Swedish Newspaper Has Tremendous Success 'Beta Testing' Article On The Pirate Bay

from the good-for-them dept

Mon, Feb 16th 2009 10:02am — Mike Masnick

Last week, in talking about how the Wall Street Journal had laid off its librarians, I suggested that newspapers could start trying a more "open research" system where they ask their community to help them with the research. To be honest, I was cheating a bit in writing that -- as I already knew of a newspaper testing exactly that concept. However, I wanted to see the responses from people before pointing that example out. And, of course, I got some angry responses (especially from librarians, actually). I tried to make it clear that I know librarians are quite good at what they do, and aren't easily "replaced" by crowdsourced research -- but that if you are getting rid of librarians, why not use a more open approach to getting research done?

So... on to the experiment where that's actually happening. Swedish news organization Sydsvenskan was working on a feature piece for this past weekend all about what's happening to journalism -- from the economics to the technology to the culture. But, last week, a few days before the article was set to run, the folks writing it uploaded a "beta" draft version to The Pirate Bay and asked anyone who wanted to look at it, to check it out. And check it out they did. They provided a bunch of additional info, including some corrections -- and ideas for future pieces. In other words, it was a huge success in using the community to help do the research, even on such a controversial topic. The writers admitted that some got upset at the experiment (especially the idea that they might be "legitimizing" The Pirate Bay on the eve of the trial), but that, as an experiment, the project seemed quite worthwhile.

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Filed Under: beta test, news, newspaper, research, sweden
Companies: sydsvenskan, the pirate bay

19 Comments

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Jeff, 16 Feb 2009 @ 10:39am

Brilliant!
And so, file-sharing has it's purposes, and I hope the TPB wins the trial.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2009 @ 10:46am

File sharing will ALWAYS have a purpose, regardless of what RIAA, MPAA, and all the rest have to say.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2009 @ 10:51am

The writers admitted that some got upset at the experiment (especially the idea that they might be "legitimizing" The Pirate Bay on the eve of the trial)

How dare they!
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slash b slash, 16 Feb 2009 @ 11:02am

Crowdsourcing is awesome. It brings rapists and animal abusers to justice all the time.
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CrimGrad, 16 Feb 2009 @ 11:13am

Pirated Newspapers
Like it or not, file sharing will keep happening. And a war on file sharing will be about as successful as the war on terror has been.

** This is not a slam against the military people over there, I'm all about supporting the Canadian - and all other - troops doing their jobs for us so we can stay home and be safe.
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Amen, 16 Feb 2009 @ 11:26am

Re: Pirated Newspapers
or the War on Drugs
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Gyffes, 16 Feb 2009 @ 11:31am

War on ___ was a failure
It's not a slam on anyone's troops to face the facts:

We went into Afghanistan (we should've) but we left too early, therefore...

1) Opium crops hit record highs in subsequent years as a devastated nation sought SOME income;

We went into Iraq (we shouldn't've) and removed the stable (if insane and evil) government in place, therefore...

2) Worldwide terrorist activities increased (source: our own state department);

We spent all our money on these wars and so had to reduce funds to state and local municipalities for vital social services, therefore...

3) More people dropped below the poverty line, even though the Bush Administration kept dropping the line.

We are simultaneously losing the Wars on Terror, Drugs and Poverty! It's the Trifecta From Hell!

Let's start a buncha new Wars we can fail out -- oooh, let's choose something vital to emerging from a depression: filesharing!

Don't roll your eyes, it might happen, even under a new Administration.
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derek shasteen, 16 Feb 2009 @ 12:00pm

TPB
FREEDOM OF SPEECH/INFORMATION/DATA
F*CK OFF NAZI PUNKS!!!!
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TW Burger, 16 Feb 2009 @ 12:28pm

File Sharing is Important
It is important to allow free flow of information. I do not believe this gives anyone the right to steal and distribute the intellectual property developed by others, but I fear shutting down file sharing based on its abusive, negative use is just an excuse used by the power hungry to limit information and ideas to the world public.

