Pirate Bay in court, to-day!

[Alfred Joe's Boy]

Headlines from the GoogleNews page:

PirateBay founders guilty
ZDNet - ‎17 minutes ago‎
The Pirate Bay founders have been found guilty and ordered to spend a year in jail and pay a $4.5 million fine, according to the BBC.
Pirate Bay defendants to fight on CNET News
Pirate Bay Team Sentenced to Jail CNNMoney.com
InformationWeek - PC Magazine - Reuters - Register

Alfred Joe's Boy is simply ecstatic that the situation in Somalia is all straightened out now. He also wonders if Hugh Manatee Wins shares his feelings. How 'bout it, Hugh?

[Penguin]

Yeah, they got assfucked. Lets hope the verdict will change in higher courts - they are gonna take it further.

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay- ... ct-090417/

Just minutes ago the verdict in the case of The Pirate Bay Four was announced. All four defendants were accused of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter Sunde: Guilty. Fredrik Neij: Guilty. Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty. Carl Lundström: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000.

While only a few weeks ago, it seems like an eternity since the trial of The Pirate Bay Four ended and the court retired to consider its verdict. The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’ and demanded millions of dollars in damages. The defense did not agree, and all pleaded not guilty - backed up by the inimitable King Kong defense.

Today, Friday April 17, the court issued its decision: article continuously updated

“The court has found that by using Pirate Bay’s services there has been file-sharing of music, films and computer games to the extent the prosecutor has stated in his case,” said the district court. “This file-sharing constitutes an unlawful transfer to the public of copyrighted performances.”

brokep
Peter Sunde (born September 13, 1978) alias ‘brokep’:

Verdict: Guilty - 1 year in prison, damages to pay: $905,000

Peter Althin, brokep’s lawyer said, “I spoke to Peter and he wasn’t very surprised. A journalist he’d spoken to knew an hour before it was public that all four would be convicted. The verdict was leaked from the court. I have to think about what effects that can have on the sentence. It is unacceptable that the court is leaking.”
TiAMO
Fredrik Neij (born April 27, 1978) alias ‘TiAMO’:

Verdict: Guilty - 1 year in prison, damages to pay: $905,000

Similar to the other defendants, Fredrik Neij was not present to hear the verdict. He currently lives in Thailand from where he manages The Pirate Bay’s servers.

Anakata
Gottfrid Svartholm (October 17, 1984) alias ‘Anakata’:

Verdict: Guilty - 1 year in prison, damages to pay: $905,000

Anakata’s lawyer Ola Salomonsson said, “We’re appealing. It’s very surprising that the court has chosen to treat the accused as a team.”

Carl Lundstrom
Carl Lundström (born April 13, 1960)

Verdict: Guilty - 1 year in prison, damages to pay: $905,000

Carl Lundström’s verdict came as a surprise to most people since he was only remotely related to The Pirate Bay. His lawyer Per E Samuelsson announced that he has already sent in his appeal and the others are expected to follow soon.

The court said that the four defendants worked as a team, were aware that copyrighted material was being shared using The Pirate Bay and that they made it easy and assisted the infringements. It categorized the infringements as ’severe’. The judge said that the users of The Pirate Bay committed the first offense by sharing files and the four assisted this.

It appears that the court chose to not take any of the technical details into account and only judged based on intent. They find it clear that the intention of the defendants is to facilitate sharing of copyrighted works and based their verdict on this.

While the court did not agree with the plaintiff’s exaggerated estimates of losses, it still set the damages at 30 million SEK ($3,620,000). This a hugely significant amount and the court has ordered that the four should pay this amount between them.

The judge also stated that the usage of BitTorrent at The Pirate Bay is illegal. Rest assured, other torrent sites hosted in Sweden will be keeping a close eye on developments.

The defense put it to the judge that he had folded under intense political pressure. The judge denied this stating that the court made its decision based on the case presented.

At one point the judge was asked if he was concerned for his personal safety after handing down this decision. The judge said he hadn’t received any harassment and was quite surprised at the question.

