“File-sharing site The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK internet service providers, the High Court has ruled. The Swedish website hosts links to download mostly-pirated free music and video. Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must all prevent their users from accessing the site.” Because, as we all know, protecting failing and outdated business models is more important than upholding stodgy old and annoying concepts like ‘freedom of speech’. Repeat after me: we live in the free world, not China. Maybe if we say it often enough, we’ll start believing it.
So um, yeah, good luck with that.
Hmm,
I thought the High Court only covered England ?
The other parts of the UK have their own courts, well Scotland anyway.
The High Court covers both England and Wales.
Scotland and NI have their own judicial systems.
However all three systems have one ultimate Supreme Court based just across the road from Parliament.
They aren’t rushing to block it. Still have access as of now on Vigin Media, what, 24+ hours later.
Uhm, China is the exact opposite of the UK, USA or any other Democratic country who’s copyright laws you disapprove of. The events of this weekend could have been more clear.
China, as we all know, does not enforce copyright very much at all. They do however imprison and mistreat blind people who have different political views than them.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/30/world/asia/china-chen-internet/index….
I propose a milder form of Godwin’s law. Comparing democracies to China due to copyright laws means you have obviously lost the ability to reasonably talk about copyright laws.
Perhaps, but I’m more concerned about the idea of a site (that doesn’t involve physical harm to anyone) being blocked just because the government disapproves of it. That’s the sort of thing the Chinese government does.
I guess now I’ll have to download NIN stuff illegally as Trent links all his new content to TPB.
(well technically downloading his new material from other sources wouldn’t be illegal either as it’s released under creative commons – but my point stands)
Well, I strongly support this solution of British court. Since Pirate Bay helps users to violate existing laws, it must be blocked.
Rule with no exceptions: if you’re not satisfied with existing laws, you must change them first. Any other activity is violation, and should be punished.
People must learn that freedom of speech does not equal to anarchy.
Lately, this site expresses strong decline into propagation of free source and data sharing and criticism to those who disagree with this position. It slowly builds in me tention to remove this site from my RSS subscription list, because I think sharing is evil and wrong, while copyrighting and IP protection are good and needed. Free data sharing will destroy existing economics, both in entertainment and in software development. Guys, socialism is proven to be wrong, — Thom writes about China in this very post, — thus the only working economy model survived is capitalism, so stop spreading the evil infected ideas about sharing and start patenting.
You go too far in the other direction. First of all, “evil” is a ridiculous word to use for an economic system. Secondly, capitalism can easily become even more “evil” (to use your word). The current U.S. patent system is a good case in point. It has been completely “bought”. This happened when Bush ordered that the USPTO had to operate at a profit. The free-market is a great thing, and we need more of it. But don’t tote it around like a religion. It has it’s limitations too.
Yes, that’s exactly my point. Everything is good to some extent, even open source — students must have something to learn from.
Free market is a good thing, no matter what. Patents and copyright stand in the way of free market, they surely ain’t helping it and cost a forturne, making goods more expensive and stiffling innovation in the same time. It should be a governments goal to help create more free market in markets where there currently is none, due to natural monopolies(can’t be helped that much), or artificially created mono/duo/tri/…polies (patents, copyright…).
Of course there’s such a thing as wanting some fairness for someones’ work but our economies and livestyles are currently based on exploiting cheap labour (think of clothes, cell phones and other fun gadgets that people in low cost countries have to work for to barely survive), so don’t try to take the moral highground against so called freeloading pirates.
Since Pirate Bay helps users to violate existing laws, it must be blocked.
So does google…. In fact, so does 90% of TV movies and books. So we should ban those as well!
if you’re not satisfied with existing laws, you must change them first. Any other activity is violation, and should be punished.
I completely agree! Because obviously the voting system works.
I think sharing is evil and wrong, while copyrighting and IP protection are good and needed
Exactly! Why would anyone share a book with a friend? Let him buy a copy, so he can help the economy.
Free data sharing will destroy existing economics
I wish you are saying the truth… I really wish this “economy” would end once and for all. Let’s be serious here, the “economy” system that we are living on is not that economic, right? I mean, everything that we buy today is built to last only the time until the guaranty expires. How this relates to economy? Our “economy” is based on selling more and more, so that we keep growing economically. That’s impossible, like the reality shows us.
