TPB Trial has ended... waiting for a verdict now.

[Barmi]

The pirate bay is simply a search engine. In the same way that road builders build roads for people to drive on, TPB hosts a service to help people find torrents. The fact that people decide to use the service for copyrighted material, in the same way that bank robbers use roads to get away from the bank quickly, isn't their fault, at least in principle. I'm not well versed in Swedish law either so in the context of the case I couldn't say whether simply hosting the service makes them accountable, but the analogy stands imo.

And TPB isn't solely there to search for torrents containing copyrighted material. BitTorrent distros etc. can be found on there.

See what ***** has posted. They are intentionally supplying their architecture to facilitate illegal activity. It's difficult to argue otherwise. I don't have the time right now, but I'm more than prepared to argue my point. (Even if it is not directly relevant to the case, it's relevant to points in this thread.)

ThePirateBay

[HotelUser]

Google also indexes illegal downloads...

...someone should sue them:rolleyes:.

[Fehm]

Google also indexes illegal downloads...

...someone should sue them:rolleyes:.

Lol... Tbh, if google got sued it really wouldnt affect them, the amount they make :L

I kinda agree with the points of how they are intentionally displaying links to torrents and illegal downloads, therefore assisting in copyright theft, but.. i dunno i never really used the site :L

[Hitman]

Google also indexes illegal downloads...

...someone should sue them:rolleyes:.

True, but read my previous post. Google wasn't made to help promote (and index) illegal downloads, however TPB was, to put it simply.

[PoizZoNxX]

Theres many ways which it can be thought about what pirate bays aim is, saying they don't assist and say it's a search engine is one way but the real reason is to provide torrents, there isnt any other need for users to go on tpb and assisting to provide copyright material or whatever would be true in my eyes as thats what there doing but some crazy sweedish laws and all that bother

[Hitman]

Indeed, they are assisting, you can't really argue that they aren't; if they weren't then they would remove the illegal torrents from the search engine, but they take pride in not having removed any.

[Agnostic Bear]

I'm waiting for the day they go at it with a big usenet provider like Giganews and see what it's like to go at someone with as much if not more money than themselves.

Indeed, they are assisting, you can't really argue that they aren't; if they weren't then they would remove the illegal torrents from the search engine, but they take pride in not having removed any.

Torrents aren't illegal this is the entire point of their defence （　｀ー´）

[HotelUser]

True, but read my previous post. Google wasn't made to help promote (and index) illegal downloads, however TPB was, to put it simply.

Though from a legal point of view they're both doing the same thing whether they both intend to or not.

[Barmi]

Though from a legal point of view they're both doing the same thing whether they both intend to or not.

I thought you weren't versed in Swedish law? In England, I think you'll find intention does matter under our law of complicity. There is a huge difference between intending and not intending – usually the mens rea element of a crime is founded on this – so from 'a legal point of view', try not to lessen the significance of it. This may or may not be relevant to the case, but shows again that you are throwing comments out there without giving due thought.

@Jewish Bear: Knives are not illegal, but using them to stab someone is. In this country it is perfectly legal to sell a knife, but not if you can foresee (admittedly rare in this example) that the knife will be used to stab someone... else the law of complicity comes in. Torrents are likely to be the same, because the owners of TPB have made perfectly clear what their mental state as to the situation is. Only they are not in the UK.

[HotelUser]

I thought you weren't versed in Swedish law? In England, I think you'll find intention does matter under our law of complicity. There is a huge difference between intending and not intending – usually the mens rea element of a crime is founded on this – so from 'a legal point of view', try not to lessen the significance of it. This may or may not be relevant to the case, but shows again that you are throwing comments out there without giving due thought.

I'll admit I hardly know anything about Swedish law. But Google still knows they're indexing illegal content. They're allowing this content to be indexed, and they're allowing users to search for this content. In that sense it is to my opinion that TPB and Google are both guilty (or not guilty) of the same thing.