[mrkickling]

The organisation that reported Thepiratebay and therefore is the reason for this raid is called Rättighetsalliansen (The Alliance of Rights). The Alliance of Rights is the same organisation as The Anti Pirate Bureau but with a new name. This is what they say on their website (roughly translated):

"The police raided The Pirate Bay today inside an Internet company in the Stockholm region. Rättighetsalliansen is behind the report against The Pirate Bay.

- Pirate Bay is an illegal commercial service that makes great sums of money by putting up other peoples movies and music on their site. The producers wont get payed for their work and the legal services growth gets prevented, says Henrik Pontén, lawyer at Rättighetsalliansen."

In other words they don't now what they are talking about. Thepiratebay is not putting up any files on thepiratebay.org, the users are (of course nothing is even uploaded, only seeded from user to user). I can recommend the documentary about The piratebay, TPB AFK where you will meet Henrik Pontén from the Anti Piracy Bureau among others.

Rättighetsalliansens website and article about this: http://rattighetsalliansen.se/nyhet/118

EDIT: I think their website crashed.

[draugadrotten]

It's a common mistake by techies to think that technical details make a difference in (Swedish) court. They don't. Technical details are rarely important in Swedish court, where the court is free to consider all evidence, even if it's obtained illegally or just is weird.

So called "technical evidence" is rarely "technical" for techies. It's often just HTTP logfile print-outs or a screen shot of a file sharing program. That's as technical as it gets. The judges don't know Excel from Word, and the prosecutor don't know HTTP from UDP. The defense have to work on the judges, not on the truth.

And in the end, they judges judge people based on emotion and political opinion anyway. After all, isn't a law but a formal moral opinion?

[GuiA]

Relevant link:

"We record the judges’ two daily food breaks, which result in segmenting the deliberations of the day into three distinct “decision sessions.” We find that the percentage of favorable rulings drops gradually from ≈65% to nearly zero within each decision session and returns abruptly to ≈65% after a break"

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889

[graeme]

Actually, this isn't as relevant as it seems. The parole judges in the study are given a steady stream of cases, without deliberation. There's also a clear default: "no"

Some court decisions fit that mold, but many do not. Often, court decisions have no default, and the judge retires to consider the arguments.

The study in question was very important for showing that humans are often not guided by rationality. But it's not necessarily a great demonstration of how all legal decisions are made.

[graeme]

Can't edit my comment. Meant to add something:

"But it's not necessarily a great demonstration of how all legal decisions are made."

Nor was it intended to be. I'm not suggesting the study was flawed.

[baddox]

> It's a common mistake by techies to think that technical details make a difference in (Swedish) court.

Or, you could say that it's a common mistake by courts to think that technical details shouldn't matter.

[thirsteh]

It's a mix of both. There are judges that don't care about the technical details -- that's wrong. But there are also people who think they won't be convicted of a crime because of an irrelevant technical detail. The fact that you disclosed the existence of a secret warrant by removing your warrant canary, for example, is highly unlikely to make a judge think you did nothing wrong.

The argument that the Swedish judges and prosecution make is that, though ThePirateBay does not necessarily host the pirated content, the site causes pirated content to be disseminated massively, and it exists solely to facilitate piracy. I don't personally agree with this, but I can't deny it's pretty hard to refute this claim when you literally named your website "The Pirate Bay."

[jcrites]

Digression. Speaking specifically to your warrant canary example, the EFF seems to believe that there is reasonable legal theory behind them: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq

The First Amendment protects against compelled speech. While courts might gag you and prevent you from speaking, they almost never compel you to speak. Compelled speech is limited to truthful speech where the statements convey important truthful information to consumers (e.g., health warnings on cigarettes). There is no precedent for a court compelling a company or person to lie.

I agree that it will be quite interesting to see how a court reacts to the idea that a person has constructed a situation in which they must lie in order to avoid disclosing the warrant. I was also interested to learn that Apple publishes a warrant canary: https://ssl.apple.com/pr/pdf/131105reportongovinforequests3.... ("Apple has never received an order under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. We would expect to challenge such an order if served on us.")

There must be a line, though. I suspect it would not succeed to publish many statements each like "We have received fewer than than 1,2,3,...,100 warrants of type X this year", or, "We have never received a warrant regarding an individual whose name begins with C", striking only those that are false as warrants are received. I would guess that this would cross a line, though it's difficult for me to articulate why. Ultimately there is no court precedent for warrant canaries, so the outcome is unknown.

