They are 'shutting' Pirate Bay. Good or Bad?

[Rum]

Looks like the courts in the UK are coming down on the side of the music industry and are going to insist that ISPs block Pirate Bay. Internet censorship or people protecting their living do you think?

Here's the story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17894176


The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK ISPs, court rules

File-sharing site The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK internet service providers, the High Court has ruled.

The Swedish website hosts links to download mostly pirated free music and video.

Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must all prevent their users from accessing the site.

"Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists," the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said.

A sixth ISP, BT, requested "a few more weeks" to consider their position on blocking the site.

BPI's chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale.

"Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them.

"This is wrong - musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else."
'Compelling alternatives'

In November 2011, the BPI asked the group of ISPs to voluntarily block access to the site.

The request followed a court order to block Newzbin 2, a site also offering links to download pirated material.

The ISPs said they would not block the site unless a court order was made, as is now the case.

Virgin Media told the BBC it will now comply with the request, but warned such measures are, in the long term, only part of the solution.
Continue reading the main story
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It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for internet censorship”


"As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price."

The Pirate Bay was launched in 2003 by a group of friends from Sweden and rapidly became one of the most famous file-sharing sites on the web.

It allows users to search for and access copyrighted content including movies, games and TV shows.

In April 2009, the Swedish courts found the four founders of the site guilty of helping people circumvent copyright controls.


The ruling was upheld after an appeal in 2010, but the site continues to function.

The Pirate Party UK, a spin-off from the political movement started in Sweden that backs copyright reform, said this latest move will "not put any extra pennies into the pockets of artists".

"Unfortunately, the move to order blocking on The Pirate Bay comes as no surprise," party leader Loz Kaye told the BBC.

"The truth is that we are on a slippery slope towards internet censorship here in the United Kingdom."

Critics of site-blocking argue that such measures are ineffective as they can be circumvented using proxy servers and other techniques.

However, one analyst told the BBC that it was still worthwhile to take court action as it underlines the illegal nature of sites such as The Pirate Bay.

"I know it's fashionable to say 'oh, it just won't work', but we should keep trying," said Mark Little, principal analyst at Ovum.

"We should keep blocking them - they are stealing music illegally.

"The biggest culprits of this, really, are the younger demographic who just haven't been convinced that doing this is somehow morally uncomfortable.

"The principle that downloading music illegally is a bad thing to do has not been reinforced by schools or parents."

But Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, called the move "pointless and dangerous".

"It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for internet censorship of many kinds, from pornography to extremism," he said.

"Internet censorship is growing in scope and becoming easier. Yet it never has the effect desired. It simply turns criminals into heroes."

[klr]

I don't see how making music and other content free (which is effectively what Pirate Bay is doing) is going to help reform copyright, not by itself anyway. It's just lurching from one extreme to another. The "slippery slope" argument about internet censorship doesn't impress me either. It's just scare tactics.

[PsychoSerenity]

Neither good nor bad. Pointless is what it is. And kind of disappointing that some people still aren't moving with the times.

[Rum]

Perhaps the broader question is whether copyright can really survive or remain meaningful in the ubiquitous digital media age?

[Azathoth]

[Azathoth]

It does fuck all though. Whatever they do people will get around it. If it is a DNS level block it can be circumvented in a couple of clicks. If it is blocked with the kiddy porn filters people will just get their torrent files through tor. Teaching people where the foul scabrous underbelly of the net is is probably not what they were intending. Fucking idiots

[Audley Strange]

Back in the days of spectrums, I used to buy lots of games that were pirated from a local market which also sold pirate albums, but when they shut it down, I wasn't that bothered, we'd all just buy stuff and copy from each other. At the very worst they'll need to ban flash drives, which they won't. The problem will not go away by flinging more legislation at it. Free is the best price of all. However convenience is a close second. I don't want to, or see why I should have to wait to watch my favourite shows, just because they are niche U.S. things. In fact, it seems to me that some shows I've watched might never have been cancelled if the keeness of the international market in watching them even when U.S. figures are preliminarily shaky had ever been taken into account.

