FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 31, 2006 SWEDISH AUTHORITIES SINK PIRATE BAY Huge Worldwide Supplier of Illegal Movies Told No Safe Harbors for Facilitators of Piracy!
Los Angeles -- Swedish authorities announced today that they have shut down “The Pirate Bay” - one of the world’s largest and most well known facilitators of online piracy.
With more than one million registered users, “The Pirate Bay” touts itself as the “World’s Largest BitTorrent Tracker” facilitating and enabling illegal swapping of millions of illegal copyrighted movies, music, software, and games. The operators of The Pirate Bay have publicly ridiculed copyright holders and taunted law enforcement for years claiming immunity to copyright laws. Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal site down. Over fifty Swedish law enforcement officials executed search warrants and raids at ten different locations which resulted in three arrests and the preclusion of millions of users trading up to two million illegal files simultaneously.
“The actions today taken in Sweden serve as a reminder to pirates all over the world that there are no safe harbors for Internet copyright thieves,” said Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Dan Glickman. “Intellectual property theft is a problem for film industries all over the world and we are glad that the local government in Sweden has helped stop The Pirate Bay from continuing to enable rampant copyright theft on the Internet.”
ThePirateBay.com is a so called pirate “tracker” that directs people to pirated movies and music, making available over 157,000 illegal files including the latest blockbuster releases such as Da Vinci Code, Mission Impossible: III, and The Poseidon Adventure and many others. The Pirate Bay’s takedown today represents a growing culture of respect for intellectual property in Sweden, which in July 2005 reformed its copyright law to address digital piracy. Various rights-holders have sent countless cease-and-desist letters to The Pirate Bay, requesting that its operators remove pirated content from the site, and have been met with mockery and scorn, such as the operators posting the letters and their replies on thepiratebay.com.
According to Alexa.com which rates millions of websites around the world, The Pirate Bay was the 479th most visited website in the world ranking 21st in Sweden and 312th in the U.S. In comparison, CNN.com is the 125th most popular site in Sweden.
Like many pirate websites, The Pirate Bay contains significant and lucrative third-party advertising, much of it promoting the porn industry. Advertising revenue is typically a function of number of unique site visits per day. With more than one million hits per day – the Pirate Bay takes in an estimated $60,000 per month from advertisers in addition to thousands of dollars collected from user “donations.”
“The bottom line is that the operators of the Pirate Bay and others like them are criminals who profit handsomely by facilitating the distribution of millions of copyrighted creative works and files protected under the law,” said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA. “We applaud Swedish law enforcement for their effort to stop egregious copyright infringement on The Pirate Bay.”
Also from the MPAA website[/b]:
Worldwide box office held steady at $23.24 billion in 2005. Although down 7.9% from 2004, the worldwide box office reflected a 46% growth over 2000. (Refer to page 5 of the 2005 Theatrical Market Statistics Report)
Yeah, we have this fucking Anti Pirate bureau in Sweden that's strictly on some stasi shit. Luckily we also have a Pirate bureau that's fighting the good fight. And it ain't over 'til the fat, greasy, jolt cola drinking lady sings batches!!! *shakes fist*
Please, dont present your downloading of others intellectual property as some righteous campaign against the corporate machine. You simply dont want to pay for the shit.
Oh, I rarely download anything - too much of a record and DVD junkie. What I don't like however, are raids against servers and private companies keeping detailed records of people personal affairs. We've already got a secret police of the goverment, don't need a corporation version on top of that.
Please, dont present your downloading of others intellectual property as some righteous campaign against the corporate machine. You simply dont want to pay for the shit.
Feel free to actually read anything I posted in this thread. And dude, you don't know me or my motivations. If you'd like to have an intelligent discussion about this issue, I'd love to do it. If you'd rather continue to play the message board troll, I will have no interest in your comments.
Yes, f#ck the police everywhere. They never protected us from the rip offs of the music industry when we had to pay about 20 ???/$ for a lousy CD. But now when we finally get our money back they treat us like criminals just for downloading some songs. Downloading is not a Crime!
Actually, I think it is a crime. But the servers confiscated by the Police contained no copyrighted material. In fact, most of them belonged to small businesses and political groups, most of whom had nothing to do with file sharing. Even the Pirate Bay's actions had already been deemed legal in Sweden. This is just further proof that money speaks louder than the law.
