Pirate Bay in court, to-day!

[treeboy]

OK I know I read somewhere about TPB using what was refered to as the Bigfoot Defense. It basically went like this:

1. TPB servers do not host content, TPB servers only hosts torrents.
2. Users with names such as Bigfoot post those torrents on TPS's servers
3. Users also host the content on their personal machines.
4. Service providers cannot be held liable for what service users such as Bigfoot do, ergo. . .
5. The prosecution does not have a case ,and if they have a problem they should go talk to Bigfoot.

Maybe I'm just imaging this. But I explained to someone earlier, and it seemed really funny. Kinda like the Chewbacca Defense, of course.

But seriously, does anyone else recall this?

[Penguin]

Yeah, its in one of my posts, but called King Kong defense. Maybe in my 3rd or 4th post in this thread, also explained the specific EU law this is based on.

Updates, day 5 of the trial:

Links from this Slashdot story - http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/21/0347200

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/9002 ... bay-5.html
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-tria ... al-090220/
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4368

Hodejo1 writes
"On the old Perry Mason TV shows, it was a common sight to see someone burst into the crowded courtroom at a dire moment and confess aloud that they, not the defendant, killed so-and-so. In reality, courts do not allow evidence to enter trial without a chance for the opposing council to view it and for a judge to rule on their admissibility. Yet, in the fifth day of the Pirate Bay trial, lawyers for the prosecution again tried to sneak in surprise evidence while questioning defendants. The judge put his foot down this time, telling lawyers for the state, 'If you have documents which you eventually plan to use, you need to hand them over now.' The prosecution continues to struggle in court. In one humorous moment, prosecutor Håkan Roswall tried to show how 'hip' he was with technology when he questioned defendant Peter Sunde. 'When did you meet [Gottfrid] for the first time IRL?' asked the Prosecutor. 'We do not use the expression IRL,' said Peter, 'We use AFK.' The defendants are not out of the woods yet. Lawyer and technology writer Richard Koman wonders aloud if the Pirate Bay's 'I-dunno' defense is all that much better."


I Dunno:

I wrote a comment on the Pirate Bay story to the effect that TPB can’t be charged with conspiracy as someone suggested because:

The elements of conspiracy are this (again, US law): (1) there was an agreement to commit an illegal act; (2) the conspirators willingly entered the agreement; (3) one of the parties committed an overt act towards completion of the crime; (4) the overt act was taken contemporaneous with the allegation of the criminal act.

In other words, unless TPB had some agreement to send users over to this torrent site or that torrent site, there was no agreement. The link would be the overt act but there was simply no agreement between TPB and Torrent site. Thats why theres no conspiracy charge.

But reading coverage of the trial today Ars Technica, I’m beginning to wonder.

Fredrik Neij was questioned by lawyers who tried to paint him as the point man for The Pirate Bay operations. Peter Danowsky, who represents the music business, pointed out that Niej owned The Pirate Bay’s domain and then showed him a contract he had signed saying that he would oversee operations for the site. Neij’s response? “But I didn’t read it.”

Neij was also asked about a speech he gave back in 2006 (watch it on YouTube) in which he said that the site had received many threatening letters over the years from copyright owners. Lawyers tried to use the speech to show that Pirate Bay admins were aware the site hosted links to copyrighted content. Neij’s response? “I just read the text which someone at the Pirate Bureau had written.” (Neij says he’s dyslexic and has difficult writing his own material.)

When asked about his view of the law as it related to copyrights, Neij said that he doesn’t worry much about the law, doesn’t care about the ideology behind (some) file-swapping, and does what he does because it’s fun to run a large site. He did indicate that he thought the site was legal.

This I-dunno defense doesn’t hold much water, I think. The question is whether there was any communication, any agreement between illegal torrent sites. The evidence isn’t quite there, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see enough to show some intention, some money-making activities. That would be enough to convict on the

-------------------------
It’s Day 5 at The Pirate Bay trial. Will colorful site spokesman Peter Sunde stand up to the pressure? There seems little doubt of that, but the Prosecution are trying to make it as difficult as possible by introducing yet more uncleared evidence. Peter demands of the Prosecution, “Is this a political trial?”

Friday, the fifth day of the trial and Peter Sunde, aka brokep, is being questioned by the Prosecution. Håkan Roswall started off by asking Peter if he ever had dealings with The Pirate Bay’s (TPB) computer systems - Peter said he did, but in a limited fashion.

