
Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison - lelf
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bays-peter-sunde-released-prison-141011/
======
jsmthrowaway
It's pretty rich that almost this entire thread is arguing about the prison
not respecting Sunde's vegan wishes and his personal wealth and ideals. There
are more than ninety comments here and all of them hang off nearly-dead
comments.

The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role,
which is to deter crime. Louis CK has a bit about this in one of his recent
specials:

    
    
        ...but we really need the law against murder, for
        one simple reason: the law against murder is the number
        one thing preventing murder. We'd like to think it's
        because "oh, I would never do that," no, it's because
        it really sucks getting caught murdering. A lot. [1]
    

Debating the prison's respect for Sunde's vegan wishes misses the forest for
the trees. Honestly, if that's your biggest concern from reading this article,
you have really messed up priorities. How about the fact that he went to
maximum _at all?_

Anyway, just an oddly off-topic thread here, thought I'd point it out. It's
even more fun because I've been detained, so reading some of the arguments
makes it clear that I'm one of the only people with that experience here.
Prison's not something you can just try, to see what it's like, so unless
you've been there it's usually wise to assume the worst things are true rather
than being optimistic about rights and common sense. If one thing is true
about detention, it's that rights and common sense don't matter at all when
the door's closed and nobody's looking.

Also, welcome back, Peter.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQUr2RkjykU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQUr2RkjykU)

~~~
ShinyCyril
> The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role,
> which is to deter crime.

Prison serves many purposes other than punishment - one of which is
rehabilitation. Making someone's life miserable for several years, purely to
punish them, does nothing in the long-run - hence why re-offending rates can
be so high.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Two orthogonal factors undermine your observation: (1) the prison system is
drifting toward private, for-profit prisons, and rehabilitating offenders
incarcerated therein would be damaging to the long-term profits of the
institution, and (2) believe it or not, a significant number of inmates in the
American system do not _want_ to be rehabilitated, which is directly linked to
various external factors.

It's easy for those outside America to put the United States Criminal Justice
System in a vacuum -- it's happening _all over_ this thread and it's honestly
ridiculous -- and try to explain to Americans that strategy A doesn't work
because recidivism B, and country C actually tries strategy D so America
should implement strategy E, but the fact is that the American justice system
reflects a lot of _other_ problems in the United States that need to be
addressed. Key among those is a significantly substandard education compared
to other parts of the world, especially the oft-cited Scandinavian countries
for the purposes of this discussion.

It is my personal experience that rehabilitation in an incarceration setting
only works in the majority if the criminal has some kind of education and
desire for a better life. Those citing Norway's prisons, have you ever
considered that education is better in Norway and most folks don't break bad
by default? Norway has the 7th best education in the world. The United States
is much further down the list.

Even in minimum, the majority of the people I was in with did not especially
mind being there nor look at it as a serious event. "Oh, I got arrested for
check fraud again, can't wait to get out and go back to selling meth, much
less risky income." To most people I talked to, it was an inconvenience and
mild disruption from their life of crime. The hardest of the hard criminals
_want_ to be in prison because they can actually have power in several systems
run from prison, including an entire infrastructure of gangs.

To be quite honest, I think pointing at American prisons and saying "your job
is to rehabilitate" is a nice, ivory tower sort of feel-good explainer for
sending people to prison, but the fact is going to prison in the United States
is a complete life-ender for "doing good" in almost every case. My felony just
fell off my record and even in _this_ industry, I was nearly unemployable --
my conviction wasn't even computer-related, but most people pull a report and
see "felony" and discard the entire candidate. Prison is only a portion of the
consequences for committing a crime.

Regardless of how you might feel criminal justice should happen, right now in
the United States the policy is one of deterrence. Your life is pretty great
until you pick up a felony, then you'll spend the rest of your life trying to
undo the damage. And, to be honest, I can understand the logic there: your
government has an implicit contract with you that the liberties offered and
protected by the United States are yours as long as you don't do any of these
hundreds of crimes, and once you do, the contract is void. I can understand
the thinking that brought us there. I also don't think the failure thereof is
necessarily the fault of the system, as criminal rehabilitation absolutely
cannot exist in a vacuum of policy. Life isn't SimCity. You can't tweak a
"prison life quality" slider and magically fix recidivism. There are other
external inputs into that equation and any discussion thereof must include the
whole picture.

~~~
bbarn
OK, I'll be that guy.

Your tone, knowledge of the subject, and general skill at writing imply you're
quite intelligent, so what did you do to get a felony conviction?

------
ohashi
Welcome back Peter.

------
carlisle_
>There was no concern for his vegan diet

I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to
accommodate voluntary diets like this.

~~~
geofft
My vegetarian friends say that they literally can't eat meat any more, in the
sense that their stomach physiology (acids? bacteria? not sure) isn't capable
of digesting it. Yes, it was voluntary at some point, but it's not clear that
you can still apply that label.

As someone with food allergies, I could understand (and be unhappy) if a
captor decided to feed me allergens as intentional punishment, but I'd be
pretty upset and feel pretty dehumanized if a captor just did so because it
was the cheapest way to prepare a meal.

