They can and do have books, TVs and offline computers.
The article is just whining by someone who tried to escape his prison sentence for two years and after getting caught (and then bragging about destroying evidence) is shocked that the system treats him as not being very trustworthy.
The comment is just derision by someone who respects the authority of conventional power and is unsympathetic to someone having a fundamentally different but consistent stance.
Yeah, that's out of line. Appropriately, users killed the comment by flagging it (and the poster subsequently deleted it).
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You're right, it was intended to be read humorously.
The argument I alluded to is that there is an internally consistent viewpoint in which the government action at hand is genuinely corrupt and supporting crony capitalism. In this worldview, one that I think there's a strong chance that Sunde adheres to, he's not being whiney, he's taking rational actions.
I'm surprised a Swedish prison doesn't provide a vegan diet. Prisons in California provide a number of different diets, although I'm not sure about vegan. It's a large expense for them.
But that said, I think there are times to give up on your vegan diet having to do with the culture that you find yourself immersed in. This has nothing to do with prisons, but if you're traveling in a culture where veganism is unheard of you should be a good guest and not push your beliefs on them, making your hosts uncomfortable. Just eat the meat.
In the West veganism is a luxury. A fetish for the rich and it is classist. Even outside of the West eggs and animal fat (not meat) are an important diet of many poor people.
The comment you're replying to did specify eggs as being more important in poor diets than other animal meat, which would square with my mother-in-law's experience growing up in the Philippines.
Traditional Buddhism actually says you should eat meat if it is given to you as well, and they have been vegetarians centuries longer than the hipsters. They consider wasting food worse than eating meat. You shouldn't allow something to be killed for you, but it is a waste if it has already been killed.
"they have been vegetarians centuries longer than the hipsters"
The implication here seems to be that tradition is a valid justification for beliefs and practices, whereas personal ethics are not; and indeed, anyone pursuing the latter is worthy of stereotyping and derision.
To put this thought in other terms: In the context of contemporary culture, wouldn't you call the Buddha a "hipster"?
On the contrary. And your comment supports my premise. You have the luxury of being vegan.
I know I'm assuming, but like many wealthy westerners you probably travel to poorer parts of the world. Believe me, you were consuming animal protein or fat even if you were told otherwise. So what did you accomplish other than to show your elitism?
I don't think veganism is a particularly moral or ethical value. It reminds me of a conversation I was a third-party to where an American kept expressing how happy she was that a South American tribal chief was keeping to their "natural" lifestyle, while the chief kept expressing that they want schools and opportunities for his people. They were talking through each other.
You seem to be rather ignorant. Buddhist cuisine for example is generally vegan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cuisine Granted, there is a fair amount of variation among sects. But it's also around 1/5th the size of Christianity so that's to be expected.
We're talking about veganism, not vegetarianism. You obviously didn't read the link you posted.
Edit: I'm responding to your recent edit. No, eating insects is not vegan. Why would you think that? Crickets and cockroaches are quite tasty with soy and sesame oil but not vegan.
The subject of the article would save his health and mind if he consumed eggs and milk.
Veganism when used by it's self is not clearly defined as seperate from vegetarianism.
"Dietary vegans (or strict vegetarians) refrain from consuming animal products, not only meat but, in contrast to ovo-lacto vegetarians, also eggs, dairy products and other animal-derived substances. The term ethical vegan is often applied to those who not only follow a vegan diet, but extend the vegan philosophy into other areas of their lives, and oppose the use of animals and animal products for any purpose.[4] Another term used is environmental veganism, which refers to the avoidance of animal products on the premise that the harvesting or industrial farming of animals is environmentally damaging and unsustainable.[5]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism
PS: Also if you actaully read the link: "Jains are either lacto-vegetarians or vegans."
