Pirate Bay Trial Gets Massive Online Coverage

[Monseratto]

Hehe...dami nakikinabang sa mga *******s dito...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/15965...ml?tk=rss_news

The eyes of the file-sharing community remained on Sweden on Tuesday as the trial of four men from The Pirate Bay continued in Stockholm.

The men are charged with copyright-related violations in connection with The Pirate Bay, a Web site that lets users search for *******s, or small information files that coordinate the download of content via the Bit******* P-to-P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing protocol.

The Pirate Bay has been in the gunsights of the movie and music industry for years, as it is one of the most popular sites for finding *******s. Although The Pirate Bay does not store the content, it does facilitate locating it.

The music and movie industries have typically settled legal battles against individual file sharers, but ultimately those pursuits have had little impact on the availability of content under copyright on various file-sharing networks such as Bit*******, eMule and others.

For Sweden The Pirate Bay trial represents the first big test of its copyright infringement laws related to file sharing. It's also been closely watched because of the unapologetic attitudes of the site's creators, who maintain that content should be free and intellectual-property laws should be overhauled.

Those defendants -- Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Carl Lundström, are pleading not guilty on all counts. They could face prison time, and Swedish authorities want them to forfeit 1.2 million Swedish kronor (US$140,000) in advertising revenue generated from the site.

In addition, the Motion Picture Association is seeking 93 million Swedish kronor in damages, and the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) is seeking €1.6 million (US$2.06 million) in damages.

Supporters of the defendants have mocked the trial, summing it up as a state-funded kangaroo court exercise. They've dubbed the proceedings "Spectrial" and created a Web site documenting the latest developments. Twitter, of course, is also being used to communicate information from the trial.

"#Spectrial is so boring," Sunde twittered on Tuesday morning. "It's sleepy."

But by other accounts, Tuesday's proceedings saw Swedish prosecutor Håkan Roswall introduce evidence related to the seizure of at least 25 servers plus other hardware in five locations in Sweden in May 2006. The trial is expected to go on for at least 13 days.

In Sweden, the trial is top news, and most major newspapers are giving it front-page coverage. In a rare move, Swedish radio is also broadcasting the trial live.

Cameras and video recorders aren't allowed in the court room, and the trial is conducted in Swedish. But Pirate Bay supporters are frequently video-blogging developments in English from inside the court house via Bambuser.com, a Swedish mobile-video streaming service.

Parked outside the court house is the S23K, a modified city bus belonging to Piratbyrån, or a group called the Bureau of Piracy. Pirate Bay supporters took it on a European tour last summer before parking it in near Belgrade for the winter. It's now back in Stockholm near the court house, acting as a press center for The Pirate Bay.

[Monseratto]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/...ogy/pirate.php

Prosecutor drops some charges in Pirate Bay case

In only the second day of one of the highest-profile copyright trials of the digital era, a prosecutor in Stockholm on Tuesday dropped portions of his case against The Pirate Bay, a Swedish file-sharing service that the movie and music industries have portrayed as their No.1 enemy.

The prosecutor, Hakan Roswall, amended the charges so that the four defendants - Hans Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström - were no longer accused of helping users of the site infringe copyrights. Instead, the men are now charged only with making copyrighted works available via The Pirate Bay.

Magnus Eriksson, co-founder of Piratbyran, a Swedish group that supports file-sharing, portrayed the move as a big setback for owners of the content.

"What's left of the charges will be very difficult to prove," he said.

But Peter Danowsky, a lawyer for the music companies involved in the case, disagreed, saying that the change would actually simplify the charges against The Pirate Bay.

"It's a largely technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay," he said. "In fact, it simplifies the prosecutor's case by allowing him to focus on the main issue, which is the making available of copyrighted works."

The move to amend the charges followed a highly technical rebuttal by the defense of Roswall's initial presentation to the court on Monday.

The trial has gotten under way amid a carnival scene in Stockholm, with the four defendants arriving in a gaily painted bus. Bands of bloggers have camped out in bars and cafés to track the trial, and there was even a brass band on hand.

"It's a nice atmosphere, like a big stage," Eriksson said.

The turnout reflects the perceived importance of the trial for both sides. The music and movie industries have made The Pirate Bay a major focus of their legal battles against piracy, because of its status as the largest so-called Bit ******* tracker, a directory of movies, music and other media files available on the Internet.

In Sweden, where copyright laws are looser than many other European countries or in the United States, the defendants have sometimes been portrayed as folk heroes, serving as the inspiration for the Pirate Party, a political organization dedicated to keeping these restrictions lax.

In addition to the criminal case, the music and movie companies are pursuing compensation claims worth a combined 120 million Swedish kronor, or about $14.3 million, against The Pirate Bay. The media companies contend that the actual total lost through copying is much greater than that, but that these are the amounts attributable to specific instances documented in their case against The Pirate Bay.

"The evidence in this case will show that The Pirate Bay is a commercial business which made substantial amounts of money for its operators, despite their claim to be only interested in spreading culture for free," said John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, in a statement.

The four defendants have denied the charges.

The trial is set to run for three weeks, with formal opening arguments from both sides set for later this week, following the prosecutor's initial presentations.

[ghosthunter]

Go Pirate Bay!! :pirate2::pirate2::pirate2:

[Monseratto]

What's the legal implications just in case matalo sila? Will this mean any sites that provide the ******* files such as mininova and ******* will be endangered?

[Horsepower]

Even if Piratebay gets shut down, there are a lot of other groups willing to replace and continue their work.

The framework has been laid, the technology is already there.

US and Europe, it seems, have been overlooking the pirate sites hosted in Russia (now, that's a gentle giant with lots of efficiently designed H-Bombs and billions of daily oil money).

The next wave of ******* sites may also be hosted in Venezuela where US and Europe laws aren't respected.

[ghosthunter]

What's the legal implications just in case matalo sila? Will this mean any sites that provide the ******* files such as mininova and ******* will be endangered?

The main battle has already been won. ******* sites are not guilty of video/software piracy because the ******* servers do not host the actual files on them. It also demonstrates that US copyright laws cannot and should not be enforced beyond it's geographic and political borders.


In the Philippines, the only reason why in the last few years there is a relatively active anti-piracy drive is because of US political pressure on the current government to do something about it in exchange for monetary and political aid. I will not be surprised if the local anti-piracy drive slows to a crawl in the next few months given the current state of government relations and economic problems in the USA.


Also, it seems one or more of the local consultant companies that the NBI and BSA uses for these intellectual property raids are in financial straits due to the current economic crisis. If they fold up, the local anti-piracy drive might be left sailing without a compass.

[ghosthunter]

the point is if we know how to use the *******s, don't go out bragging about it to almost everybody we know. in that way, ma-lessen ang exposure. and tuloy ang ligaya.

so let us all not post in this thread at all.

OldBlue, is that you? You sound almost normal. I see you have taken your normal pills again.


Sharing is caring.

[CVT]

Call it natural and unbiased peer-to-peer affection......

7505:bravo:

[leinahtan]

the point is if we know how to use the *******s, don't go out bragging about it to almost everybody we know. in that way, ma-lessen ang exposure. and tuloy ang ligaya.

so let us all not post in this thread at all.

Oh, are you sure you know how to use it? How could a ******* survive without seeds? Therefore you must brag it to everyone to keep it alive. As we put it, sharing is legal.

[Monseratto]

A ******* is useless w/o seeders. Also the ******* file has to be placed somewhere like a search engine. Mahirap mag hanap ng ******* file kung mag-hide and seek yung mga search engine unless may account ka sa usenet.