Blackout europe?

[dragos240]

I was surfing the pirate bay and then it asked me to goto a site suggesting that the internet was to become "locked up", what is this about? It seems that something sinister is happening in europe, internet laws? What is the meaning of this, how can we stop it?

[Helios1276]

Googe: Blackout Europe

..and yes it means politicians apparently invented and own the internet.

[CharmyBee]

That's not going to work. It'll just encourage the expansion of the sneakernet, which can have considerably higher bandwidth transfer rates rivaling most ISPs there.

[thewolfman]

The 4 boys from Piratebay may not be able to read your post as they should be sitting behinds bars about now.

They were given a 1 year prison sentence and ordered to pay about 3 million Euro's in damages to a couple of film and music companies.

Their site was ordered closed and all their material destroyed!!!.

thewolfman,

[ddrichardson]

There are two seperate issues that are being portrayed as one to cloud an issue. The issue is net neutrality, that ISP should not throttle bandwidth or content nor should they govern what we can access.

Sites like TPB are an issue of perceived copyright violation and there is a suggestion that big media businesses are applying pressure to governments to stop their IP being distributed outside their control.

These are seperate but linked issues, the worry is that governments might use the latter as an excuse to restrict the former as many governments don't like the lack of control over what is said online. The speed of information dissemination through the web means almost instantaneous news delivery (regardless of weighting or point of view) - look at how quickly the recent footage of police and demonstrators spread.

[dragos240]

The 4 boys from Piratebay may not be able to read your post as they should be sitting behinds bars about now.

They were given a 1 year prison sentence and ordered to pay about 3 million Euro's in damages to a couple of film and music companies.

Their site was ordered closed and all their material destroyed!!!.

thewolfman,

Didn't I read a post some while back about how TPB won the trial?

[thewolfman]

Didn't I read a post some while back about how TPB won the trial?

Well they plan to appeal but I don't hold out much hope for them as the government is keen to be seen "doing the right thing" (Swedish Gov)

thewolfman

[dragos240]

Then what did they do that was wrong? Create a torrent tracker that just happens to be a massive site for illegal torrents? Oh please.

[LowSky]

PB is still up and running, and no plans to go down, and if it does it will turn on servers in another location, just like last time. the guys behind PB got in trouble for telling people how to steal, not for actual stealing. frankly this would be the same if a locksmith explained on the net how to pick a lock, and people whent out and broke into houses.

Personally Pirating will always exist as long as companies over charge. when things are cheap then pirating doesn't happen. Personally I don't understand why movie companies dont release a film in theatres and through stores at the same time. people are still going to go to the movies and some will always wait until its on video. The percentage of people buying a movie to own is really low.

Think of it this way a film make 100,000,000 USD at the box office if tickets sold for $9 each (The fee in my hometown), then that means only 11,111,111.1 people saw the movie. 11 Million people is not even 4% of the American population.
To gve you an idea, American Idol had over 20 Million people watch it last week
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/04/ratings-unusu-1.html do you think those people whould watch if they had to pay to watch the show. (technicalyl most do in the form of cable but not my point)
And that is on FREE TV, payed for by advertisements.
The people who pirate do so because they dont want to pay over the top prices for a movie, especially a bad one.

[thewolfman]

Then what did they do that was wrong? Create a torrent tracker that just happens to be a massive site for illegal torrents? Oh please.

Well apparently the Swedish government thinks that they were aiding & abetting illegal downloads by hosting the links to the download sites!

thewolfman

[dragos240]

They'll have to prove that.

[thewolfman]

They'll have to prove that.

we will just have to wait and see the outcome, I think that like all appeals it could take some time!

thewolfman

[dragos240]

Well even if they do get busted the next most popular bittorrent tracker will gain TPB's title, and then they'll get sued, and it will start over.

[thewolfman]

Well even if they do get busted the next most popular bittorrent tracker will gain TPB's title, and then they'll get sued, and it will start over.

I think that the music and film industry are putting pressure on the various governments worldwide to clamp down on piracy and the actors/musicians of course!.

Torrents do have their place but neither the musicians nor the actors can or will work for free and want their cut too!.

[ZarathustraDK]

This case might very well implode on itself. The sentence of piratebay caught huge publicity, making lots of people join the Pirate-party in Sweden. Something like 8000 more registered members after the first 24 hours of the sentence. I think they hold enough votes to get into parliament if elections were held now. They also hold the largest political youth-group by far.

[gnomeuser]

Well they plan to appeal but I don't hold out much hope for them as the government is keen to be seen "doing the right thing" (Swedish Gov)

thewolfman

Doing this right thing so far seems to have including them breaking a lot of actual laws. E.g. it is my impression that the government instructed the police to do the raid which is blatently illegal and a strong illadviced violation of the separation of law making and law enforcing.

I am starting to get a foul smell from yonder east of my border.

Regardless, an appeal will take 2-3 years, a lot can change in that time.

[gnomeuser]

This case might very well implode on itself. The sentence of piratebay caught huge publicity, making lots of people join the Pirate-party in Sweden. Something like 8000 more registered members after the first 24 hours of the sentence. I think they hold enough votes to get into parliament if elections were held now. They also hold the largest political youth-group by far.

Friday: 17799 members
Monday: 31860 members

Unpresidented growth, if I was swedish I would join. I did join the danish pirate party, but they do not seem as active nor as professional as their swedish counterpart. The founding principals though are the same.

[thewolfman]

Doing this right thing so far seems to have including them breaking a lot of actual laws. E.g. it is my impression that the government instructed the police to do the raid which is blatently illegal and a strong illadviced violation of the separation of law making and law enforcing.

I am starting to get a foul smell from yonder east of my border.

Regardless, an appeal will take 2-3 years, a lot can change in that time.

Hi Gnomeuser,

isn't law making and law enforcing much of the same thing.

Without law and order there would be total anarchy in the world and human society would crumble under its might!.

thewolfman