PirateBay guys are now announced as guilty, what's next?
 

Ok, maybe it's not the best place where to talk about ThePirateBay, i don't really want to talk about the website, as i don't care about their content, but i wanted to hear you about what you think about these trials on pirate sites...

The fact here is important... they are all guilty, and noone will go to jail, none will pay the fines... because they have no money. they are on offshore countries, and until the UN have a decision based on these offshore countries, the guys have nothing to fear...

btw, the site is still operated, opened and visited a lot... the police was never able to close it, and i suppose they never will.

so why spending hundreds of millions sueing these guys if nothing can be done against them? a show to all who think the laws can not be applied, that's all...

we are supposed to be protected by lawyers when we want to apply our copyrights... we are supposed to be protected by the copyright laws, but it seems that these guys win all the way... not because they are heros, but because the are untouchable; they have no money, they have no life.

all these debates about our copyrights and credits etc worth nothing when we see how the law is applied. it is well written, it is greatly promoted, but yeah, we see where it goes...

Been all over the news today in the uk so I ventured to their site and watched their podcasts regrading the case. I have no real opinion on it. They aren't holding files simply indexing them. What next? sue google? they are indexing sites/links.

A waste of money I guess with the added nothing ventured nothing gained.

here is the announcement found at CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/17/s...ref=newssearch

oh, and in our local News, TPB lawsuit was below the News where they announce that MacDonald's will now offer Free Coffee in the next weeks... ROFL

I have been watching this case throughout the trial. I found it particularly interesting that they found the usage of bittorrent itself to be illegal. I'd be interested to hear how they can justify that and wonder what that means for any torrent site now.

And, if the big yahoos think that they are going to shut down filesharing, they are sadly mistaken. There are sooooo many private sites to get the material at. And anytime you close a site like TPB (which actually is not being closed - there was nothing in the verdict to say they had to close it), there are several more that pop right up. I've seen that happen with every torrent site that's been closed down. They just go underground.

funnily, making Torrents illegal does not mean a thing, P2P exists from the begining of the internet, even Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorers are P2P, as you have to exchange information between our website and our webclient... now, everything is now illegal... ARF

Well, I'd like to see them tell Blizzard that torrents are illegal since Blizzard does it's update via torrents. :) That's why I laugh about that. Everyone seems to want to think torrents are bad, bad, bad, but the bittorrent technology was not originally made for transferring "illegal" material - just for transferring files faster. But, as with many things, people find all sorts of uses for new technology.

yeah, most of Microsoft development system is torrent based too, we receive our updates via torrent... a surprising place where torrents are used for sharing data across a network is ... hum, would i say it... oh yeah, why not... SONY... one of the companies that sued TPB.

That's quite interesting. I've only followed the story by half, but I couldn't really found something to blame them for. Unless they would have been posting content themselves that is, as a user.. Or by advertising perhaps.

the mega companies needed some victims, because their war was without end.

for a certain period, these guys will be happy in front of the public, because they think they won a war... intellectuals. but in the backstore, the guys who burn the original dvds will continue to spread them in the dark market, because it always have and will always be...

WOW... lots of info here and lots of ways to think about it all. Very good points by many of you... I'll hold off on what I think until I read more into it.

piratebay will appeal.

regarding p2p, anyone remember Napster and their outcome?

Newsgroups and those site indexers are targets too.

even forums where only links to files are shown are attacked by people shouting DMCA.

This is the first I've heard about it, but it doesn't surprise me
and I agree, using torrents, P2P isn't illegal
it's distributing copyrighted material that's illegal.

I have a member on my site from Sweden and he has told me that after the results of the trail, the Pirate Party Membership had a large surge of members and now is bigger than the Swedish People's Party.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2009/04/61.jpg
He goes on and on about it here: http://thebestforumever.com/politica...ay-verdict.htm You can check it out if you want to read.

Lawyers believe that the sentencing of Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström to a year in jail for breaching Swedish copyright law could lead to a flurry of similar lawsuits as Hollywood and the music industry battles to regain the upper hand in the war against file sharing.

Napster was a joke, remember it was a software that caused a crisis... PirateBay is just a repository of links... and a ton of servers to redirect people to the right place. TPB is the same as Demonoid, isoHunt and some others.. big, structured and ready to go to trial. Napster was a single guy in need of cash, like most of the coders who develop that kind of software. TorrentBit was developped as a data-exchange protocol, and the original version now do the same as Napster, they show banners and ads...

if they decide, the whole community of torrent users who would give only 10$ to save the network would win against all the companies, because they would have a larger budget... the companies are doing it only for the money, the torrent users are doing it for the liberty...

Not quite. I think it's mostly a show to the shareholders of the music industries that they're trying to do something about acts that endanger their income. If they did nothing at all, they'd have to answer to the shareholders and face being replaced at the next meeting.

If the pigopolists weren't wallowing in cash all the time, I'd have some sort of sympathy for them. I don't pirate stuff, but I don't have sympathy for the claims that piracy is destroying the industry when I have DVDs that have adverts at the front that I can't skip past.

Rapscallion

same here... and isn't it the shareholders of all markets that broke the financial environment all around the world?... work on some other way to deal with profit...