Roswall then inquired about Peter’s involvement in TPB’s advertising deals, in particular one with ad company Random Media which Peter signed up to as a ‘Founder’ of the site. Peter said that this was connected with new website project which would draw funds from TPB’s adverttising revenue.

Roswall then brought up Piratbyran - the Swedish Bureau of Piracy - and asked Peter if this organization is critical of copyright. “Not critical directly,” Peter replied. “There are many differing views.”

Roswall then turned to Peter’s stance toward copyright. “This is a difficult question to answer,” Peter said. “I like things that are not protected by copyright, this is a non-issue.”

Peter was asked if he knew of TPB’s “legal” page. He said he was aware of it. Roswall, presumably trying to speak the same ‘language’ as the somewhat techie defendants, got tied up a little;

“When did you meet [Gottfrid] for the first time IRL?” asked the Prosecutor. “We do not use the expression IRL,” said Peter, “We use AFK.” “IRL?” questioned the judge. “In Real Life,” the Prosecutor explained to the judge.

“We do not use that expression,” Peter noted. “Everything is in real life. We use AFK - Away From Keyboard.” “Well,” said Roswall. “It seems I am a little bit out of date.”

One of the themes so far is how the Prosecutor is struggling to come to terms with the somewhat chaotic structure of the TPB’s operations. Trying to pin down Peter’s role, he asked about his position as TPB spokesman - Peter said he took the unofficial position since no-one else in the team wanted to do it. A request from a journalist or someone else for a comment on something came in, said Peter, and he simply took it in hand.

Then the attention turned to Peter’s relationship with advertiser Oded Daniel and whether or not Peter has handled money from him. “Have you never wondered why you got these earnings reports? Isn’t this type of thing a little beyond your role of spokesman?” asked Roswall.

“I think it is his [Oded Daniel's] way of trying to motivate people. He sends so much weird email, I don’t read half of it. He could have been using me to get more contact with Fredrik and Gottfrid,” said Peter. The Prosecutor continued to struggle with the apparent lack of a formal decision-making structure at TPB, continually referring to TPB as a “company”.

It was revealed that Peter and Gottfrid met Oded Daniel in 2005/2006. Carl Lundström and Peter Sunde met just a handful of times.

“Is it true you went to Israel to meet Oded in 2006?” said Roswall. “Yes,” responded Peter.

“Why did you go to meet him?” questioned Roswall. “Because he asked me to go there as his guest,” said Peter. “Did you not go there to go to the beach?” “Yes, I did, very often.”

Roswall then questioned Peter on many emails back and forth from Oded Daniel to TPB, many centered on the proposed TPB YouTube-like side-project for streaming video called VideoBay. Referring to development of the search capability on TPB, the Prosecutor appeared to be suggesting that Peter worked on TPB on technical issues in a response to mails from Oded Daniel, but Peter said that others carried out the work.

At one stage Peter said he came up with the idea of selling statistics from TPB, believing people would be interested to read them in newspapers etc. When Roswall asked Peter if he ever expected to receive money from TPB, the answer was “no”.

After the break, it was IFPI’s Peter Danowsky turn to start questioning Peter, beginning with his education. Peter says he dropped out of school but later learned English and computer programming from the Internet. Danowsky then turned his attention to ad-company Random Media, again referring to emails from TPB.

Then, in a repeat of yesterday’s performance, the Prosecution started again to introduce more evidence that had not been cleared pre-trial. Danowsky continued to present new evidence in the form of some newspaper articles to try to contradict what Peter had said.

According to multiple reports, not only was the defense annoyed at the Prosecution’s unacceptable actions, but the judge was too. The judge reprimanded Danowsky and the defense told him to cut out this American-style trial strategy. The Court then adjourned for 10 minutes to discuss the situation.

Upon restart, the judge said the decision is that any new material the Prosecution is planning to bring up needs to be submitted before the questioning has started, as is proper. The Prosecution then claimed to hand over all their surprise material they were holding and the Court took another break so that Peter could read through everything. This was later confirmed to be 9 new documents.

After the break Danowsky’s questioning of Peter resumed. “Did you hold a lecture called “How to dismantle a billion dollar industry?” “Yes I did,” replied Peter.

