Verdict: The Pirate Bay Guilty

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
Date: April 17, 2009 7:45:11 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Fwd: Verdict: The Pirate Bay Guilty

FYI....--rf

Begin forwarded message:
> The Pirate Bay Guilty
> By Wired Staff EmailApril 17, 2009 | 5:28:00 AM
> Categories: Yo Ho Ho
>
> Tpb Oscar Swartz reports.
>
> http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/pirateverdict.html
>
> Four men connected to The Pirate Bay, the world's most notorious  
> file sharing site, were convicted by a Swedish court Friday of  
> contributory copyright infringement, and each sentenced to a year in  
> prison.
>
> Pirate Bay administrators Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and  
> Peter Sunde were found guilty in the case, along with Carl  
> Lundström, who was accused of funding the 5-year-old operation.
>
> In addition to jail time, the defendants were ordered to pay damages  
> of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) to a handful of entertainment  
> companies, including Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Bros, EMI and  
> Columbia Pictures, for the infringement of 33 specific movie and  
> music properties tracked by industry investigators
>
> Sunde, The Pirate Bay's spokesman, announced the news over Twitter  
> Friday morning before the verdict was official. He remained defiant,  
> and offered comfort to supporters. "Stay calm -- Nothing will happen  
> to TPB, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just a  
> theater for the media."
>
> The two week trial, which ended March 2, was a joint civil and  
> criminal proceeding that pitted the entertainment industry and the  
> government against the four defendants, who each faced up to two  
> years in prison and fines as high as $180,000. In addition, motion  
> picture and record companies sought $13 million in damages for the  
> 33 movies and music tracks at issue.
>
> The verdicts are a significant symbolic victory for Hollywood, the  
> record labels and the rest of the content industry that claims  
> online piracy costs them billions of dollars in lost sales.
>
> "The Pirate Bay has claimed all the time that their activities are  
> legal," Henrik Pontén, a lawyer who represented the film and  
> computer game companies in the trial, told the Swedish media. "Now  
> that it has been proven illegal we presume that they will stop."
>
> The Pirate Bay crew, though, has vowed to continue running the site  
> whatever happens, and claims that it is secured from a forced  
> shutdown through a network of distributed servers located outside  
> Sweden.
>
> For now, the attention brought by the highly-publicized trial has  
> only made The Pirate Bay more popular. The site has swelled to some  
> 22 million users. And thousands of Pirate Bay fans have flocked to  
> sign up for its new $6 anonymization VPN service, which allows  
> torrent feeders and seeders to conduct their business in private  
> without leaving a trace of their internet IP addresses.
>
> And since the trial began, membership in Sweden's copyright reform  
> Pirate Party has grown 50 percent, while its youth affiliate is now  
> the second largest in Sweden.
>
> Even if The Pirate Bay is ultimately shuttered, dozens of other  
> illicit BiTtorrent tracking services are easily accessible.
>
> The defendants are expected to appeal, and they remain free pending  
> further proceedings.
>
> The defense largely hinged on an architectural point. Because of the  
> way BitTorrent works, pirated material was neither stored on, nor  
> passed through, The Pirate Bay's servers.  Instead the site merely  
> provided an index of torrent files -- some on its servers, some  
> elsewhere -- that direct a user's client software to the content.
>
> But prosecutor Håkan Roswall argued successfully that the defendants  
> were culpable anyway, citing past prosecutions of criminal  
> accomplices. In a Supreme Court decision from 1963, he noted, a  
> defendant who held a friend's coat while the friend beat someone up  
> was considered culpable.
>
> The verdict could shatter Sweden's reputation as a safe haven for  
> content piracy, coming just weeks after a new law that took effect  
> that allows content owners to force internet service providers to  
> reveal subscriber data in piracy investigations.
>
> But supporters of copyright reform hope that the trial will energize  
> Swedish youth.
>
> One minute after the judgment was public Friday, Sweden's Pirate  
> Party issued a press release claiming: "The verdict is our ticket to  
> the EU Parliament", referring to the election that takes place in  
> the beginning of June.
>
> The party's top candidate, Christian Engström, comments: "Sweden has  
> now outlawed one of our most successful ambassadors. We have long  
> been a leading IT nation but with these kind of actions we will be  
> left behind and become dependent on other nations' arbitrary views".
>
> Reached by e-mail after the verdict, defendant Gottfrid Svartholm  
> Warg's sole comment was: "Like a dog!" --  the condemned Josef K's  
> final words in Franz Kafka's The Trial.
>
> In a web-only press conference held two hours after the verdict,  
> Sunde was more upbeat, invoking Hollywood in explaining why he still  
> believes The Pirate Bay's crew will ultimately prevail.
>
> "We see this as a film," he said. "This is the first set-back for  
> the heroes. ... In the end we know that the good guys will win, as  
> in all movies."
>
> Last updated 7:30 a.m.





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