This is the accumulation of decades of US interference in Sweden's sovereignty, resulting in laws and institutions that are in no way serving the Swedish people, nor any particular political ideology. And it is the same all over Europe. Our laws are not our laws. They've been bought and paid for (although not necessarily in cash).
Even if the trial itself was squeaky clean (it most definitely wasn't), and the verdict was a fair interpretation of the current law (highly debatable, but IANAL), the fact remains that these Swedish citizens are convicted for something that would never have been a crime in the first place had the US government and the US entertainment industry not thoroughly corrupted Sweden's legislative process.
> They've been bought and paid for (although not necessarily in cash).
More specifically, the US entertainment industry bought the US foreign policy to threaten Sweden with trade sanctions unless... See the wiki leaks files.
"From having the minister of justice pressured by the US to illegally make a case of TPB, through the police officer responsible for the investigation (Jim Keyzer) “just happened” to get a job at Warner Brothers the weeks before I myself got promoted from a witness to a suspect, to the judges in the court cases being either board members, or in one case the actual chairman of the board, for the swedish pro-copyright society…"
WikiLeaks has several documents that give details about US embassy pressure towards the Swedish justice system to make legislation and verdicts that favor the US IP Mafia.
Whether you call it corruption or regular diplomatic process is up to you.
On the one hand, there is movie-villain corruption. I pay bribes directly to politicians and law enforcement personnel, then I give them orders, which they follow regardless of the law.
On the other hand, there is a much more common type of corruption through affinity. I run a very lucrative and well-thought-of business in a key industry. I pay lobbyists to obtain access to politicians. Politicians develop an affinity for my interests because they have more exposure to my point of view through lobbying and that is magnified by the positive public perception of my company. Then, when my interests and other people's interests collide politicians (and law enforcement as well, due to similar phenomena) will naturally take my side because they have come to associate my interests with their and society's interests. This extends up to bending the law.
And, of course, there are degrees in between. I not only have fostered an affinity between politicians and my business, I give campaign donations, my lobbyists take you to really fancy meals, I gave a lucrative job to your brother in law, etc.
Maybe because the facts speak against the verdict?
TPB has hosted torrent files, they were not hosting content, so what they did was perfectly legal.
The verdict of this case, which ignores the facts, shows clear signs of US pressure on the Swedish legal system and politicians there. There is no other explanation.
> TPB has hosted torrent files, they were not hosting content, so what they did was perfectly legal.
I think these arguments devalue the situation.
Dancing around a legal loophole in a grey area is fun to watch, but one can't complain when it turns out not to work. We (I) expect others to be judged based on obvious intentions as well. I don't want my gov't to tell me one day that they didn't violate my privacy, they just store some large integer numbers forever, who could blame them for that? They're not my numbers! Or that their CCTV system only compares hashes of faces, so it is legal etc. etc...
The only way to change things is to publicly discuss copyright (and US intervention).
The OP goes to great lengths to emphasize TPB's role in Wikileaks and similar cases, I think this makes more sense as a moral defense.
I don't know Swedish law, but they were convinced of aiding copyright infringement. To me, it is clear they are guilty of that, the whole site is designed for that sole reason of copyright infringement (except perhaps 1% of torrents). Further, the admin do extensive "cleaning" of torrents they deem inapproriate (for example files put in the wrong section), but never clean up copyright infringing files.
Now, you might think that aiding copyright infringement shouldn't be illegal, but if it is, how do the facts speak against the verdict?
Aiding in copyright infrigement, aiding is the key word. The ISPs carrying the signals and the state putting down the wire has been aiding the infrigement. The Linux servers running the torrent site and the collocation facilities are aiding in the infrigement.
Never before in Swedish justice history has this law been applied so rigorously as now. The monopoly mail-delivery system has never been trialed for aiding in spreading of illegal content such as child abuse pictures or bombs.
The messaging system has many uses, the trial did not even take this aspect up for discussion. The servers of thepiratebay where raided and with them several sites where taken down and servers where confiscated, still not returned. Some of those where owned by startup companies and completley unrelated to tpb except for sharing the same server room.
>The ISPs carrying the signals and the state putting down the wire has been aiding the infrigement.