The idea that morals are a fetish or a luxury strikes me as a dangerous point of view. If I went to a country where businessmen frequent 12-year-old prostitutes, would you expect me to do that as well so as to be a good guest? I kind of suspect that in reality, there are things some people do that you simply wouldn't, and you are specifically dismissing veganism because you do not agree with their morals.
I wonder if you feel the same way about Orthodox Jews or Muslims eating pork.
So you do simply disagree with their moral values, rather than believing morals should be cast aside when people around you hold different ones. That is what I figured.
But surely you can see why vegans, who do believe animals' rights are very important, would not see any more merit to your advice than you would to advice that encouraged you to abandon your deeply held values because they're inconvenient.
I think western wealthy vegans don't have particularly strong morals or ethical values and are vegan for other elitist and classist reasons. I think if they were exposed to the real world they would have a more practical (and Buddhist) outlook on diet.
I don't think they particularly care about animal rights either. You can have a moral and ethical existence and still eat eggs and animal fat.
You still just seem to be asserting "My morals are right and theirs are wrong."
I don't usually like to bring myself into things, but since we're getting into people's thoughts, I'll just be explicit here: I do not believe one can lead a fully moral existence while having animals killed or abused for your convenience. I'm not trying to force this on anyone, but I'm not going to have anyone force it out of me either. You disagree with this belief, and that is your right, but to assume that I secretly know your system of morality is right and mine is wrong seems incredibly pompous to me. I believe what I believe just as strongly as you believe what you do.
Female cows only produce milk to feed their young.
Thus, cows are constantly bred. Any male calves are sold off for meat (usually veal which in some countries consists of considerably cruel rearing practices -- if not used for veal they're just shot) and the female calves are used to continue the milk herd.
And that's just considering the dairy products from good farms.
Let's bear in mind that someone is being locked inside a building for a while, just because he once ran a website that became unpopular with the authorities. Debating whether or not he should be fed a vegan diet on the inside is prematurely surrendering the debate that questions whether he should be losing the freedom to control his own diet for that supposed offense.
It is not a binary choice between just loss of freedom and loss of freedom plus compromise of one's dietary practices.
It seems odd that we would be assigning the same punishment regimes to people so pacifist that they won't even eat plankton as we assign to people who destroy human lives with nary an inkling of remorse.
Veganism is something I can understand and respect. The morality of state justice, on the other hand, is far less defensible when you look past its well-groomed public image. Depending on your locale, the prisoners in your nearest prison may be treated with less respect than the animals in your closest slaughterhouse. In that light, making morality-based appeals to the prison kitchen seems almost pointless.
You seriously believe people are vegan for 'elitist and classist reasons'? Maybe some people are vegan because they think it's cool, but 90% of vegans and vegetarians I've met are vegan for either health, environmental, or moral reasons, the latter of which is related to their views on animal rights.
I'm Muslim, and no Islam doesn't advocate having sex with twelve year olds.
Pork can be easily avoided, whilst other meat and animal products are widely used by the food industry (Food additives) that avoiding such products isn't as easy for Vegans.
Probably partially because there's stuff (think vitamin B12 for the most extreme example) you can't get or can't get easily from a vegan diet, needing (oftentimes expensive) supplementation.
Which has totally failed, because the site is still up, youth perspectives against copyright law are at all time highs, the movement is expanding to physical fabrication, and in Europe, Australia and New Zealand we even have growing political outreach (Pirate Party, Wikileaks Party, etc.).
I'm very surprised that they still maintain that all their income from advertising went to pay for their hosting infrastructure. TPB were hosted by PRQ which were owned by Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm. Any bills PRQ sent them would be them paying themselves.
That part of the story is really fishy to me. TPB has roughly the same type of advertising as one of the many porn tube sites. But a porn tube visitor easily costs the site tens of megabytes in streaming video while a torrent tracker only has to serve a few 10-30kb large torrent files. Yet the tube sites appear to be able to make some money, but TPB with less than 1% of the bandwidth costs/visitor couldn't?
