Pirate Bay co-founder arrested in Cambodia

[Mazmaz]

Not politics, etc. Shit Pirate Bay is next.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/st...ay-arrest.html

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg faces 1-year prison sentence in Sweden over file-sharing website

A co-founder of popular file sharing website The Pirate Bay was arrested in Cambodia at the request of Sweden, where he faces a one-year prison term for violating copyright laws, authorities said Monday.

Cambodian police arrested Gottfrid Svartholm Warg last Thursday at a home he had rented in the capital, Phnom Penh, said national police spokesman Kirth Chantharith.

"He is being detained in Cambodia, and we are waiting to expel him," Kirth Chantharith said.

Cambodia has no extradition treaty with Sweden but has requested details of Svartholm Warg's crime in order to process his handover, he said, adding that Cambodia would act as quickly as possible.

Convicted in 2009

Svartholm Warg and the website's three other founders were convicted in 2009 by a Swedish court of assisting copyright infringement by helping millions of the site's users to illegally download music, movies and computer games. All were sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($4.5 million) to entertainment companies, including Warner Bros., Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.

Svartholm Warg failed to show up at an appeal hearing in 2010. At the time, his defence attorney told the court he had received text messages from Svartholm Warg's mother saying her son had fallen ill in Cambodia and would not appear in court.

The appeals court reduced the prison sentences for the three other co-founders from one year to between four and 10 months and raised the amount they have to pay in damages to the entertainment industry to 46 million kronor ($6.9 million).

All four defendants denied the charges, arguing that The Pirate Bay doesn't actually host any copyright-protected material itself. Instead, it provides a forum for users to download content through so-called torrent files.

The torrent system of sharing files breaks files up into fragments, which are shared simultaneously and in both directions among a number of users, or peers as they are known, who then can continue to share the file once they have a complete copy of it.

Files have to be initially uploaded to sites called torrent trackers but can then be indexed on sites such as Pirate Bay that compile links to trackers and act as de facto search engines for torrent files.

Some torrent sites act as both trackers and indexers.

Kirth Chantharith said a group of Swedish officials was scheduled to arrive in Cambodia on Monday or Tuesday to present documents concerning the case and discuss procedures for returning Svartholm Warg.

[Hatedregret]

Man, they really do have a hard on to get every single torrent site down.

[BadKarma]

Only a year? Definitely not america

[Lucavi]

Man, they really do have a hard on to get every single torrent site down.

You'd honestly think otherwise when the movie industry is lobbying so hard and throwing so much money and pressure at governments in general?

[Serra]

Was the Pirate Bay case the one where the prosecution appeared to have no idea about how torrenting works and built their argument on inaccurate information, but then the verdict went in the complete opposite direction of what people were expecting based on the arguments that had been presented (or was that just the spin given by the internet..?)?

[Priran]

I guess he didn't have the right friends

[hey]

Files have to be initially uploaded to sites called torrent trackers

lol

It's funny because no files of any kind ever (let alone copyrighted ones) have to be uploaded to any server for torrents to work.

[Uzor]

Was the Pirate Bay case the one where the prosecution appeared to have no idea about how torrenting works and built their argument on inaccurate information, but then the verdict went in the complete opposite direction of what people were expecting based on the arguments that had been presented (or was that just the spin given by the internet..?)?

Yes, that's the one. Some of their arguments were rediculous and based on the assumption that torrenting is the only way to download files.

[Chrius]

lol

It's funny because no files of any kind ever (let alone copyrighted ones) have to be uploaded to any server for torrents to work.

Files have to be initially uploaded to sites called torrent trackers but can then be indexed on sites such as Pirate Bay that compile links to trackers and act as de facto search engines for torrent files.

While not entirely clear, they at least make the distinction that torrent trackers are not the same as the actual file one is trying to get.

[hey]

While not entirely clear, they at least make the distinction that torrent trackers are not the same as the actual file one is trying to get.

What i took from that was that the entire file needed to be uploaded to a torrent tracker, then separate sites like tpb could then index those files.

can then be indexed on sites such as Pirate Bay that compile links to trackers

It explicitly says this, which isn't really what they do. The pirate bay does not post links to files. For half of their torrents, they only have hashes of the torrent files, an the other half also have a file that has hashes for the actual files, as well as links to sites that just keep track of ip addresses.

[Galkaeater]

why always south east asia?
are they fucking kids?

