AfterDawn: News

Pirate Bay founders confident of victory in trial

The founders of the infamous Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker remain confident that they will be victorious in the court battle over alleged copyright theft, which has gotten significant media coverage around the world since it kicked off. Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde founded The Pirate Bay in 2003. "We are quite confident we are going to win," Peter Sunde said.

In February 2009, the Pirate Bay recorded 22 million simultaneous users of the service. The site hosts no copyright infringing content whatsoever, but instead let's users download torrent files which can be used to download and share films, TV shows, albums, video games and everything else in between from other users.



Representatives for the movie, music and games industry are seeking about 115 million kronor (€10.6 million) in damages. A charge of "assisting copyright infringement" was dropped on day 2 of the trial, and instead the founders are charged with "assisting making available copyright material", which would be considered a lesser offense.

"We still don't think we have done anything illegal under Swedish law," Mr Sunde told BBC News. "We don't share any files; we just link to material." He went on to say that despite the verdict, the Pirate Bay will continue operating. "The Pirate Bay will continue. Nothing is going to happen if we lose, for a multitude for reasons, not least because we will immediately appeal," he said.

As would be expected, there has been a lot of comments from the entertainment industry in the course of the case. "We are... tired and sick of services like The Pirate Bay who have no understanding or respect for the creative community, and instead have their own financial interests at heart," Jonas Sjostrom, chairman of the Swedish Independent Music Producers Association, said.

John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI), said that the Pirate Bay has done "significant damage to the music industry as a whole". A written judgment by the Stockholm court will be issued on Friday.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 15 Apr 2009 8:26

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• 11 comments

• logan1957

  I can see the SIMPA and the IFPI are both as stupid as the RIAA in the States by trying to use the "making available" argument which has already been thrown out. Seems these morons can't come up with an original thought amongst them.
  
  They seem to completely oblivious to the fact that file sharing helps their business by increasing CD sales as has been proven by independent research, yet they still try and whine whilst having made more money than years previous. Can you say "G-R-E-E-D-Y?" Sure you can, cause that's all these clowns are is greedy, they want their cake and eat it too.
  Well, boys, I got news for you, unless the Swedish courts are completely off in la la land, they'll want to see the physical proof that The Pirate Bay is hurting you.
  How I can't see as they do not host any physical files only links like Yahoo or Google's search engines do, so where's the infringement?

  15.4.2009 08:47 #1

• pirkster

  Folks that expect to obtain something that doesn't belong to them for free are more greedy than those who legally profit in the free market.

  15.4.2009 16:31 #2

• nonoitall

  @pirkster:
  You do realize that the artists only see a tiny shred of the money that you shell out for a CD, right?
  
  [sarcasm]
  But yeah, the consumers who want to try before they buy are waaaaay greedier than the labels who line their pockets with 90% of something they didn't even create.
  [/sarcasm]
  
  Only a fool would believe that just because something is legal means that it is also moral.

  15.4.2009 16:59 #3

• jeff_2

  I will continue to illegally download music and flims when I feel like because I can. I no longer care about the big copperations. I am aware that what I do is illegal and immoral.
  
  However take Microsoft Word for example I need it to complete my work and finish University and I have to pay £60-£80 to do this. Why should I pay money to a clearly rich business? Yes there is somehting called supply and demand but I feel no reason to pay for something when I can get it for free.
  
  If they want people to stop downloading programmes and files illegally make it harder. It is as easy as typing any album into Google's search engine and adding .torrent at the end
  
  I hope the Pirate Bay wins. Someone or somthing needs to stand up to them and create the healthy competition within a mixed or free economy that they do not have.

  15.4.2009 17:45 #4

• joe777

  I would say that if there is a money trail from profit, then its all over for TPB folks. But if there is no trail then they are going to win for sure. I hope the boys win!!!!!
  
  @pirkster. The linux section @TPB is fantastic. All those open source, free software. Got to be of use eh? And all those movies, music, games and books that the creator him/herself uploaded to TPB. So ah suppose your right, for all your free stuff, go to TPB. Check it out to try before you buy.

  15.4.2009 18:20 #5

• bomber991

  Originally posted by jeff_2: However take Microsoft Word for example I need it to complete my work and finish University and I have to pay £60-£80 to do this. Why should I pay money to a clearly rich business? Yes there is somehting called supply and demand but I feel no reason to pay for something when I can get it for free.I've been getting by just fine with Open Office for the past 2 years of college, and if I really need to use Microsoft Office, then I can always go to the computer labs and use it for 'free'. Technically they charge me something like a $100 computer lab fee every semester, but whatever, it's there if I need to use it.
  
  The thing with Pirate bay. They host the files that point your bittorrent program to the trackers, that are also run by them, that then point the bt program to other users with those files. Technically TBP isn't officially hosting any files at all. The users host all the files, but TBP does point you to those users.
  
  Now morally, come on guys, there's no denying the fact that you'd have a hard time getting your BT program to download what you want if tracker sites like TPB didn't exist.
  
  The legal question though, is "Is giving directions to a program on where to go to download a copyrighted file in fact copyright infringement?" If I remember right, in Sweden there's a loophole that says no, this is not copyright infringement. It's different everywhere else though.

  15.4.2009 20:00 #6

• joe777

  ^^^^^^ What about spain?

  15.4.2009 22:25 #7

• cart0181

  Originally posted by pirkster: Folks that expect to obtain something that doesn't belong to them for free are more greedy than those who legally profit in the free market.There are those that would argue that the information, and it IS information, that they are obtaining should be free, by rights. They might also argue that the corporations are restricting the flow of information, by charging a fee for it, oftentimes for content they were not themselves involved in creating.

  15.4.2009 23:12 #8

• wrules

  Originally posted by joe777: ^^^^^^ What about spain?
  this politician of spain said that if people want to download music from this website illegaly, can't remember the name, it doesn't matter

  16.4.2009 14:39 #9

• joe777

  ^^^^^ Yeah that was what I was getting at. Torrent sites pointing to copyrighted stuff is legal in spain, as it also is in sweden as long as there is no profit involved.
  Cant wait till tomorrow for the verdict. Come on TPB!!!!!!!

  16.4.2009 16:45 #10

• Bozobub

  Quote:The thing with Pirate bay. They host the files that point your bittorrent program to the trackers, that are also run by them, that then point the bt program to other users with those files. Technically TBP isn't officially hosting any files at all. The users host all the files, but TBP does point you to those users.
  
  Now morally, come on guys, there's no denying the fact that you'd have a hard time getting your BT program to download what you want if tracker sites like TPB didn't exist.
  This is quite inaccurante, considering there are torrents that run ONLY on the "DHT" ("Distrubuted Hash Table") trackerless network, instead of just using DHT for additional seeds/peers. eMule, for example, uses a very similar approach for Kad, their serverless network (as opposed to the eD2K server-based network).
  
  For either p2p app, a properly-constructed "magnet" URI is all you need to start the transfer without using any central server.
  
  So, no, we WON'T have a hard time without TPB, ergo, it's not difficult to deny.

  17.4.2009 18:19 #11