20 years ago, Pirate Bay's response to legal threats from DreamWorks

80 comments

no Swedish law is being violated

Unfortunately, Swedish courts disagreed

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- Not at that time. That came after the us government pushed the swedish government to do something and they in turn "strongly hinted" to the swedish judiciary system that they better do something.
  
  And finally the sentencing judge socialised professionally with pro-copyright lobbyists.
  
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  That came after the us government pushed the swedish government
  
  🎶 We're all living in Amerika, Amerika ist wunderbar 🎵
  
  104
- Nice bravado but he ultimately wasted years of his life in solitary confinement.
  
  EDIT: ~~Maybe not years. Certainly months.~~ Actually it was over a year when you add the reported stints together.
  
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  Why was he in solitary?
  
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- Not at the time. That came later
  
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20 years ago, Pirate Bay's response

Holy shit I'm so old 😭

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- 20 years ago
  
  Sees letter is dated 2004...
  
  Why have you done this to me?
  
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  That's like 8 years ago.
  
  ...
  
  Wait... crap. We are old.
  
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  I graduated high school in 2004 😭
  
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- sad Napster noises
  
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One day I hope to write a "go fuck yourself" email of this caliber.

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- If every peasant started treating his opressor like this, we might actually start getting results.
  
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  We would need all peasants doing it at once. One peasant doing it just means you get your head cut off, which unfortunately doesn't help.
  
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Despite all the lawsuits, it's still sailing

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- But not run by the original owners. And the current team is really shady. I wouldn't trust downloading an .exe from there.
  
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  Good thing you don't download executables from torrent sites?
  
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  Windows executables are really shady.
  
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- Riddled with malware, but still sailing
  
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  Been using it for decades, never an issue for me. What in the world are you trying to download over there??
  
  50
  
  I'd say this might be true for programs, but as long as you download movies, shows and music I'd assume it's fine as long as you use common sense.
  
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  The technologically illiterate pirate is an easy target.
  
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  Just don't download any software and you'll be fine. Sure, there are better trackers for movies, TV shows and music nowadays, but I'm still glad we have The Pirate Bay
  
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The Darknet Diaries podcast made a really good episode about The Pirate Bay, telling the entire story, including funny stories like the responses to these letters, and interviewing Peter Sunde, one of the 3 founders. https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/92/

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- Thanks, you gave me a new podcast to listen to.
  
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  It’s one of my favorites! Also check out Search Engine, one of my favorite new podcasts with an amazing host. “What’s the best phone to do crimes on”, the latest episode, is excellent—Darknet Diaries covered the subject as well, but this goes into even more detail.
  
  I also loved “Who’s behind all those spammy text messages?” but that one gets DARK.
  
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IIRC, the US accusers even quoted US federal law at TPB in emails preceding this. They had probably just assumed TPB were US based and this response where how they found out.

I'm still salty about Sweden bending over about this, tho. Sovereignty is a lie.

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- There are tolerated quirks, and then there is insubordination. Defying US Copyright Law would have been the latter, it was not tolerated.
  
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Actually absolute bad-asses!

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Based

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Steal This Film

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- Download this song
  
  1
  
  Don't download this song
  
  https://youtu.be/zGM8PT1eAvY
  
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  Steal this album
  
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BASED

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Remember when they tried to buy Sealand?

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- Wait… Like the Principality of Sealand?
  
  Was Major Bates still there?
  
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  I remember this being discussed at length on various forums at the time (the legality, questions about what would happen if it all fell into the sea.) but as with so much of the Internet, it appears to have been largely lost. Luckily I was not imagining things this time and did find a couple of references.
  
  Death of a data haven: cypherpunks, WikiLeaks, and the world’s smallest nation | Ars Technica
  
  The Pirate Bay Wants to Buy Sealand * TorrentFreak
  
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The hunt for the cofounders of torrent site The Pirate Bay was a lengthy game of cat-and-mouse, spanning several continents. In the end, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm all ended up in prison.

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This puts me in mind of Arkell vs. Pressdram.

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Permanently Deleted

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🫡

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Disrespectful :- (

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