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Pirate Bay

Keith Parkins | 17.04.2009 16:26 | Culture | Globalisation | Technology

Pirate Bay has been closed down, the founders hit with heavy fines.

'The Pirate Coelho supports Pirate Bay!!!' -- Paulo Coelho

I heard on the lunchtime news today that those behind Pirate Bay had been found guilty and hit with hefty fines.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm
 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/17/pirate_verdict_next_move/

Pirate Bay had support from unlikely quarters, one of who was Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. Well maybe not so unlikely when Paolo Coelho allows his own work to be made freely available on Pirate Coelho, much to the chagrin of his publishers. But what Paulo Coelho has shown is that if you make available on the net, public awareness increases and more books are sold.

 http://www.heureka.clara.net/art/paulo-coelho.htm
 http://piratecoelho.wordpress.com/

I have to admit, I had never heard of Pirate Bay until I read of it on Paulo's blog. Sounds like a good idea and what a pity I thought my ship had not visited to see what treasures were to be had.

 http://paulocoelhoblog.com/
 http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2009/04/13/from-pirate-coelho-central/

As Paulo shows in his latest novel The Winner Stands Alone, the film and fashion industry is a greed driven business. To which I would add the rest of the entertainment business, which includes the music business and sport.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/427460.html?c=on

Who is ripping off who when on sale is a shirt or blouse or pair of jeans or trainers that costs $70 in the shops and one dollar is the factory gate price?

Go back twenty years and the music business was griping about audio cassettes, presumably before that the sale of reel-to-reel tapes. They equated every cassette sold with a lost album sale.

Their logic was seriously flawed. No way was these people going to go out and buy their offerings, thus no sales were lost. I see nothing wrong with friends passing around their music.

There was a time when a few CDs had copy protection. They did not meet the Red Book standard for a Compact Disc, with the net result they would often not play. Strictly speaking they were not CDs as they did not meet the standard for CDs.

If I went away on vacation, I would take my personal CD player with me and a handful of favourite CDs. I took copies, which I then gave away before returning home. More people were introduced to music they were previously unaware of.

Copy protection and regional encoding on DVDs is another pain in the neck with DVDs.

Download AnyDVD or DVD43. AnyDVD has the advantage that it strips out not only regional encoding, but also the annoying trailers and adverts.

The industry is only interested in the next big block buster. Look around at the multiplex-multiscreen cinemas, at any one time they are all showing the same films. Where is the choice?

There are exceptions. The Electric Theatre in Guildford during its film seasons has a good selection of films.

What the industry fails to understand is that their products are overhyped and overpriced.

I was given the latest James Bond film Quantum of Solace months before it was officially released. Having watched it I would not part with good money to buy it for the simple reason it is a load of rubbish, a poor copy of the Bourne trilogy. In many ways a pity as the new James Bond is one of the best. In turn, I gave away my copy.

There are good films, but they lack the distribution. Try Black Gold or Favela Rising, both of which I saw at various times at the BeyondTV film Festival, and then went on to buy. Cannes and all its glitz and glamour and pretensions Beyond TV is not.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/387310.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/12/357751.html?c=on

If I want a film or album, I pick it up from a good second-hand record shop. Ben's Records in Guildford is a favourite place.

 http://www.heureka.clara.net/surrey-hants/gu-ford.htm

For books, there are plenty of secondhand bookshops around, though sadly nowhere near as many as there used to be.

Pirate Coelho is not the only place to find books. The book on sustainable energy is Sustainable Energy by David MacKay, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. The book is available for download as a pdf file, plus there are lecture notes and a mp3 file of a lecture.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/415544.html?c=on

What will the industry try next, to close down all the secondhand bookshops and record shops?

This is not as fanciful as it sounds, look at the biocide industry which has done its best to stop farmers from saving seeds for the next harvest, something Man has done ever since he learnt how to walk. One reaction to this is highly successful seed swaps.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/390643.html?c=on

Corporate greed, monculture, lack of choice versus diversity and choice.

Keith Parkins

Comments

Hide the following 14 comments

soli with the pirate's

17.04.2009 17:08

solidarity with those arrested in Sweden. "piracy" only harms the media corporations not the artists themselves. Protecting our access to our common culture must continue, our resistance can't be stopped.

commoner


blocked websites

17.04.2009 17:26

These websites are blocked in public libraries in Hampshire

 http://www.bittorrent.com/
 http://thepiratebay.org/

Keith


*NOT* closed

17.04.2009 18:20

hey,

piratebay is still up and running and it doesn't look like it's going to close anytime soon either. remember, the most serious charges were dropped on the second day of the trial and they're claiming they are going to appeal todays verdict as well. correct me if i'm wrong, but from what i understand they've been given a sentence due to the court assuming they were working as an organization for profit, which they themselves deny.

chopped pork


File sharing is good

17.04.2009 18:33

But sharing copyrighted material is bad.

opinion


This message is copyleft

17.04.2009 20:12

Surely you mean...

