more
accurate comparison.

------
SixSigma
What I did was finance a feature film and get it released on DVD. Shame some
people think that they can just take all my investment and piss it on to the
internet.

------
smoyer
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while
the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” - Wilhelm
Stekel

I think we need Peter Sundes in this world to keep the rest of us vigilant ...
I'm not sure going to jail for a cause really helps much either. While I
admire him for sticking to his principles, I'd rather he was out in the world
doing his work.

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Marazan
I like the way he selflessly teamed up with a Neo-Nazi. How noble.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/26/pirate_bay_neo_nazi/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/26/pirate_bay_neo_nazi/)

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swamp40
Subtitle: _" Even bad guys are Heroes in their own Story."_

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etiam
Do you think he's being ironic about the cell phones? Seems like a strange
stance on them if he's all in favor of skipping Facebook, for similar reasons
and with similar consequences.

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eridal
Wow all I see here is top-paid man-hours being used to produce a wall of text.

I'm not against discussion, but look at what are we doing, arguing to each
others instead of just producing something valuable.

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mrfusion
Some similar thoughts:

[http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...](http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html)

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tambourine_man
_I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?_

A bit _tu quoque_ , not the best way to engage people, IMO

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GoldenHomer
This sucks, I didn't get to download a car.

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joesmo
I think what most people here are missing is that TPB didn't actually host any
illegal content and yet it still got shut down and its members sent to jail.
Sunde went to jail for free speech and distributing completely legal files. I
think that's implicit and am rather surprised that it's a point missed by so
many people. In that sense, it's a lot more egregious than Manning or Snowden
because, AFAIK, he did not commit any crimes. Perhaps he wants it to be a
warning to people like many of the commenters here who are deriding or
belittling his actions yet still claim to support free speech.

If the files he distributed contained freely available chemistry information,
would he have been sent to jail for assisting others in making bombs or
poison? That seems rather ridiculous, but that's essentially what equating his
actions with piracy is actually doing.

