Internet freedom attacked again

Pirate Bay

I have to say that I don't use Pirate bay for fear I might be downloading copyright material.

But where would the material come from if I did use it?

Not from Pirate Bay.

Let's get the argument clear: breaking copyright means copying and distributing a person's work without their permission. Pirate Bay does not do that. They do index other sites that host copyright works. These are offered by these sites for downloading. If the protocol used for downloading bit torrent, then the sites that the actual download comes from are many none of which is Pirate Bay, but a bit from here and a bit from there.

We are faced with these issues:

- The internet is global , you cannot enforce local laws about it

- Information out there is found by indexing and search, e.g. by Google

- Copyright is not broken by indexing and searching, but by copying from the indexed sites

So why do people put up copyright material on their sites? To make money by advertising, because they think its amusing or simply don't understand the issues, or because they are frustrated at not having legitimate download sites they can buy the work from? This last one is feel known as the main motivator for music and movies to be available from lots of sites.

So, lots of copyright material held on sites illegally is motivated by the lack of legitimate hosting sites where you an purchase it, particularly music and movies driven by the industries outmoded business models which release movies by country, by channel, by time. The internet is global, if a movie is released in USA but not in UK, then people in UK are going to want to see it, and they are motivated to illegally download it.

Accusing Pirate Bay of secondary guilt is simply wrong for free speech. The claim that the harm to copyright works can be equated to harm to physical products or to people, e.g. by an incitement to murder or promotion of physical copy-products which may be unsafe or break someones Intellectual Property rights, is wrong. Any laws that are interpreted to mean that it is illegal to index internet sites is wrong.

Try prosecuting Google not Pirate bay, they index many more sites with copyright protected works listed in the search results, just as does Pirate Bay. If Google is legitimate then so are other search engines. All of them make money from advertising.
The illegality of downloading a copyright work without permission and possible payment is between the hosting site and the downloader, nothing to do with any index which enable you to find the work on the global internet.