Re: Re: Lay judge co-owns patents with creator of uTorrent
"Umm, no, they're objecting to his being employed by one of the parties in the case"
Yes, but why are IFPI complaining about the lay judge being biased to their advantage? That's the question. The motives they present need not necessarily be the real motives.
I can identify three possible reasons:
1) they want a clear precedent and the discussions following the verdict to focus on the matter at hand so that they can also use that to put pressure on other sites
2) they realize the defendants will do it anyway, so if they do it first they come out looking better
3) they are afraid of this lay judge's technical knowledge, his background on the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) where students often have a more relaxed view on the whole file sharing issue, or by his relationship to the uTorrent author.
If he understood what the login data represented and that he was not supposed to have access, then I don't see why he should go free of charges.
For example, we had a scandal here in Sweden where one party used a leaked login to access the other parties plans on how to get elected. Personally I think one shouldn't be allowed to use login credentials that you are not supposed to have access to. It's like dressing up like a cop and misusing the authority that gives you. Just because you (or anyone) can do this doesn't mean you should be allowed to.
The key question I think is whether you realize that you are not allowed to use the login data.
Lay judge co-owns patents with creator of uTorrent
I just read some new info about this lay judge. Apparently he co-owns a patent "Peer-to-Peer Streaming of Media Content" with his work collegue at Spotify Ludvig Strigeus who is the one who developed the famous bittorrent client µTorrent.
Marcin de Kaminski writes in an article (google translation) that earlier the plaintiff's argument was that it is beneficial for judges to actively educate themselves by being part of for example the Swedish Copyright Association. Now, on the other hand, they seem to be afraid of this lay judge having relevant technical knowledge. Maybe only some knowledge from certain parties is good...
So IFPI spent years corrupting the Swedish legal system and then asked for this lay judge to be removed from the case themselves?
Sorry, but that doesn't make much sense.
I don't know why it took that long to prepare the case either, but I think it would be more reasonable to blame the prosecutor. I'm not sure if the fact that the criminal and civil charges were tried at the same time delayed the civil case somehow.
He is a lay judge and not a "real" judge. Think of it as a jury member with a bit more influence. Surely you aren't disqualified to serve as a juror in your country only on the grounds of having a normal day job?
In the earlier trial the problem was that the main judge had a side occupation which he failed to inform the parties of in advance. Such side occupations is something which I can agree with you could be problematic in certain cases. I haven't read anything that indicates that it is very common though, so I wouldn't draw any general conclusions from that isolated case.
Lay judges and the real judges have an equal say and they serve as representatives for the people, just like jurors do. In Sweden we have three levels in our court system. In the lowest court the lay judges are in majority, in the middle court the professional judges are in majority and in the highest court there are only professional judges.
The problem with bias I think is that the people involved ask themselves whether they are partial or not, but do not really evaluate whether they also appear to be impartial from the point of view of the public and the parties involved. Just being impartial is not enough. People also needs to believe that you are.
Peter Sunde has written a followup on his blog where he seems to have changed his mind slightly after IFPI's actions and having read the comments to the previous post. The title of the post summarizes the dilemma well: "Bias or tech"?.
I think it's important to highlight that this is handled the correct way this time around: the parties are presented with relevant facts ahead of the trial in order to let them respond to it. IFPI has already demanded that this lay judge is removed. Maybe they did so because they realized that the TPB side would do it anyway and doing it first would make them look better (or less bad).
It's too bad that this lay judge probably will be removed though (but I do agree it's natural considering his employee). I have met him a couple of times and he is a really smart guy with a Master of Engineering degree in computer science currently studying for a doctor's degree (game theory if I remember correctly). His team of programmers came third in the IOPC - International Online Programming Contest 2007 and won another worldwide programming competition the same year.
The main focus is the law of course, but still - his technical knowledge would have been useful. Personally, I believe that he is impartial (based on having met him and listening to a radio interview with him about this case), but that is not enough - a lay judge also needs to appear unbiased to the general public. I would guess that TPB is worse off without him though.
I would think such games would inspire people to want to learn to play real instruments, though.
