Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from Hastaff
Speaker 1: Work stock Yard and welcome to tech stuff, be Jonathan Strand.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Focam. I don't I don't know if you
Speaker 1: play now, I don't know. I'm sorry. Well, today, obviously
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about the Pirate Bay, one
Speaker 1: of the most blocked sites on the Internet. And uh,
Speaker 1: I know it's a little early for talk like a
Speaker 1: Pirate Day by more than a month, but you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't resist really, I mean, they called themselves the
Speaker 1: Pirate Bay. Their logo is a pirate ship sailing on
Speaker 1: the high seas. There may be one or two moments
Speaker 1: where I cannot resist the urge to speak in a
Speaker 1: stereotypical pirate voice, which is, by the way, not the
Speaker 1: way pirates talked, and not really Swedish either. Oh that's
Speaker 1: another point. So the Pirate Bay is a Swedish website.
Speaker 1: It is run mostly by Swedish people, and and we
Speaker 1: we do not know the Swedish language. We are we
Speaker 1: are going to make a very earnest attempt at pronunciating.
Speaker 1: Pronunciating that was This is off to a terrific start. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So one first thing, this is way earlier than when
Speaker 1: we normally record our show, so we're coping with that
Speaker 1: right now too. We are going to be speaking some
Speaker 1: words that are in Scandinavian, including people's names, and we're
Speaker 1: going to try to pronounce them as closely to the
Speaker 1: actual pronunciation as possible. But know that we're gonna be
Speaker 1: mangling stuff because mostly our knowledge of Swedish comes from
Speaker 1: the Swedish chef, yeah, from the Muppets, So which is
Speaker 1: not We do make a solemn promise that except for
Speaker 1: this moment right now, we will not follow anything with work, work,
Speaker 1: work and then throw utensils in the air well. I'll
Speaker 1: be throwing utensils in the air well. Utensils may be flying,
Speaker 1: but the work work work thing, apart from that second
Speaker 1: one that I said was not going to happen, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna happen again, all right, Right, So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the part of bit. Yeah, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: a big thing. It is. It is one of the
Speaker 1: most heavily trafficked sites on the Internet. It has so much,
Speaker 1: so many torrents, all of the torrents, right, and of
Speaker 1: course we just did an episode about bit torrent and
Speaker 1: how bit torrent works. So for a large part of
Speaker 1: this conversation, we're really going to be focusing on the
Speaker 1: story of the Pirate Bay and we're not gonna concentrate
Speaker 1: too much on the technology, although that will come into
Speaker 1: play it parts. But as the Pirate Bay has updated,
Speaker 1: UM has started making use of newer technologies than we
Speaker 1: were talking about in the bit torrent episode. Right But
Speaker 1: if you want to know basically how bit torrent works,
Speaker 1: just go listen to the episode that we published immediately
Speaker 1: before this one. I believe that's the one that should
Speaker 1: be airing before this one, and then you can catch up,
Speaker 1: uh and and know that that's the basic technology that
Speaker 1: underlies at least the early days of the Pirate Bay UM,
Speaker 1: which which has a big deal that they're about to
Speaker 1: celebrate their tenth anniversary in September. I believe they're holding
Speaker 1: their tenth anniversary party on August tenth, which is like
Speaker 1: two days from when we're recording this. It will have
Speaker 1: already happened by the incredible future that you listened to
Speaker 1: this episode, So tell us how it was, because UM,
Speaker 1: right now we just know how it will be. That's
Speaker 1: going to happen in Stockholm right now. Five d and
Speaker 1: fifty four people have r s VPD on Facebook, which
Speaker 1: is about UM seventy thousand more people than the venue
Speaker 1: that they have set up can accept. UM and I
Speaker 1: suspect that most of those are are just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you go, pirate baby excitement. Would I would? This is
Speaker 1: just me thinking outside the box here. If I were
Speaker 1: to attend an event held by a website that has
Speaker 1: been prosecuted successfully as we'll discover for UH, for assisting
Speaker 1: in the theft of intellectual property, and had been under
Speaker 1: intense scrutiny from numerous law enforcement agencies, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I would use Facebook to say yes, I want to
Speaker 1: go to this place. Just thinking about, you know, being
Speaker 1: tracked easily. I'm just you know, throwing that out there.
