Why the end of Pirate Bay won’t make a difference
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in Bittorrent, illegal, Pirate Bay, pirate on
Nobody is ever going to admit to downloading a Bittorrent file publicly, but most people are aware of the Pirate Bay - a tracker that allows people to download music, games, software and more for free.
Since it was first put online its been pretty upfront about what it’s been doing, treating letters from the companies its been pirating with sometimes humorous disrespect, together with an portraying themselves as having an almost revolutionary attitude.
But the jailing of the Pirate bay founders as well as their failed appeal looks to have finally crushed their battle against the big companies, as it was revealed today that the Pirate Bay was sold to a private company.
Most people will immediately think of Napster. Napster had similar battles over copyright and finally backed down to the record companies, and now it is a paid-for service.
Pirate Bay can’t be the same as it was with private ownership, which has already said that content providers and copyright owners will “receive compensation.”
To me it just sounds like the Pirate Bay founders have given up the ghost with their likely imprisonment and are trying to make as much money as possible before it happens.
It’s disappointing because the founders made big sounds about not making a profit and being all about “sticking it to the man”.
Unless they invest the money back into something similar to the Pirate Bay or pro-piracy politics I’d call it taking the money and running - although admittedly, its likely they will have a few legal fees needing paying off!
Thing is though, in the files sharing scheme of things, this will make no difference. There is a multitude of torrent sites such as Torrent Reactor and MiniNova which are capable to rising up to take this place.
They won’t have the in your face attitude of the Pirate Bay owners, but they will do exactly the same thing and probably less likely to be caught.
So when you think about it, this whole Pirate Bay copyright case was a big waste of time. The organisations bringing the case may have won the battle, but the war is still being fought - and unless they find a way to embrace people getting content for free - they will lose.
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How Pirate Bay sticks two fingers up at the industry
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in Sweden, trial, Pirate Bay, pirate, Microsoft, IT PRO, Apple on
The Swedish owners of Pirate Bay, one of the most notorious file sharing websites in the world, seem to be bulletproof.
It was today revealed that on the second day of their highly-publicised trial for copyright infringement, the prosecution has already had to abandon half of all the charges.
They are completely open about what they’ve been doing - hence the name, symbol and much of what they say on the website.
Their main defence is that none of the files shared are saved on their server - only torrent files, which technically means that the owners of the site don’t hold any of the copyrighted files.
Many of the companies whose property is being downloaded are pretty unhappy with what the Pirate Bay does, and how the owners stick two fingers up and laugh, as they feel they are protected under Swedish law.
Here are some of the cease-and-desist notices that companies have sent to Pirate Bay, together with some of the rather cheeky replies that its owners have given.
The big daddy of tech has already sent what Pirate Bay owners describe as a ‘ton’ of cease and desist letters like this one.
Pirates Bay contains a number of Microsoft files which users have uploaded and shared, including different versions of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and many more.
Like Microsoft, Apple sounds very serious in how it intends to “take further actions to stop the sites illegal activities.”
However the Pirate Bay sent a rather mocking reply, together with the insult: “Instead of simply recommending that you sodomise yourself with a retractable baton, let me recommend a specific model- the ASP 21 inch, the previous lawyers tried to use a cheaper brand, but it broke during the action.”
The MPAA and the Swedish government
The Motion Picture Association of America and Swedish authorities thought they scored a victory against the Pirate Bay by ’shutting down’ the website in 2006.
However, the Pirate Bay returned.
They said: “Just some stats… here are some reasons why The Pirate Bay is down sometimes, and how long it usually take to fix.
Tiamo gets “very” drunk and then something crashes - 4 days
Anakata gets a really bad cold and no-one is around - 7 days
The US and Swedish government forces the police to steal our servers - 3 days…. yawn
Rated: 80% (5 votes)
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