Exactly. The games are no replacement for really learning to play an instrument, but if the games make kids twice as lazy but ten times more interested in music - then there might be five times as many diligent kids who want to learn to play the real instrument.
If you look at student's political opinions in Germany it's clear that the party has a strong foothold there: apparently 38.8% support them and the week before that number was 48%.
"It's also the name of a more or less flat layer of sand or earth or even a type of clouds."
Yep, it's exactly the same in swedish. But you could still register "sandbank.se" or "molnbank.se" (cloud) since the regulator (PTS) clearly said that compound words that don't cause confusion are not affected by this decision.
Why doesn't anyone bother to check the facts. The real story here seems to be that of an awkard domain name approval procedure - not that lots of "bank" domains are forbidden - they aren't.
It's interesting to see how many of those who comment here seem to be more interesting in ranting than in the actual facts...
I have already pointed out that the problem here is merely that of an awkward screen procedure for the registrar. There is no general prohibition of "bank" in domain names for others than financial institutions.
Compare it to trademarks. They do this in order to avoid confusion, not in order to silence anyone. And it's quite clear that many semantically different domain names containing "bank" will be allowed - contrary to what has been stated here and there.
One can of course take issue with the approval procedure, but while that is of course important for the registrar it doesn't seem that big a deal for the rest of us. And the .SE foundation has high requirements to be transparent about their internal procedures.
That's not how I read it. What the regulator says is that the domain registrar needs to flag all domain names containing "bank" for manual approval in order to guarantee that they are in accordance with the bank laws. Now if someone wants to register the geographical name "Banka" or "bloodbank" there is no confusion and I cannot see why this would not get approved. If you want to register "bankwithlowestrates.se" you may need to go through some kind of screening first.
And actually if you read the document that Fältström refers to it's quite clear that the regular makes a less strict interpretation. In one place it says that "bank" in the meaning "storage" (as in "bloodbank" I guess) is to be accepted. In another place it says that compound words containing "bank" and cannot lead to misunderstandings need not be approved by the third party that the registrar will otherwise consult about what bank domain names are ok.
So except that they didn't mention personal names and geographical places (or other different semantics of the word) I cannot see any big problem with this. From a practical point of view of the registrar it seems easier to test these cases after the registration has been done though - like is done in many other cases.
All this said, I'd like to point out that Fältström is normally right and as one of the Swedish government's advisors on IT issues it's interesting to follow what he has to say. Not the least since he is very critical of the bad way data retention is about to be implemented, and the other day he also questioned the court order that told an ISP to block access to the Pirate Bay.
With an advisor like him it's difficult to understand how the government can make so many mistakes, but maybe they don't listen enough.
That's not how I read it. What the regulator says is that the domain registrar needs to flag all domain names containing "bank" for manual approval in order to guarantee that they are in accordance with the bank laws. Now if someone wants to register the geographical name "Banka" or "bloodbank" there is no confusion and I cannot see why this would not get approved. If you want to register "bankwithlowestrates.se" you may need to go through some kind of screening first.
And actually if you read the document that Fältström refers to it's quite clear that the regular makes a less strict interpretation. In one place it says that "bank" in the meaning "storage" (as in "bloodbank" I guess) is to be accepted. In another place it says that compound words containing "bank" and cannot lead to misunderstandings need not be approved by the third party that the registrar will otherwise consult about what bank domain names are ok.
So except that they didn't mention personal names and geographical places (or other different semantics of the word) I cannot see any big problem with this. From a practical point of view of the registrar it seems easier to test these cases after the registration has been done though - like is done in many other cases.
All this said, I'd like to point out that Fältström is normally right and as one of the Swedish government's advisors on IT issues it's interesting to follow what he has to say. Not the least since he is very critical of the bad way data retention is about to be implemented, and the other day he also questioned the court order that told an ISP to block access to the Pirate Bay.
With an advisor like him it's difficult to understand how the government can make so many mistakes, but maybe they don't listen enough.