While the judge won’t be getting any flowers for this verdict, Roger Wallis who spoke in favor of The Pirate Bay at their trial and received a mountain of floral tributes in return, noted, “This will cause a flood of court cases. Against all the ISPs. Because if these guys assisted in copyright infringements, then the ISPs also did. This will have huge consequences. The entire development of broadband may be stalled.”

Peter Sunde characterized the verdict as ‘unreal’ and said that he didn’t expect the jail sentence. He briefly spoke with Fredrik and Gottfrid and all were surprised with this outcome. In response to the fines Peter said: “We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay if we could. If I would have money I would rather burn everything I owned.”

Sunde has already explained that this decision does not mean the end of the line in this case. There will be an appeal which means we are still far away from the ultimate decision - possibly years away. Any appeal from either side must be submitted to Sweden’s higher Court by 9th May 2009.

Rasmus Fleischer, one of the founders of Piratbyrån commented, “The sentence has no formal consequence and no juridical value. We chose to treat the trial as a theater play and as such it’s been far better than we ever could have believed.”

As for the fate of the site, Peter has already promised that The Pirate Bay will continue. The site itself was never on trial, only the four individuals listed above.

This is a breaking news story, please check back frequently for updates.
Saved in: Anti-Piracy Gangs, Copyright Issues, Legal Issues, P2P and Filesharing
Tags: #spectrial, the pirate bay

Previously: Pirate Bay Loses - Courtroom Leak from “Trustworthy” Source

Next: Pirate Party Membership Surges Following Pirate Bay Verdict

[Seamus OBlimey]

[Penguin]

Haha, I love that man...

Nowadays I consider best music the stuff thats done by my friends and shared freely. Seems to be all the rage in electronic music circles anyways - sharing and bootlegging and dubplates etc, mixtapes...I dont see such a plethora of mixtaping in any other area.

I dont buy cds anymore either. The reason is simple. Last time I did buy a cd, the fucker came with copy protection - meaning it was not a Compact Disc (r), but some disc that would not play in my cd player. Well, fuck it, I ripped it with Linux (hell yeah, the comp and the ripper program DID read it, my cd player not) into mp3s and listened to it that way. So screw you.

Besides, GRAMEX, you fucks, you still owe me 20 euros for radio play. Wheres my money!

Luckily theres still the library. Loan out all the new CDs, rip and enjoy. That used to be legal too, dont know how it is today.

Im saving that image! Makes for great stickers.

[Penguin]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid= ... &art_pos=8

"Forbes is running a story discussing the verdict in the Pirate Bay case and its implications on file sharing, specifically with regard to Google. The article points out what most people on Slashdot already realize: Google provides essentially the same service that the Pirate Bay does. The Pirate Bay case may be far from over, accounting for appeals, but the Pirate Bay's assumption of being unchallengeable was shattered. The article raises the question of whether or not Google is untouchable in the matter. The story is quick to point out how the situation resembles a futile game of cat-and-mouse, but given how the Pirate Bay's confidence was ultimately broken, is Google beyond reproach?"

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/17/pirate ... e-bay.html

------------------------

And, haha -
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid ... art_pos=20

"Due to outrage over the verdict in The Pirate Bay trial, the Swedish Pirate Party has gained 3000 members in less than 7 hours. It is now bigger than 3 of the 7 parties represented in the Swedish parliament. 'Ruling means that our political work must now be stepped up. We want to ensure that the Pirate Bay activities — to link people and information — is clearly lawful. And we want to do it for all people in Sweden, Europe and the world, continues Rick Falk Vinge. We want it to be open for ordinary people to disseminate and receive information without fear of imprisonment or astronomical damages.'"

[Seamus OBlimey]

Google provides essentially the same service that the Pirate Bay does.

Too right. And by the same reasoning all disk and drive manufacturers, all ISPs and TelCos are guilty of "enabling".

Lock 'em all up!

[Seamus OBlimey]

And MCPS must owe me a few pence by now but it's hardly worth the price of a stamp to claim it.

