Swedish public broadcaster will broadcast live audio of the copyright infringement case against the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker site next Monday, February, 16th.
The copyright infringement case against BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay begins next Monday and Swedish public broadcaster SVT says it will be there to stream audio of the trial online.
Television broadcasts from a trial are not allowed under Swedish law, but it will be able to upload photos and documents for audiences to see.
“It is a major trial with exciting witnesses and expert interviews,” says Erik Fichtelius, head of SVT 24.
The four founders of The Pirate Bay face charges as accessories in violating copyright law, helping others ‘breach copyright laws’ and of making illegal gains by selling advertisements on the the BitTorrent tracker’s website.
“The most interested are a group of experienced users, so they will find the right,” continued Fichtelius. “This is the first time we are only streaming a trial, not Broadcaster. It is a development that we are only seeing the beginning of yet.”
Sweden’s Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge has criticized the trial in a recent op-ed piece on The Local.
He writes:
The trial against the operators of The Pirate Bay, which starts next Monday, offers a glimpse into these two possible futures going head to head with each other. The trial is not about copyright infringement, it is about the power over knowledge and culture as such.
Behold, for instance, the prosecutor’s list of witnesses. Usually, you would expect a witness to have some sort of firsthand observation of the action being on trial. Here, it’s bigwigs from across the media industry. Managers of institutions. It’s not the operators as individuals that are on trial, it’s what the establishment regards as a threat to their society – the pervasive youth culture of freely exchanging culture and knowledge.
Consider, for instance, what one of the witnesses said in an interview recently. Rasmus Ramstad, CEO of Svensk Filmindustri, stated that all Internet providers that allow (!) access to sites like (!) The Pirate Bay should be shut down. This amounts to abolishing the postal secret, and requiring the Internet as a concept to be closed down.
What scares the establishment is that everybody are equals on the net. Everybody can share and receive freely. There is no central point of control. They are fighting tooth and nail to bring back the good old days, where there was a hard division into approved senders and passive consumer receivers, where the approved senders would compete for the wallet of the consumers. Essentially, they are trying to turn the Internet into a cable TV network.
As people turn to the Internet to view video content copyright holders will increasingly try to monopolize the Internet as a sort of tube that can be capped, throttled, or even filtered as they see fit in order to protect their bottom line.
The trial against The Pirate Bay really is about more than copyright infringement, it’s about access!
Combined with the recent RIAA trial against accused file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum expected to be streamed online, it’s satisfying to know that copyright infringement cases are finally seeing the light of day. Too often defendants have been badgered into submission in closed courtrooms away from the public spotlight. Why? Because it would surely make many realize how outdated our copyright laws really are and how irrational damage claims can be ($9250 per song?)
Now I only wish SVT 24 would include English subtitles with the trial.
[Hat Tip]
jared@zeropaid.com
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