Court only allowed to consider the material presented by the parties
I have discussed the verdict with a Swedish blogger who has a law degree. He told me that the court in civil cases of this type is not even allowed to actively collect more material (eg. by seeking up experts and asking for clarifications) than that provided by the parties involved. It's up to the two parties to present the material that they find is relevant and then the court makes a decision based on that.
This means that even if the court had doubts regarding whether it is possible for an ISP to block specific works it's not up to the court to investigate this further but rather for the affected parties to bring this up, which the ISP clearly failed to do in this case.
Of course one can still argue that the court must have been quite ignorant since this almost seems like common knowledge, but in any case it's seems the fault of this strange decision is mostly to be blamed on the ISP.
Re: Re: The ISP is partly to blame for the poor decision
I never said that the decision is fully due to a lame defense by the ISP. From a practical point of view, if the ISP had only informed the court that blocking only certain works is not possible then the court would have been forced to take the blocking of the whole site into consideration which very likely could have changed the outcome.
In terms of responsability however I don't think the court goes without blame. Actually I fully agree to what Hulser said above: "One [verdict] means the court is dangerously oppressive. The other means it's dangerously ignorant."
In any case this sure has stirred a lot of healthy debate. I think many are still in shock that this can happen in our country. Not the least after all the public debate about net neutrality and the principle of "mere conduit" etc.
Re: Re: The ISP is partly to blame for the poor decision
Well, maybe we're both right ;)
My source is the court protocol itself where it clearly says what I said. Since it's not possible for an ISP to block certain works the implication is of course that the ISP is forced to shut down all access. So if you're talking about the implication then TechDirt and CNet are correct, if you're talking about the court's words and what it actually ordered then I am correct.
Reading through the decision I actually just found an interesting thing: apparently both the record companies and the movie companies demanded that the ISP is ordered not to "assist making available" the copyrighted works in their catalogs or those relevant to the case. However, the court's order forbids the ISP to "make available" the works. Notice the absence of the word "assist" in the latter case.
The mere notion that an ISP makes copyrighted works available by providing network access seems really strange. Even more so when these words come from a Swedish low court.
It's important to note that the court only ordered the ISP to block the works mentioned on the lists that the movie and record companies provided (100-200 copyrighted works). It's of course not possible for an ISP to block only certain works so they have to block traffic to the whole site, but it's quite possible that the court didn't realize this and the ISP, very surprisingly I must say, failed to inform them of this fact. At least there is no mention of this in the court protocol.
If the court would have known it would probably have needed to weigh different interests against each other much more carefully, and I think that it's likely that the outcome in that case would have been different. So to a large degree this decision is due to the - I don't hesitate to say - lame defense of the ISP.
By the way, the court phrased the decision in terms of assisting the infringements done by the users of the Pirate Bay, which I guess is a way to try to get around this long chain of A assists B who assists C and so on.
On page 10 it says that when Sweden implemented the EU directive 2001/29/EG ("infosoc directive") it was found that Swedish law corresponded to the demands of the directive regarding injunctions targeted at third-parties. The government also wrote that for assistance of a crime (whether intentional or not) just providing internet access is not enough to make an injunction possible. Providing server space and knowing that is used for infringing content is mentioned as an example of when an injunction is possible. These examples cannot be found in the actual law text, but in Sweden, unlike some other countries, the courts are obliged to take these texts created during the preparation of the law into consideration as well in order to interpret the intent of the legislator.
Two pages later the court finds no reason to dispute the information given by the ISP according to which they don't provide any server space in this case. Then there is a paragraph explaining that it's likely that the ISP is aware of both the Pirate Bay verdict and the fact that rights holders earlier this year thought that the ISP assisted the infringement.
Then the court writes: "These circumstances taken together are such that Black Internet, through it's providing of internet access to the file sharing service The Pirate Bay objectively speaking [whether intentional or not] can be found assisting the copyright infringements that users of the site and possibly others commit." Then it goes on to say that an injunction is then possible.
It's very hard to understand how they reached this conclusion. Maybe the court meant to imply that the ISP had intent and failed to notice the law preparation text where it clearly says that this shouldn't matter in the case where just internet access is provided (as opposed to server space). Otherwise it seems downright contradictory.