Methods of distribution are dramatically changing and yet those who don't have the wits to capitalise on it properly are injuring their sales more than piracy ever will.

[Hermit]

The financiers and distributors are bunch of greedy, hypocritical cunts. In regard to greed, a couple of days ago I bought half a dozen DVDs for $7.50 each. When they were classed as new releases, the asking price of each of them was $25+. I cannot believe that thousands of newly minted copies of hundreds of titles are offered at $7.50 if the manufacturers did not make a profit. So, what is the profit rate at new release prices? Greedy. As for hypocrisy, Sony is one of the main producers of film, music and other products. It is also one of the chief manufacturers of the means to copy those products illegally, CD and DVD burners.

The appeal to the lot of the poor, starving artists is their main ploy to pull the wool over our eyes. "Oh, the calamity! If everyone pirated our products, the footsoldiers of the entertainment industry would starve to death because we'd be unable to pay them for their labour, and then you'd have no entertainment." News for you, fuckers: I know that you don't give a toss about starving artists and technicians of any sort. You just want to squeeze every possible cent out of us while you can, and despite the illegal copying that does exist, most of your profits come from the likes of workers at the top of the labour hierarchy like Tarantino, Metallica and Harrison Ford. Listen. Here's my promise: If you sell your products at $7.50 a disc, on which you do make a profit, I will not waste my time circumventing copyright protection or download from sites which do that for me.

[Atheist-Lite]

People should be put in jail for copyright theft and made a example of. I buy my software and music at some expense legit and then some kid whose never done a days real work in his life just downloads the same for nothing. It isn't just stealing from the people sweating away to produce the stuff, market it and pay out royaltys to any creative talents. It is also stealing from me. I want the thief to pay.

[Svartalf]

It does fuck all though. Whatever they do people will get around it. If it is a DNS level block it can be circumvented in a couple of clicks. If it is blocked with the kiddy porn filters people will just get their torrent files through tor. Teaching people where the foul scabrous underbelly of the net is is probably not what they were intending. Fucking idiots

If most users are as clueless as I am, that could still largely work... I mean, I'm the kind of guy who can't see some youtube vids because I can't configure my computer to use proxies or efficiently hide my actual location.

Then again, if the means to circumvent that idiot thing are easy, they will go around and people will use them... I imagine a series of sites with names like Jack Sparrow's Cove or Blackbeard's lair being set up to teach people just that... preferably in the Netherlands or the like.

But such a law is illegal... Pirate bay is in Sweden, a EU member, freedom of information and communication and all that... I'm not sure that blocking jihadist sites from Pakistan or Iran would be legal in the UK anyway...
and do I foresee Anonymous doing horrible things to the site of the UK justice minister?

[Animavore]

Pirate Bay has been blocked by Eircom in this country the last three or four years. Just go to torrentz.com to get a list of similar sites.

[Svartalf]

It's a matter of principle, I prefer my primary torrent to be the pirates bay one

[Animavore]

What's the difference? You'll be downloading the same files.

[Svartalf]

Technically, non, I just don't like my primary torrent to have a numerical code for a name, or a prefix like mnova or isohunt

[Animavore]

Trying to battle piracy is a losing effort. It's as endemic in Irish society as child abuse in the Catholic Church. Everyone is complicit. Even if you don't do it yourself everyone else is. All my friends have external hard drives full of films. I spend a lot of time at friend's houses. I see tons of films that come out. I see some before they're in the cinema. Before that they had DVDs full of film. Before that video cassettes. And who never had a shed load of audio cassettes of recorded albums? Everyone did. I didn't even realise it was supposed to be illegal as a child. And what has ever been done about it? Who has ever heard of anyone being arrested for it? If they arrested one person they have to arrest the vast majority of the population. It will always be treated with a blind eye by police who likely are all doing it too.