[Ashmada]

It's nice to see Cambodia is more determined to arrest alleged pirates than genocidal tyrants.
But yeah, the verdict makes no sense. If "potentially indexing pirated content" is illegal now, ol' goog-goog and all search engines are seemingly next.

[Meresgi]

So how are they pinning this on the trackers? I mean all they do is act as a middle man directing hosts to other hosts who have the files they want.

[hey]

So how are they pinning this on the trackers? I mean all they do is act as a middle man directing hosts to other hosts who have the files they want.

My guess would be by finding a country where maintaining lists of ip addresses, or hashes of files is illegal and dropping him off there. Either that, or they'll just go with the easier option of lying about what torrents are.

[Kuya]

Maybe that's the direction they want to take this. Since they can't stop people from uploading pirated content, they want to knee cap the middle man instead, since it might be easier.

[Meresgi]

Maybe that's the direction they want to take this. Since they can't stop people from uploading pirated content, they want to knee cap the middle man instead, since it might be easier.

At that point though you need to kneecap places like Gamestop or pawnshops because they are making actual $$ off reselling used shit, and the original creators don't get a dime. No clue why torrents am so bad, but used game sales for Gamestop are just dandy.

[Qalbert]

the guy who takes trash doesn't understand how property works? color me shocked

[Meresgi]

the guy who takes trash doesn't understand how property works? color me shocked

I DO know how torrents work.

Say I buy a book, I pay the publisher money for that book, is it mine now? Can I sell it to another buddy of mine for cash or give it to him for free? Same with video games, if I purchase it, is it mine to sell to someone else? Because a lot of companies will say "no" to that idea. \

The tracker site doesn't really have the file somewhere in magic internet space, they have a list of all peers who have a full file or a portion of the file, and when you connect it just connects you to everyone else on that list to seed the file. Unless i'm horribly mistaken in this understanding.

So if I have a book, and I loan it to a friend to read..isn't that the same thing? On the web it would be in pdf format, I can't put that book on my bookshelf and my friend can't either. After they read it, most likely it will just be deleted to save space. Did the author and publisher loose any money on this at all?

Now how is what Gamestop is doing any different? They are cutting the original creator and publisher of the goods out of any profit after the fact. I know this is a huge reason why so many games have DLC that can only be activated with a fresh game copy and such, and why a lot of publishers are going after Gamestop.

There's already a huge thread in the poopdeck on this anyways, may as well just merge this into it.

[Ksandra]

I DO know how torrents work.

Say I buy a book, I pay the publisher money for that book, is it mine now? Can I sell it to another buddy of mine for cash or give it to him for free? Same with video games, if I purchase it, is it mine to sell to someone else? Because a lot of companies will say "no" to that idea. \

The tracker site doesn't really have the file somewhere in magic internet space, they have a list of all peers who have a full file or a portion of the file, and when you connect it just connects you to everyone else on that list to seed the file. Unless i'm horribly mistaken in this understanding.

So if I have a book, and I loan it to a friend to read..isn't that the same thing? On the web it would be in pdf format, I can't put that book on my bookshelf and my friend can't either. After they read it, most likely it will just be deleted to save space. Did the author and publisher loose any money on this at all?

Now how is what Gamestop is doing any different? They are cutting the original creator and publisher of the goods out of any profit after the fact. I know this is a huge reason why so many games have DLC that can only be activated with a fresh game copy and such, and why a lot of publishers are going after Gamestop.

There's already a huge thread in the poopdeck on this anyways, may as well just merge this into it.

I mean you kinda answer your own question in the post, but lemme simplify it:

I buy 1 copy of FF13, play it. I sell my 1 copy of it back to gamestop.

vs.

I buy 1 copy of ff13, play it, create an iso and give out 2039854240958345 copies to other people.

So ya, I see an obvious difference as to why companies care about one more than the other.

[hey]

I mean you kinda answer your own question in the post, but lemme simplify it:

I buy 1 copy of FF13, play it. I sell my 1 copy of it back to gamestop.

vs.

I buy 1 copy of ff13, play it, create an iso and give out 2039854240958345 copies to other people.

So ya, I see an obvious difference as to why companies care about one more than the other.

vs buying 1 copy then giving it a friend, who gives it to another friend who gives it to another friend, until we have a chain of 2039854240958345 friends who have all played one single copy of it.

Before you say that's bullshit and doesn't happen, it's perfectly plausible for say, 100k copies to be played by 200k+ people.