Has The Pirate Bay Lost Its Appeal... Or Should We Not Trust The NY Times?

from the fact-checking? dept

Fri, Jun 12th 2009 6:25pm — Mike Masnick

Someone just alerted me to a NY Times story claiming that the guys behind The Pirate Bay have lost their appeal of the verdict that found them guilty. That would be big news (and it may very well happen). However, I can't find anything else to support it. The NY Times credits the Hollywood Reporter, whose only recent article I can find on the subject merely claims that the TPB guys failed to get the case thrown out. But digging deeper, the only information I can find is that the District Court, which made the original ruling has told the Appeals Court that there was no bias. That's not surprising -- of course the District Court is going to say it wasn't biased and that its judge wasn't biased. But I haven't seen anything that says the Appeals Court has ruled one way or the other on the issue. It looks like the reporters at The Hollywood Reporter and the NY Times may have gotten confused about the difference between the District Court and the Appeals Court -- and assumed that because the District Court claimed the judge wasn't biased, the Appeals Court had ruled that way. Now, it may well come to pass that the Appeals Court does rule that way, but I haven't seen any reports of that yet, and given how news has spread about this case, you would think such reports would have been out there.

But, you know, it's the professional reporters at the NY Times who fact check stuff. We bloggers just make up innuendo and rumor. Surely, they couldn't have gotten the story wrong, right?

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Filed Under: fact checking
Companies: ny times, the pirate bay

40 Comments

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CleverName, 12 Jun 2009 @ 6:32pm

or, maybe they just made it all up
not like that has ever happened before
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 6:32pm

Someone has to have the story first, and yes, it would be big news if the one appeal used is thrown out.
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- Mike Masnick (profile), 12 Jun 2009 @ 7:05pm
  
  Re:
  Someone has to have the story first, and yes, it would be big news if the one appeal used is thrown out.
  
  Yes, someone has to have the story first, but others would have it soon after. No one else seems to be mentioning it -- including the TPB folks.
  
  Furthermore, the NYT piece credits the THR piece, but that article (from yesterday morning) does not appear to be accurate either.
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  - stat_insig (profile), 13 Jun 2009 @ 12:23pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Well... everybody can make mistakes. I still rely on major newspapers and websites to provide me with facts. Blogs play a complimentary role by providing some facts (ignored by major houses), but I wouldn't rely on that.
    
    Major News Providers: 90% fact (good accuracy) + 10% commentary (except in the case of FOX where it is 25:75).
    Blogs: 5% fact (fair accuracy) + 95% commentary.
    
    Sometime commentaries posted on the major news websites are confused for facts and that is quite disturbing!! (Eg: http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/an-innocent-abroad/?scp=1&sq=foxy%20knoxy&st=cse ).
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dieselm, 12 Jun 2009 @ 6:35pm

attribution to the hollywood reporter..
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i2976b9e446efa135e830334d65e3 cca5
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- Mike Masnick (profile), 12 Jun 2009 @ 6:39pm
  
  Re:
  Yes, I already linked to that piece in the story. But I believe they got it wrong. They seem to be saying that the court ruled that way, but no one else is saying that. All of the stories have said only that the District Court said there was no bias... not the Appeals Court.
  
  I think it's a case of the supposedly "professional" reporters at the NYT and THR getting the story wrong.
  
  Perhaps there's new info on the story, but I'm not seeing ANYTHING out of any Swedish sources.
  