Speaker 1: That is a thing to consider. But anyway, so let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about what the pirate bay is and how
Speaker 1: it got started UM also and and and kind of
Speaker 1: talk about the reputation that the site has not only
Speaker 1: among its users but among its critics. Right like correct
Speaker 1: dot com wrote up a really a really humorous piece
Speaker 1: UM that was not entirely kidding and and they said,
Speaker 1: according to the r I, a pirate Bay rates somewhere
Speaker 1: between Nazi dinosaurs and the League of Extraordinary Evil on
Speaker 1: the global threat scale. Yeah, so this is a that's
Speaker 1: kind of the perception I think that's out there in
Speaker 1: the in the content creation industries. Oh sure, yeah, because
Speaker 1: you're talking about a site that facilitates file sharing. Now,
Speaker 1: on its face, file sharing is not necessarily various. It's
Speaker 1: not illegal. It's not that it's stealing. It's a way
Speaker 1: of getting its transmitting. Yeah. I mean, it's just sharing files, right,
Speaker 1: that's all it is. It's when those files contain intellectual
Speaker 1: property or our material that belongs to a party. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that normally that party would sell that material or
Speaker 1: otherwise make money off of it through licensing or whatever.
Speaker 1: And the perception is that by sharing it, you are
Speaker 1: essentially taking money out of that content creator's pocket. Um oh,
Speaker 1: and I We've gone on quite a bit, and I've
Speaker 1: meant to mention this at the very beginning. We are
Speaker 1: going to do a two part series on this. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be The Pirate Bay is going to be a
Speaker 1: two part episode so that we can really concentrate on
Speaker 1: two different segments of the history of the Pirate Bay.
Speaker 1: So this is part one, obviously, and Part two will
Speaker 1: focus on taking it from the point where the legal
Speaker 1: system really got involved up to present day, starting back
Speaker 1: onto the very early days of the the Pirate Bay.
Speaker 1: You have to go back to September fifteen, two thousand three,
Speaker 1: and that was when the pirate based site was founded
Speaker 1: by UH, an organization called Pierrot Byron UH. Pierrot Biron
Speaker 1: is UH the anti copyright organization in Sweden UH, and
Speaker 1: that was a group that was formed to kind of
Speaker 1: just oppose the concept of copyright in general, and also
Speaker 1: the anti Pierrot Biron group in Sweden, right right, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of anti piracy lobbyists happening in Sweden
Speaker 1: or lobbying happening in Sweden at that point in time,
Speaker 1: and so and so, you know, they were just saying, hey,
Speaker 1: there's another there's another side to this. UM. Pierrot Bidon
Speaker 1: means Bureau of Piracy way right, So the Piracy Bureau
Speaker 1: was very much opposed to this blanket approach to to
Speaker 1: UH anti piracy and we're saying They were saying it,
Speaker 1: there are there are things that are wrong with copyright law.
Speaker 1: You know, they some people in this group feel that
Speaker 1: copyright in general just should not even be a thing.
Speaker 1: Many say, it's not that shouldn't be a thing. It's
Speaker 1: that in its current form, it's a system that is
Speaker 1: punishing people, uh to ridiculous levels, or it's really holding
Speaker 1: back the ability of people to show creativity. Like you know,
Speaker 1: this goes across all sorts of things, not just file sharing.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you are someone who likes to remix
Speaker 1: music and you are you're really talented, you make really
Speaker 1: good remixes, and it's stuff that is that that that
Speaker 1: resounds with people. People really enjoy it. They they seek
Speaker 1: out your work. But because what you're doing is taking
Speaker 1: the work of some other artists and then applying your
Speaker 1: own talent to changing that, uh, there are there are
Speaker 1: organizations that will go after you because they're saying you
Speaker 1: don't have the right to that original work that you
Speaker 1: took and then transformed it. Um. There's also all these
Speaker 1: arguments about fair use and if it's transformative enough, does
Speaker 1: that mean it's fair use of that material material? But
Speaker 1: that's that's tip that's difficult stuff, right. It's something that
Speaker 1: only gets determined if it goes to court. So it's
Speaker 1: not like you can just say fair use and you're Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got to be able to defend that in a
Speaker 1: court setting, and a lot of people can't. So this
Speaker 1: has given rise to a culture not just in Sweden
Speaker 1: but around the world, uh, to say that, you know this,
Speaker 1: this is something that we really need to talk about
Speaker 1: and not just have the government cater to enormous organizations
Speaker 1: that spend millions or even billions of dollars to lobby
Speaker 1: the government officials and say, look, let's let's protect this.