[ObviousScience]

Warrant canaries actually are a relevant distinction: the state has the ability to compel you not to reveal something, but rarely if ever the ability to compel you to speak, outside of testifying (at least, in the US).

Dismissing them trying to exercise a different power than the one they're granted by the law as a "technicality" is a disservice to the rule of law. It's not a mere technicality, it's a fundamentally different kind of action.

[pdabbadabba]

> but rarely if ever the ability to compel you to speak, outside of testifying (at least, in the US).

I don't think this is at all true. A U.S. judge would not hesitate to issue an injunction ordering you to update your warrant canary if they thought there was a good reason to do so. I'm not aware of any law (including the Fifth Amendment -- which deals only with self-incrimination in a criminal proceeding) that would prevent them from doing so. Am I missing something?

[gear54rus]

And that is exactly why they should never even be allowed to handle something they don't understand.

Gosh, it's like a fundamental obvious thought: don't make decisions about something you don't understand.

How to solve this is another story.

[gcb0]

now explain how that is different from anywhere in the world...

[rayiner]

In the U.S., you have strict evidentiary rules and the opportunity to get expert testimony into the record. If the judge doesn't know HTTP from UDP, you get a Stanford PhD expert witness to explain it. If your opponent mischaracterizes the distinction, you comb over the transcripts and get your expert to submit a declaration picking apart each instance of mischaracterization. Everything goes in a voluminous record that is dissected on appeal.[1]

In my opinion, in the U.S., courts rarely get technology straight-up wrong. What technologists call "not understanding technology" is usually more an artifact of judges not sharing the same values. I.e. just because a judge understands the difference between a torrent and the actual file doesn't mean they're going to be sympathetic to an "information wants to be free" attitude towards copyright.

[1] Of course, this is one reason litigation in the U.S. is so expensive and time-consuming.

[WildUtah]

"... in the U.S., courts rarely get technology straight-up wrong."

Except, of course, the patent courts -- the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and their pet district courts in East Texas. In those courts the judges have a personal career interest in how technology is regulated by the patent system. The result is that judges are competent but motivated to use reasoning to reach personally beneficial conclusions rather than ones rooted in objective law and reason.

That's why software patents keep expanding and more tech savvy judges just keep making them expand more when you might think they would keep them under control.

[pdabbadabba]

> personal career interest

Quite an accusation, but I have no idea what you could be referring to. What's the interest? It can't just be that they need to keep the patents flowing for the sake of job security, since they already have life tenure...

[harryh]

The breadth of software patents isn't expanding, it's contracting.

[bjornsteffanson]

It's not different, and I believe that was the point. There is a weird stereotype that I've encountered about Sweden that I wasn't aware of until the first time I lived outside of our country...whenever something like this comes along, there's a notion that some people think "Oh it's Sweden, they'll do the right thing," as if our laws or courts are somehow "more right" or "more just" than others. I think what the preceding comment was trying to point out is that that is not always true.

[jbaptiste]

That's very true. In Europe, Sweden is in our minds like one of the two or three countries where everything seems to be "good". Economics are good, people are nice, unemployment seems low and somehow those countries act as "The goods and respectables guys from the north". That's a very common feeling in EU.

[meowface]

The same sentiment is held by many in the US. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway are viewed as more modern and civilized societies.

[PhantomGremlin]

Don't forget the "babes". When I think of Sweden I think of http://www.people.com/people/elin_nordegren/

[renaudg]

This is indeed the good image that Sweden has for more southern Europeans. Although the whole Assange case has shown that even there, politics can be stronger than justice.

[dogma1138]

It's not, but depending on the country not every judicial system has the same weird regulations as the US one. For example hearsay, evidence without a clear chain of custody, and many other things that would be thrown out of a US court are accepted in most other western countries. The Judges know how to deal with that evidence and under which circumstances except it or not, some one lost a tag on an evidence bag doesn't really scares them, the evidence came from an "unofficial" source, as long as it's credible they'll take it in and so on.

[jeltz]

That Swedish courts do not have to worry about how evidence is obtained. It can always be used.

[wuliwong]

I seriously doubt that all judges in Sweden do not know the difference between Excel and Word. I know you are trying to make a point but you are doing it poorly.

[shock-value]

It's obviously hyperbole.

[wuliwong]

And I obviously understood that.

The point is, the commenter has no clue which judge will preside over this case and furthermore cannot possibly know the level of technical knowledge the judge will possess. I didn't realize that pointing out the flaws in a comment was something you got down-voted for by the HN elite.