[Penguin]

"Pirate Bay founder devices a Distributed Dollars of Denial - attack"

http://www.blogpirate.org/2009/05/10/pi ... rs-attack/

Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm (aka anakata) recieved a bill for the 30 million SEK that he, along with Peter Sunde (aka brokep), Fredrik Neij (aka TiAMO), and Carl Lundstrom, was fined in the verdict of the Pirate Bay trial just over three weeks ago. The bill inspired anakata to devise a plan involving sending money to Danowsky’s law firm, but not to pay the fine of course which they say will never be payed. Anakata’s clever plan is called internet-avgift, internet-fee in English. Anakata encourages all Internet users to pay extremely small sums around 1 SEK (0.13 USD) to Danowsky’s law firm, which represented the music companies at the Pirate Bay trial. The music companies will not benefit from this, instead it will cost them money to handle and process all the money.

The plan can be called a Distributed Denial of Dollars attack (DDo$). The plan is an away-from-keyboard DDoS attack. DDoS attacks involve lots of users overloading the victim with internet traffic damaging their ability to provide services. Money, instead of Internet traffic is used in this case. The victim is Danowsky’s law firm which represented the IFPI at the Pirate Bay trial.

A friend of anakata told Blog Pirate that the bank account to which the payments are directed has only 1000 free transfers, after which any transfers have a surcharge of 2 SEK for the account holder. Any internet-fee payments made after the first 1000, which includes the law firm’s ordinary transfers, will instead of giving 1 SEK, cost 1 SEK to the law firm. Since Danowsky & Partners Advokatbyrå is a small firm, all the transactions are handled by hand. Handling all payments will be time consuming, costing the law firm in productivity. Maybe it will even affect their success in other cases.

Make direct payments to
Danowsky & Partners Advokatbyrå KB. Plusgiro 79 31 21-5.

Additionally if after paying the internet-fee you determine that your payment was erroneous, Swedish law states that you can request the money back, putting an additional load on Danowsky’s law firm.

Since the Pirate Bay crew was provided with such clear, logical, and well explained methods for calculating the damages in the trial, an explanation on how the internet-fee was calculated is provided. Use the formula below, substituting anything anywhere, to check that the internet-fee really is 1 SEK.

The name internet-avgift, as well as the layout of the site is based on tv-avgift and they layout of its site. Radiojanst, a state owned company, is responsible for collecting TV license fees in Sweden.

Im really liking these guys!

[monster]

That is brilliant.

[beeline]

Posted on Tue, Jul. 21, 2009


Would-be buyer of Pirate Bay backpedals in court
TOSTERLING

The Associated Press

AMSTERDAM - The would-be buyer of Web site The Pirate Bay backpedaled in a Dutch court Tuesday, saying that it is uncertain whether the purchase will ever be completed.

Lawyer Ricardo Dijkstra said Sweden's Global Gaming Factory X would only buy The Pirate Bay if it can turn it into a "legitimate business."

GGF, a software company, said last month it planned to buy The Pirate Bay domain name and related Web sites for 60 million kronor ($7.8 million), with the deal closing in August.

Dijkstra said Tuesday that is conditional on whether "those assets can be used in a legal manner."

The Dutch court is hearing a civil case brought against The Pirate Bay and GGF by Stichting Brein, a Netherlands-based organization funded by various copyright holders groups.

The Pirate Bay provides an index to BitTorrent files, which can be used for trading media such as movies, music and computer games. The site has more than 20 million users globally. In April, a Swedish court found that four Swedish nationals connected with the site had helped millions of people download copyright-protected material. They were given one-year prison terms and ordered to pay a fine of 30 million kronor ($3.9 million, euro2.8 million).

Stichting Brein had originally tried to summon The Pirate Bay and the men fined in Sweden for the Dutch suit, but amended that to include GGF after the company's announcement last month.

Dijkstra said GGF was surprised it had been named in the case, since it supports paying copyright holders, and GGF doesn't have any say over the site at the moment.

Whether the deal will ever be completed is "very much the question" he said.

GGF has said it hopes to strike a deal with copyright holders as Apple has done with its iTunes store, though the Swedish company has not presented details of how its service would work.

Representatives of The Pirate Bay did not appear in court Tuesday.

