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The Pirate Bay — "Just a Very Large Hobby"
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 02, 2008 12:36 PM
from the but-robin-hood-wasn't-a-rude-hidebound-dreamer dept.
from the but-robin-hood-wasn't-a-rude-hidebound-dreamer dept.
praps writes "In a fascinating interview with two of the founders of The Pirate Bay entitled 'Are they baby-eating monsters or what?,' Swedish news site The Local discovers that far from being the radical Robin Hoods of the digital age, Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij are actually 'polite, humorous and down-to-earth.' They may run one of the biggest sites in the world but 'it's just a hobby that's grown to be very, very large.' Financially, they are 'happy as long as it doesn't make a loss,' and both hold down regular IT day jobs. And apparently they spend a lot of time with a Bedouin in the Sinai desert."
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Baby eating monsters unite (Score:5, Funny)
Meanwhile I take piracy very seriously and treat my baby-eating as a hobby.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
That's racist! I prefer dark meat babies!
Re:Baby eating monsters unite (Score:5, Funny)
Insightful!?
OK you've convinced me. I've just been out to the children's playarea and picked one up. How do I prepare it, just drop it into a pot of boiling water or what? Grill? Barbacue?
There is one advantage I have noticed to this: I'll cook it last as it is currently chopping vegetables. A HUGE timesaver!
Parent
Re:Baby eating monsters unite (Score:5, Funny)
Catching the infant by the ankles and swinging it brusquely around in tight circles usually does the trick.(And it's won't bruise the meat!) After this, it's best to oven roast at about 160 degrees centigrade until the flanks turn golden brown.(Some people use a rotating spit, but be careful to secure the limbs!). Remember to add a little oil if the child is lean.
The meat should be tender and moist when serving, and is quite filling. Serve with a light salad and cool rice. A fine Californian red is a perfect accompaniment both during and after this meal. For ambiance, the deeper sounds of the viola will aid digestion, or if they are not too shrill, the wails of the mother can be most uplifting.
Parent
Not radical Robin Hoods? (Score:5, Funny)
What, did they expect them to be carrying RPGs, in small boats, off the coast of Somalia or something?
Re:Not radical Robin Hoods? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Not radical Robin Hoods? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard conflicting stories about those (real) pirates. Some say they are protecting their waters that were being over fished by foreigners, CNN of course just says that they are after it for the money.
Well, they attack transport ships, and when they get a microphone their demands are for money, not less fishing. So...
Parent
Re:Not radical Robin Hoods? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Not radical Robin Hoods? (Score:5, Funny)
There are plenty of RPGs on The Pirate Bay.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
What, did they expect them to be carrying RPGs, in small boats, off the coast of Somalia or something?
No, no that's the blue collar pirates. They were probably expecting some sort of pirate lair with all the booty (the treasure kind... really) that they're busy figuring out where to stash (dug down under the big X has a poor ROI), just like drug lords aren't exactly on the street peddling little white bags.
surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij are actually 'polite, humorous and down-to-earth.'
And does this surprise anyone? I think most will find that most people that work in IT are this way. Sure there's the occasional elitist that likes to think their shit doesn't smell, but on the whole I'd say most people in IT are reasonable, easygoing people.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And does this surprise anyone? I think most will find that most people that work in IT are this way.
Most people are. The people on top (any top, IT or not) mostly aren't. I'm not sure what top they think TPB is on though, but it's certainly doing well at something.
Re:surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
I could see how mainstream, non-geeks would get the idea that the guys who run a "piracy file sharing website" (as some in the MSM portray it) would look like that picture of Stallman from that /. story a few days ago...you know...stereotypical "anti-establishment" look...scraggly beard, Castro hat, dread locks or green-colored hair...
Geeks shouldn't be surprised at all...but people who are on the outside looking in only have what they've heard in news reports to guide their perception, and I can at least understand why they would expect some anarchist types to be being TPB
Parent
This just in: (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, though, what would you expect the operators of something like the pirate bay to be like? IT guys with a strong(and probably slightly odd) sense of humor seem exactly like what one would expect. I suspect that they have a sheeple index far, far lower than average; but, contrary to depressingly popular belief, the desire to not be fucked around with doesn't inevitably lead to all sorts of outrageous depravity.
