
Swedish court: 'We cannot ban Pirate Bay' - jamesblonde
http://www.thelocal.se/20151127/swedish-court-we-cannot-ban-pirate-bay
======
everyone
"The Pirate Bay, which grew into an international phenomenon after it was
founded in Sweden in 2003, allows users to dodge copyright fees and share
music, film and other files using bit torrent technology, or peer-to-peer
links offered on the site – resulting in huge losses for music and movie
makers."

I have seen no credible evidence that file-sharing causes losses to music and
movie makers. In any independent studies I've seen it in inconclusive and some
of them suggest that file-sharing actually boosts sales by providing a fremium
model / free advertising / word of mouth transmission etc.

Also many other things are shared via the pirate bay other than copyrighted
films and whatnot.

~~~
themartorana
Yeah that's either biased or just plain lazy reporting.

Edit: when something is general knowledge it doesn't require citations over
and over again, because nothing has changed for over a decade. But fine.

[https://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf](https://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf)

ftp://ftp.jrc.es/pub/EURdoc/JRC79605.pdf

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/bittorrent-piracy-
increas...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/bittorrent-piracy-increases-
sales-of-leaked-albums-study/)

[https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2...](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2006_10-05_Oberholzer-
Gee.pdf)

Let me know how many more you need instead of just down voting me.

~~~
such_a_casual
[https://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod?langua...](https://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod?language=en)

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scotty79
They only say that copyright owners can't impose their ridiculousness on ISPs.
Which should be obvious. It's as stupid as suggesting that gas stations
shouldn't service highway toll evaders, because that would be helping them
with their crimes. Or that car companies shouldn't sell them cars.

~~~
jamesblonde
But all over Europe the opposite is happening. Courts are telling ISPs to ban
access to Piratebay....

~~~
iso8859-1
Exactly. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_T...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_The_Pirate_Bay)

~~~
matthewrudy
I like the fact that the header says "due to copyright issues" but they
include China in their list.

Which I'd suggest is not banning it on the basis of "copyright issues"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_T...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_The_Pirate_Bay#China)

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CookieMon
> _Bredbandsbolaget refused to comply, stating that its only role is to
> provide customers with internet access and ensuring the free-flow of
> information._

Now that's an ISP to be with, regardless of whether they are the cheapest. The
cheapest would cave to avoid the lawsuit, instead of using your money to set
precedent for Sweden.

(The studios tried the same thing in Australia, and iiNet put up a fight and
won. Sadly iiNet was later bought out by another company and might no longer
be a champion)

~~~
Stolpe
It's noble and all, but I think that the same decision would be made even if
only business aspects were taken into account. Imagine being "that one ISP
where you cannot download movies". They would probably loose many current and
potential customers by having that stamp, even among customers that do not
illegally download any movies at all.

I'm Swedish myself and I have Bahnhof as my ISP. They are a company which
builds much of their image on issues such as integrity and privacy, and that
image is what got me to choose them over other options which were slightly(!)
more expensive. So, all the sudden you have a company that gets a lot of
appreciation from the public, and it's not like they are spending more money
on their infrastructure just because they do everything they can to avoid
tapping their customers' traffic.

This seems like a no-brainer decision, which is why I find it hard to
understand why it's not like this everywhere.

~~~
pc86
> _They would probably loose many current and potential customers by having
> that stamp, even among customers that do not illegally download any movies
> at all._

I think you are grossly overestimating the amount of thought the general
public puts into which ISP it uses (when it has a choice).

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acd
I think the ruling is correct.

Should the electric utility also be involved, they provide electricity which
is used for piracy. How about the makers of the CPU, the motherboard maker,
the storage vendors?

Should the builders of roads be responsible for people speeding on it, how
about car makers making cars that go above the speed limit should they be
responsible?

As an individual I do have a moral right to pay for the digital media I
consume so that new media will be produced and other people will not have to
pay for my consumption.

~~~
samuirai
Funny that you mention "storage vendors". In Germany we have to pay a fee as
compensation on storage like USB sticks, because it is potentially used to
store copyright material. It's outrageous.

[http://www.geek.com/news/germany-increases-usb-flash-
drive-t...](http://www.geek.com/news/germany-increases-usb-flash-drive-tax-by-
over-2000-percent-1494587/)

~~~
tomp
I actually love this tax. It makes it morally, and possibly also legaly,
excusable to share/pirate media.

~~~
ulber
Finland had a similar tax before. At least here the purpose of the tax was to
offset the loss of income incurred from (perfectly legal) private copying
(i.e. making copies for yourself or your close friends). In this sense our tax
did not excuse piracy.

On the other hand one might not agree to offsetting costs from legal copying
and use the tax as an excuse for piracy anyway.

~~~
tomp
Well, if the copying is legal, then noone deserves to be compesated for it,
obviously.

Furthermore, I don't even agree with offsetting costs from _illegal_ copying
(since there are no provable costs), hence my moral interpretation of the tax.

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DodgyEggplant
Notably, copyrights owners still didn't solve the "not available in your
country" issue. A lot of people WANT to pay, but can't, since there is no
legal option to pay for the content in their country

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
It's worse than that.

Look at Netflix, even if you pay, you can't be sure what content you get.

Or you can watch a couple seasons only, or until some agreement expires.

The media execs are crazy.

~~~
morgante
I find it especially annoying how Netflix changes in each country. So I can
start watching a show but can't continue it once I get to another country.

We need to abolish the insane notion of national boundaries for informational
goods.

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gizi
Regardless of the law suit, I do not like the DNS system a bit. It is
conceptually just a table that associates names and IP addresses:

name1 ipaddress1, name1 ipaddress2, name2 ipaddress3, name3 ipaddress1 ...

Nobody should have the right to manipulate or to censor that table. It should
be entirely decentralized, just like the table storing the onion addresses on
the tor network. So, if it helps getting rid of the existing DNS system, I am
in favour of blocking the DNS entry for the pirate bay. I want to encourage
them to destroy that system by thoroughly discrediting it. I don't want to
block just one entry. I want to block all of them.

