New blog posting on the site says that no matter what “We’ve been here for years and will be here many more.”
Today Swedish public prosecutor Hakan Roswall formally charged four people responsible for operating The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker site, for accessory and conspiracy to break that country’s copyright law, which could lead to fines or up to 2 years in prison.
Hans Fredrik Neij, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundström, are accused of “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws.”
Charges include some 33 cases of alleged copyright infringement: 20 albums, 9 movies, and 4 computer games. Considering the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of different selections of each of these made available vis a vis torrent trackers on the site over the years I’d give anything to see what specific content the Swedish prosecutor decided to single out in the case.
Roswall is seeking damages of 1.2 million kronor ($185,000 USD ) and wants the confiscation of the 4 the suspects’ computers.
Evidence gathered by the prosecutor includes information provided by the suspects as well as interviews with staff at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency (APB), a non-governmental organization representing the entertainment industry.
One of the arguments in the case against them seems to be the fact that they sell advertising on the site.
“The company’s claimed business model is based on selling advertising to brands that wanted to reach its 10 million users in more than 30 countries, while paying nothing for the content that it uses to attract those users,” reads a statement by the IFPI.
John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI, which represents the recording industry worldwide, says: “The operators of The Pirate Bay have always been interested in making money, not music. The Pirate Bay has managed to make Sweden, normally the most law abiding of EU countries, look like a piracy haven with intellectual property laws on a par with Russia.
“We welcome the filing of these charges in Sweden. The evidence presented by the prosecutor shows that The Pirate Bay, which claims to be motivated by idealism, is really motivated by making money.”
Ludvig Werner, chairman of IFPI Sweden, says: “The Pirate Bay operation has caused massive financial damage to rightsholders. The profiteers behind The Pirate Bay have no interest in free speech, and they are not running The Pirate Bay because they love music and films. They are totally mercenary and are driven by the desire for personal wealth.”
But, as several people have pointed out, no matter the outcome of the case The Pirate Bay site will continue to exist.
“The Pirate Bay is not going to be down for a single minute. The Pirate Bay is now established in a number of countries, so there’s no one place in which to push the off button,” said Magnus Eriksson, a spokesman for pro-file sharing lobby group Piratbyrån.
As for them actually being convicted, he said that “It’s not very likely.”
“In the course of the investigation there have been attempts to bring up various things that The Pirate Bay has supposedly been guilty of. Before it was financial crime, and now this accessory thing seems to be the last straw for the prosecutor,” Eriksson pointed out.
To those that think piracy hurts music artists and filmmakers he says to them that “Artists have a lot of ways to earn money, and in that respect they are actually helped by file-sharing.”
“These charges will not help artists. Instead they are part of a wider campaign from the anti-piracy side to stop people downloading,” said Eriksson.
For its part a blog post on The Pirate Bay comments on the charges and repeats the same message about how no matter what the trial’s outcome The Pirate Bay will live on.
“In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site,” it reads. “The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many more.”
After having scattered their servers throughout several countries following the raid back in 2006, my bet is it will indeed continue to operate no matter the verdict in the case.
Related
- Day #1 of The Pirate Bay ‘Spectrial’ in Sweden
- Case Against The Pirate Bay Delayed Once Again, Possibly Until 2009
- IFPI Demands $2.56 Million USD from The Pirate Bay
- Swedish prosecutor gets an extension to figure out a case against the Pirate Bay
- Can CRIA Recover from the Largest Copyright Infringment Case In Canadian History?
“Charges include some 33 cases of alleged copyright infringement: 20 albums 9 movies and 4 computer games.”
*lol
This is a farce. Long live TPB.
Wow talk about lo-balling I’m surprised they aren’t trying to claim every single song game app movie or otherwise belongs to them and they have the sole right to prosecute every living creature in existence for alleged ‘copyright accessory’.
Well hopefully Sweden will stick to being the brightest of the bunch in this whole copyright fiasco and clam up those IFPI b-tards once and for all as these actions will not cause a single inkling of change to the dying models that they so desperately cling to.
I’m still wondering what happened to the potential court cases against what was it 7 different companies in Sweden doing black hat operations against TPB using Media Defender?
I Simply do not think anything will happen to them. This is the IFPI’s last stand…and they know it!
IFPI ? IFPI.. hmm.. Isn’t that the International Federation of Pirates Interests? XD
I don’t think much will happen out of this either. Don’t forget they are going after the people involved there hasn’t really been mention of taking down the site well not that i’ve seen anyway.
ai ai captain !!! there she blows…. pirates foreva.
“IFPI ? IFPI.. hmm.. Isn’t that the International Federation of Pirates Interests?”
LOL! I never really thought of it that way before but yeah…I guess you could call the international record companies pirates for the tactics they employ in trying to sue everyone they can.
IFPI are the main reason music is so widespread. They set the 180.000 OiNK captives free which are now free to upload everywhere else… and most of them do.
So really the IFPI probably has some great way to promote filesharing even more by being involved in this lawsuit. They probably want to force the pirate bay to close so that hybrid filesharing well get more popular. This geting everything in one place isn’t good enough.
Q re music downloads: Is $15 a month too much for a subscription to a site like Napster? If they pass laws that severely restrict P2P force ISPs to become the police etc. what do you think will happen? Won’t people just join Napster? People were okay paying for monthly cable/satellite TV before P2P came along. Eventually the record labels will drop their “sue the college students” tactic and try something else and that something else will probably be a tax or license fee on every device that can record (probably doubling or tripling the cost of PCs mp3 pla yers etc.) and every recordable medium.
I can’t see the current state of affairs lasting forever at some point either people will somehow scrape up enough balls to get the b.s. copyright laws changed or everyone will have Internet connections monitored 24/7 by Big Brother.
The Pirate Bay is alright. But they are hypocrites. Hey to make some money online for real check out www dot thespidersystem dot ws