“Prison is a bit like copyright”, says jailed Pirate Bay founder | Hacker News Reader

“Prison is a bit like copyright”, says jailed Pirate Bay founder

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206 pointsGarbage58 comments

I think it's interesting to contemplate that all this is not about TPB relieving anybody of their property, but the possibility of preventing somebody from making the maximum amount of money possible off of their property. TPB doesn't even host copyrighted material, and the access they grant to it requires just enough technical knowhow that most people don't even bother and just pay for netflix and itunes.

Under no conceivable legal system has TPB violated any law (though TPB's users may have). The closest analogy I can think of is putting the mayor of a city into prison because there are people in the city who might break the law, and properly running city services and having functional roads, public transport, property title management, etc. enables them to break the law slightly more easily.

That description does not live up to the image I had of Scandinavian prisons. Although I suppose an 8 month sentence will never be about rehabilitation and can only be used as punishment.

As a European, I was surprised, too. But the key thing to remember here is that he pissed off some very influential people, so it's likely they stuck him in a maximum security facility with a lot of hardened criminals and some instructions to make his life as difficult as possible. Which is par for the course when you're an activist I guess, and a borderline-but-not-quite political prisoner. If you're someone who gives the authorities a hard time, they'll in turn give you a hard time, such is the nature of political corruption.

However, it's important to keep in mind that his sentence is only 10 months, which may not even be served fully. Those months are going to be bad, but the guy will return to his normal life pretty soon. He's a community hero, and financially taken care of, so there's probably not a lot to be worried about in the mid to long term.

>so it's likely they stuck him in a maximum security facility with a lot of hardened criminals and some instructions to make his life as difficult as possible

The prison is ranked as a "lower security class" prison (Class 2). With 1 being highest and 3 lowest. Considering that he dodged his sentence for several years it is not unreasonable to have him in the slightly higher security prison. Additonally I believe the class 3 prisons are "open prisons" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_prison ).

Thanks for clearing that up. The article certainly makes an effort to depict it very differently.

> Those months are going to be bad, but the guy will return to his normal life pretty soon.

I don't know what life is like in other countries, but in the US the branding of having been to prison makes a normal life difficult. My brother made a bad mistake of striking a federal employee about ten years ago and he still can't get work doing more than clearing dishes because of it. He's brilliant, btw, but he'll probably never have an office job or similar ever again.

I'd guess if anything it's worse in the EU since you don't even need to actually go to prison to have a bad permanent record, sometimes a fine for something as trivial as a regulatory violation will have the same effect. Heck, I think in most cases it's enough to have a bad credit status in order to be disqualified from finding work.

On the other hand, I don't think a regular office job is what Mr Sunde needs or wants. It's clear that he'll do bigger and more public things with his life.

It is probably a good idea to think twice before you believe a source that says our criminal justice system is all fun and joy. The Scandinavian system is good, but I still don't think being in prison here is easy.

(Not to mention that Sunde is pretty close to being a political prisoner, if you consider the details of how the case was carried out).

Political prisoner? The guy personally profited off movie piracy. If Sunde is a political prisoner for breaking copyright laws then so is any drug dealer for breaking drug control laws.

I don't get the elevation of these guys on some pedestal. I understand we all like getting stuff for free but TPB was not some political project. If they had really believed copyright was so evil they'd have built a site distributing great content people wanted to watch that was licensed liberally by its creators; thus proving that the open source model could work for movies and TV shows. They'd have done what Stallman did. But they didn't.

You misunderstand me. Sunde would not have been prosecuted in Sweden if it was not for political pressure from the United States. Norway and Sweden have a long history of bowing to US pressure when it comes to internal matters.

The TPB guys did break Swedish law (*as interpreted by the lower courts) but would not have been chased by the Swedish legal system if it wasn't for external pressure. If I remember correctly, there are also indications that the appeal was unfairly rejected, but I would have to read up on it to be certain.

Doesn't it? It doesn't seem to contradict anything I've read. "The worst thing is the boredom" he says. They even let him buy vegan food. Then there are some restrictions on the mail he receives. I guess one of the "socialist utopia prison" articles had something about a guy with a Playstation and a TV, but that's probably something you earn after years of good behavior, and Sunde is only in for months.