The necessity for securing technical evidence for the existance of a web-service which is fully official, the legality of which has been under public debate for years and whose principals are public persons giving regular press interviews, could not be explained. Asked for other reasoning behind the choice to take down a site, without knowing wether it is illegal or not, the officers explained that this is normal.
The TPB can receive compensation from the Swedish state in case that the upcoming legal processes show that TPB is indeed legal.
Thats really intresting. My opinion of the laws are that only the uploading is permitted but not the provide such a web service nor the downloading (as far as it is not ofrom an obvious illegal source). But it seems to me that nobody really knows the law and the musik industry uses that. Du you have a clue how the legal situation is?
In Canada, it's not illegal to download. Just sharing is... I'm not sure what it's like in Sweden, but I know it's not against the law to index torrents.
It will be interesting to see what will happen because of this. Unless they find copywrite material on TPB's (And only their) servers, the police are gonna be fucked. Many other companies and parties were effected by this.
In Canada, it's not illegal to download. Just sharing is... I'm not sure what it's like in Sweden, but I know it's not against the law to index torrents.
It's the same here I believe.
the police are gonna be fucked.
When they've checked the servers and the law, they'll have this look on their faces:
Same here, I bet that file sharing hurts smaller independant artists and labels a lot more than the big coporations those that dl' claim to be "fighting"...
The big corporations will always be alright, that's the bottomline. Downloading has made sure that no Swedish hiphop is released on major labels anymore - it just isn't worth it. From what I've heard, Sony and EMI and them might close their Swedish offices altogether. But I'm playing funk for 18 year olds tonight so that's an unrelated upside.
Yes, f#ck the police everywhere. They never protected us from the rip offs of the music industry when we had to pay about 20 ???/$ for a lousy CD. But now when we finally get our money back they treat us like criminals just for downloading some songs. Downloading is not a Crime!
Err...The police do not concern themselves with the pricing of products as the companies have not broken the law by setting their prices at what they are...However there are copyright laws against downloading/filesharing.
Yes, f#ck the police everywhere. They never protected us from the rip offs of the music industry when we had to pay about 20 ???/$ for a lousy CD. But now when we finally get our money back they treat us like criminals just for downloading some songs. Downloading is not a Crime!
Err...The police do not concern themselves with the pricing of products as the companies have not broken the law by setting their prices at what they are...However there are copyright laws against downloading/filesharing.
Thats not entirely true. Majors have been busted for price fixing in the past. And all types of other shit (Rootkits bullshit, paying off radio stations, etc).
Also, the laws depend on what country you are in. Just because something is illegal in the US, doesn't mean it is everywhere else. In many countries it's not illegal to download. Here in Canada a levy is paid on all recordable media to help offset these losses. Not that any of that money acually goes to any artist mind you.
I just want to clarify that I'm not debating the legality of downloading here. However, be aware that Raj is actually hosting copyrighted material, on his frontpage no less. I don't think any strutter has ever contacted all the labels involved to gain permission to use songs for their mixes. If Soul Strut were a considerably larger site, it probably wouldn't come to a surprise to anyone if the RIAA came knocking, asking him to remove all mixes. We probably would be surprised if a gang of police officers burst into the offices of the company that hosts his server and confiscated not only Soul Strut's server, but every other server in the room as well. It makes no sense, from a legal perspective or otherwise. The actions of the Swedish Police (most likely led on by the Swedish anti-piracy bureau) were nothing less than attempts to bully and intimidate TPB and similar sites into submission. In their own words, their motives are to "test the legality" of TPB's operations. That's a fairly open-ended concept. One could conceiveably test the legality of nearly anything. Why, aren't cell phones and voice message services used frequently to facilitate drug sales and related activity? Why don't the cops bust Verizon, to test the legailty of their buisness? While they're at it, they can go ahead and shut down any businesses that happen to be located in the same strip mall as any Verizon retalier.
Bottom line, it's abuse of power, regardless of whether or not you support illegal file-sharing.
I've just seen in the news that the was a big (700 people)demonstration in Stockholm against the criminalisation of filesharing and the police actions.
I fully support the demonstrants. The police actions are in no comparision to filesharing. The police was never so strict against the cartels of the music industy, so why should it be justified to act so hard against downloaders?
twoply
Only Built 4 Manzanita Links 2,915 Posts
Comments
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 31, 2006
SWEDISH AUTHORITIES SINK PIRATE BAY
Huge Worldwide Supplier of Illegal Movies Told No Safe Harbors for Facilitators of Piracy!