Speaker 1: Let's make copyright ninety six years now after the original
Speaker 1: creation of the work and um, and then the other
Speaker 1: side says, is that really necessary? I mean, how long
Speaker 1: does this protection have to last before you can say
Speaker 1: this belongs to the world. So this is it's not
Speaker 1: a dialogue because both sides have extremists who tend to
Speaker 1: dominate the conversation. It's not that the extremists make up
Speaker 1: the majority of the population, but they are the loudest
Speaker 1: and they tend to end up being the ones that
Speaker 1: everyone associates with. Those organizations, so things like the Recording
Speaker 1: Industry Association of America the r A double A is
Speaker 1: representative of content creators. And then the most hardcore pirates
Speaker 1: are the most quotable things. But you know, most of
Speaker 1: us tend to fall somewhere in the middle, and some
Speaker 1: of us are well, we'll get into that discussion towards
Speaker 1: the end. We can talk about our own personal kind
Speaker 1: of perspectives. So Pirate based starts in two thousand three, right,
Speaker 1: that was kind of the whole purpose of it was
Speaker 1: to create a file sharing service that used the bit
Speaker 1: torrent protocol that was there in Sweden that could have
Speaker 1: uh that the folks in Pierrot Bran would have the
Speaker 1: control over, so that they could end up supporting it
Speaker 1: and not just have it disappear. And the founders included
Speaker 1: uh pater Sunda whose handle was broke Up, uh friedrich
Speaker 1: Nay Tiamo Tiamo Yeah, and Goldfried's vat holm Vari who
Speaker 1: was Annakata, and they wanted to create the Scandinavian bit
Speaker 1: torrent community. They started off by saying that they had
Speaker 1: a very simple policy really, which was that this site
Speaker 1: is for you to be able to share stuff. We
Speaker 1: don't care what it is. We don't really want you
Speaker 1: to care what it is. If you know, if you
Speaker 1: find stuff on there that you don't like, don't report
Speaker 1: it to us. We're not going to take it down, right.
Speaker 1: They're essentially saying, we built this road system for you
Speaker 1: to drive on. We don't care what you put in
Speaker 1: your car. We don't care what you bring back in
Speaker 1: your car. We don't want to know what's in a car.
Speaker 1: All we're doing is providing you the ability to get
Speaker 1: from point A to point B and back again. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you know that that's a that's a policy
Speaker 1: that they have stressed time and time again and used
Speaker 1: as a defense as well. Absolutely, because you know what
Speaker 1: when some uh, when some content that isn't only under
Speaker 1: copyright but but is but is controversial and controversial in
Speaker 1: another way. Um, there's a lot of pornography that happens
Speaker 1: on on or that has classically happened pirate bay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: that you can find, the torrents that you can find
Speaker 1: on pirate Bay relate back to material that is either
Speaker 1: controversial or illegal in some places, and not just because
Speaker 1: it may be stolen or you know, intellectual property that
Speaker 1: doesn't belong to the person who's sharing it, but because
Speaker 1: the actual content. Um, they will remove files if UM,
Speaker 1: if the name and the content don't match up, right, So,
Speaker 1: in other words, they want you to be straight up
Speaker 1: with whatever the torrent is supposed to be. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if if I upload a copy of Jurassic Park, or
Speaker 1: I say it's a copy of Jurassic Park, but it
Speaker 1: turns out it's actually Howard the Duck, then they would
Speaker 1: remove that torrent because it was improperly improperly labeled or
Speaker 1: improperly uh presented and uh and people would end up
Speaker 1: missing out on the great cinematic masterpiece it was Howard
Speaker 1: the Duck. Or or if there's malware that is not
Speaker 1: just Howard the Duck, right, right, Let's say that I
Speaker 1: uploaded a file that says it's Jurassic Park, but in
Speaker 1: fact it's a virus design to create an entire botan
Speaker 1: net zombie army that I'm going to control so I
Speaker 1: can attack another companies, you know, servers that would be
Speaker 1: taken down, not because I was playing on attacking those servers,
Speaker 1: but because it wasn't. So it's not an ethical thing.
Speaker 1: It's more like we just want people to be able
Speaker 1: to get the stuff that they are searching for, So
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with the ethics of the
Speaker 1: actual whatever that piece of content. It's just accuracy that
Speaker 1: they're concerned with. But so, but so, the very first uh,
Speaker 1: the pirate base server. And I'm still not I don't
Speaker 1: know the language t PBB is probably I probably just
Speaker 1: I usually just say pirate Bay. I even leave off
Speaker 1: the rebel um. The very first server to host it
Speaker 1: was located in Mexico. This server belonged to a company
Speaker 1: that that Gottfried was working for. And um that that
Speaker 1: original server is now in a computer museum in a Lynching, Sweden,
Speaker 1: which has has created this. They took off one of
Speaker 1: the original walls of it and then scripted it, you know,
Speaker 1: so that people could see inside. This was the original
Speaker 1: pirate uh. And and there's a there's a little history
Speaker 1: that is currently unscripted in that glass now that that
Speaker 1: talks about, uh, the significance of it. And yes, it
Speaker 1: was a revolution that began in a dark gray metal
Speaker 1: box under a bed if according to one of the
Speaker 1: sources I read, it's specifically had a seller on one
Speaker 1: point three giga Hurts processor with two d fifty six
Speaker 1: megabytes of RAM, and that was the bit torrent tracker. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've listened to our bit Torrent episode, you know,
Speaker 1: the tracker is essentially kind of like the traffic controller.