  It feels like a big game of "telephone" where THR misread the story from Monday in Sweden and then the NYT misread the THR story.
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Anonymous Poster, 12 Jun 2009 @ 6:55pm

This is why I wait for TorrentFreak to report this sort of thing. They've had the best coverage of the TPB trial.
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- ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 12 Jun 2009 @ 6:58pm
  
  Re:
  Meh, I look at @Sophia and @Brokep. Neither has said anything about this.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 8:20pm

So Good...
See, this just shows how good the "professional reporters at the NY Times" really are. They're so good that they can actually report the news before it even happens! Now that's good!
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- Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2009 @ 8:23pm
  
  Re: So Good...
  They must have a time machine! Wow, amazing.
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M, 13 Jun 2009 @ 12:43am

You are correct NY times has not checked thier sources.
Living in Sweden I follow this very closely. The current situation is that they have said the Judge was not biased. The matter of appeals is acording to Swedish media a process that could take up to a year. My reconendation to anyone following this is to google translate www.dn.se This is Swedens largest respected newpaper.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Jun 2009 @ 4:30am

RE: You are correct NY times has not checked thier sources
Or there's thelocal.se. Not sure how respected they would be, but they probably do a better job than google of translation :-P

http://www.thelocal.se/piratebay/
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Peet McKimmie (profile), 13 Jun 2009 @ 4:53am

Has The Pirate Bay Lost Its Appeal... Or Should We Not Trust The NY Times?

Why do we have to choose? Can't both be true?
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- Anonymous Coward, 13 Jun 2009 @ 5:24am
  
  Re:
  Since one of Mike's goals is to discredit mainstream media (those buggy whip people), you don't get to choose both. Either they are right or they are useless, nothing in between.
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  - CleverName, 13 Jun 2009 @ 7:18am
    
    Re: Re: discredit
    How did you come to that conclusion ?
    
    and I thought MSM was doing it all by themselves.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 13 Jun 2009 @ 8:07pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Hey, looky! We've attracted an NYT troll!
    Now where's that bug spray?
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Brutus Beefcake, 13 Jun 2009 @ 6:28am

NY Times = Pravda
Worthless joke of a news org.
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Griper, 13 Jun 2009 @ 7:31am

In his defense
The writer is a fluff writer, I don't think the times takes him seriously.
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- Anonymous Coward, 13 Jun 2009 @ 8:04pm
  
  Re: In his defense
  The writer is a fluff writer, I don't think the times takes him seriously.
  
  They seem to take him seriously enough to pay for his stuff and publish it.
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Wolfy, 13 Jun 2009 @ 8:03am

Of course, there would be no attempts to help a decision to go one way by reporting it in advance...
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Charles, 13 Jun 2009 @ 8:52am

That's okay... they also said terrorists took down the trade towers also... ah ha ha
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- Anonymous Coward, 14 Jun 2009 @ 3:59pm
  
  Re:
  Terrorists did take down the twin towers. You maybe disputing the identity of those terrorists though, but whoever took down those towards are, by definition, terrorists.
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  - stat_insig (profile), 14 Jun 2009 @ 5:46pm
    
    Re: Re:
    They are also called "freedom fighters" in some societies ;)
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Noah Fence, 13 Jun 2009 @ 8:59am

Lost it's appeal?
I, personally, still find the Pirates Bay VERY appealing!
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- Jason, 13 Jun 2009 @ 10:32am
  
  Re: Lost it's appeal?
  That's what I was thinking. The writer was expressing his disenchantment.
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bob, 13 Jun 2009 @ 9:58am

The nytimes is a great paper - it fits exactly in my bird cage. It's the only use for it, though.
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ScytheNoire, 13 Jun 2009 @ 1:38pm

Bigger they are, the more they are wrong
I never trust large news groups, these big corporations, as they are often wrong, and their opinions are tainted by corporate money and corrupt political agenda's.

It's bad when a place called "The Pirate Bay" is more truthful and upstanding than a major national newspaper.
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timstevens (profile), 13 Jun 2009 @ 9:03pm

C'mon, the NY Times wrong...again?
Is this the same NY times with Krugman the foaming Bush inquisitionalist and Nobel Laureate, Dowd the permanently single, yet still hot for an old broad columnist-babe and Rich, the hate everything old white-dude curmudgeon?

To think that the NY times, which coincidentally is virtually bankrupt (lousy business plan) would get a story completely wrong.