Re:This just in: (Score:4, Funny)
But, there will be depravity, right? :-P
Cheers
Parent
Oh like Robin Hood is going to TELL you (Score:5, Funny)
I was just reading (Score:5, Interesting)
about the origins of the Robin Hood legend.
In the earliest documented version of the legend in anything like recognizable form, Robin and his Merry Men beat and rob a monk, then later on they decide to kill the monk and his page because they were afraid they would testify against them.
The whole system of sheriffs was a form of oppression forced on the population by their Norman overlords -- that much the later legends sort of get right. Monasticism was a byproduct of a Christian society in which the highest echelons made their living by murder, robbery and extortion, and in which sins could be expunged through gifts to the church. The history of medieval monasticism was a story of reformist zeal followed by rapid accumulation of wealth and corruption, recapitulated over and over again.
But notice: While it's obvious why robbing and killing sheriffs and monks might be considered admirable, apparently this doesn't stop at that. Killing the page was considered quite as merry and shrewd.
There's a lesson in this.
When the law becomes abusive, it's too much to expect that resistance to it take the form of highly principled disobedience. Once defying the law becomes seen as just and right, fine distinctions like between a corrupt church official and an innocent child witness go out the window.
Re: (Score:2)
how innocent is someone who is immediately attached to a corrupt official?
Anyone that close to a politician for instance, who does not know what is going on, is either lying, or has an IQ lower than his shoe size.
Re:I was just reading (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I was just reading (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, you're going to get caught for the killing of that sheriff anyways, so why not?
Link to copyright: Well, you buy a game and it doesn't work. You instead go download a no-cd or crack.
Next time, you just go download the game from whoever has it and go get the patches. Why not? The no-cd and cracks are illegal.
Later on, after getting screwed with bad purchases one cant use and cant take back, one downloads everything they can. Movies, songs, applications, data.
The sites are easy to find.
BitTyrant - modded azureus for opportunistic sharing
WASTE - encrypted P2P private nets. high security for friends and contacts only
TOR - onion router for hiding ones tracks and researching things that are considered "unpalatable"
HTTrack - multi-platform friendly web mirroring
IRC - get a good client. Stay away from MIRC. Xircon, BitchX and others are usable as well as scriptable.
Using TOR or another onion router-like tech, one can use IRC and initiate file trading via those channels. One could highlight a drop of a GPG'ed package at any number of file dumps online. Or, they could send it via email split in X many pieces.
Let me know if there's anything that might be interesting to get. I could post links.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I was just reading (Score:5, Insightful)
Which illustrates my point. As soon as the barrier between lawful and unlawful behavior is no longer accepted as just, a determination of "fair game" for one act spreads to circumstantially related acts.
It goes from "I'll get you," to "and your little dog, too."
Parent
Re:I was just reading (Score:4, Insightful)
The law does not deserve our automatic respect. The law does not deserve our unquestioning obedience. The law does not issue from divinity, nor does it necessarily reflect the will of the people.
Yes, people are quite flagrantly breaking the law of the land as it is written. The question is; is the law just. In the case of copyright law, the answer is no. It is clear that copyrights laws, and the fines imposed under them, are injust. Faced with this, there is a very serious question as to whether that law should be observed or respected at all.
You are correct though. Lack of respect for some laws leads to lack of respect for the law in general, and that can and has lead to the breakdown of society. But what you have failed to realise is that a general lack of respect for the law is caused by unjust laws. It's true. People are smart enough to realise when they are being had. The truth is that unjust laws do more to undermine our legal system than any amount of teenagers downloading files off the internet.
Parent
Re:I was just reading (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you're a troll!
"Once defying the law becomes seen as just and right, fine distinctions like between a corrupt church official and an innocent child witness go out the window."
