Who Knew?

barthel: I have a rather long piece up about the Pirate Bay conviction at Idolator today.  I am not entirely sure it was a good idea, but there you go. I just read all of it. First off, this was definitely a necessary article - not a new opinion by any means, but one that hasn’t yet entered the discourse around this specific ruling, and one that I agree with. That being said, I gotta take issue with some of your basic assumptions. The whole reason that TPB never pled guilty in the first place is that they believe that their actions are in no way illegal. Rasmus Fleischer of Piratbyran had a great quote in Steal This Film that succinctly explains this cause of much confusion: Running a BitTorrent indexing site like The Pirate Bay wasn’t, or isn’t directly unlawful under Swedish law or under, I mean, like most copyright laws. Because it’s not about direct involvement in transactions of copyrighted material but only transactions of metadata, basically. Links and filenames and checksums. Many websites host links to copyrighted material, and as a cursory Google search will tell you, even major corporations don’t see a problem with doing this - it falls under safe harbor laws and the philosophy of net neutrality. Of course, TPB were being dicks about it, and that certainly isn’t the greatest attitude, but they adopted that bravado because, after consulting with their lawyers, they had reason to believe that they were not committing a crime. They posted DMCA takedown letters from studios and ruthlessly mocked them because they believed that those takedown notices were meaningless under Swedish law. Of course, these beliefs were ruled as false in a Swedish court (creating a precedent for other websites to possibly be sued in Sweden for indexing copyrighted content), so the rules have now changed. But I feel like many people aren’t just taking the adolescent ideological stance and instead are actually moving forward with political action and grassroots initiative. The Swedish Pirate Party (which is an independent entity from TPB) has had a surge in members since the ruling, and hopes to use this increased member base to gain a seat in the European Parliament. (I don’t actually know whether they even have a shot in accomplishing this, but the article does mention that they’re poised to become the #1 party amongst Swedish youth, and it’s definitely at least a hint that people are converting their passion over the topic into political action.) The ruling took place in Sweden, so obviously there’s not much one can do about it in America. But even Cory Doctorow (arguably the most obnoxious builder of false consensus around this issue) tries to provide an outlet for his readers to take some sort of political action when issues of copyright arise in pending legislation. (His call to action often revolves around writing to or calling your local representative.) I guess in the end what gets me is that on the one side you have TPB and the “copyfighters”, complete with their obnoxious bravado and open disdain for the law, and on the other side you have normal citizens who are repelled by that behavior. There aren’t too many people being persuaded to join the ideological middle, as it were - honestly evaluating the laws in place, the damages that piracy inflicts on rightsholders and the benefits of the public domain for culture, and forming your opinions based on the facts, not the heavy spin.

barthel:

I have a rather long piece up about the Pirate Bay conviction at Idolator today.  I am not entirely sure it was a good idea, but there you go.
I just read all of it. First off, this was definitely a necessary article - not a new opinion by any means, but one that hasn’t yet entered the discourse around this specific ruling, and one that I agree with. That being said, I gotta take issue with some of your basic assumptions.

The whole reason that TPB never pled guilty in the first place is that they believe that their actions are in no way illegal. Rasmus Fleischer of Piratbyran had a great quote in Steal This Film that succinctly explains this cause of much confusion:

Running a BitTorrent indexing site like The Pirate Bay wasn’t, or isn’t directly unlawful under Swedish law or under, I mean, like most copyright laws. Because it’s not about direct involvement in transactions of copyrighted material but only transactions of metadata, basically. Links and filenames and checksums.
Many websites host links to copyrighted material, and as a cursory Google search will tell you, even major corporations don’t see a problem with doing this - it falls under safe harbor laws and the philosophy of net neutrality. Of course, TPB were being dicks about it, and that certainly isn’t the greatest attitude, but they adopted that bravado because, after consulting with their lawyers, they had reason to believe that they were not committing a crime. They posted DMCA takedown letters from studios and ruthlessly mocked them because they believed that those takedown notices were meaningless under Swedish law.

Of course, these beliefs were ruled as false in a Swedish court (creating a precedent for other websites to possibly be sued in Sweden for indexing copyrighted content), so the rules have now changed. But I feel like many people aren’t just taking the adolescent ideological stance and instead are actually moving forward with political action and grassroots initiative. The Swedish Pirate Party (which is an independent entity from TPB) has had a surge in members since the ruling, and hopes to use this increased member base to gain a seat in the European Parliament. (I don’t actually know whether they even have a shot in accomplishing this, but the article does mention that they’re poised to become the #1 party amongst Swedish youth, and it’s definitely at least a hint that people are converting their passion over the topic into political action.) The ruling took place in Sweden, so obviously there’s not much one can do about it in America. But even Cory Doctorow (arguably the most obnoxious builder of false consensus around this issue) tries to provide an outlet for his readers to take some sort of political action when issues of copyright arise in pending legislation. (His call to action often revolves around writing to or calling your local representative.)

I guess in the end what gets me is that on the one side you have TPB and the “copyfighters”, complete with their obnoxious bravado and open disdain for the law, and on the other side you have normal citizens who are repelled by that behavior. There aren’t too many people being persuaded to join the ideological middle, as it were - honestly evaluating the laws in place, the damages that piracy inflicts on rightsholders and the benefits of the public domain for culture, and forming your opinions based on the facts, not the heavy spin.
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