Furthermore, the injunction is not target at the Pirate Bay site as a whole but just the copyrighted works explicitly listed by the movie and record companies. So the ISP is not ordered to cut-off access completely, but just block certain works. Now this is of course not possible so they have to turn off all access. It could be due to the fact that the ISP didn't bother to explain this fact (which is of course readily apparent to any person with minimal technical knowledge) properly that the court didn't take this into consideration when balancing the different interests against each other. On the whole, this ISP hasn't seem very interested in fighting this case.
On the post: Pirate Bay Appeal Lay Judge Employed By Spotify?
Re: Re: Lay judge co-owns patents with creator of uTorrent
Yes, but why are IFPI complaining about the lay judge being biased to their advantage? That's the question. The motives they present need not necessarily be the real motives.
I can identify three possible reasons:
1) they want a clear precedent and the discussions following the verdict to focus on the matter at hand so that they can also use that to put pressure on other sites
2) they realize the defendants will do it anyway, so if they do it first they come out looking better
3) they are afraid of this lay judge's technical knowledge, his background on the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) where students often have a more relaxed view on the whole file sharing issue, or by his relationship to the uTorrent author.
On the post: Intelligence Analyst Charged With Hacking For Logging Into An Account Sent To Him Via Email
For example, we had a scandal here in Sweden where one party used a leaked login to access the other parties plans on how to get elected. Personally I think one shouldn't be allowed to use login credentials that you are not supposed to have access to. It's like dressing up like a cop and misusing the authority that gives you. Just because you (or anyone) can do this doesn't mean you should be allowed to.
The key question I think is whether you realize that you are not allowed to use the login data.
On the post: Pirate Bay Appeal Lay Judge Employed By Spotify?
Lay judge co-owns patents with creator of uTorrent
Marcin de Kaminski writes in an article (google translation) that earlier the plaintiff's argument was that it is beneficial for judges to actively educate themselves by being part of for example the Swedish Copyright Association. Now, on the other hand, they seem to be afraid of this lay judge having relevant technical knowledge. Maybe only some knowledge from certain parties is good...
On the post: Pirate Bay Appeal Lay Judge Employed By Spotify?
Re: Wow
Sorry, but that doesn't make much sense.
I don't know why it took that long to prepare the case either, but I think it would be more reasonable to blame the prosecutor. I'm not sure if the fact that the criminal and civil charges were tried at the same time delayed the civil case somehow.
On the post: Pirate Bay Appeal Lay Judge Employed By Spotify?
Re: Re:
In the earlier trial the problem was that the main judge had a side occupation which he failed to inform the parties of in advance. Such side occupations is something which I can agree with you could be problematic in certain cases. I haven't read anything that indicates that it is very common though, so I wouldn't draw any general conclusions from that isolated case.
Lay judges and the real judges have an equal say and they serve as representatives for the people, just like jurors do. In Sweden we have three levels in our court system. In the lowest court the lay judges are in majority, in the middle court the professional judges are in majority and in the highest court there are only professional judges.
The problem with bias I think is that the people involved ask themselves whether they are partial or not, but do not really evaluate whether they also appear to be impartial from the point of view of the public and the parties involved. Just being impartial is not enough. People also needs to believe that you are.
On the post: Pirate Bay Appeal Lay Judge Employed By Spotify?
On the post: Pirate Bay Appeal Lay Judge Employed By Spotify?
It's too bad that this lay judge probably will be removed though (but I do agree it's natural considering his employee). I have met him a couple of times and he is a really smart guy with a Master of Engineering degree in computer science currently studying for a doctor's degree (game theory if I remember correctly). His team of programmers came third in the IOPC - International Online Programming Contest 2007 and won another worldwide programming competition the same year.
The main focus is the law of course, but still - his technical knowledge would have been useful. Personally, I believe that he is impartial (based on having met him and listening to a radio interview with him about this case), but that is not enough - a lay judge also needs to appear unbiased to the general public. I would guess that TPB is worse off without him though.
