Spectrial Trial, 28th of September
As many of you might know, the Pirate Bay trial a.k.a Spectrial is scheduled to the 28th of September (conveniently 9 days after the Swedish parliament election).
Discuss this event here!
Any thoughts regarding how it might end? Any thoughts on how you want it to end? Why do you think the trial takes place after the election?
hmm, I'm giving my opinion from what I've read so far from politics, but keep in mind that the only things I know about Sweden so far are Ikea, hardcore punk and TPB.
But from what I know, this usually depends on the political party in question. If the party that won the election wants closer ties with the US, they would probably put some pressure on the judicidal system for the TPB to lose, as the US government will probably include copyright infringment as one of its top 10 agendas for Sweden.
A party that favours lesser control from the US might take the issue in mind, but they might also look into the popular opinion of Swedes as well, so my guess is that you can try voting for the Pirate Party since that's the party that's pro copyright infringement.
Keep in mind that in most elections, the general public doesn't care much about stuff like the TPB, they're more interested in issues like the current status of the economy, immigration, etc. So they're more likely gonna vote for someone who best suits their political alignment.
I hope the far-right parties don't win though. I hate far-right parties.
Well, as you probably know, the trial agains TPB has been widely criticized all over the world. Mostly because of the fact that this trial is more than just the pirate bay.
Here in Sweden, Spectrial is more like a shout out that something is terribly wrong with our court system and our parliament in general.
The right side of our parties, the so called alliance has stated several times that they refuses to support the laws that oppresses our individual integrity. Yet they just keep on voting for them as soon as they arrive, same applies for almost all parties now.
So you see, TPB is much more than just the tracker.
And yes, integrity is a deeply unacquainted question in our society. That's why we have the pirateparty which speaks for us in those manors. Luckily, it seems as they will make it into the parliament!
well, that's good news to hear.
Does the pirate party does more than give moral support to the TPB folk, such as providing legal and finanical support to them?
Because in these type of cases, they're gonna need these kind of support more than people saying "we're behind you, fuck the RIAA" messages, and since you know how the American recording industry loves nothing better than to make normal folk penniless over a few songs, these guys are royally screwed if they lose the case.
Also, on another slightly funny and useless note, I once got a warning from my ISP for downloading from TPB. The offending material in question was a Mob 47 album, which isn't available here, let alone distributed widely around here.
Well, the pirateparty is indeed associated with The Pirate Bay, and WikiLeaks as well. Although, they don't provide that kind of support for Pirate Bay, pirateparty hosts their servers as well as WikiLeaks (in a near future at least).
Although, one of the piratepartys many law improvement request is to reform the copyright. And that in such a case that Pirate Bay can't be charged under Swedish law.
Of course, that's not the sole purpose of their existence though.
Well, that's good to hear, at least things are looking up a bit. And I hope they do take care more than just changing the copyright law, since if they focus only on one issue, and if that issue is changed, they'll become obsolete and only have one acheivement in their life span.
Just out of interest, are you considering to join the party or at least voting for them? Just voicing out support won't help much, you know.
Someone with a technical background like yours can probably be useful for the organization in many ways.
Over here, there's no pro-piracy movement. Most of them are pretty terrified of the idea of offending the big media companies, even though I still can't see why, there are more ways we can generate money, the entertainment industry isn't one of them, for sure.
I haven't been up-to-date on the latest music developments to begin with, so the stuff I pirate are either past their copyright date, or rare/obscure or just plainly passed around in the music scene.
Well, I am active in the pirate-party, of course. And it's getting busy now these few 9 days left until election day.
We take care of several different motions, first of there's the integrity concerns. A year back the Swedish parliament voted to implement a new government called FRA. This could sort of be compared to the states NSA.
This wasn't very popular, yet over 50% of the parliament voted it through. Pirate-party would definitely devolve FRA, as well as IPRED and stop the work on IPRED2.
We would also definitely stop our current government from implementing the Data Rating Directive and continue paying the penalties to EU.
Also devolve all patents currently active in Sweden since it's being abused by multi national corporations and has been since many years back.
Remove the broadband taxes as well as the tape taxes we've had on recordable medias since the 80's.