Edited 2012-04-30 17:21 UTC
The only way to change them is to break them.
Aye.
Clearly content companies have a right to protect their assets, and thus they do everything they can to deter piracy. No one can blame them for that, and people that support out-right illegal distribution of copyrighted material are in the wrong. On the other hand, the content companies are too narrow minded to realize that pirating exists for very simple market-principled reasons –not simply b/c their are “thieves” out there that must be stopped. People want the content, but can’t get access to it, either b/c it is not available or not for a price that people can afford. Case in point, I watch Project Runway. But last season I missed the first four episodes. I could not find any legitimate means to catch-up. I had to resort to illegal distributions. I can tell you that if I was not able to catch-up, I would not have watched any of that season at all.
So the real cause of piracy lies with content provider’s own short-sightedness. There will alwasy be some piracy, of course, but if the content providers would simple make all their content available at reasonable cost, then it wouldn’t be enough to fuss about.
And who will determine this “reasonable cost”? Is $10 for a CD reasonable? Or should it be $5? Or is even $1 unreasonable? Now let’s talk blu-ray. It’s a pretty recent format, and there are patents involved. So what is a reasonable cost for a blu-ray disk? Is the average $30 too much? Oh, some people may not be able to afford $30, so how about $20? Still some people can’t afford that either, or aren’t willing to pay that, so we must make it $5 for a blu-ray. Now, let’s factor in licensing fees for the various patents involved, and what is the profit on that $5 blu-ray? Somewhere below zero I could believe.
Suffice it to say, “reasonable” is completely arbitrary. Some people will be willing to fork over whatever they are charged, some will wait, some will never pay. But if you don’t pay whatever requirement, you shouldn’t be able to enjoy the content. Simply saying “it needs to be priced more reasonably” is not a valid excuse for _anybody_ to justify theft.
You just ruined your perfectly valid point.
Depriving somebody the profit of their work is theft. I don’t care if legally it’s a civil matter, it is still theft.
And this is why more and more companies are moving to abolish the practice of resale. Anything can be argued to be “depriving somebody the profit of their work”. If I buy a game second hand, it’s depriving the game company of the profit they may have had if I bought a new one.
What about the actions of companies who deprive themselves of their own profit? Many media companies don’t distribute overseas even though there is almost no cost for them to do so. Research clearly shows people would be willing to pay if something was available.
What about research that shows “piracy” actually increases sales, and that “pirates” tend to buy more than the average person? Should they then be compensated by the media companies for doing the opposite of depriving them of profit?
If a company does it to themselves, that’s their responsibility.
Ends don’t justify the means. Never have, never will.
“The wrong thing done for the ‘right’ reasons is still the wrong thing.” (attribution unknown).
And you can say the exact same thing about this whole copyright nonsense.
This is why, when principles fail (as they invariably do), we must stick to scientifically verifiable facts. Fact is, small time piracy does not affect profits, and in many cases contributes to profits.
Not giving me money for OSNews [by becoming a subscriber] is theft. I don’t care if that dun’ makes any sense whatsoever, it is still theft.
Edited 2012-04-30 17:27 UTC
It’s not theft if your business model includes releasing content openly for no cost. It would be theft if you charged, I paid, and I redistributed everything you wrote for anyone to read, contributing nothing back to you.
Well, you get to make up your own definitions, so why can’t I?
So, pay up, you thief.
What would you call it, then, if it’s not theft? “Copying without permission”? “Depriving them of profit for your own gain” (Sounds a lot like theft to me)?
Uh… What about, I don’t know, the actual correct term: “copyright infringement”?
Of course, that doesn’t has that nice ring to it that “stealing” does.
Thom Holwerda,
It must be similar to what teachers feel like each year: “How am I supposed to cover complex subject matters when students don’t even understand the basic fundamentals?”
We call it copyright infringement, because that’s the body of law it comes under. “Theft” is *not* the right word, because that’s from the body of law dealing with physical property.
License violation, contract violation (depending on the exact letter of the law).
