Pirate Bay "Baffling" to Prosectors

[Virtuoso]

Score one for the piracy community.
The prosecutor became visibly frustrated when he tried to get Neij to identify the kingpin who is ultimately responsible for The Pirate Bay, and the text and graphics on the site. Neij explained that an extended group of people have privileges on the server, and contribute haphazardly as they see fit. The prosecutor seemed not to grasp the concept.

Its always funny when the people in power cannot understand a situation in which no one is in power.

From Wired News (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/neij.html)

[MasterEvilAce]

This reminds me of when OiNK got taken down, and they were explaining how they didn't host illegal content on the site, and the prosecutors were baffled by it.

[Wyrm]

Awesome.

This is why this stuff is still kind of open to interpretation. The laws we currently have don't deal in this language, so lawyers don't comprehend it.

[TeeCakes]

"What the fuck is the internet?!"

[Virtuoso]

"What the fuck is the internet?!"

I believe its like a series of tubes....

[Zander]

"What the fuck is the internet?!"

Horribly stupid, but wonderfully funny movie.

[Anenome]

They'll probably just end up dealing with PB as an entity, as a corporation, than the individual owners.

[Virtuoso]

They'll probably just end up dealing with PB as an entity, as a corporation, than the individual owners.

I don't think they can, because it isn't registered as an LLC or anything (or the Swedish equivalent). Because of this they have to charge the individuals.

[Chaos Machine]

pirate bay is kinda like a guy that searches a parking lot for cars with unlocked doors, then makes a big sign on it that says "THIS DOOR IS UNLOCKED!" and places it on top of the car...with that car being parked in the ghetto.

did he do anything illegal? i dont know but i dont think so.

[bowie]

pirate bay is kinda like a guy that searches a parking lot for cars with unlocked doors, then makes a big sign on it that says "THIS DOOR IS UNLOCKED!" and places it on top of the car...with that car being parked in the ghetto.

did he do anything illegal? i dont know but i dont think so.

Your example reminds me of a university student newspaper in Australia that printed an article entitled The Art of Shoplifting. It provided instructions on how to shoplift. The editors were taken to court and successfully prosecuted. I guess these things vary a lot from country to country though.

http://libertus.net/censor/rdocs/rabelais.html

[bowie]

Where is the edit button? I think I have misrepresented what happened in the Rabelias case. The article was banned which opened the editors up to charges. The appeals of the ban failed opening the editors up to charges. But the charges were dropped without explanation.

[Evil Avatar]

As much as I am anti-piracy (I think developers/publishers/musicians and even those Hollywood weirdos should get paid for their work) I'm not sure what they are hoping to accomplish here.

Even if they get some kind of minor charge on these three guys the copyright laws in Sweden are totally different from those of the USA so I doubt they will do any jail time or even owe much of a fine and it certainly does not open the door for anyone else to sue them.

On top of all that -- if somehow this one site was shut down there are 10 more waiting in the wings to take its place.

You can't fight digital piracy with this kind of thinking. You have to think outside the box and find ways to make people 'want' to pay for your product and then just be happy with the sales you get.

[Virtuoso]

You can't fight digital piracy with this kind of thinking. You have to think outside the box and find ways to make people 'want' to pay for your product and then just be happy with the sales you get.

This is exactly correct. You cannot make people want to play your game by being dicks, and until publishers and the like (governments being leveraged by these companies) understand this, they will continue to see falling profits and increasing piracy.

[revelation]

Where is the edit button? I think I have misrepresented what happened in the Rabelias case. The article was banned which opened the editors up to charges. The appeals of the ban failed opening the editors up to charges. But the charges were dropped without explanation.

Eh, the Rabelais was, is and always will be a piece of shit. They deserved to be prosecuted for putting something out. :p

[SuperMonkeyFighter2]

You can't fight digital piracy with this kind of thinking. You have to think outside the box and find ways to make people 'want' to pay for your product and then just be happy with the sales you get.

I agree that you can't fight it this way, but I do disagree with the latter statement.

How do you make a dishonest person want to buy anything? Devs make impressive games all the time, yet if a pirate can download it, he will.

[MasterEvilAce]

I agree that you can't fight it this way, but I do disagree with the latter statement.

How do you make a dishonest person want to buy anything? Devs make impressive games all the time, yet if a pirate can download it, he will.

Make the multiplayer aspect require authentication with a master server in order to play.... Even though it's not 100% foolproof, most people play games for the multiplayer aspect, if available... and master server systems work pretty well... Battlenet, Steam, EA Games, etc.

[thenumber5]

I agree that you can't fight it this way, but I do disagree with the latter statement.

How do you make a dishonest person want to buy anything? Devs make impressive games all the time, yet if a pirate can download it, he will.

For the most part games and movies i download i end up buying them a lot of the time i am just downloading a leak or Screener a month ahead of the release, now i will say if i download something and it turns out to be crap , ie Two-worlds, it never gets my money. and i think that what is pissing these people of people know if something is a steamer before they spend there money now instead of after

[blackzc]

Its kind of like a chop shop that sells stolen cars and regular cars. Id be pissed if torrent sites went down but dam. How can they not just shut these things down.

I know all the technicality arguments about legit files and what not but lol!,see above. If this where a chop shop it wouldn't matter if they sold cars legally they would be shut down and the owner would go to jail. Whos the owner, the dude who registered the domain name and anyone who funded it and whoever else the judge though should go to jail. Thats how it works with anything else. Why not this.

These shadowy tech guys are making the legal system look like clowns.