He's trying to strengthen his argument with hyperbole that is not backed up in anyway with real evidence.

[Moru]

Seriously, why is people pirating that crap? Throw out the TV and stop going into that what is just a bad copy of every other movie out there already. The same goes with games. They just get more and more shallow as the grafics get pumped up. Every shared movie/game is another proof for the producers that they are creating something that people wants. If people finally would vote with their wallet instead of going for the latest crap all the time, mabe we would have quality games and movies?

[jeremiep]

The very same argument could be made about your comment.

[castis]

People DO vote with their wallet by straight up not paying for the material, or did you forget what thread you were in?

[prawn]

We do have quality games and movies, but not all movies and games are going to be considered of a high quality by all people.

[cortesoft]

Obviously a lot of people think they are of sufficient quality to be worth watching/playing.

[hasenj]

Technicalities aside. They're still making money by helping people "pirate" stuff. Assuming ads on their site do actually generate revenue, and that revenue gets forwarded to them.

Though I kinda expect the average piratebay user to have adblock installed.

[api]

Exactly. They may or may not have actually broken the law, but they are certainly in spirit a service that makes money through the unauthorized monetization of other peoples' works against the wishes of those works' creators. Even if it doesn't make them criminals, it certainly makes them assholes.

It's already hard enough to make a living as an artist, musician, etc. without being kneecapped by opportunists. We've gone from the old pre-Internet system, which screwed artists most of the time, to a new system that screws artists all the time.

I don't understand why there's so much sympathy for industrial-scale piracy -- especially for-profit industrial-scale piracy -- among people who make a living from creative work (programmers, entrepreneurs, engineers). I guess only certain castes of people and professions deserve compensation and respect, and everyone else can suck it...?

[gargantian]

Times change, and technology changes value. Scored music "screwed" street performers, then recordings "screwed" concert performers, then the internet "screwed" recording artists.

Plenty of artists have successfully adapted and are doing great. Others have sheltered behind curators and promoters like labels. Others have failed to deliver what people want and they are screwed. That's capitalism at work.

I don't understand why we should hold back progress so that existing artists can be sheltered from needing to adapt and provide a product people want to pay for.

I say this as a former small-time producer of club tracks and a current software developer.

Additionally, you should ask artists who's screwing them before you start pointing fingers. Many artists would kill to have their music downloaded. Much of the screwing comes from the big labels that reap almost all of the profits.

[baddox]

> Plenty of artists have successfully adapted and are doing great.

Exactly. The artists that have adapted are the ones whose art is actually valuable, rather than artists who work with the people who control distribution channels. Distribution channels are a lot more prone to disruption than creators of art.

[api]

"I don't understand why we should hold back progress"...

I don't think we should hold back progress. I'm not arguing for legislated compulsory DRM or shutting down the Internet.

I'm just saying I don't have a lot of love or sympathy for people who build businesses on the appropriation of peoples' hard work against their will. I feel the same way about jerks who take OSS software closed without authorization or credit, or who scrape peoples' blog posts and use them for their own click bait sites without even linking to the original author. TPB is in that sort of category.

"Additionally, you should ask artists who's screwing them"...

I have, and trust me... nobody has any love for record labels except maybe some of the indies.

The trouble is that the new model -- the promised land -- is not appearing. There is no new model. The new model is you give your work away for free and starve.

Like I've said, we've gone from a system where there was some opportunity -- albeit in a shitty model with shitty record labels -- to a system with no opportunity outside touring and merchandise sales.

You can squeeze by on that, but you can't build a career on it. Great art requires years of dedication. That means making it a sustainable career, a vocation. Squeezing out a few tunes in between your two day jobs just won't lead to great art.

It also means you're basically a consultant -- a glorified service sector employee. Why is it that programmers are allowed to build equity in startups, but artists are forbidden from building equity in a portfolio of copyrighted works? It's the only vehicle for equity building they ever had. Without some opportunity to build on your work in a non-linear fashion, you are just a wage slave forever.

I guess we're going to reward all those artists and musicians who enriched our lives by making them eat dog food when they're old...?

Sonny Bono always gets bashed for saying copyright should be "forever and a day." I still don't agree with him-- I think that position is too extreme. But I understand where he's coming from now. He understands economics and business.

To build an industry that can pay actual wages, benefits, and invest in new things, you need to build capital. You need some way of building a portfolio of enduring value that can produce recurrent revenue over a long period of time to fund new things and to support the vast overhead that a real profession demands.