But theft it is not. You haven’t lost anything. You may have lost a possible income, but one cannot steal something you don’t have. They may prevent you from getting some you might have had otherise, but that does not equal theft.
If anything is theft it is “intellectual property”.
As I had mentioned in my first reply, the letter of the law makes it a civil issue. But, since people around here take license with using the “spirit” instead of the “letter”, I chose to use the “spirit” of the law and the act, and in that spirit I do consider it theft. Saying it’s simply the “loss of potential revenue” isn’t enough. If you say they “may have, but may not have” purchased it instead of committing the copyright infringement, you can only use the “may have”, and use it to mean “would have”. Saying “may not have” shows they had no intention of purchasing it or even viewing/listening to it, except for the fact that it was available for download. But if there is no interest in the material, why download it? The only reason to download is because there _is_ an interest in the material, of some degree. Therefore, drawing the conclusion that the sale _was_ lost.
Of course, I may be the only one on this site who believes that copyright violation of a commercial work is theft (loss of potential profit due to infringement of work is always loss of actual profit in this view).
My issue with Thom is that he makes copyright infringement appear benign, which it is not. Of course, in engaging in such disagreement, I have joined the special olympics of arguing on the internet.
You can only steal something if it is material. If it is not material you cannot take it and therefore cannot steal it. The entire concept of “immaterial property” is broken.
If violating copyright is theft, then copyright itself is theft.
How is ownership of one’s own creation theft? Copyright is legal acknowledgment of one’s own creation.
Because “one’s own creation” often, practically never, contains purely original material. If you’re willing to define copying as theft, then it’s your fault for playing with such a bad definition that includes the creation of any work that borrows from others.
Nobody is stealing any creation. If the creation is not physical is not a creation, but a thought. Thoughts cannot be owned. “Intellectual property” is ownership of thoughts incl. ownership of other persons thoughts if these thoughts are derived thoughts of another person’s thinking. So basically with copyright you get to claim ownership on my thoughts. Copyright is no right but a privilege, and in a free society there are no privileges and therefore no copyright.
A movie is 1h30.
You may watch about 5-10 a month. If you include tv shows, those are about 3-4 a week (so up to 16 a month).
You’d like to watch all this in 1080p cause, u know, its 2012, 1080p have been around for years.
Price is about $30 for movies and $10 for shows (those are the low prices for recent content i generally find)
10*30 = $300
16*10 = $160
Is $460 reasonable? No. It just isn’t. It doesn’t even include music.
Then again if that was the only issue! In general you just _cannot_ even buy the said media.
So yeah, there’s a problem, unless you’re ok with watching year old or more movies, and one or two a month, zero tv show.
Simply becase Chineese don’t give a damn about copyrights
In the UK, you’re free to criticize the government. Try that in China and you will probably get tortured and/or executed.
I don’t like the slipper slope that much of the world seems to be on… But we’ve got a long, long, long way to fall yet.
By what measure can we confidently say we’re a “long long long way”? Copyright affects speech and culture in general. It would seem if someone wanted to eliminate human rights, they would do so through the back door.
I know its a nice thought and everything, but the reality is you’re not.
You don’t have freedom to critise the government, you don’t have freedom of speech. That’s just yet another americanism people seem to have picked up.
You’re allowed freedom of expression and freedom of thought. That’s pretty much it.
This is completely rediculous. How can they ever rule to block the whole medium for any percentage of illegal materials? what about opensourced, royalty free, creative common materials?
This is nuts. Stand up and fight for your freedom, UK citizens. You’re heading into very bad direction.
Crush this “copyright lobby” by choosing small distributors, independent artists …
I am going to explain to you why, and what the difference is between sites like The Pirate Bay and Google.
In the town where I live, you see a new Asian Massage Parlor (AMP) pop up from time-to-time. Of course, you CAN get a regular massage in one of these places, but if you know the right protocol, you can get much more than a massage
This is why most people go to AMPs. Now, I personally think prostitution should be legal, and have visited a few of these places myself, but I am never surprised when one of these places get shut down, because prostitution IS illegal here, after all; they’re just enforcing the law.