Speaker 1: It's when it when you get a request for a
Speaker 1: specific kind of file. It is sort of what allows
Speaker 1: the software to know what other computers in that network
Speaker 1: host that file. So that was the first one. Uh.
Speaker 1: It eventually moved from Mexico over to Sweden and um
Speaker 1: it you know, things were kind of moving along this way.
Speaker 1: It was getting the pretty popular pretty quickly, especially within Sweden,
Speaker 1: but the real breakout would happen shortly thereafter. In fact,
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, that's when the Pirate Bay grew
Speaker 1: to more than one million peers. Now piers are the
Speaker 1: computers within the network that are hosting files, right, so, um,
Speaker 1: you know they're not hosting all the files, they're hosting
Speaker 1: whichever files the users are interested in for their particular use,
Speaker 1: but if they remain connected to the network, then those
Speaker 1: files can then be downloaded by other users. Uh. There
Speaker 1: were more than sixty thou torrent files at that point,
Speaker 1: and it was interesting that the Pirate Bay founders discovered
Speaker 1: something that that surprised them. They saw that eight of
Speaker 1: the traffic that was coming to the Pirate Bay came
Speaker 1: not from the Scandinavian countries that came from the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, and that's when they realized, wow, this
Speaker 1: thing and that was one year after they had founded Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so this at this point, you know the purpose
Speaker 1: of the site originally was to create this bit torrent
Speaker 1: file sharing service within Scandinavia. There was never any intent
Speaker 1: and those days for it to become something larger than that.
Speaker 1: But the way the internetworks, it's a global network of networks.
Speaker 1: So as people discovered that there was this resource for
Speaker 1: getting uh you know, thousands of different types of files
Speaker 1: across multiple categories, you know, music, television, move movies, text files,
Speaker 1: video games, all sorts of stuff was being shared on
Speaker 1: through this this system. The the popularity began to explode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to add a bunch of new servers that year,
Speaker 1: um as they were relocating to Sweden. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: also when the Pirate base split from being run by
Speaker 1: Pierrot Biron and became run by quote unquote dedicated individuals.
Speaker 1: They they've been a little bit um uh secretive about
Speaker 1: who exactly has been. I mean, they realized that what
Speaker 1: they were doing was potentially problematic, even if they didn't
Speaker 1: think it was illegal. They knew that people would come
Speaker 1: after them, absolutely because of the nature of the files
Speaker 1: that were being shared, even though again their their position was, hey,
Speaker 1: you know we sure we call ourselves the Pirate Bay,
Speaker 1: and sure we advocate the the file sharing, and sure
Speaker 1: we advocated even if it's intellectual property. But we're not
Speaker 1: the ones putting it up there, We're just facilitating it.
Speaker 1: They were. They were political activists. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that they knew what they were doing. Yeah, heah, and
Speaker 1: boy that the story gets so much more complicated when
Speaker 1: we get into the illegal stuff. But yeah, that this
Speaker 1: also freed Peter Beran up right. They no longer had
Speaker 1: to administer this site, which was growing and becoming more
Speaker 1: of a full time gig, and so instead the organization
Speaker 1: went on to focus on debating copyright issues within the
Speaker 1: Swedish government rather than maintaining a file sharing site. So
Speaker 1: that was, um, you know, really early on, like you said,
Speaker 1: one year after it had been founded, it had already
Speaker 1: grown so large that the founding organization was like, we
Speaker 1: should probably hand this off so that we can focus
Speaker 1: on what we want to do and not be distracted
Speaker 1: by running a service. Moving up to two thousand five,
Speaker 1: that's when the Pirate Baby got a redesign and was
Speaker 1: became available in multiple languages, because they, you know, they
Speaker 1: would said, well, we've got the whole world coming to us,
Speaker 1: we should start to cater to them, so that, uh,
Speaker 1: to make it more possible for them to use our serve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're we're peddling not files, We're peddling a philosophy,
Speaker 1: and that philosophy should be open to the entire world.
