Michael Jackson Sues The Pirate Bay

The "Prince of Pop" joins the list of artists claiming damages from the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker site.

Michael Jackson and has apparently decided to join a list of artists suing The Pirate Bay for $100 million in damages they say have been caused by the BitTorrent tracker site’s "facilitation of copyright infringement."

"The list of artists is not ready yet but the compensation claims will amount to more than $100 million (619 million kronor)," Web Sheriff President John Giacobbi told E24.

Several months ago the Village People and ABBA hired WebSheriff also decided to go after The Pirate Bay for alleged "facilitation of copyright infringement, thus far to no avail. They were then followed by Prince, who also has not had much luck so far (he also went after YouTube if you recall).

The Pirate Bay also says that Bob Marley is suing them, which means that being he has long been deceased, that either Universal Music, which owns Island Records, the label through which Marley recorded most of his global hits, such as "One Love" and "I Shot The Sheriff," or Fifty Six Hope Road Music Ltd, which is owned by the Marley family, has also decided to join the fray.

From The Pirate Bay blog:

Websheriff, oh this sheriff

So, our old friend Websheriff has just dropped a press release that he’s going to sue us for 100 million dollars. I can see his Dr. Evil grin when he said that number to the press.

They’re going to sue us for Prince, The Village People, Bob Marley, UB40 and Michael Jackson. The common thing for all of these artists are of course that noone listens to them anymore. And hey Michael – do you want us to pay you in small kids maybe?

Websheriff says he wants to sue us in Sweden and in the US. Most of us civilized people understand that people cannot be sued outside their own domicile – aka we can not be sued outside of Sweden. So good luck with that. It proves that the sheriff is just after making some headlines!

Oh on a side note Mr Sheriff – you’re saying to the press that you have not sent PI’s after us? And that we’re paranoid to think that we have had PI’s after us? Well, read the police investigation – there’s statements from a PI company in there. But of course you’re not interested in reading over 4000 pages, it’s too hard.

The good thing about this is that we just broke TorrentSpy’s law suit. Maybe time to call Guiness, we like to break world records and we just broke one I think! Hooray for TPB!

What’s interesting, as the post points out, is the claim that Web Sheriff also plans to sue The Pirate Bay in the US as well. The case surely couldn’t make much headway in Sweden, since torrent files are not copyrighted material and that’s all the site hosts, but in the US it could being that our copyright laws are much less progressive and stifling as they are in other countries – especially Sweden.

TorrentSpy anyone? It ultimately received a default judgment in the case, but the fact that the case was allowed to even proceed being that it was hosted on foreign soil by non-US citizens, owned by non-US citizens, and accessible only by non-US citizens , you have to wonder what kind of traction the case could get in an American court. That’s no doubt the reason why Web Sheriff may be planning to file suit in the US as well.

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