And one thing you do NOT see are the owners of these establishments crying, “Waaaaaaah! We’re just like every other massage parlor in town!!!!’ Why? Because they know better. It’s highly likely that some of this illegal activity goes on at the legit massage parlors, but if the owners found out that one or more of the girls at the legit places were providing ‘extras’, those girls would be fired immediately, because the owners know they would get shut down too if the cops ever found out about it. Contrast that with the AMPs, who not only allow the illegal activity to go on, but also ENCOURAGE it, and they even advertise these services on sites like Backpage or Craigslist.
So, if you support piracy and think the laws should be changed to allow it, that’s ok. But with the laws being what they are, you can’t be too surprised when a site like this gets shut down, or try to play the ‘they’re just like Google!!!’ card, because clearly they’re not.
Edit: I don’t support piracy myself, but do realize that technology makes piracy inevitable, and it will never be stopped. Sure, you can try to make it harder for pirates by shutting down these sites, which will ultimately be about as productive as pissing into the wind.
Edited 2012-04-30 19:12 UTC
WorknMan,
“Edit: I don’t support piracy myself, but do realize that technology makes piracy inevitable, and it will never be stopped. Sure, you can try to make it harder for pirates by shutting down these sites, which will ultimately be about as productive as pissing into the wind.”
I don’t think anyone should be entitled to copy the digital works of others without compensation. On the other-hand I don’t think owners of digital works should be entitled to impose DRM on users who have compensated the owners. So I do think the pirate bay does help protect even legitimate users from abusive DRM.
The recent switch over to digital cable networks in the US is an excellent case study, all of a sudden people are faced with DRM where there previously was none. Time shifting DVRs are breaking. Even those who prepared by buying digital TVs/tuners need to rent new decryption boxes due to DRM, and even playable digital streams have “no copy” flags which consumer devices and operating systems are required to adhere to. It all serves to nullifying consumers’ legally granted fair use rights. It’s all possible because corporations are willing/able to buy laws, and today’s governments are unwilling/unable to protect the public’s interests.
At the moment, there’s not much DRM that can’t be worked around on purchased products, so you don’t need The Pirate Bay much for content. They don’t put DRM on music anymore, and DVDs and blu-rays can be easily cracked, as can most ebooks. (And I believe that ‘fair play’ from iTunes movie/TV purchases can as well.)
The two big exceptions for this are games and software, but you’re more likely than not to get some sort of malware by downloading these, so you’re probably better off avoiding TPB anyway.
Right, OK. So today it’s The Pirate Bay that gets blocked, what about tomorrow? An order that all search engine providers remove all links on how to “work around” the aforementioned DRM? Where does it stop? I think we all know the answer to that one. It doesn’t and it wont!
Apart from the fact that TPB can be used for entirely legal purposes depending which country your from, I for example have downloaded countless Linux distro’s and open source software from there. I have also downloaded a copy of a game from there to replace the damaged media of one I have purchased legally that wont read anymore. Although that could be considered a gray area, the law in the UK states I may have 1 backup copy for personal use, no matter what the greedy EULA states. And I will continue to do the same, from the same site, no matter what the government run court system says. These idiots couldn’t block a toilet never mind a web site!
First of all – thank you for your extensive response, I appreciate it.
However, I do not think we can compare piracy to prostitution. I – myself – do not support piracy. I also do not support shutting down service with “this whole stuff is illegal” ticket. I do not support taking our freedoms away with “we need to do it, because we fight terrorism” ticket too. I think it’s unreasonable, illogical, and – as you kindly mentioned – there is a more inherent and non-removable problem that lies elsewhere: piracy can not be stopped. Why? because piracy is sharing, and sharing is something we do since we evolved from apes.
Some people try to convince us that sharing is bad, where – in fact – sharing is good and constructive. It creates bonds between people, it makes helping other people possible. It widens our horizons, it makes us better people.
Marketing model … business model … now, that’s what is flawed. That’s what needs to change.
You say you don’t support piracy, but you do support sharing, and you say that sharing is good. Sooooo…. it sounds like you DO support piracy.