Danowsky started to quote some of Peter’s comments from his blog at Brokep.com. Peter says that everything he writes on his blog isn’t about TPB even if prosecutors would like it to be the case.

Pressed further on his opinions on copyright, Peter asked Danowsky, “That is a political issue. Is this a political trial or a legal trial?” Danowsky continued, ignoring the question but Peter pulled him back. “I want an answer from the lawyer Danowsky. Is this a political trial? Can I get a reply?”

“How can copyright law be a political issue?” said Danowsky, but had no follow up questions. Peter was surprised, “No follow-ups? Ok, let me elaborate…” and he went on at length about the context of Danowsky’s various questions.

Danowsky asked Peter about a time when he said that rights holders had acted illegally. Peter said this was a reference to Warner Brothers that had attacked file-sharing sites with hacking, aka anti-p2p activity.

Danowsky asked Peter what the purpose of TPB was. “It is to enable users to share their material with others,” said Peter. “Even though it is copyrighted?” questioned Danowsky. “That can sometimes be the sad consequences,” Peter replied.

After a brief appearance by movie company lawyer Wadsted, the court stopped for lunch.

On return, Peter Altin questioned his client, Peter Sunde. He asked him if he was responsible for TPB or if he felt responsible due to his comments for the site. On both, the reply was negative.

Altin put it to Peter that he could’ve made lots of money from TPB. “No, I don’t have a million sitting around somewhere. That would be nice, though.”

When Altin asked about the amount of copyright material tracked by TPB, Peter explained that he carried out a survey of a random 1000 torrents from the tracker and 80% of the content linked by the site was not copyrighted, noting that there is much more illegal material on YouTube.

Then Altin’s interview with Carl Lundström began. He told the court how he met Fredrik at an event called Dreamhack in Jönköping, Sweden during 2004. The Court heard that Lundström always believed that TPB operated within the law but they needed resources. This situation led to him signing an agreement with Fredrik that they could have two computers at Rix Telecom in Gothenburg, along with him being a technician there. The deal would allow TPB to develop with a little financial support from Lundström, and then when the site grew and became a success, TPB would stay with Rix and pay their way as a regular customer.

Next it was Roswall’s turn to interview Lundström. Lundström admitted that he knew that there was piracy connected with TPB, and that he understood that TPB is a “file-sharing site, a torrent site”.

Speaking of the advertising he took responsibility for the plan believing it was a way the site could pay for itself in the future. He went on to say that he had no idea of any political motivations of the site and what interested him was the desire of the other defendants to make the biggest BitTorrent site in the world. “And I liked that,” he said.

“I can understand that,” replied Roswall.

Then followed discussion about the equipment given to TPB by Lundström. The cost of the equipment was 18,000 kronor and the bill was paid by Lundström. Lundström made clear that he didn’t want to become a partner, but that he did continue to be interested in the project, and that he gave some advise to the TPB team a few times.

After a short break Lundström was further questioned by the prosecution. They asked him about his contact with Oded Daniel, who handles advertisement on TPB. Lundström admitted to know Oded very well.

When movie industry lawyer Wadsted asked Lundström why an 48 year old businessman hangs out with people from TPB his lawyer jumped in and told his client not to respond.

At 3 o’clock in the afternoon the hearings ended, after discussing next week’s schedule.

(the Torrentfreak story)

[treeboy]

Thanks for the updates Penguin. And yes, King Kong defense: that's still really funny. In fact, most of the material about the trial is really entertaining.

I can hardly believe the prosecuting attorney used the expression "IRL" in a court of law. It's like something out of a bad movie.

[Penguin]

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/0 ... -pros.html

STOCKHOLM -- As the landmark trial of The Pirate Bay wrapped up its first week Friday, the prosecutor fought to tie the last two defendants to the daily operation of the world's most notorious filesharing site.

Four defendants in all are accused of contributory copyright infringement for allegedly deliberately facilitating the making available of copyrighted works to the public. Establishing intent is crucial for a crime to have been committed under Swedish law, and the prosecutor and civil plaintiffs have tried to show that the overriding purpose of The Pirate Bay is to encourage unlawful sharing of copyrighted material.