I have no knowledge of Swedish law but this argument sounds to melike you are trying to use a loophole. I don't think you need more than basic common sense to see why TPB is guilty while accusing the ISP or the State is a little far fetched. And if their is no law in Sweden that can make the distinction between the two well, there needs to be one.
Yes, you can argue that every part is technically aiding. But the thing is, legality also considers intent and awareness. The Pirate Bay was clearly intended for pirate material (how you prove that is another point..) and they were very much aware that the majority of torrents pointed towards pirated material.
Aiding in copyright infrigement, aiding is the key word. The ISPs carrying the signals and the state putting down the wire has been aiding the infrigement. The Linux servers running the torrent site and the collocation facilities are aiding in the infrigement.
You're stressing it for lack of an argument.
There are various levels of aiding. Those you described don't count much. In fact, they are fairly neutral: the "wires", for example, are used for millions of non-copyright-infringement uses.
Your "argument" is akin to saying that the company who made the knife in the first place is as much an aid as the guy that held the man getting knifed to death by his accomplice. And maybe their mothers too, because if they hadn't brought them to life, there would be no murder.
Is it too much to ask for people to NOT go making far fetched claims and playing every loophole?
Tired argument's like: "It's not stealing, because you only make a copy", "Google aids copyright infringement too", etc, are 1st grade material, not actual arguments worthy of adults.
I disagree. I'm definitely an adult and I don't think copyrighte infringement is stealing. We can have an intelligent discussion about the morality of copyright infringement, but calling it stealing is spinning.
> Further, the admin do extensive "cleaning" of torrents they deem inapproriate (for example files put in the wrong section), but never clean up copyright infringing files.
I can tell that a movie is, for example, a RomCom by looking at it. How do I know a given copy of a specific 50 Cent video is a copyright infringement?
I mention 50 cent because I understand that various artists have released independently produced videos for general distribution. In addition, labels have done the same thing.
Yeah, because TPB believes that all of its torrents are potentially legitimate (50 cent has released videos for general distribution after all). I'm sure if they were ever notified by rights holders that they were hosting a torrent that was aiding in the infringement of protected works, they would surely "clean" it up. After all, I can tell that a movie is, for example, infringing by looking at a takedown notification.
Classy. Surely they were acting in good faith by defying notification since it referenced US instead of Swedish law. As we all know, the appeals process has just proven "no Swedish law is being violated." It is certainly appropriate for TPB to tell the rights holder to "Go fuck yourself." How dare the rights holder demand that TPB not aid in the piracy of their work while TPB, not the work's creators or investors, profit off it.
</sarcasm> It is beyond me how prevalent the opinion is on HN that this court ruling is corrupt. I don't claim to know every relevant detail of this case or Sweedish law, but IMHO, what TPB currently does SHOULD be illegal. However, it seems to me that this is the minority opinion here.
Well, when someone e-mails you, telling "transformers 3", in your film category, is in fact transformers 3, and ask you to take it down, you could do so.
Instead thepiratebay tended to just laugh, and insult people who sent them letters, claiming what they were doing was perfectly legal. It turns out, it appears, that they were wrong.
"TPB has hosted torrent files, they were not hosting content, so what they did was perfectly legal."
Eh, well actually, the whole point is that they were convicted, several times, so it's not 'perfectly legal'. You can call a chair a table, but it's still a table, regardless of your insistence that it's not.
You're confusing two different things. One is the question of innocence/guilt (did you do X) the other is the question of legal/illegal (is it legal to do X). If you're found guilt of murder, that obviously doesn't mean that you committed a murder, but it does mean that murder is considered illegal.
"You are using circular logic here: "They were convicted and that's proof that what they did is illegal.""
By definition, when someone is convicted, it's because they did something illegal, at least when all appeals are exhausted.
When deciding on guilt in a criminal case like this one, there are several questions a judge answers before coming to a verdict. I won't go into the details, but the ones you are conflating are "did they do what they were charged with", and "is what they did illegal".
"You are saying that never ever innocent people are convicted."
What? I said no such thing, not even remotely. "When innocent people are convicted", it's because they didn't do what they were charged with, yet a judge thought they did do it. In this case, that question is irrelevant: there is no question on whether they did 'it', just on whether what they did was against the law. You said that it's not, which is nonsense - the fact that several judges said it was, and an appeal was rejected, means that yes, what they did was against the law.