Nobody should understand this more than the HN crowd, which is why I have such an uncharitable interpretation of the down votes I always get for pointing these things out.

[gargantian]

This is actually a great apology.

I agree with you that it's troubling that a new model for monetizing free work isn't coalescing -- in art, open source, writing, and more. I've personally felt the sting of all of these.

However, I don't blame the downloaders or the Pirate Bays. People want what they want, and Pirate Bay managed to provide that to people: a download index for the price of an ad or a drive-by download. I congratulate them on their success.

I think if you can't convince people to hand over money for what you've made, then what you've made simply isn't valuable, even if it maybe was yesterday. Perhaps this means that the local band will have to pack away their guitars while the one-hit wonder Gangnam Styles rake in the bucks, but nobody is being screwed here.

What society wants from entertainment has evolved, and holding onto a static definition of what constitutes "art", "quality", or "enriching one's life" while ignoring what real people are clearly demanding from their entertainment is, I think, pretentious.

I don't think the internet is destroying anything or screwing anyone. It's just closing gaps and optimizing every industry towards exactly what people want; if that's thrown-together garbage delivered for free at the cost of promotions shoved into your eyeballs, then don't blame the internet, or Pirate Bay. Blame people for consuming crap and blindly selling their souls to ads.

[res0nat0r]

> I think if you can't convince people to hand over money for what you've made, then what you've made simply isn't valuable.

They aren't paying because there is pretty much a zero percent chance of getting in trouble for downloading it illegally.

If magically somehow tomorrow every illegal download came with a bill for 250$ for each infraction at the end of the month things would change and more people would move back to legal purchasing. People are cheap and if they can take something for free without consequence they are going to do so.

[doki_pen]

Who was making a living recording and selling albums before the internet? As far as I know, touring was always much more lucrative than recording. Labels always made much more money than artists and the artists were ok with that because the only way to get famous(and make money touring) was for a label to like you and promote you. Things have changed. It's harder than ever to make a living playing music because less people want to see live shows, but that isn't thepiratebay's fault. At the same time, it is easier then ever to get your music out there. If pirating was completely stopped it wouldn't change anything for "artists". We'd just revert to labels choosing winners, but it would still be harder to make a living now then it was 30 years ago.

[mullingitover]

> Like I've said, we've gone from a system where there was some opportunity -- albeit in a shitty model with shitty record labels -- to a system with no opportunity outside touring and merchandise sales.

> You can squeeze by on that, but you can't build a career on it.

Steve Albini strongly disagrees with your theory [1]:

"...As a result fans are more ardent for this music. They are willing to spend more on seeing it played live. They are willing to buy more ephemera and eager to establish a personal relationship to the people who make the music. Gig prices have escalated as a result. And the merchandise tables at gigs are universally teeming with activity. Back home, gigs that used to cost five or six bucks are now 20 or 30. Over here the ticket inflation has been more pronounced, with club gigs going for $80 or more. As a result gig income for bands has increased exponentially. My band has been playing a lot of the same places for the entirety of our existence, over 20 years now. I guess you could say we’ve saturated our audience, no matter how long we stay at it. Some of these perennial gigs are now paying an over of magnitude better than they were 10 or 15 years ago. That’s right, some places where we used to earn four or five hundred dollars we now earn four or five grand."

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/17/steve-albinis-k...

[lordbusiness]

Excellent points, very well stated. I could not agree more.

[macns]

> We've gone from the old pre-Internet system, which screwed artists most of the time, to a new system that screws artists all the time.

In general you make some valid points and I think I understand where you're coming from - as an artist. I strongly believe though, that the pre-Internet system screwed artists because the Internet itself did not exist.

The screwing is coming from the music industry itself. People are still paying for music, it is still (and probably more than ever) a multi billion business. Yet, true, authentic talent don't get the attention/compensation they deserve, why?

Because the big players control who gets what. And that's what they're trying to do when fighting internet piracy, control the distribution. They're not interested in small time artists, they're not fighting for you.

I truly believe that all small time artists should embrace the internet, it's their only true hope to get the attention they deserve, for free. Money will come afterwards. After all, a few companies and a few more monkeys probably get more money than the rest 95%, the internet can split some of that more equally.