But whether you do or don’t, that’s not really the point. The point is that as long as piracy is illegal, there is a legal justification for shutting down sites like TPB that doesn’t apply to other sites like Google. (See my previous example as to why.)
If you want to come out in support for sites like TPB, you have to come out in support of piracy (which is what Thom does). If you want to set up a site for open source/legal files with strict anti-piracy rules, you can run a site like that without being shut down, but that is not what TPB was all about – they don’t call it The PIRATE Bay because people are there sharing FOSS software
Edited 2012-04-30 22:32 UTC
I don’t actually support piracy per se. I support a saner copyright and patent regime, and considering the vested interests have made it impossible for these to change (international treaties are embedded in things like UN/world bank/etc. membership – you can’t unsign/depart those without ALSO departing those organisations), we, the people, have the right to ignore them – as we do with any bad laws.
The people have already spoken: sharing is acceptable, and not at all a moral issue. That’s how laws get changed. See homosexuality in The Netherlands; it was pretty much accepted and normal for decades before the law finally caught up.
So do you actually support piracy/sharing, or not? Sharing a book with a friend is one thing… sharing an ebook with a few million friends is not exactly the same thing, for similar reasons that copying is not theft. We have to make distinctions between digital and physical entities; you can’t claim that they’re the same when it’s convenient for you, and then claim that they’re not the same when it isn’t. (Same holds true for the content industry.)
I support it as a means to bring about change. Once we have sane copyright laws that are not anti-consumer, there will be no more need for piracy.
Me, personally – I barely ‘pirate’. Don’t download movies, I buy all my music (on CDs – fcuk digital crap), and have god knows how many videogames (all legal console games). Some of those videogames were bought second hand, and some classify this as piracy.
I do ‘pirate’ television shows, but mostly those that aren’t broadcast in The Netherlands. More often than not, I end up buying the box sets.
Why don’t you support boycotting then, instead of piracy? Boycotting accomplishes everything piracy does in this regard, with the added benefit of not giving the content industry an excuse to buy more copyright laws. The one thing the boycotting DOESN’T allow is for people to have free shit, which is why I’m guessing we don’t hear a lot about boycotting from those who use the ‘I’m sticking it to the man’ excuse for pirating
Except the copyright barons have shown that they’ll gladly interpret sales slumps as a piracy problem even when it isn’t. A lot of people ARE boycotting lots of content for being more expensive than they’re actually worth.
I think you’ve made a very good point here! boycotting is a right way of changing the whole industry. It goes perfectly in match with my view on the whole problem: I do not pirate stuff, I only share and download legal materials and I boycott the whole “copyright” industry which creates the problem.
Thus, I do not support shutting down the whole Pirate Bay just because there are some illegal materials. I have my right to download legal materials using TPB and this right may be taken away from me some day, which is not ok.
WorknMan,
“If you want to come out in support for sites like TPB, you have to come out in support of piracy”
I don’t object to your general opinion, but we must emphasize that TPB directory does not actually commit copyright infringement itself, and as for 3rd party infringement, TPB ought to be protected under the safe harbor provisions (unless it’s actively promoting infringement). There’s no doubt torrent file search tools like TPB can facilitate copyright infringement, but to my knowledge they haven’t publicly endorsed or promoted it, have they?
Actually, no. I do support sharing of legal materials. I do not support sharing of unauthorised materials. You see, TPB shows you not only illegal, but also legal materials in your searches. And that’s the whole point.
And that’s the point of view I’m usually deeply concerned about. There is no justification for shutting down the site that share legal materials. TPB shares legal and illegal materials. Why should the users who download legal materials suffer from not being able to download it? this doesn’t make any sense.
Well, not really. You kinda seem to see the whole problem in monochrome, while the whole thing is much more complicated. TPB is just a search engine. It doesn’t store any illegal or legal materials itself, as you probobly know. It has clear rules for sharing *legal* materials, but it does not have resources to control every possible file uploaded onto it. You need to remember that the users are responsible for piracy, not the site itself. It is hugely important distinction which seems not to be observable to some people.
The name itself – The *Pirate* Bay – is merely a joke that shows enormous amount of absurd that people put into the whole thing by calling everyone who shares a “pirate” [which is highly inaccurate term: pirates are long gone. Pirates were usually hostile, pirates were interrested in ships, etc].