TPB was hosted by PRQ which in turn was hosted by port80. But the two companies had a quite incestuous relationship with each other. The owners of the two companies were friends or at least good acquaintances with each other.
I don't see how it is wrong to keep your business and yourself as separate entities (or your other business in this case). For example, isn't it good practice to keep track of office renting space even if you are a freelancer and work from home so you can take it in consideration when deciding how much to charge for your work?
What he's saying is that it is extremely suspicious that the TPB guys are saying they made no money from running TPB, when they had easily less than 1% of the costs of businesses running similar types and volumes of ads (i.e., adult websites), and furthermore, when they were allegedly hosting TPB at another company that they also owned.
It appears that the TPB guys are claiming that the hosting revenue earned by the second company should not be treated as the ill-gotten revenue earned by the TPB, even though they owned and controlled both companies. And indeed, there are laws in most nations and internationally addressing precisely those sorts of sketchy relationships.
The SMH article I shared explained this was because the MPAA funded a lawyer to hang around in Thailand. Neij had been in and out of Thailand 30 times (he lives in Laos with his wife and young family) and the Thai's never cared .. until the MPAA funded a change in official perspective.
At no point in the article do they mention how long is the sentence Sunde has to serve. It's important because a few months in prison (less than a year according to the article) is ridiculous compared to most prison sentences.
Of course, that doesn't mean that even a few weeks in prison isn't atrocious. But a lot of people have been through much more, sometimes when they weren't even guilty, and didn't have a voice to be heard.
60 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadThe article is just whining by someone who tried to escape his prison sentence for two years and after getting caught (and then bragging about destroying evidence) is shocked that the system treats him as not being very trustworthy.
;)
All: when you see a comment that is truly bad for Hacker News, you can flag it by clicking 'link' to go to that comment's page and then clicking 'flag'. We monitor these flags and take action based on them, and over the last few months have slowly introduced a system where enough user flags will kill comments. In such cases you should see "[flagkilled]" if you have showdead turned on in your profile.
The argument I alluded to is that there is an internally consistent viewpoint in which the government action at hand is genuinely corrupt and supporting crony capitalism. In this worldview, one that I think there's a strong chance that Sunde adheres to, he's not being whiney, he's taking rational actions.
But that said, I think there are times to give up on your vegan diet having to do with the culture that you find yourself immersed in. This has nothing to do with prisons, but if you're traveling in a culture where veganism is unheard of you should be a good guest and not push your beliefs on them, making your hosts uncomfortable. Just eat the meat.
In the West veganism is a luxury. A fetish for the rich and it is classist. Even outside of the West eggs and animal fat (not meat) are an important diet of many poor people.
Now in the west, eating only plants is an expensive luxury.
The implication here seems to be that tradition is a valid justification for beliefs and practices, whereas personal ethics are not; and indeed, anyone pursuing the latter is worthy of stereotyping and derision.
To put this thought in other terms: In the context of contemporary culture, wouldn't you call the Buddha a "hipster"?
"Wasting" food when you're trying to send a signal not to produce so much of one type of food is not really waste.
I know I'm assuming, but like many wealthy westerners you probably travel to poorer parts of the world. Believe me, you were consuming animal protein or fat even if you were told otherwise. So what did you accomplish other than to show your elitism?
I don't think veganism is a particularly moral or ethical value. It reminds me of a conversation I was a third-party to where an American kept expressing how happy she was that a South American tribal chief was keeping to their "natural" lifestyle, while the chief kept expressing that they want schools and opportunities for his people. They were talking through each other.
Some paths of Hinduism also hold vegetarianism as an ideal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_and_religion
PS: World wide there are ~250million to 1 billion vegans depending on definitions. AKA is eating insects ok?
Edit: I'm responding to your recent edit. No, eating insects is not vegan. Why would you think that? Crickets and cockroaches are quite tasty with soy and sesame oil but not vegan.
The subject of the article would save his health and mind if he consumed eggs and milk.