On the post: Elderly Classic Rock Musicians Don't Like Music Video Games
Re: Well....
Exactly. The games are no replacement for really learning to play an instrument, but if the games make kids twice as lazy but ten times more interested in music - then there might be five times as many diligent kids who want to learn to play the real instrument.
I'd say that's a good thing.
On the post: Could The Pirate Party Become A Legitimate Political Force?
Strong support for PP among german students
On the post: Swedish Regulators Say The Word 'bank' Not Allowed In Any Domain Names... Except If You're A Bank
Re: Funny...
Yep, it's exactly the same in swedish. But you could still register "sandbank.se" or "molnbank.se" (cloud) since the regulator (PTS) clearly said that compound words that don't cause confusion are not affected by this decision.
Why doesn't anyone bother to check the facts. The real story here seems to be that of an awkard domain name approval procedure - not that lots of "bank" domains are forbidden - they aren't.
On the post: Swedish Regulators Say The Word 'bank' Not Allowed In Any Domain Names... Except If You're A Bank
I have already pointed out that the problem here is merely that of an awkward screen procedure for the registrar. There is no general prohibition of "bank" in domain names for others than financial institutions.
On the post: Swedish Regulators Say The Word 'bank' Not Allowed In Any Domain Names... Except If You're A Bank
Re: Blood banks?
Btw. I'm sorry about the double post above. Maybe a moderator can remove one of the posts.
On the post: Swedish Regulators Say The Word 'bank' Not Allowed In Any Domain Names... Except If You're A Bank
Re:
One can of course take issue with the approval procedure, but while that is of course important for the registrar it doesn't seem that big a deal for the rest of us. And the .SE foundation has high requirements to be transparent about their internal procedures.
On the post: Swedish Regulators Say The Word 'bank' Not Allowed In Any Domain Names... Except If You're A Bank
Not entirely correct
And actually if you read the document that Fältström refers to it's quite clear that the regular makes a less strict interpretation. In one place it says that "bank" in the meaning "storage" (as in "bloodbank" I guess) is to be accepted. In another place it says that compound words containing "bank" and cannot lead to misunderstandings need not be approved by the third party that the registrar will otherwise consult about what bank domain names are ok.
So except that they didn't mention personal names and geographical places (or other different semantics of the word) I cannot see any big problem with this. From a practical point of view of the registrar it seems easier to test these cases after the registration has been done though - like is done in many other cases.
All this said, I'd like to point out that Fältström is normally right and as one of the Swedish government's advisors on IT issues it's interesting to follow what he has to say. Not the least since he is very critical of the bad way data retention is about to be implemented, and the other day he also questioned the court order that told an ISP to block access to the Pirate Bay.
With an advisor like him it's difficult to understand how the government can make so many mistakes, but maybe they don't listen enough.
On the post: Swedish Regulators Say The Word 'bank' Not Allowed In Any Domain Names... Except If You're A Bank
Not entirely correct
And actually if you read the document that Fältström refers to it's quite clear that the regular makes a less strict interpretation. In one place it says that "bank" in the meaning "storage" (as in "bloodbank" I guess) is to be accepted. In another place it says that compound words containing "bank" and cannot lead to misunderstandings need not be approved by the third party that the registrar will otherwise consult about what bank domain names are ok.
So except that they didn't mention personal names and geographical places (or other different semantics of the word) I cannot see any big problem with this. From a practical point of view of the registrar it seems easier to test these cases after the registration has been done though - like is done in many other cases.
All this said, I'd like to point out that Fältström is normally right and as one of the Swedish government's advisors on IT issues it's interesting to follow what he has to say. Not the least since he is very critical of the bad way data retention is about to be implemented, and the other day he also questioned the court order that told an ISP to block access to the Pirate Bay.
With an advisor like him it's difficult to understand how the government can make so many mistakes, but maybe they don't listen enough.
On the post: Is Assisting With Assisting With Assisting With Potential Copyright Infringement Illegal?
Court only allowed to consider the material presented by the parties
This means that even if the court had doubts regarding whether it is possible for an ISP to block specific works it's not up to the court to investigate this further but rather for the affected parties to bring this up, which the ISP clearly failed to do in this case.
