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Pirate Bay administrators found guilty by Sweden's courts

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBC News

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.
They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (�3m) in damages.

Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.

Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as "bizarre".
"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird," Sunde said.

"It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

"We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."

It is almost certain that The Pirate Bay will keep on sailing, long after today's court judgement

The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.
However, the total awarded fell short of the $17.5m in damages and interest the firms were seeking.

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.

"The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.

"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that," he said.

The Pirate Bay's first server is now a museum exhibit in Stockholm
The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.
Speaking on Swedish Radio, assistant judge Klarius explained how the court reached its findings.

"The court first tried whether there was any question of breach of copyright by the file-sharing application and that has been proved, that the offence was committed.

"The court then moved on to look at those who acted as a team to operate the Pirate Bay file-sharing service, and the court found that they knew that material which was protected by copyright but continued to operate the service," he said.

A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson, told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.

"That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."

Political issue

Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party - which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age - told the BBC that the verdict was "a gross injustice".

"This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.

"There is a lot of anger in
Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it.

"Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament."

The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.

This is basically the equivalent of suing Google because you can type the name of whatever digital media you want and the name of a file-hosting website and download it instantly. Except that Google is a big company that can hire big lawyers with big suits working in big buildings and can provide big government bureaucrats with big money.

I just got a game off The Pirate Bay. Abandonware, perfectly legal. I'm sure there were a bunch of ESA-protected games on there that I didn't get. In short, I used the service for a legitimate purpose. The idea that these men can be held personally responsible for the actions of everyone on the Internet is irresponsible and unrealistic. I'm sure they knew about the pirated data, but expecting them to shut the entire site down because of it is both bad business and an admission of fault that's not theirs.

In short, the fact that they were convicted over the actions of their users is an incredibly flimsy attempt by big media to try to scare people into their pockets. The real target should be the users who shared content illegally.

That the record companies seem to think they've won something here shows that they still don't really understand the fight they're in. File sharing isn't going away no matter how many people they sue, and the people they sue aren't likely to have the money to actually pay such ridiculous damages.

There's an arguement about antipiracy and how it only hurts those who do NOT pirate, but I don't think it applies to this perfectly so I think I'll take the stance of RT's bolded sentences and wonder how they can get sued for copyright violation when none of the torrent files themselves are the actual copyrighted material.

in the US, yea these charges would never stick. Only those that actually seeded and leeched can be sued. It would be like owning an appartment building and being responsible for what your tenants do. Yes you gave them a place to do these things, but what they did was beyond your control.

I thought the claim that they were running the site to line their pockets especially funny, as I'm pretty sure they only make enough money on advertising to cover their bandwidth and server costs and they don't charge anything for using the site.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BitVyper (Post 915701)

That the record companies seem to think they've won something here shows that they still don't really understand the fight they're in.

The Music Industry is Dr. Kettle.

Amazing how using the new norms adds to their revenue than fighting. I think they went after Pirate Bay as a principle. IIRC, The Pirate Bay did send them a letter toting copyright law a few years back that kinda had the industry in arms.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aerozord (Post 915972)

Actually if the tenants run a drug lab in the apartment and you know but blissfully pretend like nothing's happening, you can also be charged.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nikose Tyris (Post 916038)

Actually if the tenants run a drug lab in the apartment and you know but blissfully pretend like nothing's happening, you can also be charged.

Only if they can prove that you knew.

They'd need documented proof of your knowledge of the event. A recording of you having a conversation about the lab or you entering the place and exiting with drugs.

OR have one of the tenants testify, but that isn't likely because the authorities wouldn't really have a reason to offer them a shortened sentence just to catch their landlord.

Except that Pirate Bay's argument was that they just ran the site and weren't responsible for what people put on there, which is pretty much saying outright that they knew people were using it to transfer copyrighted stuff illegally.