And of course, reforming the copyright law.
There's probably tons of stuff I've forgot or just omitted, if you wonder anything feel free to ask.
Oh and by the way, the stuff they say about studio companies getting bankrupt because of the piracy movements, that's not true.
At least not here in Sweden, quite to opposite, they're doing better then ever!
For example, 2009 there were more cinema tickets sold then there had been here in Sweden for the past 30 years.
root_op wrote: Oh and by the way, the stuff they say about studio companies getting bankrupt because of the piracy movements, that's not true.
At least not here in Sweden, quite to opposite, they're doing better then ever!
For example, 2009 there were more cinema tickets sold then there had been here in Sweden for the past 30 years. I definitely agree. For myself, I've found that downloading a lot of music has led me to be more likely to buy music too. I find out about more bands through piracy and find things that I really want to support, plus I'm more likely to go to concerts and buy other merchandise.
ynori7 wrote: I definitely agree. For myself, I've found that downloading a lot of music has led me to be more likely to buy music too. I find out about more bands through piracy and find things that I really want to support, plus I'm more likely to go to concerts and buy other merchandise.
Exactly, that's where the money is for these days artists. Concerts and live performances overall.
There's no money selling albums, there never has. So these 'illegal' sharings doesn't overall do anything to their financial status, quite the opposite. As you also stated, you find more artists you want to support by piracy. That's exactly the point, it's free commercial!
So our illegal sharing actually helps artists, it also helps smaller unsigned bands to find their way out to the audience.
The only real reason why piracy is still illegal is because the copyright law says so, and that's why it should be reformed.
a good argument, but keep in mind, that given any day, the majority of material pirated on the internet is most likely by the latest acts, such as Lady Gaga's or Justin Bieber's latest single (do they even have albums? I dunno) over some three-piece band combining several genres to create a unique sound in their garage.
In most cases, their promotion is done mostly by word-of-mouth, so it's done by the musicians themselves to their friends who try and promote their work in the hopes that they can be discovered.
So in most cases, while the internet has helped ease the process a bit, there's still a lot of hard work they have to put in for them to acheive success. In fact, a good number of indipendent musicians I know take it as a good sign when they saw someone uploaded their album on the internet either as a Torrent or Rapishare link, it shows that they are gettting recognized and the uploader thinks their material is good enough to pass around.
Why that is of course true, as we speak the top 100 on Pirate Bay mostly consists of artists such as Lady GaGa, Eminem, Rihanna and such.
Although there's still the fact that it's good promotion for them, and as I stated earlier. There's no big money when it comes to albums in the music industry. Most of the financing comes from, yet again as I stated earlier; Live performances.
Why I can see that people would want some profit for their hard work (well, some at least). But as the copyright law states now, whenever you pay for an album it doesn't entitle you as the owner of it. It's merely a license for you to listen to it..
It has been like this for ages, yeah sure. But it's not until recently that this has been questioned as much as an entire political movement has been established to resolved these kinds of question.
Besides, the government must be shitfaced to actually believe that they can do anything. Criminalizing millions of people by the sign of an government act won't help at all, if anything it would encourage people.
The government, (both U.S and EU) takes precautions and measurements one law by another. But in the end it's only going to hurt themselves..
Take for example the whole ACTA situation, by allowing the tolls to search through your electronic devices you're not only going to condemning the law of free speech. They will also accelerate the process of inventing and finding new efficient ways to protect and hide your data.
In some cases it might even accelerate the process of finding new ways to smuggle electronic devices, ways that might apply to drug smuggling as well.
root_op wrote: Why that is of course true, as we speak the top 100 on Pirate Bay mostly consists of artists such as Lady GaGa, Eminem, Rihanna and such.
Although there's still the fact that it's good promotion for them, and as I stated earlier. There's no big money when it comes to albums in the music industry. Most of the financing comes from, yet again as I stated earlier; Live performances.
Why I can see that people would want some profit for their hard work (well, some at least). But as the copyright law states now, whenever you pay for an album it doesn't entitle you as the owner of it. It's merely a license for you to listen to it..
It has been like this for ages, yeah sure. But it's not until recently that this has been questioned as much as an entire political movement has been established to resolved these kinds of question.