How on earth do you figure that? Those companies have an almost endless supply of cash even in this economy. Even if you took $10 from every filesharer for legal proceedings, guaranteed it still would not touch the sheer amount of money the companies have. The original Transformers movie alone has amassed around 1 billion dollars worldwide. You cannot honestly tell me file sharers could ever come up with that kind of money.

The fact is, companies will keep suing and finding ways to minimize piracy as long as it affects their bottom line. If they stop even a few people, that's a lot of re-gained revenue. They know it. The battle will be neverending.

The battle is already lost for the companies... TPB is still online, same for Demonoid and isoHunt, even after millions in pursuits... the companies only power is money... they can not brainwash the hundreds of filesharers... the guys at TPB spent some cash, the salary of one lawyer... the big companies had to spend millions to be represented by liars (did i mention lawyers?) ... and the site is still up, and they have nothing in hands to make it close... their only goal was to put the guys in jail, they failed miserably...

... which doesn't help the case that the leaked movie has hurt profits.

TPB may have over 3.5 million registered users (and over 21 million peers currently), but there are still a whole LOT of internet users who are clueless regarding torrents or how to download free stuff. And a lot of those users will still go out to see movies, buy CDs/DVDs, and pay for software even though they can get it for free.

(And studies like this don't help their case either - Study: Pirates 10x more likely to pay for music)

Looks like they are running for Parliament -
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090506/...SywoH1e6LtiBIF

I guess they really want to change how things are done.

never mind

Ha! I little tidbit about democracy actually working for the people perhaps?
Very interesting - especially considering the ludicrous judgement against the The Pirate Bay peeps :)

Jacquii.

I don't know if this is on the subject, but I heard someone say this, and I don't remember if it was here, or on another forum. I think it was on another.

Anyways, I am against having to buy all of your music. Sometimes it's great, but most times, I hate it. If someone builds a car, they sell it, but then they have to keep making more cars to make more money. Artists have to record one album or song, and they get the money for it, forever. I don't understand why they get so much money from just one song (or album), when other people in the world actually have to work as hard as they can day and night to make some decent money.

Is that fair?

I know it must be quite some work recording some songs, but really, they should have to do some more. They make enough at concerts and tours, etc. Why do they need to charge for every single album?

I think you are somewhat naive on how a record/album is produced - the process from production to end-user. Many artists struggle to make it on what little the receive from their part/share of what they create when they use major-labels to produce their music. I by far am no expert on the process, however, I know a couple bands (the members respectively) from their startup - one didn't make it and the other is currently doing tours.

When you buy a song off of iTunes, the money most likely gets broken down like this:

Apple: 10%
Credit Card Company: 3-5%
Music Studio: 80% (includes marketing and distribute charges)
Artist: Remainder.

So a 99 cent song probably nets the artist 6-7 sents in royalties. Its worse on CDs because they have to add in packaging and shipping costs which amount to half the cost of the CD.

They make more money on tours in fact they make the majority of their income on tours but that is done through presales bonuses. If the tour bombs or is cancelled, they have to give a good portion of that money back.

So while you might feel that the artists don't deserve your money for the MP3s, realize they really don't make anything off of iTunes anyway. They would get more having their work converted to Muzak and played in an elevator which pays an average of $30.00 in royalties per license.

Anyway, the Pirate Party has one representative in the European Parliament woh0000!!!! :D

maybe if they had better songs that people liked they would earn more that is how it works out im afraid.
Also no matter how skint they are they always seem to find the money for drugs

It actually still does make the case.

So if Vbulletin is making close to 50 million a year for example, and they wanted to start suing people that are using it illegally because it's hurting their profits, it still makes the case. It's not a matter of how much they are making or have grossed thus far. It's the amount of revenue they feel they have lost from potential profits.

So in the case of Transformers for example, if they feel they have lost close to 500 million dollars (or even $50 for that matter)...then it still makes the case as that is still a chunk of change. The same with Vbulletin. Vbulletin makes a chunk of change. Why would they continue to waste time and money trying to shut down illegal forums or those sharing illegal versions of VB? It's all the same in the end.

As for that study. If they were really 10x more likely to pay for it, then they wouldn't need to be downloading it illegally would they? Logic really flies out the window with that. Why pay for it, when you already have it free? I would say that study is horribly flawed.

Either way, pirating something just because you don't like the cost of it or believe everything in life should be free, is a poor excuse to do so. Remember that the next time someone steals something from you.

There is lots of logic to it, in my personal opinion because back in the late 90's I used P2P software and downloaded music.. I have NEVER bought so many cd's ever, as I did during the time I used it. Then I heard it was illegal and they started advertising all those ads with artists telling you not to DL P2P music so I stopped because I like to feel legit. haha. In the last 8 years I havent bought as many CD's as I did in that 18 months of P2P.... So what ever. Theres plenty of logic when I look at that perspective. You say they lost 500 million in revenue because of estimated pirated copies but what they fail to show is that they probably would have been down 750 million in revenue with out the pirates. LOL So, they are shooting themselves in the foot. One thing the P2P is good for is LOTS of exposure most people wouldnt even be subjected to.

Its long since been known that artists even pirate out there own stuff to gain popularity too, because some of them "get the logic" and know it in the end it will boost their sales.