Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by VonLipwig 5245 days ago
"""[citation needed]"""

Sure, however I doubt I am far off. The site is called The PIRATE Bay. Shall we play a game of spot the legitimate content? http://thepiratebay.se/top/300

"""The Pirate Bay exists to make it possible for people to share content, but bandwidth and infrastructure is not free."""

Of course it isn't however the owners are making no attempt to remove infringing content. They know their business is helping to distribute copyrighted digital content and they profit from it. Sure, they need to cover their costs but they don't run it to be a beacon of freedom. They run it for the $$$.

Take WikiLeaks, before it started publishing unredacted content they served a purpose. They broke some laws but they set information free. There was a positive reason for it's existence.

What has the Pirate Bay done of value over the last decade?

"""And? Is it written anywhere that people with deep pockets should not be insulted? If anything, their position of privilege should make them less prone to knee-jerk reactions."""

Knee Jerk reactions? Really? Content owners file DCMA take down requests and take other actions. The pirate bay respond by goading them.

http://thepiratebay.se/legal

There is little doubt that TPB is costing content owners real money by helping people access torrents. The amount is obviously up for debate however when you insult, goad and cause losses to Billion dollar companies you are asking to be engaged by an army of lawyers and politicians.

The Pirate Bay could just quieten down. "You do your thing, we do ours." They don't though do they. Instead they adopt the. "Ha ha ha ha ha ha you can't get us."

Well sorry but you know, if millions of dollars of copyrighted content is being accessed via your company. Large content owners will work to lobby and pressure politicians to take action.. this isn't knee-jerk. This just natural escalation.

"""I think you should talk to your analyst about that complex, hating extrovert people is quite the negative attitude."""

ROFL.. sure because that was exactly what I was saying...

4 comments

What has the Pirate Bay done of value over the last decade?

I don't know, maybe stuff like founding the only political party that really cares about policies for the internet age? Promoting the free exchange of art, content and ideas on the internet? Sponsoring cultural events across Europe?

Oh, but they must be in it for the money, of course. Because risking jail and having very powerful people come after you, while you're developing a free search engine built on a highly redundant architecture designed to bypass censorship attempts, is such an easy way to rake in the millions. I wonder why Zuckerberg didn't think about that.

They might not have started a revolution in Tunisia, but they've still done more to change the world of ideas than 95% of the tech companies out there (yeah, my 95% is as bad as your 95%, lol).

I won't waste time challenging your half-assed assertions that "there is little doubt that TPB is costing content owners real money by helping people access torrents". That's what the copyright mafia says, whereas an increasingly large amount of research says this is quite a dubious claim at best, and at worst exactly the opposite of what's really happening. If companies like Adobe and Microsoft really hated piracy as much as they say, they'd have stopped long ago to distribute "demo" and "trial" versions which could be easily cracked.

Quiet people sit at the back of the bus, while progress is made by unreasonable people; but considering your attitude towards people who "enjoy the attention", I don't doubt that you'll struggle to understand where I'm coming from.

You make the mistake of assuming that "pirating" is inherently and obviously "wrong".

I, and many others, reject that premise.

If you disagree, so what? We're quite used to people disagreeing, and have gotten rather good at not caring.

PS:

"Instead they adopt the. "Ha ha ha ha ha ha you can't get us.""

This attitude makes zero sense to me. Why is it so wrong if they are extroverted?

The attitude is antagonistic rather than extroverted. Anyway, it all boils down to a business strategy. The Pirate Bay enrages copyright holders, who then go after all "piracy sites". The weaker ones die because of the increased legal scrutiny, while TPB continues to live. I'm guessing that TPB served more pages after MegaUpload died than they did before. And that is money in the founders' pockets.
Copyright holders were going after "piracy sites" well before TPB -- see Napster, Grokster, Kazaa, etc etc etc. Considering the founders are now facing jail, and they've always been politically active, I'd say they are in it for more than just "money in their pockets". I know, in this day and age, this is hard to believe, but sometimes it's actually true.
Thats neat, a lot of the top torrents on TPB are just redistributions of open source stuff. I also figure a lot of the windows 7 torrents are used to restore broken installations after losing the cds, because 99% of people don't build their own PCs and thus come with windows pre installed.

The photoshop / vegas being so high isn't coincidence either. Those products are prohibitively expensive for everyone that would use them except businesses.

>What has the Pirate Bay done of value over the last decade?

All sorts of things get submitted to tpb. When Wikileaks looked like it could be raided and shutdown at any moment, they put their encrypted archives up for anyone to download, for one.

Also, as an aside, I hate python's comment syntax enough when coding. It's even more annoying when on a forum.

Off-topic: tell me about it! We get it... you're a pythonista. Now quote like a normal person.