~~~
VLM
"in the sense that their stomach physiology isn't capable of digesting it"

Its a very popular strightdope urban legend discussion topic. You'd die pretty
quickly if you couldn't adsorb complete proteins. Astrologically speaking,
iron ions from spinach are dramatically different than iron ions from a steak,
but your biochemistry won't know the difference.

You can get three interesting effects:

1) Any time you mess with your diet you mess with your gut flora and ...
residue. Not to mention the "feel" in your stomach before its all broken down
to constituent molecules indistinguishable from plant sources (other than less
fiber) So minor tummy ache is theoretically possible. Less fiber intake =
less... output the next day, etc.

2) From my M-i-Ls adventures in gallbladder problems, its theoretically
possible for vegan types to chug olive oil especially in the form of salad
dressing, but to really consume huge quantities of oil/fat all at once you
need a greasy triple cheeseburger with bacon. So you can have some bile /
gallbladder related fun (whoa I just ate three days worth of oils/greases in
one meal, totally freaking out my gallbladder type of reaction). You'll be
fine.

3) Psychologically you can get really messed up. Try eating some dog sometime
in a foreign country and then focusing on your stomach (assuming you're
standard American) is going to be all messed up. Still meat is meat and if
they told you it was pork you wouldn't have blinked, but here you are feeling
like you're gonna hurl. Its really not as much fun as my description sounds.
Think of that soy stuff instead of cows/chicken/fish/pigs/dogs and you'll be
just fine as long as you can avoid getting all anxious. Being anxious is never
fun, no matter if due to diet or relationships or tiny enclosed spaces or
public speaking or whatever.

~~~
hiou
It's actually for the same reason people get sick when the visit countries
with poor water quality and drink the water. They aren't used to the
pathogens.

Check page 2 of this Consumer Reports article[1] for an example.

 _> Enterococcus was the most common bacterium we found, occurring in 79.8
percent of our samples. Next was E. coli, in 65.2 percent of them;
campylobacter, 43 percent; klebsiella pneumoniae, 13.6 percent; salmonella,
10.8 percent, and staphylococcus aureus, 9.2 percent._

It's part of the reason that only some people experience the problems as a lot
of it depends on how long you have not eaten meat, at what age you stopped
eating meat, the overall strength of you immune system and just if you were
unlucky the first time you resumed eating meat and ate something with higher
percentage of pathogens present. Also, if you regularly cooked and ate from a
kitchen that was mixed use or non meat.

[1] [http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/the-
high...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/the-high-cost-of-
cheap-chicken/index.htm)

------
zxcvvcxz
Does anyone know which state prisons have a gluten free option? I need to
figure out where to commit my next offense.

~~~
tashi
Sure. If you have celiac disease, try California. Your doctor can write you a
note so that you don't have to eat food that could be debilitating or life-
threatening.

Simple health issues aside, it's a weird fact I have trouble wrapping my head
around that there's an uncrossable chasm between people who think prisoners
should be given some measure of dignity and people who find the very idea
laughable.

I would just wish for you (and for us all) a moment of vivid imagination and
empathy. Imagine that the meat on the menu is dog or cat or human. Not just
something you find distasteful, but something that provokes genuine sadness,
and whose consumption you don't want a part of. By being convicted of a crime,
should you lose the ability to say no to something you find morally
unconscionable?

~~~
Johnny_Brahms
The focus on "prison as punishment" for some people seems to also mean
"complete removal of any dignity". Prison can suck without forcing people to
eat and live against their moral values. Do we really thing rehabilitation
works better when we show no respect?

I am a meat eater, but this whole discussion is laughable in many ways. I
think veganism is a healthy conviction. Stepping on that is likely to just
make people more angry and feel more alienated by the system.

A bit unrelated: Back in the days when I had no money at all I lived on rice,
pasta, beans, broccoli, cabbage and an occasional glass of milk for 3 months
(meat is expensive, at least when your budget is about 1 euro a day) without
getting any notable deficiencies (went to see a doctor when I got money). If
you provide means for someone to get B12 and calcium (while serving legumes
daily) there wouldn't be much trouble catering to vegan needs.

------
johansch
TIL: Once people have decided that someone is a hero, facts cannot change
their outlook. I thought HN was populated by smarter people than that, but I
was wrong.

------
johansch
Going back to enjoying the off-the records millions made by putting shady ads
on thepiratebay.se for 10+ years.

I seriously have a very hard time time to understand the widespread sympathy
for this gang. If they would have gone without ads, sure.

~~~
adamnemecek
Running servers costs money. And IIRC they were actually losing money even
with the ads.

~~~
film42
> Although Sunde did not provide Ars with specific financial details regarding
> The Pirate Bay's operational expenses, he did argue that the site's high
> bandwidth, power, and hardware costs eliminate the potential for profit. The
> Pirate Bay, he says, may ultimately be operating at a loss.

Source: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/02/pirate-bay-big-
re...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/02/pirate-bay-big-revenue-
claims-fabricated-by-prosecutors/)

~~~
zak_mc_kracken
Not making money doing something illegal doesn't make it any more legal.

~~~
Nyr
Not making money makes it legal in Spain and Hungary for example. US law
doesn't rule the world.

