Founders of Pirate Bay on trial

[dinho]

Pirate Bay file-sharing defended

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7892073.stm

Gottfrid Svartholm Varg, partially obscured, and Peter Sunde
Two of the defendants argued their innocence on Sunday in a webcast

The founders of a website which carries links to copies of music, films and TV programmes have gone on trial in Sweden on charges of copyright theft.

The Pirate Bay is the world's most high-profile file-sharing site and is being taken to court by media firms including Sony and Warner Bros.

The men face up to two years in prison and a fine of $143,500, if convicted.

"File-sharing services can be used both legally and illegally," defence lawyer Per Samuelsson said.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi and Carl Lundstorm have portrayed themselves as digital libertarians and say that they cannot be prosecuted for copyright theft because none of the content is hosted on their computer servers.

The men are accused of "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws", according to charges filed by senior public prosecutor Haakan Roswall.

Representatives of the movie, music and video games industry are seeking about 115 million kronor (10.6 million euros) in damages and interest for losses incurred from tens of millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the site.

   
It's not a political trial
Monique Wadsted, lawyer

"It is legal to offer a service that can be used in both a legal and illegal way, according to Swedish law," Mr Samuelsson said at the opening of the trial, which is expected to last three weeks.

He said the site "can be compared to making cars that can be driven faster than the speed limit".

Monique Wadsted, a lawyer representing media firms, including Warner Bros and MGM, involved in the case said: "It's not a political trial, it's not a trial about shutting down a people's library, and it's not a trial that wants to prohibit file-sharing as a technique.

"It's a trial that regards four individuals that have conducted a big commercial business making money out of others' file-sharing works, copyright-protected movies, hit music, popular computer games, etc."

The Pirate Bay, which was founded in 2003, directs people to "torrent" links, which allow file-sharing program BitTorrent to download and upload files among potentially millions of users.

   
They have already failed to take down the site once. Let them fail again
Gottfrid Warg

Swedish police raided the company's offices several times and seized nearly 200 servers in 2006, temporarily closing the site. But it re-opened a few days later with servers hosted in different countries.

Mr Warg, in a webcast on Sunday, said: "What are they going to do about it? They have already failed to take down the site once. Let them fail again.

"It has a life without us."

John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, representing 1,400 member record companies worldwide, said: "The Pirate Bay has hurt creators of many different kinds of works, from music to film, from books to TV programmes. It has been particularly harmful in distributing copyrighted works prior to their official release.

"This damages sales of music at the most important time of their lifecycle."

Mr Kennedy said the four men had "made substantial amounts of money" from the site, "despite their claim to be only interested in spreading culture for free".

On Sunday, Mr Sunde said: "It does not matter if they require several million (kronor) or one billion. We are not rich and have no money to pay."

[Quags]

Shit is the site safe to visit according to weary Loud Steupssssssssssssssss.

[Tallman]

Court jails Pirate Bay founders
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.

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 four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.

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.

[D.H.W]

stueps d site still up, plus they have servers off shore, u cah kill dem, Viva Pirate Bay

[Bitter]

Dat eh nutten, them men just have to move to Somalia