Legal Niches

Google as Guilty as The Pirate Bay?

By gamepolitics

As the operators of The Pirate Bay prepare to appeal their recent conviction by Swedish court, everything is miscellaneous points out that those seeking BitTorrent files can just as easily use Google.

The site takes notice of ThePirateGoogle, a anonymously-created utility which can be used to hunt for torrents, whether public domain or otherwise:

The intention of this site is to demonstrate the double standard that was exemplified in the recent Pirate Bay Trial. Sites such as Google offer much the same functionality as The Pirate Bay and other Bit Torrent sites but are not targeted by media conglomerates such as the IFPI as they have the political and legal clout to defend themselves unlike these small independent sites.

But everything is miscellaneous acknowledges that this is not a simple argument:

Intent counts. The difference between the Heimlich maneuver and assault is intent, and that's as it should be. ThePirateBay is intended to enable the sharing of copyrighted works... it's disingenuous to say that the site is ethically the same as Google...

[On the other hand,] I don't know what to do about copyright. It's obviously spun out of control and needs to be pulled back in...

Via: boing boing

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on April 27, 2009 (boomark / email).