Nothing like the stories I hear from the US which are all about concrete walls and toilets with no seat, unsanitary conditions, drug smuggling, violence, etc.

I think you are thinking of Norway.

I second that: Sweden is no Norway and Scandinavian is not universal.

I guess Scandinavian prisons are good for real criminals...

Considering that he is an activist, his description might not be entirely accurate.

What I don't understand - I'm still happily using Pirate Bay along with bunch of other torrent sites (but mostly through torrentz.net search engine). So what's the story behind it? Why PB still operates if it is proven that it is illegal?

Many reasons:

The site today is just text with a simplistic search engine attached. This make relocating them very simple, duplication very simple, and running it very simple. Because the site is that simplistic, removing it gets that much harder. Its like trying to remove illegal numbers from the internet, and expecting that one large raid on the number central will do it.

What lobbyist are trying to do is takeing the site down through DNS by getting TLD's responsible for the internet at large. This is a bad idea(tm), and is being pushed against by the TLD's. It would also not work.

PB has been hosted by an ISP belonging to the Pirate Party of Sweden since 2010. Shutting it down would be seen as political censorship.

The Swedish Pirate Party stopped hosting The Pirate Bay in early 2013: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130226/09515722117/swedi...

It's one thing to say that it's illegal. It's another thing entirely to shut it down.

So, the Pirate Bay's servers are in countries that either don't care to enforce or aren't able to enforce copyright law.

Not just that. I'm pretty sure i read somewhere that they employ a very decentralized and redundant architecture, where almost nobody is in a position to compromise the entire setup. They had to evolve this way after it became clear that Swedish authorities were after them. From what I understand, even their own admins often don't know where their servers are anymore.

This resistance to physical attacks is why countries eventually started blocking it at the consumer end, through ISP-enforced bans.

It's a shame they can't talk more openly about it, I'm sure they could teach some valuable lessons in reliability.

That and it's worth noting that TPB doesn't actually host any pirated content. It only provides magnet links.

I assume they just moved their servers to another country.

> Other items that arrive in the mail, such as vegan candy, won’t be handed out to him until after his release, “but at least the prison has to catalog every single thing you send me, which pisses them off,” Peter says with a wink.

Imagine if millions of people from all around the world sent Peter something every week. I think the prison would want him out of there pretty quick.

Personally, if I was in prison, annoying the staff would be the last thing I wanted to do.

It's a rather civilized country, he won't get raped by the staff.

I don't think that was the concern. Probably something less sinister, like delaying his mail or disallowing exercise time etc.

It would be pretty funny to mail one of those travel chess and checkers sets, one piece at a time. The result would be something (potentially) useful and it would be obvious if any were misplaced.

Only if you view this case as being worthy of civil disobedience, of course.

> “If you don’t constantly insist upon your rights, you will be denied them”

I think in US Jails like Rikers is that if you insist upon your rights you will be thrown into solitary. Americans don't think prisoners should have rights, they went through the due process system and lost them because they did something bad.

allegedly anyways

Here's a question on a slightly related note. It is widely known that Gottfrid Svartholm (anakata) is not provided access to books as opposed to Peter Sunde. But, Gottfrid is allowed to receive letters. I was wondering if there is any legal restriction on the content of the letters sent to such prisoners. If not, would it be OK if books are sent by the page via letters either as-is or paraphrased?

as-is could be copyright infringement. paraphrased - could be ok (although IANAL :))

Surely it's not copyright infringement unless you claim you wrote it yourself? Like, you could buy a book, tear the pages out of it and send that.

If you claim to have written it yourself, that's plagiarism. It would only be copyright infringement if you sent photocopies of the pages of the book. If you're sending the original pages, there's no copying, and thus no infringement.

I remember tpb showing his jail mailbox, so he can read mail but is he allowed to answer them ?

Here is the original article, paragraphs of which seem to have been stitched together to make the TorrentFreak version: http://senficon.eu/2014/08/prison-is-a-bit-like-copyright-pe...

Thanks. We changed to that from http://torrentfreak.com/visited-pirate-bays-peter-sunde-pris....