With the Pirate Bay trial half over, the defendants have reason to be hopeful. First, the government stunned observers on Tuesday by dropping half the charges in the joint criminal-civil prosecution, resulting in a partial acquittal. And despite aggressive questioning by the prosecutor and a battery of entertainment industry lawyers, defendants Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Fredrik Neij stuck to the story that the sole purpose of The Pirate Bay is to let internet users transmit whatever material they want.

Warg and Neij were never public people, and that showed in their sometimes awkward testimony. But Friday's first witness, Peter Sunde, aka Brokep, is The Pirate Bay's official spokesman, and he's accustomed to the spotlight. He wore a grey hoodie as he took the stand to defend the website, even as he sought to distance himself from its operations.

The first questions posed to Sunde by prosecutor Hakan Roswall focused on his ideology, prompting Pirate Bay supporters in the blogosphere to cry foul. Referring to the open-culture activist organization that founded The Pirate Bay the prosecutor asked: "Is it correct that the Pirate Bureau discusses copyright and is critical of copyright as it is today?"

"What is your personal opinion on copyright?" the prosecutor followed up.

When recording industry lawyer Peter Danowsky asked the same question later, Sunde fired back. "That is a political question," Sunde said. "Is this a political trial or a legal trial?"

Danowsky's answer: "In what way is copyright a political question?"

Danowsky then produced printouts of news articles on The Pirate Bay, pointing out statements made by Sunde. One exhibit came from a 2006 Wired.com article, from which Danowsky read the last paragraph aloud: "We're also into educating people about the consequences of piracy. We're teaching them how to do it."

Sunde said that he meant that The Pirate Bay educates people about filesharing in general. He quoted the paragraph before to show that his statement was a response to MPAA, which claimed that it was "educating people about the consequences of piracy and getting involved."

Likeable with a boyish face, Sunde can argue with die-hard enemies on TV and still carry a winning smile while his opponent resorts to cursing. He testified Friday that he was "only" a media contact for the website, and that he never actively participated in the acts charged by the prosecutor --namely, "organizing, systematizing, programming, financing or running " Pirate Bay. But Danowsky confronted Sunde with e-mail printouts taken in the 2006 police raid, which seemed to show that Sunde was more involved than he's acknowledged.

Carl Lundström, a wealthy 48-year old businessman, has a far more tenuous connection to the site, and he did not face any ideological questions on the stand. The prosecutor tried to tie Lundström to The Pirate Bay as a "co-owner," but Lundström claimed that he has only sold hosting and internet services to the site's operators.

Fredrik Neij, one of the young defendants, was hired by Lundström's CTO as a network technician in 2004, while Neij was already running the then-tiny filesharing site.

Lundström admitted giving The Pirate Bay's crew moral support and sympathy, but said he'd rejected becoming a business partner with them, finding the prospect too legally risky. "I didn't want to get into potential illegal things when I had 50 employees," he stated.

The court adjourned for the weekend, with testimony set to resume Tuesday afternoon. Among the scheduled witnesses is John Kennedy, the chairman of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries - the international version of the RIAA. The trial is expected to wrap up at the end of next week. The three civilian law judges, and a fourth professional judge, will decide the defendants' guilt or innocence by a majority vote. In the event of a tie, the professional judge's vote will prevail.

Friday night, Sunde will play DJ at a party arranged by the Pirate Bureau. Stockholm's digerati are expected to turn up to show support for The Pirate Bay.

(hope you had a good party, neighbours! we root for ya!)

[Penguin]

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-ends ... ng-090221/

(thats the attitude!)



As the first week of the trial came to an end, hundreds of supporters gathered Friday evening for a Spectrial Kopimi Party at a night club in central Stockholm. The party was thrown by the Swedish Pirate Bureau and saw live performances by several artists, a DJ set from Brokep and video art made from the movies featured in the trial.

It has been a long and exhausting week for all participants of the spectrial. To end it in style, Pirate Bureau threw a party last night, which turned out to be a huge success. Tickets were sold out just an hour after they started selling, and as the party got underway the optimistic kopimistic atmosphere among the participants couldn’t be mistaken.

“Right now, society is developing at a fantastic pace. That is immensely wonderful and everyone involved is having fun. Let us try and make it a good development,” said Johan Allgoth of the Pirate Bureau.

The cheerful spirit was not only due to the events in the first week of the trial (where the prosecution repeatedly failed to present any evidence) but also down to a supply of free champagne for all pirates in attendance.