...copyright is bad


This is good news - files sharing is killing music

17.04.2009 21:59

If nobody bought films/music then there would be no money to make it. Yes, corporations and millionaire rock stars are losing money; boo hoo!! But it trickles down and everyone in the industries suffers. I remember being in bands when you would sell them for a few quid at gigs and people would buy them getting me a bit of money back on the recording costs. Now you have to give them away. I think part of this is the greed of the music industry when a few years back cds were going for around 15 quid.

Working (but poor) musician


Pirate Bay is *not* closed down

17.04.2009 22:25

The Pirate Bay founders were sentenced to a year in jail and a £3million fine:
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

 http://thepiratebay.org/
The PirateBay website is hosted in several places all round the world and the exact details aren't even known to the people in the court case, so it will be very difficult to shut down.

For those that don't know, the PirateBay website connects file-sharers together to share files using the "BitTorrent" method of filesharing. It doesn't host any files itself at all, other than the small files that introduce sharers to each other. In Swedish law this isn't a crime, but US companies have been putting heavy pressure on the Swedish government to buy them this result.

Denying us the right to copy information around is a totally artificial restriction enforced by government. In the internet age is is increasingly a joke.

Pirate away!

(just off to watch the leaked Wolverine film weeks before it is in the cinema, heehee)

anon


Pirate Bay

18.04.2009 00:10

x


Free (£300) self replicating printer

18.04.2009 01:32

RepRap has been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment.
Look at your computer setup. Imagine if you hooked up a 3D printer. Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical parts. To give you an idea of how robust these parts are think of Lego bricks and you're in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer will make components using Fused Deposition Modelling Rapid Prototyping, which builds the component up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn't even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy
Download Now Free
License:
GNU General Public License
Approx. Cost to Build - £300

y
- Homepage: http://www.kith-kin.co.uk/shop/reprap/


a fewv random thoughts

18.04.2009 12:38

I'm sorry, but when the tagline of an article is wrong, it doesn't give a good impression.

The Piratebay has NOT BEEN CLOSED DOWN. It is still going. Just visit  http://piratebay.se and take a look.

As for arguments that file sharing is bad (a bit like "drugs are bad, Ok?" argument) I suggest the following article:

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/southcoast/2007/10/383534.html

The music industry has to die for the artists to begin reaping the rewards that they are due through direct merchandising, gigs, direct sales, etc. The industry are the parasites and leaches that get rich on turning music and art into pure commodity and encourage the enclosure of our artistic commonwealth.

Personally, I reckon the piratebay people have a good chance of arguing their case at appeal stage. Their argument - that linking to copyright material is not a crime is pretty safe. Just think about Google for example!

Krop


not closed down

18.04.2009 19:14

I agree, Pirate Bay has not been closed down, mainly due to the use of distributed servers, cf Indymedia UK, which makes it very difficult if not impossible to close, but the news as it was breaking gave the impression, albeit wrong, that Pirate Bay had closed down.

For an update:

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/427815.html

Keith


You killed my father.

19.04.2009 21:12

Westley's a Dick
Westley's a Dick

Prepare to die.


Pirates are only popular compared to their victims

Piracy in popular culture is a side effect of the what we would now call 'the Royal Navy'. None of the Elizabethan 'privateers' are admirable. When a Royal Navy nuclear submarine sank an Argentinian warship that was in international waters, that captain celebrated by flying the Jolly Roger all the way home. I complain when I saw a Skull 'n' Cross Bones flying at peace camps. If you know the history it is not fun or appropriate. I have more respect for the dread 'Somali pirates'.

A good rule of thumb in dealing with people is if they wrap themselves in the pirate myth then they are dangerously stupid. Someone asked me once 'How do you know if you are a pirate or a thief?'. It was a joke, a prelude to sex, but I answered it seriously. Because I am me, I was vaguely insulted that she ignored my serious answer and was only interested in my body.

My name is Inigo Montoya


she sure wouldn't have been interested ...

20.04.2009 11:22

in your mind.

helio engelnaz magfinico


At least she was interested

25.04.2009 10:19

In my self-replicating, open-source, battery-powered printer.

I wanted one of these for ten years but they were too expensive. Now this guy has designed a low cost version, far cheaper than anything else on the market. 'Self-replicating' is misleading, but it does mean precise, complex parts can be made anywhere without having to go to a corporation to make it.
The most interesting thing is that the guy made it available on an open-source licence. When people really create something important, when they have an idea they believe in, they do their best to propogate it.

Dread
- Homepage: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/24/reprap/


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