Speaker 1: So by the end of the year, that side had
Speaker 1: more than two point five million users, and that was
Speaker 1: about the time when some folks out on California A
Speaker 1: Hollywood and the record industry both started taking notice and um,
Speaker 1: I think serving them with them takedown notices, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, the pirate base response to take down notices
Speaker 1: is essentially this, Yeah, alright, getting back into the piracy
Speaker 1: I was I was just going to note that that usually, um,
Speaker 1: they are a little bit more snarky than you're. Extremely
Speaker 1: loud laugh just right. I was just summing it up. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: they have been very vocal and very not politically correct
Speaker 1: in their responses and saying, uh, no, we are not
Speaker 1: taking down our service, and what a going to do
Speaker 1: about it, Yeah, and come at me, bro, that's essentially
Speaker 1: their response. Um, or they just ignore it, that's the
Speaker 1: other choice. So all right, so this sets up what
Speaker 1: is going to become the legal the beginning of the
Speaker 1: legal portion of our episode about the Pirate Bay. But
Speaker 1: before we get into that, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: very quick break. Alright, we're back. So two thousand five,
Speaker 1: two thoour Big Years. Two thousand six, something pretty major
Speaker 1: happens to the Pirate Bay. Right, the Swedish police rated
Speaker 1: their data center, one of their data centers in Stockholm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sixty five Swedish police officers raid the data center in Stockholm, Sweden,
Speaker 1: and uh, they had this very specific job, right, Their
Speaker 1: job was to shut down the pirate base servers. And uh, well,
Speaker 1: one of those founders, Frederick, kind of learned that something
Speaker 1: something was up in the middle of this. He got
Speaker 1: a little bit of a little birdie told him that
Speaker 1: perhaps he might need to take some measures to prevent
Speaker 1: something I'm happening to the site. Yeah, he um made it,
Speaker 1: made it, stopped for a couple of minutes to make
Speaker 1: a full backup of the site, and then trotted on
Speaker 1: down to the data center to see what was up
Speaker 1: and was you know, greeted by sixty five Swedish police officers.
Speaker 1: And had he not stopped for those couple of minutes
Speaker 1: to make that backup, um, this story might go very
Speaker 1: differently because because as it turned out, that happened on
Speaker 1: My thirty, two thousand and six, they had the site
Speaker 1: back up by June three. Yeah, they had a backup
Speaker 1: online hosts one, a news server in the Netherlands, and
Speaker 1: the founders renamed the site temporarily the Police Bay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were essentially saying, ha ha, you tried to get us,
Speaker 1: and look, you shouldst down for three days, for three
Speaker 1: whole days, for seventy two hours, and then we're back.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was I think it was really
Speaker 1: thanks to Frederick's um uh foresight of making that copy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the logo they ended up changing that temporarily
Speaker 1: again to a part ship that was firing cannonballs at
Speaker 1: Hollywood at the Hollywood Sign. Yeah, and then eventually they
Speaker 1: changed it again so that it kind of looked like
Speaker 1: a phoenix, which of course is the mythical bird that
Speaker 1: every now and then bursts into flames and parishes and
Speaker 1: then a new from dashes. Yeah. So they're again they're
Speaker 1: saying like you can, you can try and kill us,
Speaker 1: but we'll just come right back. That was the message
Speaker 1: they were sending. And the media loved this story o. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and also they pointed out happily they happily pointed
Speaker 1: out that because of this police action and because of
Speaker 1: the media response to everything that was going on their site,
Speaker 1: traffic exploded. Yeah. So essentially, the other message they gave
Speaker 1: was every time you try and take action against us,
Speaker 1: you're just bringing more traffic to us. So really, every
Speaker 1: time you try and stop us, you're making mate unquote
Speaker 1: problem worse. Yeah, so uh not credit does that message
Speaker 1: make the organization stop? So moving up to two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: that's when the pirate base starts to really look around
Speaker 1: and say, what can we do to prevent us ROUM
Speaker 1: having to deal with this, you know, problem of a
Speaker 1: government coming in and shutting us down because it's kind
Speaker 1: of irritating, not that it's gonna stop us, but it
Speaker 1: slows us down. And it would wouldn't it be nice
Speaker 1: if we could locate our servers someplace beyond the reach
Speaker 1: of law. So how can we do that? How could
Speaker 1: we get to the point where no government could come
Speaker 1: after us. Well, if we form our own country, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what if we What if we just you know, bought
Speaker 1: an island somewhere, declared ourselves a sovereign nation. Let removed
Speaker 1: ourselves from pretty much any other government influence, and then
Speaker 1: you know, operated out of there. Wouldn't that work. Let's
Speaker 1: take a look online, see if you know, in Craig's list,
Speaker 1: if there any if anyone's selling like a major island
Speaker 1: or something. And it turns out, yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: there was an old British naval platform out in the
Speaker 1: North Sea, Yeah, called called renamed Sea Land. Originally it
Speaker 1: was just a naval platform, a military platform that the
Speaker 1: British Navy had pretty much abandoned after World War Two,
Speaker 1: and um Major Patty Roy Bates, a former UH Navy
Speaker 1: man himself, I believe, decided them, Hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: I am disenchanted with life under any other governmental system.