Best regards!
So what ? One filesharing website was blocked, through means designed by technologically illiterate politics and that can as such likely be bypassed with the dumbest proxy around ?
Wake me up once they start to monitor P2P traffic and read personal emails, claiming that it is still about pirates and pedophiles.
Edited 2012-04-30 18:00 UTC
So…
…you’re saying your asleep NOW and oblivious to anything that’s not right in front of you?
More like suggesting that people who care about the issue have probably waken up earlier, and that those still think that there is no problem probably won’t be alarmed by the UK’s comparatively minor actions.
At least the BPI have had the decency to take their complaints to a justice court and to target a specific website, instead of bribing their way to the ratification of vague and downright scary laws as has been done elsewhere.
Edited 2012-04-30 19:26 UTC
I don’t see manifesto’s of any kind on the front page of the Pirate Bay, so what has this to do with freedom of speech?
Also, what happened about economic freedom? You know, the right to sell the things you produce under a contract you agree with? Apparently only consumers should have rights nowadays. Long live life-long copyright. Your art is your possession. You made it, and you should be able to tell people what to do with it. If people don’t agree with that, they should just find another artist or start making their own art.
I’m not trying to troll. This site just desperately needs some nuance.
That’s what I was taught the free market was supposed to be about.
So enlighten us: why is it artists that are signed to major labels often come out OWING those labels money despite making decent sales? How has copyright helped those artists?
That’s what I was taught the free market was supposed to be about.
Basically because they are stupid enough to agree with such contracts and give the rights to their work to a corporation who does not care for them nor the work. Just boycott major labels if you don’t like what they do.
They have posted manifesto-like material before.
They’re not the first country to do this and certainly won’t be the last.
If I’m not mistaken the same decision was taken a few months ago in the (free)(lol) Netherlands.
I guess they block drugs and guns to the UK too.
Well, yeah. You can’t buy a gun legally here without serious paperwork. No one has the “right” to bear arms either.
I’m curious to see how they implement this block on thepiratebay.se, especially since my UK ISP is part of the O2 network, which one of the ISPs implementing this block.
I wonder if the ISPs will just do a simple DNS “hijack” of the domain to either make it look up to something unusable or to point to a “this is site blocked” page. These sorts of blocks are 100% ineffective because they are so simple to work around (hosts files, Google DNS, OpenDNS, ever mind proxy servers, VPNs and Tor goodies for those more advanced), but would technically obey the “blocking” court order.
If they try to block the Pirate Bay’s IPs, then that would be a little more effective (rules out easy DNS workarounds), but a lot harder for the ISPs to monitor (e.g. the Pirate Bay will inevitably come up with changed/extra IPs over time, plus they already have loads of aliased names in different languages!).
Basically, this is the courts being dumb and assuming there are no workarounds to an ISP block, but this is far from the case.
Well, that’s sort of how they did it in Ireland when one of our ISPs bowed to pressure from the musical rights guys here. Pirate Bay links just redirect to a page saying that it’s an illegal site, and advertising their own “Music Hub”. Any sort of proxy gets around the block, but simple DNS tricks don’t work as they block IP addresses too.
Incidentally, they lost many, many customers over that, and had to implement their own Music Hub which allows music to be streamed for free by their customers through a website. Which I guess isn’t a bad compromise I suppose…
Back when Lost and Battlestar were still being broadcasted, and before Sky and Virgin made up and the Sky channels returned to the UK cable TV system, I used to pirate TV. Now, I don’t. Why? Because, firstly, I don’t watch as much TV anymore. Secondly, since UK launch, I can stream TV via Netflix. With a simple hack, I can watch US Netflix. It’s just made stealing physical copies of TV shows completely pointless. Yes, hacking Netflix is dubious, but they still get my £6 a month so it’s not like I’m getting anything I wouldnt if I was actually sitting in the US. If the world had more sane content sharing agreements, video piracy would decrease to almost nothing. It’s really that simple.
I heard that this action of UK High Court brought 12 million more users to The Pirate Bay. Superb VPN can easy bypass this barrier.