AfterDawn: News

80% of torrents on Pirate Bay are for legal content says defendant

As week 1 of the Pirate Bay trial wrapped up last Friday Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, the public face of the torrent tracker site, said that as much as 80% of the content linked to is legal to share. He went on to suggest that the percentage of infringing content on The Pirate Bay is less than that found on YouTube.

Kolmisoppi said his figures were based on a survey of 1000 randomly selected torrents. He said that 70% - 80% appeared to be for legal content.



He also spent some time protesting questions from music industry lawyer Peter Danowsky, who wanted him to explain his views on copyright. Kolmisoppi refused to provide the explanation, characterizing the line of questioning as political rather than legal.

Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 23 Feb 2009 13:43

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• 6 comments

• grkblood

  While I appreciate aD's update on the trial it would be nice to hear an unbiased recap of what happened. I don't think its to much to ask for the main strengths and weaknesses of the Defendants. Im very interested in hearing them.

  23.2.2009 20:46 #1

• domie

  Even if it's true - it's not much of a defence to say that up to 80 % of your content is legal - that's the same as saying over 20% of your content is illegal - not the kind of thing you want to say in open court.

  24.2.2009 14:02 #2

• emugamer

  In helping the court visualize how much may be legal, they've given them reason to believe that it would be easy to track illegal content since the % is relatively small.

  24.2.2009 17:16 #3

• maxikaz

  he is right, on youtube are much more pirate content
  

  
  

  24.2.2009 17:23 #4

• hermes_vb

  80% my ass. Come on guys, do you really believe it? Not that I really care, but I'm not a kid anymore.

  1.3.2009 23:51 #5

• rovert34

  I think that only 20 percent are legal, all the rest is illegal, and everybody knows that. Why should we pretend? I think also it is impossible to filter all content. Besides, very often users search something that can hardly be legal (like porn). In my site http://truetorrent.com (though it is relatively new) I get many abuses every day asking to take off from the index some files. And I do that because I don't want pirate bay's problems... At the same time I am afraid it is impossible to get rid of them at all

  27.10.2010 08:29 #6