Speaker 1: So what I plan on doing is taking my boat
Speaker 1: out to Sea Land and claiming it as my own
Speaker 1: sovereign nation. And that's what he did. That was back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven. Yeah, So he proclaimed to the state,
Speaker 1: and he created his own passports, he created his own currency,
Speaker 1: and he declared himself Prince Roy, now, to which the
Speaker 1: British Royal Navy a year later in said no, no,
Speaker 1: get off, that's ours, and uh judge said that, um no,
Speaker 1: you can't do that because you abandoned it. And that
Speaker 1: platform is outside of English international waters, so it's outside
Speaker 1: of jurisdiction. So technically Prince Roy has it. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have to cite the old law that was made shortly
Speaker 1: after the Magna Carta was in twelve fifteen finders versus
Speaker 1: keepers and as it turns out, the finders win in
Speaker 1: this one. Um the Yeah, so Prince Roy was essentially
Speaker 1: still allowed to stay there because it was territorial waters
Speaker 1: outside of the British control. Now, since then the UK
Speaker 1: has changed how far out their international waters, but they
Speaker 1: can't retroactively claim it according to court cases. And that
Speaker 1: is how Prince Roy's son, Prince Michael wound up putting
Speaker 1: the island up for sale. Yeah. He says, well, you
Speaker 1: know this one, this is mine. We have established by
Speaker 1: law that this belongs to me and and through primo geniture,
Speaker 1: I own this. My father has given me the rulership
Speaker 1: of this island. I can sell it if I want to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the sale goes up and uh and and Pirate
Speaker 1: Bay is one of the bidders for this island. However,
Speaker 1: Pirate Bay does not ever white seal the deal, so
Speaker 1: it never goes through. The Pirate Bay ends up abandoning
Speaker 1: the plan to purchase Sea Land, which kind of unfortunate
Speaker 1: because I think the rest of this podcast would just
Speaker 1: be us talking about how weird it would be to
Speaker 1: have a navy platform as your sovereign state and that
Speaker 1: only the Pirate Bay is there. That would be kind
Speaker 1: of a cool conversation. Unfortunately, that's not how it turned out.
Speaker 1: So uh, that same year that they were looking at
Speaker 1: purchasing Sea Land, that's you remember us. Back in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, there was an interesting report hackers leaked emails
Speaker 1: that came from the anti piracy company Media Defender that
Speaker 1: showed that Media Defender had considered hiring hackers to attack
Speaker 1: Pirate Bay servers. So at this point, the para base
Speaker 1: like you bring it on, guys. I mean, clearly you
Speaker 1: you're afraid of us, and you should be, and you
Speaker 1: are willing to take action outside of the legal system. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: like like you you say that we are are underhanded
Speaker 1: and illegal and that the stuff we do is terrible
Speaker 1: and is costing people billions of dollars. Meanwhile, you are
Speaker 1: willing to engage in tactics that are outside the law
Speaker 1: to pursue your own agenda. So who is the bad
Speaker 1: guy here? Huh again, I am paraphrasing. Yes, I don't
Speaker 1: think that we could actually repeat much of the language
Speaker 1: that they use on the show. No, because it's on
Speaker 1: Swedish and we've already established that I can't speak it.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and eight, the r I double A goes
Speaker 1: after the Pirate Bay. Yeah, they put down their official suit.
Speaker 1: They were speaking thirteen million dollars in damages for thirty
Speaker 1: four cases of copyright infringement. Right now. Cracked that which
Speaker 1: you had referred to earlier ended up breaking this down
Speaker 1: as saying that if you take the thirteen million and
Speaker 1: you take the thirty four cases of copyright infringement, that
Speaker 1: essentially means that every file is worth more than three
Speaker 1: and eighty thousand dollars, which means that if you were
Speaker 1: to apply the dollar per file cost to all the
Speaker 1: torrents that we're being uh traded, all the files that
Speaker 1: are being traded uh and facilitated by the pirate Bay,
Speaker 1: because remember the pirate Bay does not host these files,
Speaker 1: they're facilitating the trading. But if you were to apply
Speaker 1: that to all the files that were being traded across
Speaker 1: the pirate Bay, that would mean that it would be
Speaker 1: about forty six times more money than actually exists in
Speaker 1: the entire world, according to Crack. Now, Lauren, I think
Speaker 1: you had some issue with this. Well, well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm their their math works out, but you know they
Speaker 1: were talking about about, you know, thirteen million divide by
Speaker 1: thirty four equals the value of each piece of media
Speaker 1: that um that is being traded, and then switches to
Speaker 1: saying that that that's the value for every single download.