“The Pirate Bureau operated for many years without economic resources and that was a very good way for us to work. Lately, we’ve had some money coming into the organization and we needed to put it to good use. Buying champagne for great people is definitely a good way to channel our resources, paying the poor artist another way,” Johan Allgoth told us.
Free Champagne for all the pirates

The Pirate Bureau has had a busy week in Stockholm, doing their part in the performance of the Spectrial theater. Their headquarters have been located in the S23K bus, parked outside the court. From the bus they created audio visual art, published op-eds and streamed impromptu parties with everyone welcome to participate.

Anyone with an instrument could come by the bus and add their piece to a composition called “Düsseldorf versus Bochum“, a recording which was premiered at yesterday’s party. Support for the pirate movement has never been so massive as it has this week, even coming from the Stockholm police.

“Late Wednesday night, we had some problems with the police because there had been complaints about the electrical generator outside the bus being noisy. The situation was resolved in 2 seconds and the police actually said they support us. Even the very people who are to uphold law and order love The Pirate Bay, doesn’t that tell something about the absurdity of the trial?” Allgoth said.

There was also political support for the defendants. During yesterday’s party The Pirate Bay was given the Freedom Prize by Swedish Moderate Party’s youth organization. Most importantly, however, the party offered some time to relax after hours in court, or listening to and translating the trial’s audio streams for days.
Brokep accepts the award while TiAMO drinks some more beer

Last night, artists Ollibolli, Tobias Bernstrup and Goto80 played live. On the walls were projections of the IRC channel so party-goers could see The Pirate Bay torrents being posted real-time. There was also video art made of the movies whose supposed sharing is cause for the prosecution in the trial.

As evening turned into night, brokep entered the DJ booth to keep the pirates dancing. Whether or not an anti-pirate party from the opposing side would have been successful is doubtful.
Goto80 playing his DJ-set

“I do not think the anti-pirates are partying tonight, I believe they are sweating. But we’d welcome them with open arms here. I think especially Henrik Pontén and Monique Wadstedt would make great additions to the party. Some of the more aggressive copyright-coterists wouldn’t fit here.”

“There are rules on how to behave, in nightclubs as well as on the Internet, and the way some of them behave they would probably be thrown out by the bouncers from the nightclub. And from the Internet.”

All in all it has been an exiting week for all the spectrial followers, most of who also actively participated. The party (more pics) was well deserved and turned out to be a great success. On Tuesday the trial will continue, and we will make sure to keep you updated on the latest developments.

[Penguin]

In the spirit:
http://www.crimethinc.com/
http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/

[Penguin]

Of torrents and darkwebs:

"Combining torrents with darknets for P2P privacy"
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/23/2245231

"Currently popular peer-to-peer networks suffer from a lack of privacy. For applications like BitTorrent or Gnutella, sharing a file means exposing your behavior to anyone interested in monitoring it. OneSwarm is a new file sharing application developed by researchers at the University of Washington that improves privacy in peer-to-peer networks. Instead of communicating directly, sharing in OneSwarm is friend-to-friend; senders and receivers exchange data using multiple intermediaries in an overlay mesh. OneSwarm is built on (and backwards compatible with) BitTorrent, but includes numerous extensions to improve privacy while providing good performance: point-to-point encryption using SSL, source-address rewriting, and multi-path and multi-source downloading. Clients and source are available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows."

http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu/

[Penguin]

Updates...

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay- ... ty-090303/

After two weeks of live broadcasted hearings on the Internet, the ‘Spectrial’ is coming to an end. This week both parties presented their closing statements to the court. Time for us to weigh up developments so far and look forward to the verdict.

Yesterday the prosecutor called for jailtime, while the prosecution presented its closing statements. Today the defense had its say and the trial officially ended.

The Pirate Bay trial started on February 16 with lots of press coverage, protesting pirates and people handing out free candy. As the days went by, plenty of information was presented by both the prosecution and defense.

So which elements are most relevant, and which side is ahead in the polls?

On day two of the trial the prosecutor announced that half of the charges against the four defendants had been dropped. The prosecutor couldn’t prove that the .torrent files that were submitted as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay’s tracker, and he had to let go of all charges that accused the Pirate Bay folks of ‘assisting copyright infringement’.

What remained is the claim that they were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Armed with several screenshots of web pages and torrents downloading films and music albums, the prosecution argued that this was indeed the case. The torrent files hosted on The Pirate Bay allow people to download and share copyrighted material - period - they argued.

