Author Topic: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!  (Read 8557 times)

Qhimm

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Acting on the initiative of Antipiratbyrån (Sweden's lobby organization for the media/software megacorporations), Swedish police today entered the server storages and homes of the maintainers of The Pirate Bay, confiscating any servers and computers and bringing in the people for questioning. Piratbyrån (Swedish grass roots organization arguing for the right of free sharing) and other, unrelated web hotel customers also found themselves shut down since their servers were in the same physical location as The Pirate Bay. Fifty police officers were involved in the raids, which occured simultaneously at several places in the country. This happening at the same time as tons of investigations into actual theft, beatings and murders remain unsolved or simply abandoned due to lack of police manpower.

The Pirate Bay's activities have been take to court on earlier occassions and found to be legal according to Swedish law, but warrants to search the various premises were still issued, statedly in order to "put The Pirate Bay's legality to the test".

If you ask me, as an observer I cannot help but think that the earlier rounds in court already tested what needed to be tested in terms of legality, and until those laws are rewritten to make generic distribution of information illegal (or make data providers responsible for the legality of all contained traffic), the police should have better things to do than harass legal businesses on the order of foreign corporate interests. What organization would tolerate having their people and property detained and put out of business "just in case" they are later deemed illegal? No, first you suspect people of a crime, then you call the police. You don't detain people at whim while you try to figure out how to make them criminals. "Violating copyrights" my ass; that has already been in court, and unless I'm very much mistaken, nothing has changed since then -- neither the relevant laws nor Pirate Bay's activities.

Regardless of which side you support in the "filesharing is good/bad" debate, it becomes rather apparent that this has been a travesty of justice, where the courts and police have bypassed their own laws for the sake of a "greater good" dictated by lobby organizations. Shame on you! :x
« Last Edit: 2006-05-31 18:41:00 by Qhimm »

Sad Jari

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Re: The Pirate Bay is down
« Reply #1 on: 2006-05-31 16:32:38 »
I'm telepathetic, I knew what you were going to post before you posted it! :-D

I don't have anything particularly smart to add, but I agree with what you wrote (duh). And that there's quite bit of talk about Pirate Bay in Finnish forums too.

Emerald Weapon

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Re: The Pirate Bay is down
« Reply #2 on: 2006-05-31 18:42:03 »
I think it will not be too long before it's back up. As the police will find, and if I'm correct, the servers of the pirate will contain no actual data whatsoever that is copyright infringing. Then again, that's nothing new. It has been the main argument (along with the fact that they're hosted in Sweden) in the Legal dir of the site. Which was hilarious to read btw.

I think the police and the organisations involved might acutally be facing charges against them, when they are finished interrogating, and they might just have a problem...

spyrojyros_tail

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #3 on: 2006-05-31 19:45:54 »

... the police should have better things to do than harass legal businesses on the order of foreign corporate interests.


Its crazy the amount of power corporations have, to be able to control the police and twist the arm of governments. I must admit that their "legal threats" section is hillarious, but its really unbeliveable how these companies are above the law. I hope that nothing comes of this, because you can be damn sure that the companies involved will want to make an example out of them.

You don't detain people at whim while you try to figure out how to make them criminals.

Heh, it looks like the corporations are following america's example of guantanamo...

Relf

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #4 on: 2006-05-31 20:32:02 »
Aye aye Cap'n Qhimm.... But really, too bad. I am kinda fond of the place...

ye-roon

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #5 on: 2006-05-31 21:54:50 »
Well do to legal issues The Pirate Bay has switched server locations some time ago. The servers were operated from i think sweden, but the actual servers are located in Holland, cause the laws here are prolly the most screwed up of them all :) And filesharing isnt illigal in Holland, so what do i care, givz me all your data :)

Qhimm

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #6 on: 2006-05-31 22:15:17 »
Well do to legal issues The Pirate Bay has switched server locations some time ago. The servers were operated from i think sweden, but the actual servers are located in Holland
They did? They are? In that case it must've been some incredible coincidence that PirateBay went down at the same time that police disconnected and confiscated the servers labelled "piratebay.org" at Rix|Port80's (PB's Swedish bandwidth provider) offices here in Sweden. :P
While the police seem to have mixed up the "innocent until proven guilty (of a crime)" idiom, I don't think they confused Sweden with Holland. :)

Relf

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #7 on: 2006-06-01 00:08:00 »
Mistakes like that happen only in Canada. The RCMP are just brilliant for the most absurd mistakes and wates of time...

James Pond

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #8 on: 2006-06-02 22:32:35 »
As far as I am aware, storage and distribution of torrents is completely legal.

It only crosses into illegal territory the second one man uploads and another iniitiates the torrent downloading process, and downloads the file.  The torrent files are not illegal in any way, they simply point to a tracker AFAIK, which then conencts the uploader and downloader.

Of course, many places use torrents for legal purposes, a few linux distro's, The World of Warcraft Patcher uses it, I beleive filefront.com also uses some torrenting to lower strain on their servers.


Its a grey area for sure...

Sad Jari

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #9 on: 2006-06-02 22:44:31 »
As far as I am aware, storage and distribution of torrents is completely legal.
It's so much of a grey area that the statement above can be true in some countries and not true in others. It was supposed to be legal in Sweden, but for example in Finland there's a legal precedent that it's illegal.

At least I think that the tracker was the reason for closing down Finreactor. There hasn't been any trial yet, though.


EDIT: It's up and running... in Netherlands. Seems to be missing the database, or it's having trouble connecting to the server.

EDIT2: And some info about the take down.
« Last Edit: 2006-06-03 08:30:46 by Sad Jari »

VincentVal

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #10 on: 2006-06-03 15:53:29 »
The site seems like its back up, and it shows a cannon shooting the hollywood sign ( lol ) but after trying a search I get this message

No hits due to politics
The search function will be back later today.


James Pond

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #12 on: 2006-06-03 18:48:47 »
gg on reiterating what the past two posts have said.

Radiosity

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #13 on: 2006-06-04 03:24:22 »

Sad Jari

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #14 on: 2006-06-04 03:29:31 »
Ahoy mate! It's from last year! Arrrr! :P


EDIT: Don't feel too bad, though. You are not the first person to post it. Not even the 10th. I've seen that thing (or some variant) posted so many times in the past few days.  :-)
« Last Edit: 2006-06-04 03:32:25 by Sad Jari »

Radiosity

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #15 on: 2006-06-04 17:51:55 »
It's all good for a laugh, that's the point, it's what Pirate Bay are all about ;)

sfx1999

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Re: Arrr! Man ye cannons, Ye Pirate Bay be under attack!
« Reply #16 on: 2006-06-06 21:25:25 »
I would think that if you hosted pirate bay in the US, you would be charged with consiracy to commit copyright infringement, or something of the sort.

If I had to guess, Pirate Bay's activites will soon become illegall; the legislature will probably make pass something.