Sigh. Fine. Here's a FANCY metaphor.
Considering Pirate bay is named as such and has made no measures to remove illegal content posted by their users or remove said users, they are promoting it. That is illegal. CASE CLOSED.
It's copyright violation. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION.
Say I open a video game library where people that make freeware games publish them. The games are copyrighted under the GNU license. This is legal.
Then say some guys steal a lesser known commercial game and fool me into publishing it. Once I discover their crime, I will ban them and never distribute the game again.
However, my competitor, Pirate Library, continued to publish and distribute these games. Not only that, they took no legal measures and have been avoiding the law all this time. With fancy lawyerwork and loopholes. Not to mention gray laws and such.
Now, considering millions of people use Pirate Library every month, if not more, the police can't logically assume they're all willingly guilty. Ignorance of the law does not grant innocence. But it does grant innocence when fraud is committed. Pirate Library is committing a fraud by distributing it in a legal fashion, thus making it "legal".
Now, the only thing you can do is sue Pirate Library and have the police arrest them.
Does THIS metaphor make sense to you?
Actually , Google is quite proactive at trying to prevent illegal activities through its website. But its different to be providing a place for crime, versus telling people where the place is.
This is a silly argument. The laws are quite clear. That is why they were prosecuted. That is why napster was prosecuted.
Thanks. If I ask somebody where I can buy some drugs, he cannot get arrested for providing me the drugs.