So, if your product (news and information) is suspect, why would anyone believe their spin, er reporting?
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The Mighty Buzzard, 13 Jun 2009 @ 9:09pm

Trust the NYT?
We haven't been able to trust the New York Times since they started putting ideology ahead of the truth, many years ago. No, I'm not even talking about commentators vs. journalists; I'm talking about the decision of which news is Fit To Print.
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Hephaestus (profile), 13 Jun 2009 @ 10:54pm

Went to the pirate bay and ....
... to see what it was and had this downloaded onto my machine ....

[DEFAULT]
BASEURL=res://ieframe.dll/dnserror.htm
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.zees earch.net/go.php?track_url=aHR0cDovL2MyNi52YWxhcnkuY29tL3BjbGljay52YWxhcnk/Yz0zNzk2MTI3Ny0yYWRjLTRhM DctYTNkOC0yY2QxOGJkZTMyNjA=&keyword=jobs+in+my+area&bidvalue=0.003441&xmlprovider=valary &display_url=&action=redirected
IDList=
IconFile=http://www.zeesearch.net/favicon.ico
Ico nIndex=1
[{000214A0-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
Prop3=19,2

Anyone know what it is?
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- Anonymous Coward, 14 Jun 2009 @ 8:37am
  
  Re: Went to the pirate bay and ....
  Read about that here (in the comments section):
  
  http://thepiratebay.org/blog/155
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- Anonymous Coward, 14 Jun 2009 @ 8:37am
  
  Re: Went to the pirate bay and ....
  Anyone know what it is?
  
  Who ever is running your DNS service seems to have redirected you someplace. Check with them.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 14 Jun 2009 @ 4:04pm
    
    Re: Re: Went to the pirate bay and ....
    Or he can change his DNS server.
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Mike, 13 Jun 2009 @ 11:07pm

http://torrentfreak.com/media-misreports-on-pirate-bay-biased-judge-090613/
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Tor (profile), 15 Jun 2009 @ 6:45am

I read many english-speaking reports about it that got the facts wrong. Maybe the NY Times was fooled by one of those. It's surprising though that they don't check their facts better.

When the Appeals Court makes it decision I'm sure we will see lots of news about it.
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Pete Austin, 15 Jun 2009 @ 9:59am

NYT Still Wrong (3 Days Later)
This seems to be the accurate version: "According to the Stockholm District Court, Judge Tomas Norström was not biased and therefore that component of the Pirate Bay appeal has failed... The appeal will continue with other grounds being submitted to the Court of Appeal, however, this was always one of the strongest components of the appeal."
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25575/1239/
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- Mike Masnick (profile), 15 Jun 2009 @ 12:12pm
  
  Re: NYT Still Wrong (3 Days Later)
  This seems to be the accurate version: "According to the Stockholm District Court, Judge Tomas Norström was not biased and therefore that component of the Pirate Bay appeal has failed... The appeal will continue with other grounds being submitted to the Court of Appeal, however, this was always one of the strongest components of the appeal."
  http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25575/1239/
  
  Nope. That IT Wire report gets it wrong too. It's confusing the district court, who claims that judge wasn't biased, with the appeals court, who needs to rule on it. That part of the argument has NOT failed yet. The appeals court simply has not ruled on it.
  
  The district court gave its opinion to the appeals court, and the appeals court is still considering the matter.
  
  Saying that that part of the appeal "failed" is flat out incorrect.
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Tor (profile), 15 Jun 2009 @ 12:58pm

I read many english-speaking reports about it that got the facts wrong. Maybe the NY Times was fooled by one of those. It's surprising though that they don't check their facts better.

When the Appeals Court makes it decision I'm sure we will see lots of news about it.
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whatever, 15 Jun 2009 @ 5:09pm

it's fixed now
"This article has been revised to reflect a correction: An earlier version of this report stated that the men's appeal had been denied."
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- further, 15 Jun 2009 @ 5:12pm
  
  Re: it's fixed now
  The editor is lazy too. Even the correction notice is poor. It reads better like so:
  
  "This article has been corrected. The earlier version stated that the appeal had been denied."
  
  Fewer words. Much better.
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