Lawyers for Stichting Brein asked the judge for a summary ruling requiring The Pirate Bay to block all Internet traffic to its site originating in the Netherlands.

"It's evident that The Pirate Bay is violating copyright law," said lawyer Douwe Groeneveld, pointing to the Swedish ruling.

He showed the judge evidence that they had called The Pirate Bay administrators to court by an array of means, including mail, e-mail, Twitter and Facebook.

Dutch magazine Revu quoted one of The Pirate Bay's administrators, Frederik Neij, as saying he hadn't received any formal notification about a suit and did not plan to attend.

"Would a sane person trust information that he received just like that from the Internet? ... Of course we're not coming," the magazine quoted Neij as saying.

Stichting Brein's Web site has been unreachable for days due to denial-of-service attacks.

A ruling on the summary request is due July 30.

http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/features/high_tech/51310532.html

[§ê¢rꆧ]

Not related to the trial, but news about Pirate Bay nonetheless

§ § §

(Original Link)

Does the U.S. government want to seize The Pirate Bay's domain?
Thursday 08 July 2010 by Daniel Foster

For years Hollywood has put pressure on the American and Swedish governments to put a stop to that pesky little Pirate Bay bittorrent site. Despite a government raid, large fines and jail time, the site is more popular than ever. But according to TorrentFreak, the United States government planned an operation in coordination with ICANN to seize thepiratebay.org.

As part of a campaign called ‘Operation In Our Sites,’ the government has already illegally seized the domains of nine movie streaming sites. According to an insider source at TorrentFreak, ICANN took control of the domains and then handed them to the government– in clear violation of domain owner rights.

The government was poised to seize The Pirate Bay’s domain as well as MegaUpload.com, but changed its mind at the last minute for some unknown reason. This does not mean these sites are safe, however. As Professor Pouwelse of the Delft University of Technology put it, “Hollywood lawyers have discovered the soft underbelly of piracy.”

ICANN has declined to comment on the matter.

[Montag]

I hope Pirate Bay can keep on chugging... I don't like what they did to Isohunt.

[8bitagent]

Piratebay to me is the greatest thing to hit the internet since youtube, wikipedia, ebay and facebook:)

[Elvis]

I might be a stodgy old fuddy-duddy but explain again how it's okay to take and distribute someone's work without paying the asking price?

I realize that the larger battle is to protect freedom of information, but aren't many of these file sharing website owners making money (and lots of it)?---while the artist might be left with debts and little else for the ass-busting work they put into it?

I could see a political rationalization for lifting mass-market works of evil megacorps but where is the line drawn?

I've had this discussion with some file-"sharing" friends who just say, "Hey, once it's digitized, fuggetabout it"---as if digitizing it somehow places it in the public domain. I can't quite get the ethics of this.

[SonicG]

I might be a stodgy old fuddy-duddy but explain again how it's okay to take and distribute someone's work without paying the asking price?

I realize that the larger battle is to protect freedom of information, but aren't many of these file sharing website owners making money (and lots of it)?---while the artist might be left with debts and little else for the ass-busting work they put into it?

I could see a political rationalization for lifting mass-market works of evil megacorps but where is the line drawn?

I've had this discussion with some file-"sharing" friends who just say, "Hey, once it's digitized, fuggetabout it"---as if digitizing it somehow places it in the public domain. I can't quite get the ethics of this.

Although I download a ton, I agree in theory. We've been at this crossroads for quite a while though. How to stop illegal d/ls and how to get people the product they want. Now that iTunes is there, and eMusic and others, I would imagine that cut down a bit on illegal sharing but there, like videos now, the pirates were ahead of the corporate. I would gladly pay the one dollar (what should be the real value) of getting a limited time d/l of a movie to my computer within 15 minutes from the original source. But they aren't there yet. I guess Netflix is doing something like that now but living outside of the US has all sorts of restrictions so I may have to stick to illegals for a while...Even with iTunes, the stuff is way overpriced- costing nearly the same as a physical CD although there is no product and no physical distro...Most of the underground bands I know are just doing limited vinyl only, maybe with d/l codes included and hoping it will get them enough notice to be able to do small-scale touring...