Day #3 of The Pirate Bay Trial – Users Responsible for Uploads

It might not have been as dramatic as day 2 of the trial, but the day wasn’t void of the defence casting doubt on the prosecutors charges.

The days events revolved around the philosophy on how ThePirateBay is run. The prosecutors have been tasked to try and figure out a way to make the creators of the website responsible for the actions of their users while the defence is arguing that users are responsible for what they upload.

The prosecutors that represented major companies of the copyright industry said that ThePirateBay made it impossible for authorized services to flourish. They referred back to 1 download is 1 lost sale and that hundreds of dollars were needed to compensate not only market damage, but internal damage as well.

The defence responded to the accusations saying that it’s not possible to tell how many people downloaded a said work through ThePirateBay. One might say that the numbers provided denote ‘Clicks’, not ‘downloads’, and what if a user re-uploads the file elsewhere?

“We don’t know who the uploaders are. We don’t know how the uploaders came to possess the material, that is to say, the protected material. We don’t know how Fredrik Neij may have influenced the uploader,” said (TheLocal.se) Nilsson, according to SvD’s account.

“And perhaps more importantly, how did he promote this, other than that he, via The Pirate Bay, provided a legal function and technology.”

“I submit that the torrent files one finds on The Pirate Bay can also be found by other search engines, like Google,” he said.

Additionally, the defence argued that one can find child pornography on another service known as Blocket, but Blocket isn’t responsible – rather, the user is responsible.

All in all, the defence is confident that they’ll win this case on the basis of criminal law. Things have been looking up for ThePirateBay so far since half the case has already been won in the span of one and a half days. While the remaining charges haven’t been dropped, there’s plenty of doubt to go around over if ThePirateBay admins are liable for damages in the remaining charges.

Further reading:
Day 2
Day 1

NOTE: The trial is being covered via twitter HERE as it occurs, with the legend for abbreviations HERE. You can also watch a quick video recap in English HERE.