This House Would Recognize 'The Pirate Bay' As Wrongly Convicted.

Allow me to elaborate some counterpoints: Firstly, I am not defending the record industry. However, they are artists who do wish to protect their craft. Artists who publish work outside the MPAA/RIAA and openly declare certain works of theirs as "public domain" and free for distribution over P2P networks are fully within their rights to do so -- it is their creative work, and unless they transfer control or ownership over their creative works, they and/or their agents (which some still subscribe to RIAA/MPAA as their agents) are the ONLY ONES allowed to dictate whether a creative work is freely distributable over the Internet, but this argument has nothing to do with that. This debate is in regards to works artists and/or their agents have NOT authorized for redistribution, but The Pirate Bay decided to take that decision away from those artists. It makes no difference whether unauthorized copying and distribution generates profit or not, it is still not authorized by the artists nor their agents. Artists have a right to control distribution of their work as they see fit, and no one should be allowed to take that away from them without their consent. To do so in any way, shape or form /does/ harm the artist's intellectual property. "The Pirate Bay" name is evidence of intent, and combined with the fact that The Pirate Bay willfully seeded unauthorized distributions of copyrighted works itself makes any attempt to defend the charge of piracy as "we didn't pirate copyrighted works" as simply ridiculous. The opponent may whine all he wishes, but the fact is The Pirate Bay was willfully created to illegally distribute copyrighted materials without authorization from the artists or their agents. No reasonable person with a basic understanding of intellectual property could deny this. My opponent retreats and pretends he didn't make the "because everyone does it, it shouldn't be illegal" point . .. I hope he at this point at least must concede that is a nonsensical claim, and how easy it is to commit a violation and how hard it is to monitor and enforce infringement laws is not a viable determinant as to whether or not a law is just. The Berne convention is not in the Constitution; it is /international copyright law/ that has been in existence since the 19th century. Its basic premise is to grant the original author of a work sole distribution control -- that is, it is illegal in any country to distribute an artist's work without their permission. Unless my opponent is prepared to argue that The Pirate Bay or any of its users had the permission of the artists of the works they were distributing, that is the key determinant as to whether what Pirate Bay committed was a violation of copyright law. My opponent confuses "distribution control" with monetary profit again and again. Nowhere have I mentioned profit. An artist may choose to make zero monetary profit off a work, but that does not make their work free for distribution -- they still have a right to control its distribution. Regardless of what you intend to do with an illegally obtained work -- personal enjoyment or trying to sell pirated copies -- it is still wrong and in violation of intellectual property. You have taken away the artist's right to control distribution of their work. If you wish to personally enjoy particular music, you can buy the CD, buy the download off a service like iTunes if available, or hope to catch it from the radio. Unless you can provide proof you have permission from the artist to download and redistribute their work for free, you are violating that artist's rights by downloading or copying and re-distributing without their permission. This is the basis for international accords. Without it, books, movies and songs could not be sold internationally. My opponent keeps dodging this issues and refusing to respect artist's rights to control distribution over their own works. While some artists are indeed okay with it, others are not . .. I've known a few of my friends whose creative works were copied without their permission, and the artists became so upset that they stopped creating anything new. If my opponent cannot provide any evidence that he or The Pirate Bay has been granted permission by all the artists they are accused of infringing intellectual property, then the case is closed -- The Pirate Bay is guilty as charged, they did infringe artist's copyrights and they should be punished and prevented from violating copyrights again since they've proven they cannot respect them.