I would rather have some abuse of file sharing and freedom of information than no file sharing at all. Sydsvenskan's experiment is a perfect example of what file sharing should be used for.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2009 @ 12:40pm

Re: War on ___ was a failure
We went into Afghanistan (we should've) but we left too early...

Yeah, like some people say we should have never left Vietnam. Except, we're still in Afghanistan.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2009 @ 1:13pm

am i the only one who thinks this was a some sort of PR stunt for TPB (don't get me wrong i love that site) but that cant be a coincidence.
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Mike (profile), 16 Feb 2009 @ 1:38pm

Re:
am i the only one who thinks this was a some sort of PR stunt for TPB (don't get me wrong i love that site) but that cant be a coincidence.

Why would a newspaper want to do a PR stunt for TPB?

I don't think it's a *coincidence* but that doesn't mean it was a publicity stunt. I'm sure all the news about TPB got folks at this newspaper to think about TPB and how it might be useful.
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Dan, 16 Feb 2009 @ 1:42pm

As a subscriber to Sydsvenskans paper I have read most of what has been written about their move (culture section of the paper) in the last week. There's people who think what they did was very innovative and cool and others who just think it was a populist move to ride media-craze-Pirate-Bay-wave. My personal opinion was that there was genuine interest from them to try this out but it would be naive to not think that they wanted to hit said wave...their running a business after all.
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Norm, 16 Feb 2009 @ 1:55pm

Value of Pirate Bay and file sharing
I don't think that the question of torrents and file sharing should be in question. The medium is brilliant really. Gaming updates which are often HUGE are delivered that way.

Of course "The PIRATE Bay" gives away it's non-hidden agenda in the title.
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Azrael, 17 Feb 2009 @ 1:07am

Re: Pirated Newspapers
Sure, and nothing makes you safer than the killing of unarmed women and babies.
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Claes, 17 Feb 2009 @ 2:44am

It was not just a PR stunt for TPB (why would a major newspaper do that?). I know that some of these journalists are quite sceptical of the pirate movement in Sweden, but they still realize when the copyright lobby tries to push it too far with their absurd measures to stop piracy.

This newspaper has the best and most unprejudiced coverage of IP issues in Sweden. In fact, I would say that it's practically the only newspaper which has something to add to the discussion that you cannot already find in the blogosphere.

Btw. for those who like to follow the Pirate Bay trial one of Sweden's most famous bloggers Oscar Swartz covers it on behalf of Wired:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/pirate-bay-tria.html
(in time there will probably be more posts in that series)
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Dan, 17 Feb 2009 @ 3:29am

!
Not entirely related to the article here but too good to not mention.

The prosecutor started day 2 by announcing that he is dropping half of the charges. Most likely because he spent all night googling DHT and since then realised that they can't prove with the material at hand that a specific download actually passed TPB's tracker.
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Claes, 17 Feb 2009 @ 5:29am

Prosecutor dropping half the charges
Here's some coverage by Swedish Radio (SR) of what Dan mentioned above (in English). It's very surprising since the prosecutor spent all day yesterday listing different cases of specific copyright infringement which the Pirate Bay persons were alleged of aiding. Either dropping these charges was the plan from the beginning in order to convey a darker image of the activity of the site, or the prosecutor hasn't used his three years of preparation for this trial very well.

Another interesting thing is that the prosecutor upon a question from a lawyer declared (although he tried his best to avoid the question) that he could not provide copies of the actual torrent files refered to in the case (presented using text/screenshots in the trial). The contents of these files could have revealed whether or not they referred to multiple trackers or just the Pirate Bay tracker. This seems very strange to me - wouldn't one need to save all evidence? One has to wonder whether IFPI & co. / the prosecutor are simply sloppy or if there is a reason why they don't want to provide such information.

Btw. a Swedish blogger collected references to mentions of the trial in international media, see: http://scabernestor.blogg.se/2009/february/and-the-world-keeps-reporting-about-the-pirat.html.
.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 7:36am

Re: Re: Pirated Newspapers
"Sure, and nothing makes you safer than the killing of unarmed women and babies."

Keeps them from breeding.
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