Indeed. Thanks for the link. The difference is about 1451 to 1152 words (the torrentfreak version is shorter).

The question is, is the TorrentFreak version a good edit or should I rush to the longer version? :P

The TorrentFreak version is missing a few of the more personal paragraphs about Julia Reda's experience visiting him. His statements are intact.

Knock "centralization" all you will, but users must take responsibility for their online lives. I'm sure it gives Sunde revolutionary feels to espouse decentralization and demonize Big Internet, but the sad reality is that users are the ones that have made Facebook and Google powerful and monolithic walled gardens. Every society get's the internet it deserves.

Is this like saying most hospital patients should take responsibility for their own society's health-care system?

It's beyond the scope of the average person to research alternatives, define alternatives, promote said alternatives and push them as hard, or harder, than the big players in any field.

Saying that "users are the ones that have made Facebook and Google powerful and monolithic walled gardens" is ignoring the fact that those "in the know" have been arguing against these practices since their inception, and that competing against these corporations would take a huge marketing campaign in order to even get the word out that alternatives exist.

For example: Many people are happy with Pandora, Spotify, Rdio etc for their music listening. They aren't aware that they don't actually own the tracks in their playlists until they try to play them on something else, or burn them to CD etc. This is an example of a paradigm shifting, with only half of the parties being aware of the shift. This is happening all the time, in all sorts of areas. The average (non IT industry) person has neither the time, nor inclination to keep up with these changes, they just want to listen to their music, look at their photos, read their email etc.

Yes, caveat emptor is still a legitimate rule, but the number of caveats per emptor is getting ridiculous, and no-one in power seems to think this a bad thing. It seems that it's expected to assume that every provider (of goods or services) is megalomaniacally sociopathic, and if you get burnt by such behaviour, it's your own fault.

"Is this like saying most hospital patients should take responsibility for their own society's health-care system?"

Yes, they should.

Look, you're right, it is beyond the scope of the average person to research alternatives. However, we live in a democratic society and it is out of our political apathy that the healthcare system has become what it is: an utter disgrace. If we were a truly compassionate society that prioritized ensuing health-care for all, then this is what we would have.

Same goes for online. We love to bitch and moan about the government taking away net neutrality, our friends and parents thinking the internet is just Facebook, and of course the NSA. But it is us - you, I, our communities - that are creating this situation; not the government. Why? Because we are the government.

Am I aware of how idealistic that sounds in 2014? Absolutely. But we are the ones who, ultimately, decide what level of lobbying and influence corporations have. We are the ones who ultimately decide what level of survelience we allow in our lives.

That was my initial point. But of course, HN folks can be super-reacitionary to anything detracting from the open-source caliphate. Believe me, no one wants a more bio-diverse online ecosystem than I. I've written extensively about it. However, this is the issue it comes down to. We get what we deserve. What's more, if these were important issues in society (which I, in the minority, believe theyt are) then it would galvanize into actual policy being created.

We're in the West. We have democratic ideals. Utilize them. Our entire system and culture is based upon these. It's what justifies wars. If you're not happy about the system, lobby your friends and create movements.

Ironically, this is what the Pirate Bay guys have done. they've gone out and come at IP in a major way, and have felt the might of the law against their favour. I'm not going to comment on whether that's right or wrong, because it isn't the issue. The issue is that we, now, through the sum part of a billion tiny actions, have the chance in this moment to influence the future of this space. The future of IP. The future of rewarding creators fairly. So instead of whinging about Big Internet (which is what happens a lot in this forum - where cries go unheard) - actually take some practical steps to lobby.

So that is why. We get the internet we deserve is that we must take collective responsibility for what kind of world we are creating. Unfortunatley, this is a highly unfashionable stance in age of cynicism and entitlement.

When Google, Facebook, or Microsoft acquire a service I use and love is it still the internet I deserve? Not all centralisation is done through natural, market forces. Sometimes Big Internet uses its bottomless purse to keep itself out in front.

Giant companies using their cash is a market force. How did they get that money? In the market, through their massive user bases.

...and lawyers, and legislation, and patent portfolio, and many other events that doesn't even touch a "free market".

