"File sharing by it's very nature is almost entirely infringing / illegal material"
I think that depends very much on whether you count the number of files or the download traffic. I don't find it unlikely at all that the majority of files on TPB link to noninfringing material, but that at the same time the majority of the bittorrent traffic generated is related to infringing material.
According to wikipedia the EU database directive covers databases for which "the selection or arrangement of their contents, constitute the author's own intellectual creation". However, the Bern convention says that "selection and arrangement" requirering creativity also makes the corresponding contents copyright-protected.
Besides the differenct conjunctions ("or" vs. "and") does this mean that the USA has or ought to have some kind of database protection? - since it has signed the Bern Convention I mean.
Please try to get the facts straight and not make things up.
According to the available information Brokep doesn't get any money out of this deal. Why would the TPB guys be involved in stock fraud? (especially when they have very little money to invest)
The business model wouldn't be based on allowing ISPs access but rather (one part of it at least) to optimize the traffic in the ISPs nets in order to reduce their costs.
I think it's interesting to compare with this Torrentfreak article about an ISP intercepting torrent files and adding an additional tracker of theirs with local seeds in order to reduce the bandwidth costs due to people communicating with peers outside their network.
Convincing content providers to pay would probably be quite difficult, so I think it might be easier to get ISPs to pay for the service of minimizing their traffic with external networks. However it's hard to see how that alone would make the torrent database and bittorrent tracker service any more legitimate from a legal point of view.
"The claim is that this is to make the service even more decentralized, but it is a bit of a headscratcher."
Not at all. If one party runs both the web site and the tracker you could in principle cross-reference the hash sums in the tracker with the hash sums in the torrent files in order to examine what kind of files are being shared. If you isolate the tracker it will only see hash sums and lists of peer - no file contents, no file names and no file descriptions will be available whatsoever. The tracker then has no knowledge of what is being shared and it would (in theory at least) be harder to claim liability for those who operate it.
Here in Sweden there is a law that will force all cable operators with cables crossing the Swedish borders to give a copy of all their traffic to a secret Swedish government agency. This agency is allowed by the law to analyse and store large amounts of traffic data, and possibly also share that data with other countries. How about that?
The new IPRED law gives anyone who present a couple of screenshots and claim that some someone behind a specific IP-address infringed on their copyright the possibility to reveal the identity of that person.
Let's say I'm a ruthless company that wants to attack an anonymous blogger who is critical of my company. Wouldn't it be very convenient to be able to reveal his/her identity? How many high profile anonymous bloggers would remain anonymous if anyone can get their identity by claiming they infringed on their copyright? The evidence doesn't even have to be real. How would a court ever know if the evidence was fake. The person who's identity the court decides should be revealed has no way of defending himself, either in person or via some kind of representative so the court just get one side of the picture.
It has been the same in Sweden for a long time. As of late the largest Swedish collecting society has allowed people to use CC licenses though which is a nice development (apart from the fact that you for some reason are limited to a non-commercial CC license).
The business model seems to rely on letting seeders get a share of the savings made possible to ISPs and content providers by distributing the load and keep the load within the network of an ISP to reduce their costs.
I listened to the press conference, but have to say it was very confusing.
The law in Sweden doesn't seem to have been applied properly, since The Pirate Bay itself does not host any infringing files directly. It seems like the court still doesn't quite understand that fact.
The situation is not that clear-cut since there's a quite far-reaching secondary liability. Personally I think the court went too far when they said that linking (and also providing the tracker) was illegal in this case, but I'd rather call the court's interpretation unreasonable than wrong.
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.
2/3 of Pirate Party voters don't think file sharing is the major issue
According to the pre-election polls by the Swedish Television only 31% of the people who sympathized with the Pirate Party named file sharing as an important issue (or the most important - I'm not sure which of these that the diagram I saw represented).
So it seems like that for two thirds of the PP supporters the right to privacy, civil liberties, etc. are more important than legalizing file sharing.
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.
Yes, there is some similarity between extremely small parts of them. So what?