The crucial part here of course is whether the defendants actually ‘assisted’ in making any files available, this will eventually be up to the judge to decide. The prosecution has shown that there are indeed torrent files hosted on The Pirate Bay, and that some of these indirectly link to copyrighted material. However, whether the defendants are assisting in making copyright content available remains doubtful.

The defense has argued that they are not ‘assisting’, and dragged a giant primate into court to prove it. On the third day of the trial Carl Lundström’s lawyer, Per E Samuelsson pointed out that the prosecution failed to prove that Lundström had been involved in any transfers of any copyrighted material. This became known as the now famous King Kong defense.

“The admins of The Pirate Bay don’t initiate transfers. It’s the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong,” Samuelsson told the court.

“According to legal procedure, the accusations must be against an individual and there must be a close tie between the perpetrators of a crime and those who are assisting. This tie has not been shown. The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström has personally interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia,” the lawyer added.

During the days that followed both sides tried to strengthen their case, but not much that was actually related to the ‘assisting in making available’ charges that are central to the case. The prosecution brought in more screenshots and some actual torrent files as evidence, and tried to get a better grip on the Pirate Bay’s anarchic ‘management’ structure.

The defense on the other hand, argued that there are many ways to share torrent files online. By playing a video in court they showed that The Pirate Bay is just one of many torrent trackers, and a tiny part of the download chain. One of the witnesses, Kristoffer Schollin from Gothenburg University, told the court that the Pirate Bay is an “open database” of .torrent files which he described as simply an advanced type of hyperlink.

In addition to detailing the charges, there was further debate on the damages claims from last week. While music and movie industry insiders claimed that piracy was responsible for a large part of the decline in sales of their respective industries, media professor Wallis told the court that the file-sharing is actually beneficial to the entertainment industry.

It is now up to the judge to review all the information presented by both parties and decide whether the defendants are guilty of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’.

If the decision was based purely on a big win via the media during the trial, there can be no question that The Pirate Bay won a decisive victory and proved to be even more popular than ever expected. However, as it stands, it’s difficult to find anyone - no matter where their preferences lie - who is willing to step out and say who they believe is going to prevail in the case overall.

What is pretty much certain is that this won’t end with the verdict that is due on April 17. No matter what the outcome it seems unthinkable that either side will accept a defeat. An appeal seems almost inevitable.

Stay tuned.

[treeboy]

I bet by the time they do get it shut down, theres some other option available - like some kind of darknet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_(file_sharing)

I have great faith in the ingenuity of hackers! (hackers as in guys who wanna know how stuff works, and code up new cool ways to do stuff..)

Can you give me a little more info about darknets, what they are, and how they work? I read the Wikipedia entry, as well as the info you posted about OneSwarm, but I'm still a little fuzzy.

Obviously, if I'm downloading torrent trackers from TPB and participating in a P2P network with that tracker, that is not a darknet. The info regarding who is using the torrent and what their sending is available to anyone who downloads the same tracker.

Now if I participate in a Bit Torrent community that requires invites in order to enter the community, and restricts the participation in their P2P network to community members, does this a darknet make?

[Penguin]

No, the idea of a darkweb is to make it hard to know who is sharing what, and who is passing data to whom, and all data is encrypted. And the system has no central tracker (the site) preferably so there is no central point of failure.

The trouble is that by definition on the Net the packets need to know where they are on their way to - the IP address. So that darkweb works by having a listed of trusted friends, who pass data only to each other, encrypted - you still need to vet these friends yourself. Freenet is a similar idea, but that one is very slow and meant for text mostly, not file sharing. At present darkwebs arent very well developed and they are slower than other systems. Theyre being looked into as a backup option if torrent technology is throttled by large ISPs or cracked down on otherwise.

Thats why private trackers ar popular - they do somewhat limit exposure, but are no guarantee against surveillance - not even when everyone uses encryption - then the IP addresses can still be found out relatively easy. You can also use blockilsts like Peerguardian or IP Block (Java for unixes) or a torret programs own blocklist, that blocks IP ranges known to be used by the likes of RIAA etc so your torrent client wont allow those IPs to connect to you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerGuardian

Other Criticism

Besides the original criticism of Version 1 being slow and buggy, most other criticism of PeerGuardian is around the actual technique used to block peers. Critics have pointed out that the blocklists are open to the public, and thus parties who may wish to circumvent PeerGuardian can actively check the list to see if their IP addresses have been blocked.