Speaker 1: So that's not that's not, that's that's not It's still funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and their points still stands, But that's that. And it's
Speaker 1: not that we haven't seen cases of r I double
Speaker 1: A going after people who have downloaded files and seeking
Speaker 1: out enormous sums and damages and and for the most part,
Speaker 1: I imagine that this tactic is to not not to
Speaker 1: try and get money from the particular person they're going after,
Speaker 1: but rather to scare everybody into not engaging in piracy,
Speaker 1: which is pretty effective, you know, or some semi effective
Speaker 1: for some individuals, until until you get to people who
Speaker 1: are like, well, find it's a weird and underhanded and
Speaker 1: makes me all squiggly inside. You know, you know it's
Speaker 1: it's I yeah. And one also goes into feeding into
Speaker 1: the argument that really does not have any it's not substantive. Right.
Speaker 1: There's an argument that says, uh, every time someone steals
Speaker 1: a file, so when copies of file we are out
Speaker 1: of sale, we are we are losing that nine bucks
Speaker 1: for the CD or whatever it is, which you cannot
Speaker 1: prove at all. And in fact, there have been multiple
Speaker 1: reports that have said the damages sought by companies UH
Speaker 1: as a reaction to their work being pirated and distributed
Speaker 1: across the internet have no basis in any sort of
Speaker 1: quantifiable reality. It's not that it's not that that they
Speaker 1: don't exist, it's just that you can't put a number
Speaker 1: on it because there's no way to determine what the
Speaker 1: actual damages are. And and also that pirateateurs buy more
Speaker 1: online music than your average person. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of reports that show that as well, that show that
Speaker 1: there's a link between those who engage in piracy and
Speaker 1: those who spend more money on entertainment as a result.
Speaker 1: Maybe they use piracy to sample something and they think
Speaker 1: I want to either support this particular endeavor or maybe
Speaker 1: it's I want access to a better quality copy of
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Um. You know, it all depends upon
Speaker 1: the individual obviously, but at any rate, the industry does
Speaker 1: not look at it that way. The industry looks at
Speaker 1: as you know, people are stealing our stuff and we're
Speaker 1: going to stop it. So, uh, that was the you know,
Speaker 1: ur I double a going after them. Now that that's
Speaker 1: just the first and many court cases that will uh
Speaker 1: that affected the pirate Bay. The big one is still
Speaker 1: coming up, but we'll be covering that in episode two. Anyway,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, something else really controversial happened, uh,
Speaker 1: And there was another court case that didn't involve copyright law,
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with intellectual property that it had
Speaker 1: something to do with other content and it wasn't a
Speaker 1: court case, I should correct myself. There there's no court
Speaker 1: case that's involved in this. It was more of a
Speaker 1: kind of a public exchange between different parties involved. So
Speaker 1: what happened was there was a Swedish criminal case that
Speaker 1: involved the murder of two children. Uh. And in Sweden,
Speaker 1: the files related to a criminal case become public record
Speaker 1: once the criminal case goes to trial, so anyone can
Speaker 1: request a copy of the files that relate to a
Speaker 1: criminal case once it goes to trial. In this case,
Speaker 1: the file included autopsy photos of the two murdered children.
Speaker 1: Someone requested that and then uploaded it as a torrent
Speaker 1: to the pirate Bay, meaning anyone could get hold of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: The father of the two children asked the Pirate Bay
Speaker 1: to take down the torrent, and the pirate base response
Speaker 1: was no. Now the a more detailed response. First of all,
Speaker 1: one of the moderators of the pirate Bay was really
Speaker 1: awful to the father, and in fact, the so awful
Speaker 1: that the Pirate Bay founders actually addressed that, which is
Speaker 1: pretty incredible because usually they don't say anything about like
Speaker 1: there's no there's not even a budging on saying like
Speaker 1: we did something wrong here. Yeah, well they do. I
Speaker 1: they have, they have addressed to the public um their
Speaker 1: personal opinions on each other from time to time, and
Speaker 1: they they don't don't refrain from that. Yes, uh so
Speaker 1: so this sounds to me and and I didn't actually
Speaker 1: read about it. But it sounds a little bit to
Speaker 1: me like um, like when Tico of Penny Arcade goes like, oh,
Speaker 1: Gabe just said this thing that was really loud. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: so in this case, what what happened was they said, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that was that was an improper response, and
Speaker 1: for that we are sorry, but we're not bringing the
Speaker 1: media because it's it's a it's a matter of public record.