Of course one can still argue that the court must have been quite ignorant since this almost seems like common knowledge, but in any case it's seems the fault of this strange decision is mostly to be blamed on the ISP.
On the post: Is Assisting With Assisting With Assisting With Potential Copyright Infringement Illegal?
Re: Re: The ISP is partly to blame for the poor decision
In terms of responsability however I don't think the court goes without blame. Actually I fully agree to what Hulser said above: "One [verdict] means the court is dangerously oppressive. The other means it's dangerously ignorant."
In any case this sure has stirred a lot of healthy debate. I think many are still in shock that this can happen in our country. Not the least after all the public debate about net neutrality and the principle of "mere conduit" etc.
On the post: Is Assisting With Assisting With Assisting With Potential Copyright Infringement Illegal?
Re: Re: The ISP is partly to blame for the poor decision
My source is the court protocol itself where it clearly says what I said. Since it's not possible for an ISP to block certain works the implication is of course that the ISP is forced to shut down all access. So if you're talking about the implication then TechDirt and CNet are correct, if you're talking about the court's words and what it actually ordered then I am correct.
Reading through the decision I actually just found an interesting thing: apparently both the record companies and the movie companies demanded that the ISP is ordered not to "assist making available" the copyrighted works in their catalogs or those relevant to the case. However, the court's order forbids the ISP to "make available" the works. Notice the absence of the word "assist" in the latter case.
The mere notion that an ISP makes copyrighted works available by providing network access seems really strange. Even more so when these words come from a Swedish low court.
On the post: Is Assisting With Assisting With Assisting With Potential Copyright Infringement Illegal?
The ISP is partly to blame for the poor decision
If the court would have known it would probably have needed to weigh different interests against each other much more carefully, and I think that it's likely that the outcome in that case would have been different. So to a large degree this decision is due to the - I don't hesitate to say - lame defense of the ISP.
By the way, the court phrased the decision in terms of assisting the infringements done by the users of the Pirate Bay, which I guess is a way to try to get around this long chain of A assists B who assists C and so on.
On the post: Swedish Court Get The Pirate Bay Taken Down
Analysis of the court decision
On page 10 it says that when Sweden implemented the EU directive 2001/29/EG ("infosoc directive") it was found that Swedish law corresponded to the demands of the directive regarding injunctions targeted at third-parties. The government also wrote that for assistance of a crime (whether intentional or not) just providing internet access is not enough to make an injunction possible. Providing server space and knowing that is used for infringing content is mentioned as an example of when an injunction is possible. These examples cannot be found in the actual law text, but in Sweden, unlike some other countries, the courts are obliged to take these texts created during the preparation of the law into consideration as well in order to interpret the intent of the legislator.
Two pages later the court finds no reason to dispute the information given by the ISP according to which they don't provide any server space in this case. Then there is a paragraph explaining that it's likely that the ISP is aware of both the Pirate Bay verdict and the fact that rights holders earlier this year thought that the ISP assisted the infringement.
Then the court writes: "These circumstances taken together are such that Black Internet, through it's providing of internet access to the file sharing service The Pirate Bay objectively speaking [whether intentional or not] can be found assisting the copyright infringements that users of the site and possibly others commit." Then it goes on to say that an injunction is then possible.
It's very hard to understand how they reached this conclusion. Maybe the court meant to imply that the ISP had intent and failed to notice the law preparation text where it clearly says that this shouldn't matter in the case where just internet access is provided (as opposed to server space). Otherwise it seems downright contradictory.
Furthermore, the injunction is not target at the Pirate Bay site as a whole but just the copyrighted works explicitly listed by the movie and record companies. So the ISP is not ordered to cut-off access completely, but just block certain works. Now this is of course not possible so they have to turn off all access. It could be due to the fact that the ISP didn't bother to explain this fact (which is of course readily apparent to any person with minimal technical knowledge) properly that the court didn't take this into consideration when balancing the different interests against each other. On the whole, this ISP hasn't seem very interested in fighting this case.
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