EDIT: syntax, trying to make sense

[jfoutz]

> I don't understand why there's so much sympathy for industrial-scale piracy

Most distribution channels make it SO MUCH HARDER to do the right thing vs grabbing a torrent. Steam has its problems, but that was the first commercial distribution channel that seemed to generate a ton of loyalty. What Steam provided was objectively better than the hassle and danger of finding a random binary.

Now days, I stick to iTunes and Netflix for movies. If it's not there, i'm not watching. If the artist isn't big enough to cut a deal with apple they may as well not exist. I'm not really sure which is better.

That's kind of a shame, because i'm willing to spend a little money to watch stuff. But i'm not willing to screw around searching for your work, then installing some ridiculous player software. I'll just go do something else instead.

[MrBuddyCasino]

Exactly. People are just good at rationalizing their behaviour. I don't judge anybody who uses such sites, but what really pisses me off are the guys who like to shout some self-aggrandizing bullshit about fighting for freedom etc. Theres a basic lack of empathy.

[api]

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. I can't see any way to stop this stuff short of stopping everything else, but it irks me that we make heroes out of jerks who are basically just operating plagiarist click-mills. KimDotCom falls into the same category. These people are on a lower tier than scummy domain squatters and spammers.

Want to lionize someone as a freedom fighter? Try someone like Linus Torvalds, or Daniel J. Bernstein, ... someone who ... I dunno ... did actual work of their own to advance the cause of freedom?

My other point is this:

People seem to have this idea that piracy is a rebellious act, that you're hitting back at "the man." I just don't see it. To me it looks more like union busting against the artists... destroying their revenue model so as to beggar them and make them willing to take anything for their work. This in turn benefits the upcoming generation of data-aggregation capitalists who want to monetize everyone's work and use it to sell ads and push surveillanceware. You're scoring one for the man, not against him.

[dil8]

I disagree...

Sharing has been part humanity since the dawn of the human race. It is just easier to share things with more people now.

[api]

That's a variant of "information wants to be free," which is an argument from the naturalistic fallacy.

The question isn't "what's natural" or "what's easy." It's "what benefits the human condition?"

Do we want a culture where artists can make careers out of creating great art, or do we want a culture where there's no money in that so it doesn't get done by anyone except trust fund kids and people who are willing to take a vow of extreme poverty?

In most societies since the dawn of the human race, 99.9% have lived in hardscrabble poverty while <0.1% own virtually everything. Seems to me that the culture of "free" is -- a bit ironically -- taking us back there by destroying all revenue streams except those based on winner-take-all mass content aggregation. It might be the path of least resistance and it might be "natural," but it is not desirable.

[tomp]

The for profit part is only because it's not allowed to be financed by legal means. I'm sure that sharing was free for non-commercial purposes, there would be not-for-profit organizations that would run websites and only gather enough money (via ads, subscriptions, etc) to cover their operational expenses.

[LLWM]

Whether they are making money doesn't matter. Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit. Otherwise the only murderers in jail would be professional assassins.

[toomuchtodo]

Are you not familiar with the distinction between manslaughter and the varying degrees of murder? Intent plays a huge part in the legal system.

[dragonwriter]

> Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit.

Plenty of specific crimes, do, in fact, have seeking a material reward/exchange as a required element of the offense, and the act that is criminal when done for profit is legal (or, if still illegal, illegal under a different provision which often has a lesser punishment) when done without that exchange.

[baddox]

> Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that. But, at least in US law, there is a major distinction between commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement. Both are illegal, of course, but they are treated very differently.

[hasenj]

> Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit.

That's decidedly not true.

Per your example:

> Otherwise the only murderers in jail would be professional assassins.

The people responsible for dropping the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima were not considered criminals and did not go to jail or get punished at all.

War acts are always rationalized by their consequences and the intent behind them.

But this is way off-topic.

Someone already mentioned that copyright laws do indeed distinguish between "commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement".

Actually, I'd argue that even ethically they are treated differently.

If I bought a movie then shared it with my friends, no one would think I'm doing something that's unethical.

If I started selling or renting that movie to my classmates, it's more controversial.

[thaumasiotes]

> Crimes aren't suddenly legal just because you do them for reasons besides profit.

Man, wouldn't that be a better world? But in the world we live in right now, lots and lots of actions are illegal for profit and legal otherwise.

[tomp]

You mean, like Google? Of course, they remove the results that are DMCA-d, but in the mean time, 10 new links appear.

[hasenj]

Huge difference man.

Google's business is not centered around providing pirated material. The fact that it happens is accidental.