Besides, the government must be shitfaced to actually believe that they can do anything. Criminalizing millions of people by the sign of an government act won't help at all, if anything it would encourage people.
The government, (both U.S and EU) takes precautions and measurements one law by another. But in the end it's only going to hurt themselves..
Take for example the whole ACTA situation, by allowing the tolls to search through your electronic devices you're not only going to condemning the law of free speech. They will also accelerate the process of inventing and finding new efficient ways to protect and hide your data.
In some cases it might even accelerate the process of finding new ways to smuggle electronic devices, ways that might apply to drug smuggling as well.
That is true. Many musicians these days have a second job to keep them occupied when they are not recording or touring, while most went for predictable ones like starting their own clothing line or record companies or modelling, some went for more interesting ones like hockey scout, college professors, writers, etc.
So even if they lose money from piracy, many of these guys can still have a job for them to be able to pay the bills. But some musicians are practically dedicated to their music, that they are unable to master any other skill than being a good musician.
And yeah, the copyright law sucks a lot. Over here, an original CD comes in two versions, a cheaper "local" version, and a more expensive version. The main difference is that the cheaper one doesn't include any lyrics, and in some cases, they would block people from posting the lyrics on the Internet. So it's one hell of a dick move if you ask me, buying a cheaper version leaves you stuck with no lyrics for you to read through while listening to your CD.
And the part about goverments being too shitfaced thinking they can do anything? That doesn't stop them from trying. Many governments are always keeping an eye on everyone's telecommunications, and if you're considered to be a threat, (ie activist, dissident) they will pay more attention to what you're doing on the internet, and they will always find a party willing to help them monitor the internet traffic of the country (in most cases for the money)
And what exactly does ACTA look for when they search for your electronic devices? Somehow, I don't think I'll get mine back if it gets confiscated, not with my large collection of mostly pirated material and downright radical literature..
update: root_op, you can use this as evidence on why copyright laws need to be changed:
as for the retaliatory attacks by 4chan, just say some stuff that you don't endorse it, but you can see the anger they have over the MPAA over there.
So, yesterday was the big day. The election day, the day that would make a difference for users.
We did NOT get a seat in the parliament, far far from it. Of the required 4% we got 0,1% and possibly even lower than that.
This is truly a let down for all of us pirates, people from outside Sweden and EU visited our IRC channel to share the grief with us.
Truth is however, yes perhaps we should've been seen more. But it's hard for a small not established party to be properly seen by the media, especially the newspapers who has as an habit to rewrite the truth.
But there's also the fact that our motions has been neglected by every other party available here in Sweden. We have tried and tried to initiate debates concerning integrity and culture in our society. Everyone of those attempts has failed more or less. If however those question would be relevant to people all over the nation we could've done this!
Evidence of that is last year and the EU election.
Still the pre electors and mail electors haven't been counted yet, but to believe any dramatic changes on our side is to lie to yourself.
We failed this year, but will definitely be back. Especially after the upcoming four years, filled with integrity violating proposals and laws.
Yeah, It was a little disappointing to wake up this morning and read that on Slashdot. From what I read though, it sounded like a lot of effort had put into the campaign. I think %1 is still a pretty strong number for a small party like the Pirate Party, although it's going to suck that Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay will be loosing government support. Better luck next election, hopefully.
Do you have any thoughts on how this will affect the trial?
I just wanted to let you all know that the results I posted before was the preliminary results, I thought I said that but must have missed it.
Anyway, the counting is still going but I thought I'd just leave you with (somewhat) good news!
As we speak, PP has gained 36211 votes. This is 2317 more votes than the 2006 election, which is a really good sign that people are in fact gaining interest in us, rather then loosing.
Our current percentage is 0,64% which is also 0,01% more than the 2006 election.
stealth-, Oh yes. This has by far been the best election campaign from our side (even though we've only had three so far). It's been amazing to see how everybody has joined together to create this somewhat strong party and just to get things done and take actions against what's not right.
Obviously we can't really inflict anything on this since we didn't get in the parliament. Although we will still monitor Spectrial as we did last time, as well as give the original creators and maintainers our fullest support throughout media, newspapers and of course the internet.