"Dietary vegans (or strict vegetarians) refrain from consuming animal products, not only meat but, in contrast to ovo-lacto vegetarians, also eggs, dairy products and other animal-derived substances. The term ethical vegan is often applied to those who not only follow a vegan diet, but extend the vegan philosophy into other areas of their lives, and oppose the use of animals and animal products for any purpose.[4] Another term used is environmental veganism, which refers to the avoidance of animal products on the premise that the harvesting or industrial farming of animals is environmentally damaging and unsustainable.[5]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism
PS: Also if you actaully read the link: "Jains are either lacto-vegetarians or vegans."
I wonder if you feel the same way about Orthodox Jews or Muslims eating pork.
But surely you can see why vegans, who do believe animals' rights are very important, would not see any more merit to your advice than you would to advice that encouraged you to abandon your deeply held values because they're inconvenient.
I think western wealthy vegans don't have particularly strong morals or ethical values and are vegan for other elitist and classist reasons. I think if they were exposed to the real world they would have a more practical (and Buddhist) outlook on diet.
I don't think they particularly care about animal rights either. You can have a moral and ethical existence and still eat eggs and animal fat.
I don't usually like to bring myself into things, but since we're getting into people's thoughts, I'll just be explicit here: I do not believe one can lead a fully moral existence while having animals killed or abused for your convenience. I'm not trying to force this on anyone, but I'm not going to have anyone force it out of me either. You disagree with this belief, and that is your right, but to assume that I secretly know your system of morality is right and mine is wrong seems incredibly pompous to me. I believe what I believe just as strongly as you believe what you do.
Even in the u.s. you can eat animal products where the animals lead healthy lives.
Thus, cows are constantly bred. Any male calves are sold off for meat (usually veal which in some countries consists of considerably cruel rearing practices -- if not used for veal they're just shot) and the female calves are used to continue the milk herd.
And that's just considering the dairy products from good farms.
It is not a binary choice between just loss of freedom and loss of freedom plus compromise of one's dietary practices.
It seems odd that we would be assigning the same punishment regimes to people so pacifist that they won't even eat plankton as we assign to people who destroy human lives with nary an inkling of remorse.
Veganism is something I can understand and respect. The morality of state justice, on the other hand, is far less defensible when you look past its well-groomed public image. Depending on your locale, the prisoners in your nearest prison may be treated with less respect than the animals in your closest slaughterhouse. In that light, making morality-based appeals to the prison kitchen seems almost pointless.
Pork can be easily avoided, whilst other meat and animal products are widely used by the food industry (Food additives) that avoiding such products isn't as easy for Vegans.
Except that's obviously wrong because plenty of poor people have strict dietary requirements.
"He went to jail for piracy? I better stop pirating!"
"He went to jail for piracy? I better be more careful!"
> “People ask if I would have done anything different if I could. The answer is no. This has been nothing more than five months of wasted time.”
Prison is supposed to be a place of rehabilitation. If there's no rehabilitation, there's no point to it.
Strange timing. He was just arrested:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/pirate-bays-fredrik-neij-caught-tha...
That part of the story is really fishy to me. TPB has roughly the same type of advertising as one of the many porn tube sites. But a porn tube visitor easily costs the site tens of megabytes in streaming video while a torrent tracker only has to serve a few 10-30kb large torrent files. Yet the tube sites appear to be able to make some money, but TPB with less than 1% of the bandwidth costs/visitor couldn't?
It appears that the TPB guys are claiming that the hosting revenue earned by the second company should not be treated as the ill-gotten revenue earned by the TPB, even though they owned and controlled both companies. And indeed, there are laws in most nations and internationally addressing precisely those sorts of sketchy relationships.
Of course, that doesn't mean that even a few weeks in prison isn't atrocious. But a lot of people have been through much more, sometimes when they weren't even guilty, and didn't have a voice to be heard.