Los Angeles -- Swedish authorities announced today that they have shut down “The Pirate Bay” - one of the world’s largest and most well known facilitators of online piracy.
With more than one million registered users, “The Pirate Bay” touts itself as the “World’s Largest BitTorrent Tracker” facilitating and enabling illegal swapping of millions of illegal copyrighted movies, music, software, and games. The operators of The Pirate Bay have publicly ridiculed copyright holders and taunted law enforcement for years claiming immunity to copyright laws. Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal site down. Over fifty Swedish law enforcement officials executed search warrants and raids at ten different locations which resulted in three arrests and the preclusion of millions of users trading up to two million illegal files simultaneously.
“The actions today taken in Sweden serve as a reminder to pirates all over the world that there are no safe harbors for Internet copyright thieves,” said Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Dan Glickman. “Intellectual property theft is a problem for film industries all over the world and we are glad that the local government in Sweden has helped stop The Pirate Bay from continuing to enable rampant copyright theft on the Internet.”
ThePirateBay.com is a so called pirate “tracker” that directs people to pirated movies and music, making available over 157,000 illegal files including the latest blockbuster releases such as Da Vinci Code, Mission Impossible: III, and The Poseidon Adventure and many others. The Pirate Bay’s takedown today represents a growing culture of respect for intellectual property in Sweden, which in July 2005 reformed its copyright law to address digital piracy. Various rights-holders have sent countless cease-and-desist letters to The Pirate Bay, requesting that its operators remove pirated content from the site, and have been met with mockery and scorn, such as the operators posting the letters and their replies on thepiratebay.com.
According to Alexa.com which rates millions of websites around the world, The Pirate Bay was the 479th most visited website in the world ranking 21st in Sweden and 312th in the U.S. In comparison, CNN.com is the 125th most popular site in Sweden.
Like many pirate websites, The Pirate Bay contains significant and lucrative third-party advertising, much of it promoting the porn industry. Advertising revenue is typically a function of number of unique site visits per day. With more than one million hits per day – the Pirate Bay takes in an estimated $60,000 per month from advertisers in addition to thousands of dollars collected from user “donations.”
“The bottom line is that the operators of the Pirate Bay and others like them are criminals who profit handsomely by facilitating the distribution of millions of copyrighted creative works and files protected under the law,” said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA. “We applaud Swedish law enforcement for their effort to stop egregious copyright infringement on The Pirate Bay.”
Also from the MPAA website[/b]:
Worldwide box office held steady at $23.24 billion in 2005. Although down 7.9% from 2004, the worldwide box office reflected a 46% growth over 2000. (Refer to page 5 of the 2005 Theatrical Market Statistics Report)
Feel free to actually read anything I posted in this thread. And dude, you don't know me or my motivations. If you'd like to have an intelligent discussion about this issue, I'd love to do it. If you'd rather continue to play the message board troll, I will have no interest in your comments.
Downloading is not a Crime!
Actually, I think it is a crime. But the servers confiscated by the Police contained no copyrighted material. In fact, most of them belonged to small businesses and political groups, most of whom had nothing to do with file sharing. Even the Pirate Bay's actions had already been deemed legal in Sweden. This is just further proof that money speaks louder than the law.
The TPB can receive compensation from the Swedish state in case that the upcoming legal processes show that TPB is indeed legal.
It will be interesting to see what will happen because of this. Unless they find copywrite material on TPB's (And only their) servers, the police are gonna be fucked. Many other companies and parties were effected by this.
It's the same here I believe.
When they've checked the servers and the law, they'll have this look on their faces:
Same here, I bet that file sharing hurts smaller independant artists and labels a lot more than the big coporations those that dl' claim to be "fighting"...
Err...The police do not concern themselves with the pricing of products as the companies have not broken the law by setting their prices at what they are...However there are copyright laws against downloading/filesharing.
Thats not entirely true. Majors have been busted for price fixing in the past. And all types of other shit (Rootkits bullshit, paying off radio stations, etc).
Also, the laws depend on what country you are in. Just because something is illegal in the US, doesn't mean it is everywhere else. In many countries it's not illegal to download. Here in Canada a levy is paid on all recordable media to help offset these losses. Not that any of that money acually goes to any artist mind you.
Bottom line, it's abuse of power, regardless of whether or not you support illegal file-sharing.
Classic
I fully support the demonstrants. The police actions are in no comparision to filesharing. The police was never so strict against the cartels of the music industy, so why should it be justified to act so hard against downloaders?