The pirate bay, on the other hand, (as clearly suggested by its name), does infact center around providing access to pirated material.

[tomp]

Not really; it centers on providing access to material that it's users want (except certain categories, e.g. child pornography). The fact that it's mostly pirated content stems mostly from the fact that it's prohibited almost everywhere else on the internet.

But, your point is very important in a legal sense - a simple, but effective way to build a better TPB would be to center it around some other cause, and have it accidentally be used for piracy.

[hasenj]

Like bittorrent :)

[soci]

ExoClickπ[1] was one of the ad networks (if not the only one) used by The Pirate Bay to monetize.

[1] https://www.exoclick.com

[click170]

So that's who is responsible for those horrible popup ads that TPB has been using. I fear for anyone browsing pirate bay without noscript and adblock.

Edit: typo

[wvenable]

The piratebay hosts no content and even the torrent files themselves are all served from other users. That's the technical side whether that has any legal bearing is a different question.

[agumonkey]

So being an illegal content link index (categorized magnet URI lists) is not illegal ? honest question. Isn't that why Google was forced to unlist torrents from results, otherwise they'd be in the same position as TPB.

[belandrew]

It can be considered contributory copyright infringement if you're knowingly linking to copyright infringing material.

In the US, abiding by any DMCA takedown notices is enough to be fairly certain you are not going to be in trouble for contributory infringement. That's how Google covers itself.

[ivanhoe]

What about Youtube? It streams huge amounts of illegal content everyday, and it's not just indexing it, but actually hosting the content. Frankly, there would be no YT as it is today if it wasn't hosting tones of music videos illegally.

[agumonkey]

Agreed. There was a time when they strictly enforced blocking of new and removal of old illegal content. My account was flagged many times for tiny snippets of classic 80s movies[1]. That made YT stay outside legal problems. But since there's been a new wave of 'full movie' uploads so I don't know where they stand.

[1] I'm sure copyright holders benefited more than suffered from this free advertisement of love but anyway.

[hahainternet]

The problem is that when you start to make things like that illegal, you are actually just banning numbers.

[PhasmaFelis]

> In other words they don't now what they are talking about. Thepiratebay is not putting up any files on thepiratebay.org, the users are (of course nothing is even uploaded, only seeded from user to user).

If someone were to say in conversation "Yeah, I downloaded Casablanca from Pirate Bay last night," would you immediately reply, "You don't know what you're talking about! You didn't download it from Pirate Bay, but from dozens of different peers, idiot!"

You must be fun at parties.

(And while we're nitpicking, torrents certainly do involve "uploads" and "downloads". Get your pedantry straight.)

[mrkickling]

No I wouldn't, but this is not a party so you're making a really weird comparison. This is about an organisation with great power in Sweden that tries to stop piracy, they should know what they are talking about. Let me make a comparison instead; saying that The pirate bay uploads illegal files to their site is like saying that google uploads thousands of porn sites and torrents to their site, when they are just uploading links. Should google stop displaying links to thepiratebay, streaming sites and Bittorrent and god knows what?

[Cthulhu_]

The court ruling in NL (which lead to a (temporary) forced block from ISP's of the website) was that despite them technically not hosting anything illegal, they are definitely an, let's call it, "accessory to piracy", a middle man so to speak. You know, like how Silk Road was just a middle man for drug deals - the website itself didn't host any drugs. Not that that's technically possible (yet), but you get the idea.

[vacri]

Thepiratebay is not putting up any files on thepiratebay.org, the users are

Knowingly and willingly facilitating crime is usually a crime in itself. As a clear example, if you pay a hitman to kill someone, you didn't do the killing, but you facilitated the crime.

[mrkickling]

Yes, but if you pay a hitman to kill someone, you don't blame the phone company for which you used to contact the hitman.

[krapp]

You might if the phone company not only knew about it, but marketed itself on its willingness to look the other way when callers used its network for illegal activity, and encouraged the idea of using its network for hits-for-hire to the degree that it called itself "Assassins' Telephone and Telegraph" and made a logo of a crosshairs for its website.

[dil8]

Cassettes were used to copy music in the past, are you saying that cassette manufacturers were committing a crime?

[bello]

Not really, because one can easily argue that cassettes have "substantial non-infringing use". It's a little harder to argue for that in the case of TPB.

[nroets]

Some people "copied" while others "backed up".

I only used them as storage for my ZX Spectrum !

[vacri]

If they willingly put them out there with the intent to facilitate crime, yes.