Can you site any cases outside mythology to support your determination that, say, Ghandi's independence movement in India, or the US civil rights movement or the UK nuclear disarmament movement of the 80's or the Aussie Franklin river protesters, or greenpeace, or even PETA, or the East Timorese movment of the 90's or the Tuianemen square victims or indeed ANY OTHER group who believed that the law was wrong .... ... have ever failed to make the distinction in question?
I can't!
Govt agencies don't count; they acknowledge the justness of the law, but either have immunity or just break it anyway.
M. East suicide bombers probably don't have the logistical and technical resources to target the officials they'd like to. Nor, it seems, do predator drones.
No, highly principled disobedience is certainly possible at any time, and is not too much to expect from anyone who claims to have free will. I think the men you describe are typical bad guys, and decided that any witness is one too many, and you're trying to extrapolate something more absolute from the tale, like trying to pull a length of piano wire from spaghetti.
The lesson you claim is false and dangerous, and you are actively undermining people's understanding of humanity, compassion and morality.
Parent
Re:I was just reading (Score:4, Insightful)
The history of copyrights furnish plenty of examples where people who find the copyright regime to be excessive have taken liberties that encroach upon what they otherwise would accept as reasonable rights of copyright holders. In fact this argument was first made by Lord Macaulay in his second address to Parliament on copyright extension.
A modern example would be this: if a copyright holder makes it difficult for you to space shift an electronic copyright of a work, then plenty of people find a way around this, and don't scruple to distribute the fruits of their labor. Apple, on the other hand, has had great success by making their DRM less onerous to users, making space shifting relatively convenient and making it easy to recover your purchases when you no longer have access to the authorized machine. They also charge what most people regard as fair prices.
As a result, Apple has a huge number of users who don't look on the restrictions Apple has put on their purchases as punitive. It really is not that difficult to get around Apple's DRM, but there has not been an explosion in trading of DRM stripped tracks you'd expect given the ubiquity of iPods.
Parent
hobbies (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously... just use a normal - like everyone else. Or, if you're feeling fancy, try two of them: --
-B
Eh (Score:3, Insightful)
When people say it's not about the money, it's generally about the money. Sorry, TPB guys, but I don't believe you're not making a *phenomenal* amount of money from this thing. Note that they say they are IT "consultants", they don't have a normal day 9-5 job.
Which is great -- more power to them for making money -- but I don't buy this whole "we're just normal guys havin' a bit of fun" crap. They know that if they're seen as making tremendous profit from the work of others, they'll be seen a lot differently, socially and legally.
Re:Eh (Score:5, Insightful)
I can quite readily believe they're not making money doing it. Where's the funding going to come from? Advertising? Well, maybe, but (a) all advertisers know that TPB's audience consists by definition of people too cheap to pay for stuff, (b) most mainstream firms probably won't want to be seen as associated with such a notorious site, and (c) I bet the frequency of Adblock Plus among TPB users is pretty damn high.
I suppose they sell the odd bit of merchandise from the kopimi store, but that must only barely cover their costs.
Full disclosure: I don't actually have the faintest idea what kind of advertisements they show on TPB. Adblock Plus, y'see. So I suppose it could be argued that I'm pirating TPB itself :-)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Note that they say they are IT "consultants", they don't have a normal day 9-5 job.
Probably a bad translation. Over here, the work "konsult" can mean either "consultant" or "contractor".
Re:Eh (Score:4, Funny)
If the artists want their share of whatever profits these guys make from free downloads, the artists should create a free download site and steal their business. The fact is, most musicians simply aren't willing to compete in that arena. If they want to leave that money on the table, it's hard to blame TPB for taking it.
Parent
Re:Eh (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize the irony of this statement, right? Taken out if its anti-TPB rant, it quite easily applies to the Recording industry distributors. In fact, it almost better applies to them because TPB's so-called profits and effect on music sales are pretty questionable. Whereas the coercive and immoral contracts of the music distributors are widely accepted facts.
The Pirate Bay provides a very valuable service. It excels at displaying what an immoral farce copyright laws and globalization have become. It is a modern day speakeasy [wikipedia.org]. The fact that they STILL (after years of press) get threatening DMCA requests, which do not and should not apply to them (being that they aren't subjects of the United States government) is very telling.
