Sweden to charge Pirate Bay in copyright case

[Sporkman]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080128/tc_nm/sweden_piratebay_dc_2


Sweden to charge Pirate Bay in copyright case

By Anna Ringstrom Mon Jan 28, 8:35 AM ET

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden plans this week to charge the people running Pirate Bay, one of the world's most visited Web sites, with being accessories in breaking copyright law.

Pirate Bay helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files, which is illegal in many countries, including Sweden.

Public prosecutor Hakan Roswall said last week he will charge the Swedish site's organizers with accessory and conspiracy to break copyright law, which could lead to fines or up to two years in prison.

The charges will be filed in a district court on January 31.

The Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) are among those who have called for action to shut down the site.

No copyright material is stored on Pirate Bay's servers and no swapping of files actually takes place there. Rather, Pirate Bay locates file sharers on the Internet and acts as a directory of so-called torrent files.

BitTorrent is a protocol that enables big file transfers. The torrent files, downloadable from Pirate Bay, contain the information needed to download film or music files from others.

"It's not merely a search engine. It's an active part of an action that aims at, and also leads to, making copyright protected material available," Roswall told Reuters.

"It's a classic example of accessory -- to act as intermediary between people who commit crimes, whether it's in the physical or the virtual world," he said.

NO LEGAL GROUNDS

But the people behind the site say they cannot be held responsible for material that is being spread.

"It's idiotic. There is no legal ground (for the charges)," Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told Reuters.

The case is partly based on evidence collected in a 2006 raid against Pirate Bay's servers, located then in Stockholm.

Pirate Bay was started by a Swedish anti-copyright group in 2003. Later the site was run by Sunde and two others, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij. Neij owns the domain.

It does not charge users and earns money from advertisers.

Roswall said it could take more than convictions in Sweden to stop Pirate Bay. "Because the infrastructure is scattered among several places around the world... no separate country will be able to stop the site," he said.

But he believes advertisers could have second thoughts about using Pirate Bay if a guilty verdict is handed down. "That can be the sort of thing that influences the site in the long run."

Sunde said there were no plans to shut down the site in the event of a conviction. He said he, Svartholm and Neij were unaware of the location of Pirate Bay's current servers.

He said Pirate Bay had 2.5 million registered members and about as many visit the site every day.

In 2007, some 600,000 out of nine million Swedes downloaded feature films, according to Mediavision. The Swedish research firm expects the number to rise to some 800,000 this year.

IFPI estimates there are 20 illegal music downloads worldwide for every one legal sale, IFPI spokesman Alex Jacob said.

[Æniad]

I'm sure they've already made plans to relocate their servers.

[fatality_uk]

They should also charge them with starting WW2, The 80's stock market crash and Kennedy assassination. Seeing as they are making up laws to suit the MPAA and IFPI, throw those in as well, *sigh* :mad:

[sloggerkhan]

What I think is continually amusing is how the music industry seems to think that people willing to get something for 'free' would actually pay for the product instead if sharing was shut down. They need to learn that the demand for 'free' content is not the same as a 'loss.' I bet you anything lots of people who pirate aren't about to go out and buy movies if they get 'stopped.' (And rather Ironically, I also suspect that the downloaders who would buy movies if downloads were cut off are already some of their better customers.)

[Erik Trybom]

I think it will be a very interesting trial. The question is if it's illegal in Sweden to own and maintain a bittorrent site that links to copyright protected material but doesn't itself contain said material on its servers.

The most probable outcome is conviction and fines, which the defendants can surely afford because of the ad revenue that comes with running the world's largest bittorrent site. I don't think the site will shut down regardless, but it might affect other sites operating from Sweden.

An aquittal would mean a tremendous victory for the already strong file sharing movement in Sweden, and would probably raise demands for tougher laws from the content industry. Said industry has a far weaker position in Sweden than in the U.S., having sued only a few people and lacking the right to demand the identity behind IP numbers directly from ISP:s.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

They are clearly endorsing piracy by the design (and the very name) of their web site and they have done nothing to prevent users from doing so.
Let's say, as a weird analogy, that one day Google only searched for child pornography. People would be pretty pissed off! Same thing happens if someone unexpectedly posts a link to shock imagery in a forum. Another example is setting up a web site explaining how to steal from various convenience stores, including their security codes, location of their safes, employee names. A less extreme example would be - hey! - loudly trumpeting links and discussions about how to acquire content that people have not gained permission to own.

If I wanted to stay on the good side of basic morals, I would shut down or redesign my web site the moment I learned of it being used entirely to abuse content owner's rights.

Software piracy may be provoking a movement for "free" content (note quotation marks), but it is doing nothing but harm for real free, open content that we have here with open source software, Creative Commons, or those most interesting music stores like Magnatune or Jamendo.

The sooner people realize the difference between "free" as in stolen and free as in good will, the sooner the open source movement gets the credit it deserves. Piracy as is encouraged by that web site is making free + Internet + legit automatically seem impossible to people. The longer this happens, the less chance we have of truly legitimate free content systems making a dent.

[frup]

A few years ago I would see a movie a month or so and buy a CD a month.

Now I see about 2 movies a year and really only watch stuff of TV.
I haven't bought a CD in 3 years.

I don't download.

I'm just not satisfied with the quality. As I left my teens I became more discerning in what I considered good quality. Very little on the market actually satisfies my tastes. One of the few groups I still like is Pain of Salvation. They have released 5 great albums. I can't buy those in New Zealand with out paying extra to get the album specially imported. I'm not going to do that and so don't listen to the music.

[LightB]

Yes, the name is probably what gives them so much flak, nothing else. That site is hardly anything special as far as the actual content. There are tons of such sites out there without an inflammatory name. The **AA rackets would never be able to corral them all, not by a long shot. The only real way to curtail them would be to get ISPs to block all content by default then whitelist sites instead of blacklisting them like AT&T already did when they started blocking the pirate bay. I don't know if that was repealed now but it happened and it probably wasn't an isolated incident. Comcast is actively trying to cripple any torrent activity. This Chinese-style internet filtering for the sake of corporations is probably the biggest factor in the net neutrality issue.

I honestly don't care what happens to sites like pirate bay, but if and when this duel leads to all the broadband ISPs filtering at will, that will just be ridiculous.

[bobbocanfly]

Yes, the name is probably what gives them so much flak, nothing else. That site is hardly anything special as far as the actual content. There are tons of such sites out there without an inflammatory name

And every time you shut down one of these bit Torrent sites, about 4 or 5 more spring up in its place, see OiNK leading to the creation of at least 2 if not 3 major trackers plus people diving off into Waste, SLSK, Making DC hubs.