The blocklists are also managed by the public, but there is no fool-proof method on checking or reporting why an IP address or range are bad, nor on checking if the blocked IP addresses still remain bad. The list relies on the public to make submissions, and thus is vulnerable to attack itself (see above section on blocklist management issues).

[§ê¢rꆧ]

Pirate Bay has to win this, to show the way for the rest of the world.

Those kids are very brave, and clever. Maybe foolhardy. I respect them for standing up to this in court. I respect them for not being bought out. Remember Napster, how it turned into a crappy pay-to-download service when it was sold to the entertainment industry?

[Penguin]

You have to understand that Swedish laws (or the ones on other Nordic countries) wont land them in jail for years even if they are guilty.

I dont think anyone in USA would dare to try the same. Life in prison and millions in reparations? No thanks, most would say.

Not to mention they have both popular support and some political support.
And the raid on Pirate Bay earlier is widely perceived as US meddling in Swedish affairs.

Not to mention the FRA spying law that was rammed thru in Sweden, largely seen to be for letting Sweden spy on Russia for USA.

http://www.thelocal.se/12334/20080610/
Sweden's new wiretapping law 'much worse than the Stasi'

USA tried to affect our laws (Fin) about cheaper replacement medicines and medicine patents too - but were ignored. US gov wanted us to keep patents in force for longer, but this was rebutted.

We did get a new spy law yesterday thou, Im still seething thou I could see it coming..

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/20 ... ewhere.ars
http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2009/03/ ... 89012.html
"Parliament has passed the controversial reforms to the data protection law, the so-called "Lex Nokia" bill. The vote was 96 for, 56 against."
The bill, dubbed "Lex Nokia" because of the mobile phone giant's perceived advocacy for the law, angered unions and privacy rights advocates.

The law allows employers and other organisations that provide users with Internet service and e-mail to monitor IP traffic data. In practice, this means that employers can see who workers are e-mailing, when the message was sent, and the size of the e-mails and attachments. It will not allow them to read the contents of e-mails. (My comment: and it allows viewing of what web pages / IP addressess were viewed! And is for any operator, incl.. libraries, schools, flat buildings with shared internet)

Businesses say that this will allow them to clamp down on industrial espionage.

But opponents decry the measures as ineffective for preventing espionage, since any wily spy will simply use a personal e-mail account. They fear that the law will allow employers too invasive monitoring rights, such as watching what Internet sites employees access.

[stefano]

Pirate Bay founders found guilty

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 30m kronor (£2.4m) in damages. The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.
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How did they line their pockets? How does TPB make money, and is it a lot?

[stefano]

From TPB (the uploading shows no signs of slowing down, by the way):

Regarding Friday

On friday we will get the verdict in the ongoing trial. It will not be the final decision, only the first before the losing party will appeal. It will have no real effect on anything besides setting the tone for the debate, so we hope we win of course.

Since a lot of people and press are really interested in the outcome of this part of the spectrial, we've decided to hold a small press conference on friday at 13.00 swedish time (GMT+1 / CET). It will be held on Bambuser, no-one is invited physically to participate, only digitally.

The URL for the Bambuser-stream will be posted on the front page of the site on friday some minutes before 13. If you're from the press or just interested in hearing our thoughts about the outcome, you are welcome to join the stream and chat.

[§ê¢rꆧ]

Pirate Bay guilty (From The Local, "Sweden's News in English")
Published: 17 Apr 09 15:50 CET

The four men connected with The Pirate Bay were found guilty of being accessories to copyright infringement by a Swedish court on Friday, delivering a symbolic victory in the entertainment industry’s efforts to put a stop to the sharing of copyrighted material on the internet.

...

While Friday’s ruling is an important step in clarifying some of the legal issues associated with the distribution of copyrighted material in the digital age, it is by no means the final word.
With an expected appeal by the defendants, the case may eventually be heard by Sweden’s Supreme Court, with a detour through the European Court of Justice also a possibility, according to many experts.

Either way, it will likely be several years before a final ruling in the case is reached, by which time today’s bitTorrent technology may very well have been replaced by a new method for sharing files on the internet.