[Chaos Machine]

because you cant shut them down, when you try to they end up relocating to a country thats going to give your jurisdiction the finger.

you cant control the internet, its essentially communism in its ideological form when it comes to information. Not only that, but its a war of attrition when it comes to DRM and any type of technological war you are trying to fight them with, because pirates work for free, and theres millions of them just as brilliant as the smartest software engineers your company can afford.

when it comes to game piracy, the big issue is price, games are too expensive initially, and price cuts dont happen quick enough. Gabe Newell gave a prime example of this during the $25 left 4 dead weekend deal, he said it generated more revenue than its entire launch window in sales. Digital distribution is going to usher in a new era in gaming where you dont have so much overhead involved with selling a game at retail. its not like these devs are getting 60 bucks for every copy they sell, most goes to the publisher, then the retail outlet, then the developer if they even get everything cause they had to sell their soul to get the game published in the first place

[Valkyrist]

Meh, I have an extensive list of SNES roms. Yet I still bought a number of the "remakes" on my DS, YEARS later. They added content, or moderized the graphics, or whatever. And it made me *want* to purchase it, so I did.

Another example. If a new PC game is coming out, and they outright refuse to release a playable demo, I will not buy it. Period. Sometimes I can try the game at a friends house, sometimes not. On occasion I have tracked down cracked copies, played them for a bit, and then made a decision. If they were good games, I bought them. If they were not, I saved myself $50 and then deleted the crack.

It's no different than music. I have stacks and stack of CDs lying around. And many of them have 1 or 2 songs that were actually good. I got sick paying $18 for a bad CD, and now do not purchase music unless I can listen to it first. If that means I have to track down mp3's of said music, instead of some kind of "legit" way of previewing, then so be it.

I know not everyone does this. And I know that some people just outright pirate any game they can. But I wanted to add to the whole "make us want to buy their stuff" idea. It's really a simple idea: If you want to make us choose purchasing over pirating, you have to make us belive it's worth the purchase. Not by releasing sub-standard products, filled with invasive anti-piracy software. Not by spending untold $$$ by prosecuting and shutting down websites, who will be replaced by more websites.

Make good games at reasonable prices.

[bulldozer.sweden]

This trial is a really big mess since sadly it's gone to court because "outside countries" have told Sweden to take Pirate Bay into court (or there will be consequences. Who knows maybe GM dropping of Saab is one of those things, just speculating). If you read Swedish law (which I have), they (PB) haven't done anything illegal and can't be convicted under Swedish law. So my guess is that they try to find some kind of loophole and convict them for something else. The prosecute already have dropped the main charge (I think).

Just a reflection, why doesn't any one take Sony, Apple into court for selling mp3 players? 99% of the music in mp3 players are illegal (kind of like selling bongs or managing a bit torrent site). Or the broadband companies that supplying 100 mbit connections (I mean it's only just for e-mail?)

Everything will be/are on-line today and there will be no CD, DVD, blue ray and so on in the near feature so all the developer/publisher, movie/record companies have to sell things on-line and to better prices. People will always download much, so they have to be better and offer better things than people can download illegal.

I'm a game developer and I also worked with music (music producer) if I search on PB I get many of the things I've been involved in. So I should be furious about piracy. Well it's a double edge sword. Like a friend of mine that works at a really major game developer said at a recently, if it wasn't for piracy I wouldn't be working with the job I have because normal people can't afford production tools such as Photoshop, Maya, 3dstudio Max and so on (not when your young and learning)

[saneman]

Just a reflection, why doesn't any one take Sony, Apple into court for selling mp3 players? 99% of the music in mp3 players are illegal (kind of like selling bongs or managing a bit torrent site).

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property00/MP3/rio.html

[drakkarim]

Make the multiplayer aspect require authentication with a master server in order to play.... Even though it's not 100% foolproof, most people play games for the multiplayer aspect, if available... and master server systems work pretty well... Battlenet, Steam, EA Games, etc.

you should probably say most YOUNGER people play games for the multiplayer.

as an 'older' gamer myself, i don't even touch the multiplayer in 99% of the games i buy.

i finish the singleplayer and throw it back to ebay to partially pay for another game.

granted, it also tends to be the younger crowd that does most of the piracy i would think, since they also tend to have less funds available in general anyway.

[drakkarim]

...granted, not the age/mp/sp thing is a generalization, not rule.

[SuperMonkeyFighter2]

For the most part games and movies i download i end up buying them a lot of the time i am just downloading a leak or Screener a month ahead of the release, now i will say if i download something and it turns out to be crap , ie Two-worlds, it never gets my money. and i think that what is pissing these people of people know if something is a steamer before they spend there money now instead of after

I wish there were more people like you :) To be honest, someone "trying" a game doesn't bug me all that much. It can be equated to a guy playing a game at a friend's house to see if he likes it. With that said, there are just too many people who start off with good intention (ie: If the title is good, I'll buy it) but never follow up on them.

[pwnophobia]

I downloaded the D2 Install / Play disc, last night, because I couldn't find my originals but I had the case with the CD key.

I feel no remorse.

[saneman]

I downloaded the D2 Install / Play disc, last night, because I couldn't find my originals but I had the case with the CD key.

I feel no remorse.

D2 as in Diablo 2? Just saying, I'm pretty sure Blizzard has D2 up for download on their site for people with the key. I think that's true of most of their games now.

[Wyrm]

I downloaded the D2 Install / Play disc, last night, because I couldn't find my originals but I had the case with the CD key.

I feel no remorse.

Yeah, if you have the cd key, you can put it in on their website and dl it for free.