You do know that at the moment the US gov't is deciding if 2 or 3 national ISPs is enough competition. Where are all the other upstarts? Effectively locked out. How? If you showed up early enough you were subsidised in deploying infrastructure. If you showed up a little late that is no longer an option to you.

So yes, continue being naive about how those market forces rely exclusively on cash.

We have one maybe two widely used search engines. One or two social networks dominate the landscape. The third mobile OS is a distant competitor to the main two. Two cell phone companies make almost all the profits in that industry. Until recently, one processor manufacturer dominated the consumer sector, with a competitor that it had to prop up for apperances' sake. Did Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel, Amazon, Microsoft, use lawyers and legislation to achieve victory?

Proponents of startups who also believe in the market have to deal with a certain cognitive dissonance. They have to convince themselves that giant corporations can only win through non-market means. But the fact is that the market almost always favors scale. Apple and Samsung win not through suing "upstarts" for patent infringement, but through the kind of vertical integration only possible with scale. If you can spend $2 billion on a factory to make sapphire glass screens at a price point the "upstarts" can't match, then you win, through purely market means. If you're Verizon and can spend billions to have LTE coverage everywhere in the country, that's what leads you to dominance over the upstarts, not the regulatory regime.

Go back to before the modern regulatory state. Did Standard Oil and U.S. Steel lawyer themselves to victory? No, they did the same thing Apple and Samsung are doing: dominate the competition by leveraging scale.

Did Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel, Amazon, Microsoft, use lawyers and legislation to achieve victory?

Sort of, don't know, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Page rank patent, ???, lawsuits on patent/copyright/look-and-feel against clones and competitors, instruction set patents, one-click patent, anti-competitive OEM contracts and more.

Two or three choices would be more than I have now. I can choose Comcast or nothing.

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft acquire services in ... a market! So, yes, that very much happens through "natural market forces", and you very much have a choice in whether you use services that can be acquired/make any sense to acquire/where it makes any difference whether they get acquired or not.

Just to give some examples:

I use multiple public, non-profit IRC networks. The chance of those being acquired? Pretty close to zero. And even if, dropping one of them wouldn't really hurt much, and if everything else fails, even setting up my own would not be out of reach, keeping all the same user experience.

Then, I use a usenet news server. If that one got acquired? Well, as long as the service stayed the same, it wouldn't really matter much, and if they started doing funny things in order to increase profits, it would be trivial to switch to a different provider that doesn't (which really should discourage anyone from even trying).

Or how about my own email server? That will be damn difficult to acquire, I'd think. At most someone could acquire my ISP ... which, again, is highly fungible, if they started doing anything funny, I'd just obtain connectivity elsewhere.

Yes, it very much is a "natural market force" that monopolies will form where you don't make the concious choice to use technology that is inherently monopoly unfriendly, and as such one could say that you "deserve" the monopoly if you use a service that can be acquired and where that has any real consequences.

Yes, because if the only way such service can get any profit is via mergers and acquisitions, then that's what's going to happen.

And I'm not even talking about ad-block. Ads are one way to have some profit, but they are not optimal in any way.

Microtransactions should be possible. May be Bitcoin will allow this in the future.

You make it sound like the acquired companies themselves have no choice in the matter.

The companies have a choice; their users don't.

Obvious solution: only use services that have public statements promising not to be acquired. From the sound of HN comments, that would be quite the market differentiator. The dearth of such companies perhaps reveals something about what all the world changing services you like are really about.

Are you familiar with the collective action problem?

The inconvenience of filtering the services you use by the public statements of their provider companies makes it almost wholly unreasonable to expect market forces to fix moral failings in companies, unless they're egregious enough to get play in the mass media - which has its own problems of mob activism.

Users don't have an effective choice. This isn't something markets can easily fix.

the problem with that is then people would have to build actually businesses rather than loss leader "startups" that are only around to break even and pray for an acquisition

I certainly hope the alternative isn't between the pirate bay on one side and google/facebook on the other, but that there will be some middle ground, both decentralized AND respectful of sales law and private properties.

> Every society get's the internet it deserves.

Why isn't everyone using AT&T phones today? Was that change made by users?

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