Pirate Bay Founders Banned From Running The Site

i'd rather be fussy than wrong.

haha. remember napster? or kazaa? heheh. that really brings me back.

According to your logic, I should be able to legally run a whore house as long as I am not participating in the prostitution itself.The site is called the "pirate" bay. I suppose you would be alright with a person running a website called "childporncove.com," as long as they only provided a place for illegal child porn to be exchanged, but didn't actually participate. These pirate bay guys know exactly what their website is used for, and the name implies that it is its purpose as well.

edit: how do i get rid of that fake link? I even tried to edit out my reference to it but it still remained?

what's your point? of course they know what they are doing. they are fighting for freedom of internets. its those arcaic laws on copyright and intellectual property that we should be looking at. information and art should be free to share as we please.

jfill, my point has nothing to do with the supposed freedom of the "internets" or copyright laws. The_Martini_Man and I both recognize that sharing copyrighted files is illegal. He was arguing that the founders should not be punished because they merely provide a means for this type of crime to be committed, but they did not actually commit any crimes. By giving outrageous examples, I hope to show him the implications of his arguments. The arguments I put forth were about interpreting the law as it is already written, not about changing the law or the moral issues of file-sharing. That is another argument entirely.

k dude, just gonna leave it at that for fear of another load of word spooge. you give your money to whoever you want. and "internets" is a TPB reference, you should be a little more selective with your mocking quotations.

sweet song! thanx

lol. totally.

"Internet is suppossed to be 100% free of restrictions"

It is? According to what authority?

The site has nothing to do with theft. It is a search engine and nothing more. It does the same thing that google does except because Google has piles of money and lawyers, no one goes after them.

pukemnukem, Google and the pirate bay are not the same thing. Sure you can find torrents by using google search, but it is not specifically designed to only index and track torrents.

Whether you agree with it or not, in Sweden and in the US, file-sharing copyrighted materials is legally considered theft. This website provides a space were people can commit theft and therefore it is a theft issue. Would you say a whore house has nothing to do with prostitution?

It's not exactly fair to compare it to a whore house.

It's not the owners fault that other people happen to upload copyrighted material. Torrents can actually be used to share things in a way that is not illegal. I could record a song of my own and choose not to copyright it, and make it a torrent to get my name out there, or share a useful open source program I made. Torrents themselves aren't illegal, it's what's inside of them that is in question.

Thepiratebay just offers a means to search for torrents, but they choose not to spend endless hours deleting ones that contain copyrighted material.

If the government wants to go after people for torrents, they should go after the people who upload them. They are obviously the one's at fault here, and their information is posted right up on the website... shouldn't be too hard to locate them.

Besides, hasn't anyone learned that there will always be a way around the law when it comes to something like this? Even if thepiratebay is taken down, all their traffic will be directed to another torrent website. And if torrents are somehow completely done away with, another better technology will crop up in no time.

Google and Pirate Bay do the exact same thing...search for data. Nothing more, nothing less. The largest provider of torrent searches isn't Pirate Bay...not by a mile...Its google. Yet Google won't get punished.

To existentialist,
You, the people made the internet 100% free by popular demand. Also the creator of the world wide web made it a free program for a reason, so companies couldn't copyright it and so the people could use it with 100% freedom. No matter if it's theft, which I don't even like saying because it's technically sharing. These people aren't breaking into houses for bittorrents, they are sharing files over the mass web, and bands and producers are recognizing this and finding ways around it. Look up what Radiohead is doing if you don't beleive me.

To pukemnukem,
Google is a search engine, notice the word search, meaning it finds other site's. It doesn't endorse, promote, or contain torrent engines like ThePirateBay does. If you google bit torrent, you will get a list of sites for bit torrenting but you won't find a Google Bit Torrent.

To stonefree,
You're right except they have programs that can automatically block copyrighted material, Limewire has one. But even if they blocked copyrighted material hackers would access them and break the copyright and then reshare the file as uncopyrighted. There is no end to this because the internet is free, if you try to restrict it people WILL find ways around it.

@stonefree,
The pirate bay owners knowingly allow illegal torrents to be trafficked. In fact there name implies the site is for illegal pirating purposes. My point was, that if another crime was being condoned with a space provided to do it, most people would take issue with it and definitely not separate the place and its owners from the crime. Is a parent not responsible for underage drinking when they condone it on their property? Its fine to argue whether or not file-sharing copyrighted materials should be legal or not, but while it is illegal don't try to make exceptions for this crime, that you wouldn't allow other crimes.

@Fishahouse777,
While I am not sure if popular demand is is always the best guide for policy or that it intrinsically has any authority and we could probably argue how free the founders of the web intended it to be and how far that freedom extends when it comes to illegal matters (think of how the US is "free" but I still can't steal or kill without consequences) but I am just glad you responded with a thoughtful answer. At least you are thinking.

@ FishaHouse777
Exactly.

@existentialist
I was never implying that I wanted to make an exception for this crime, I'm just saying they're going after the wrong people. If you'll notice, I suggested that people who upload the copyrighted material be punished for the infringement, because without them, nobody could download anything. And no matter what the name of the website is, they don't allow the trafficking of illegal torrents. How could they? Nobody can "allow" the internet to work or not work. They are simply a means of searching for torrents. Even if the torrent contains copyrighted material, it's not illegal to search for it and look at it. It is, however, illegal to upload and download it; an act that rests solely on the individual user.

It's a bit torrent site where you can get about anything for free. From applications to music and movies, it's all there.

its a pirati... i mean bittorrent site... torrenting was created by the opensource community

can you Google this shit next time.

yeah, what are you doing on the internet.

lol sorry im not a genious.. i'll work on that.. if you had such a problem with me asking the question why would you all post three responses after the first?

stop asking stupid questions genious

i disagree, you are a genious but dont despair this site is full of them. see?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=genious