Blowback. If you clampdown too hard, people will resist. Hard enough, and they will revolt and maybe even seek revenge--justified or not. U.S. Copyright law has progressed far beyond its constitutional mandate. Article 1 section 8, clause 8 states the following: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." And yet, "limited time" has come to mean 75 years AFTER the death of the author. There have been serious arguments made in on the congressional floor to construe "limited times" as infinity minus one day. In what reasonable way is that "limited"? Furthermore, there are countless examples where modern copyright and patent laws serve only to obstruct progress. Rarely do stated arguments even involve the actual mandate of patents and copyrights anymore. We speak in terms of losses to artists and inventors despite the fact that this is rarely ever the actual case (most copyrights and patents are held by multinational corporations) and not the intended focus of these protections.
"Intellectual Property" laws have become tools of oppression and exploitation. It should not be surprising that people are resisting them, even if such resistance has ulterior self-serving motive.
-Grym
Parent
Re:Eh (Score:4, Interesting)
The recording industry and musicians have NOT tried to keep their songs secret. Back in the day when the only way to listen to a song whenever you wanted to was to buy the LP, selling LP's made sense. Now selling/leasing/licensing songs doesn't make sense. I can transfer a song from here to Australia for no incremental cost in my broadband. No one had to burn a CD, ship something, carry inventory, or anything else for this to happen
If the musician comes to my town maybe I'll plunk down $120 for two tix to see him live, $50 for a t-shirt. If I really like him then maybe I'll buy a CD so I can get a quality lossless copy and album cover, or a poster for my room. But this stuff that has already been broadcast on the airwaves for free? I'm not paying for it.
Parent
Any swedes willing to translate? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have the energy to translate it right now, but if any other Swede would like to, please do. Until that, try the google translation [google.com]
Very large?.... (Score:5, Funny)
... , or "avast"?
The Best Things in Life are Free... (Score:2, Interesting)
... but all good things (that can be attacked by the RIAA/MPAA will) come to an end.
As much as I love Pirate Bay, the central website model can't last.
Systems like Cubit [sourceforge.net] seem promising. Hopefully in a years time we'll have moved to a more distributed model for torrent file search and delivery.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see why not. The Internet is still growing, but America's hegemony is in decline. Is the day going to come when the USA at the behest of its media cartels successfully enforces its law on every nation? If not, all that has to happen is that someone in a free country sets up a tracker index.
News for pirates, torrents that matters ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Sinai Desert? (Score:5, Funny)
And their favorite film is Donnie Darko, about a human with powers over time?
Crap. We've got a couple of Fremen-in-training here. Arrest them before they can cut off the flow of spice!
I`m a "regular guy" too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:missing semicolon (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:missing semicolon (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, typography humor. That's something you don't see every day. =)
Next, an in depth discussion on kerning. ;-)
Cheers
Parent
Re:missing semicolon (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Some style guides do allow the use of the en dash surrounded by space, although the predominant english guides suggest using em dash without surround spaces.
It also hasn't been completely fixed, it's still missing the semicolon in the title element.
Re:First? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm looking for another guy to bareback my gf (late 20s, white, cute to average) while I watch. If you're disease free, white, well hung, not too old, not too fat, etc, and live near Virginia Beach, let me know.
I can meet 2 of those 6 requirements. Why do these tech jobs always have a huge list of required skill sets?
Parent
Re:First? (Score:5, Funny)
(late 20s, white, cute to average)
Cute to average.....dang I'm too good looking for the job I guess.
Parent
Re:First? (Score:5, Insightful)
No no, if it were an ad for a tech job the requirements would be more like:
must be 20-something and have 30 years sexual experience.
Parent
Re:First? (Score:5, Funny)
If you're disease free, white, well hung, not too old, not too fat, etc, and live near Virginia Beach
Well, you've come to the right place for disease free and white.
Not sure how close our mothers' basements are to Virginia Beach though....
Parent