Speaker 1: And in fact, they point out that the prosecutor could
Speaker 1: have requested the autopsy photos, for example, to be removed
Speaker 1: from the file before it went into the public record,
Speaker 1: but he didn't do that or she didn't do that.
Speaker 1: I don't know the gender of the prosecutors. So, um,
Speaker 1: so you know, their their point was that we're not
Speaker 1: responsible for what was in that file, but that file
Speaker 1: is a matter of public record, which we believe means
Speaker 1: that anyone should have access to it, and we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't as long as the Torrent file refers to
Speaker 1: whatever the continents, whether or not it's cool, it goes up.
Speaker 1: It goes up because we don't send us We don't
Speaker 1: since our users. Um. And so he's said, all the
Speaker 1: people you should be upset about are upset at, are
Speaker 1: the murderer who did this, and the court system that
Speaker 1: allowed for that information to be included. Don't be upset
Speaker 1: with us because all we did was allowed this to happen.
Speaker 1: And as kind of a twisting of the knife here,
Speaker 1: terrible frame, terrible word for this, but but really I
Speaker 1: mean this, this was part that Like, that was enough
Speaker 1: I thought to address this. But they go a little
Speaker 1: further and say, also, before you brought this up, only
Speaker 1: about a hundred people had ever access this. After you did,
Speaker 1: more than twenty thousands of people ended up because then
Speaker 1: they heard about it, and then they had that they
Speaker 1: had that kind of grim curiosity, and so that led
Speaker 1: to a bunch of people downloading, and before it had
Speaker 1: been fewer than a hundred people. So I don't think
Speaker 1: that was necessary. Arely something that needed to be said,
Speaker 1: although I guess it does tell people like, if you're
Speaker 1: upset about something being on the pirate Bay, be quiet,
Speaker 1: don't make a big stink about it, because that just
Speaker 1: means more people are gonna do it, all right. And
Speaker 1: also I'm sure that that feeds into their general um,
Speaker 1: you know, statement of don't don't stir the nest, you know,
Speaker 1: like like we see this is very interesting to me
Speaker 1: because in a way, this is the other side of
Speaker 1: the coin of what the music industry and moving industry
Speaker 1: are doing. They use scare tactics to try and get
Speaker 1: people to stop pirating by threatening these huge lawsuits with
Speaker 1: enormous damages. That's financially trying to intimidate people to stop pirating. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you've got the piracy folks saying, hey, if you complain
Speaker 1: about it, just more people are gonna pirate. So they're
Speaker 1: using scare tactics to shut up the other side. So again,
Speaker 1: both sides are using similar strategies and they like I
Speaker 1: think that's part of the point that the Pirate Bay
Speaker 1: is trying to make by releasing these statements. Is also
Speaker 1: kind of like, this is publicity. Downloads are publicity, Attention
Speaker 1: is publicity, and if if only you would make your
Speaker 1: your copyrighted material available to people to purchase, they would
Speaker 1: probably do so. I feel like that's part of the
Speaker 1: message that that all of all of that controversy. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: See I don't think that's I think it's true what
Speaker 1: you said. And we'll get into more of that in
Speaker 1: the second half. Okay, maybe not maybe not paid up
Speaker 1: beat on themselves. But but I think that that is okay. Now,
Speaker 1: I was totally attributing my own personal opinion, an opinion
Speaker 1: to which I subscribed, by the way, I just don't
Speaker 1: necessarily think that's part of their philosophy. Um. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's a good discussion that we'll have in the
Speaker 1: second episode. So we're gonna wrap this half up. So
Speaker 1: we're we've gotten up through two thousand eight. We'll pick
Speaker 1: up in two thousand nine for part two, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about, you know what, what has happened to
Speaker 1: the Pirate Base since a massive lawsuit was leveled against them,
Speaker 1: and what could be the future of the Pirate Bay.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an interesting question and also kind of
Speaker 1: a where are they now for the Parate Bay founders.
Speaker 1: So join us for that. And remember, if you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes of tech stuff, whether it's
Speaker 1: a company, an organization, a specific kind of technology, maybe
Speaker 1: you want us to do one of another one of
Speaker 1: those crazy episodes where we take a movie and we
Speaker 1: totally rip it to shreds as far as uh it's
Speaker 1: it's portrayal of technology and science. Tell us about moving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got a few suggestions already, and uh, y'all, Armageddon
Speaker 1: is just not gonna happen. People have already torn that up. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe it'll happen, but it's not gonna happen soon anyway.
Speaker 1: Let's not send us an email. Our address is tech
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