Give a crazy person the Bible and he'll soon start to uncover mysterious patterns and number sequences. Give two songs to music industry lawyers and they will eventually find similarities that other people can hardly see. No difference.
This business is quite similar to that of security companies. It doesn't matter how skilled the companies are. If the buyers are completely incompetent it makes more sense to spend money on marketing rather than technical R&D.
Now you switched subject. Masnick's point is that it's not communal ownership. What you say doesn't contradict that. By the way, the Pirate Party wants to keep copyright protection for commercial uses but limit the term to 5-10 years.
Speaking about software - I voted for the Pirate Party because I as a programmer wants to be able to reap the fruits of my own work. If the EU legalises software patents that will hamper the competition and the technical development and put me as a developer in a very vulnerable position where someone could sue me any time for work that I created myself. I have already come up with several ideas which I have found to be patented in other countries - some of these were pratically speaking pure applications of mathematics.
Programmers can make money in other ways than by charging money for digital copies that have artificially been made scarce through laws. You can for example provide software or software consultancy as a service.
French newspaper thinks Swedish prime minister is a pirate
The french newspaper Le Monde (incorrectly) writes: "Christian Engström gains a seat in the parliament representing the party that was founded by Fredrik Reinfeldt in 2006"
For those of you who don't know Fredrik Reinfeldt is the Swedish prime minister. I guess he will have some explaining to do next time he goes to France... ;)
IP rights are artificial state granted monopolies that transform an infinite good into a scarce one. Why would we want such monopolies? Well, it's based on the utilitarian thinking that it's ok to restrict people's freedom somewhat if a greater good for the public can be achieved. You can view it like a business deal between the public/state and special interests - "we give you these privileges even though it restricts our freedom since it gives incentives to create works that we all can benefit from".
That is pretty darn utilitarian, no?
If you read the american constitution and read between the lines you'll see that even the founding fathers realized what I wrote above - that intellectual rights/privileges are for the public good. They are not absolute natural individual rights, although some people are mislead to believe that due to years of propaganda.
Now, I'm not libertarian so I can accept copyright for what it is as long as it doesn't seriously infringe on other civil liberties and there is a balance between damages and gains. Any copyright term above 25 years I would argue has lost such a balance.
On the post: Swedish Court Get The Pirate Bay Taken Down
Re: Re: Re:
I think that depends very much on whether you count the number of files or the download traffic. I don't find it unlikely at all that the majority of files on TPB link to noninfringing material, but that at the same time the majority of the bittorrent traffic generated is related to infringing material.
On the post: National Portrait Gallery Threatens Wikimedia Developer For Downloading Public Domain Images
Database protection in the US
Besides the differenct conjunctions ("or" vs. "and") does this mean that the USA has or ought to have some kind of database protection? - since it has signed the Bern Convention I mean.
On the post: Insider Trading Suspected In The Pirate Bay Sale
Re: Re: It's all a bit weird yes
According to the available information Brokep doesn't get any money out of this deal. Why would the TPB guys be involved in stock fraud? (especially when they have very little money to invest)
The business model wouldn't be based on allowing ISPs access but rather (one part of it at least) to optimize the traffic in the ISPs nets in order to reduce their costs.
On the post: The Pirate Bay's New Owners: Service Providers Will Pay Us, We'll Pay Users
ISP traffic reduction savings
Convincing content providers to pay would probably be quite difficult, so I think it might be easier to get ISPs to pay for the service of minimizing their traffic with external networks. However it's hard to see how that alone would make the torrent database and bittorrent tracker service any more legitimate from a legal point of view.
Btw. on of the main IP-critical intellectuals has written a blog post about what GGF really bought: The schizo-politics of The Pirate Bay, Inc.
On the post: The Pirate Bay Has Been Bought By A Public Company [Updated...]
Re:
On the post: The Pirate Bay Has Been Bought By A Public Company [Updated...]
Separating the tracker from the web page
Not at all. If one party runs both the web site and the tracker you could in principle cross-reference the hash sums in the tracker with the hash sums in the torrent files in order to examine what kind of files are being shared. If you isolate the tracker it will only see hash sums and lists of peer - no file contents, no file names and no file descriptions will be available whatsoever. The tracker then has no knowledge of what is being shared and it would (in theory at least) be harder to claim liability for those who operate it.
On the post: The Pirate Bay Has Been Bought By A Public Company [Updated...]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Decentralize != Close
The new IPRED law gives anyone who present a couple of screenshots and claim that some someone behind a specific IP-address infringed on their copyright the possibility to reveal the identity of that person.
Let's say I'm a ruthless company that wants to attack an anonymous blogger who is critical of my company. Wouldn't it be very convenient to be able to reveal his/her identity? How many high profile anonymous bloggers would remain anonymous if anyone can get their identity by claiming they infringed on their copyright? The evidence doesn't even have to be real. How would a court ever know if the evidence was fake. The person who's identity the court decides should be revealed has no way of defending himself, either in person or via some kind of representative so the court just get one side of the picture.
See the problem now?
On the post: The Pirate Bay Has Been Bought By A Public Company [Updated...]
On the post: Taiwanese Collections Society Tells Singer He Can't Post His Own Music
On the post: The Pirate Bay Has Been Bought By A Public Company [Updated...]
The business model seems to rely on letting seeders get a share of the savings made possible to ISPs and content providers by distributing the load and keep the load within the network of an ISP to reduce their costs.
I listened to the press conference, but have to say it was very confusing.
On the post: Swedish Appeals Court Denies Pirate Bay Retrial -- Says No Bias By Judge
On the post: Has The Pirate Bay Lost Its Appeal... Or Should We Not Trust The NY Times?
When the Appeals Court makes it decision I'm sure we will see lots of news about it.
On the post: Understanding The Pirate Party
2/3 of Pirate Party voters don't think file sharing is the major issue
So it seems like that for two thirds of the PP supporters the right to privacy, civil liberties, etc. are more important than legalizing file sharing.
On the post: Has The Pirate Bay Lost Its Appeal... Or Should We Not Trust The NY Times?
When the Appeals Court makes it decision I'm sure we will see lots of news about it.
On the post: French Constitutional Council Guts 'Three Strikes' As Unconstitutional
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Music Publisher Suddenly Claims 80s Australian Pop Hit Infringed On 1930s Kids Tune
Give a crazy person the Bible and he'll soon start to uncover mysterious patterns and number sequences. Give two songs to music industry lawyers and they will eventually find similarities that other people can hardly see. No difference.
On the post: Yet Another E-Voting Glitch; This One Adds 5,000 Phantom Votes
Re:
On the post: Swedish Pirate Party Wins
TwoOne Seat In EU ParliamentRe: Re: Re: Re:
Speaking about software - I voted for the Pirate Party because I as a programmer wants to be able to reap the fruits of my own work. If the EU legalises software patents that will hamper the competition and the technical development and put me as a developer in a very vulnerable position where someone could sue me any time for work that I created myself. I have already come up with several ideas which I have found to be patented in other countries - some of these were pratically speaking pure applications of mathematics.
Programmers can make money in other ways than by charging money for digital copies that have artificially been made scarce through laws. You can for example provide software or software consultancy as a service.
On the post: Swedish Pirate Party Wins
TwoOne Seat In EU ParliamentFrench newspaper thinks Swedish prime minister is a pirate
"Christian Engström gains a seat in the parliament representing the party that was founded by Fredrik Reinfeldt in 2006"
For those of you who don't know Fredrik Reinfeldt is the Swedish prime minister. I guess he will have some explaining to do next time he goes to France... ;)
On the post: Swedish Pirate Party Wins
TwoOne Seat In EU ParliamentRe: Re: [socialistic IP rights]
That is pretty darn utilitarian, no?
If you read the american constitution and read between the lines you'll see that even the founding fathers realized what I wrote above - that intellectual rights/privileges are for the public good. They are not absolute natural individual rights, although some people are mislead to believe that due to years of propaganda.
Now, I'm not libertarian so I can accept copyright for what it is as long as it doesn't seriously infringe on other civil liberties and there is a balance between damages and gains. Any copyright term above 25 years I would argue has lost such a balance.
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