This isn't your average faceless torrent tracker, TPB has a fanatical following and a fierce determination to fight "The Man".

The admins will just go into hiding, deny any knowledge, wipe their drives, and get the site hosted in the Ukraine or somewhere.

And as mentioned, they are just a bloody search engine, they shouldnt have to act like they are hosting illegal goat porn or something.

The RIAA, or whoever, has nothing in this case. This won't be another Oink.

The Pirate Bay are technically legal so the prosecutor has nothing on them.

Now, if you want what the spirit of the law is, you're going to have a lot of people in power in your sights.

"Buy now on DVD" -> "This video is licensed ...." Fraud, really.

"By clicking OK you agree" -> valid contract post purchase. No, not really.

"We didn't know our contracted advertised contracted out to a firm that contracted to such a hive of scum and villainy". Tough titty. You did it.

So they can't go by the intent of the law. Too dangerous for the prosecutors: they may lose their jobs!

Pirate Bay is a great site, even if you are not into BT, just reading the letters they have had from lawyers is a hoot.

We need people like this to defend our freedom, most of the demands from lawyers are unfounded and merely amount to corporate bullying.

With any ongoing legal situation those in the right, in this case PB, (previously Novell in the SCO case, etc) tell the other to put up or shut up. This will give the law a chance to be used and demonstrated and the RIAA alikes to be told they are out of line!!

As Anon says, they're not gonna win this one. Even if they win the legal battles, there are plenty of places left in the world that'll happily host em.

Avast!

Added to which 1st 'anonymous coward', they haven't broken any Swedish laws.

This can only be an attempt to bring the case before a Swedish court as an effort to change the law in Sweden.

You're ignoring sweedish law. No matter what their profile is, if Sweedish law says its legal, then its legal. This will be a good test case to see what happens to similar sites in the future, as sweedish law seems to be very pirate-search-tool friendly.

They'll be more spring up. Or people into downloading will just revert back to swapping cd's and dvd's with their mates down the pub or at work.

TBP wont win this one. Has noone noticed who is being charged? The individual operators, not the organisation. The intention here isn't just to shut down TPB, but to get those who run it either fined so heavily they cant afford to set up again or locked up in jail for many years.

This is likely to kill TPB for good. It wont do anything for the many replacements that will pop up.

This is by far and away not the first attempt that 'the man' has tried to shut them down using bought or leant on stooges in the Swedish government / legal system.

There's a reason it hasn't worked sofar... Sweden has no intellectual property law, so how the hell they think that NOW it's going to work I don't know.

I suspect that the major players like RIAA and the MPAA have realised that they are utterly impotent with regards to shutting these boys down and have settled for making life as difficult as possible, dragging them through the courts etc, and the dirty tactics they got caught using recently.

Did anyone else notice that they are happy to accept money from fascists to keep them up and running? Legality aside, there are certainly moral arguments brought up here; the main ones that I can see are:

1) While it may be technically legal to host links to illegally copied media offered for download, is it morally acceptable if the media is copyright and the owners of the copyright state that they don't want you to offer it for free? (is this not a bit like saying: I know where there is a house that is unlocked and full of cool stuff)

2) If you say that you don't believe in the politics/policies of the people who support you, can you accept money from whoever you want?

(Incidentally, I'm not trying to start a flamewar, just interested in what people's opinions are.)

As jeremy said above, these companies just throw lawyers and threats at the 'small time' site admins in the hope they'll close it out of fear but it's refreshing to go on PB and see, not only a site that is ballsy enough to stay running but knowledgable enough to say 'We know the law, we have community support and we will see you in court if you can face the humiliation in which that will result, bring it on!'

I say, swill down yer grog and give a hearty Arrr to the good ship PirateBay

Legal or not, surely they know by now that if they take one site down, another five will spring up to replace it? I think they should turn a blind eye and publicise torrenting as little as possible, and think themselves lucky that most people don't know about it.

Yeah, you can take money from people without supporting their political views. Every high street shop does this daily.

Oh the last possible month under Swedish Law as the court allowed time extension runs out or else it will be confined to the circular file case permanently !

But given how weak the case is apparently or so it would seem , along with the fact they nicked the entire servers for the ISP in question and thanks to the case being undermined by the media defender leaked emails it will be an interesting case to watch !

@ jeremy: "most of the demands from lawyers are unfounded and merely amount to corporate bullying."

@ Tim Lake: "these companies just throw lawyers and threats at the 'small time' site admins in the hope they'll close it out of fear"

@ Stone Fox:: "RIAA and the MPAA ... have settled for making life as difficult as possible, dragging them through the courts etc,"

Pirate Bay could, in principle, turn the tables on all the lawyers involved by accusing them of abuse of the legal system: barratry is the word, I believe. Hang a few prominent IP lawyers by their heels from lampposts (a la Mussolini and so to speak), then stand back and watch the roaches scuttle for cover.

[I may misunderstand "barratry" but it still smells to me like significant abuse of the legal system that any honorable judge should step on toot sweet. Of course, the phrase "honorable judge" is more and moe becoming an oxymoron.]

Not quite the same though is it? You don't make your shops aware of your political opinions before you give money to them.

Having said that, I know a fair few pubs (most these days, maybe) who will kick people out and/or bar them for observing sexist/racist/homophobic/generally fascist points of view. I can't think, off hand, of any other shops/points of sale where the owners will become aware of their customer's political opinions. Although, thinking about it, the corner shop at the end of my street have banned the local racist shitbags.

for the likes of the RIAA and MPAA. These groups have done nothing to improve the entertainment industry only made it harder for us to enjoy it and given someone a second gold-plated Hummer. At what point will they just give in and realize the majority of people are tired of paying for someone else to live a life of luxury. The spirit of The Pirate Bay can never be destroyed and will survive long after it is gone.

"is it morally acceptable if the media is copyright and the owners of the copyright state that they don't want you to offer it for free?"

<shrugs> Dunno. But morality is not the same thing as law. It may or may not be immoral, but it's legal. What you are sugggesting is dangerously close to the viciously dishonest abuses some copyright holders have been attempting recently: the dishonest argument that copyright gives them rights to control not just their work, but what other people say /about/ it, used in several recent attempts by large corporations to censor negative reviews. I'm not willing to concede one inch in that battle, so as far as I'm concerned, TPB have the right to say what they like about other people's copyrighted material - whether that's "Love it", "Hate it", or "It's over there, go get it" - either way, it's their right of free speech and not something someone else can have copyright rights over.

As for the taking money from whoever dilemma? Well, as Mycho points out, shops do it all the time. Political campaigning organisations do it too: you don't accept money only from the hard-core of your grass-roots supporters, as after all any really broad campaign hopes to achieve support from as much of the political spectrum as possible. If what you're campaigning on is a general point of principle rather than a party-political line, there's no inherent contradiction or hypocrisy there.

TPB revealed in 2006 that they have a farm of backups already http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/08/71543?currentPage=1

Oh and i'm sure that Swedish law accepts Norwegian law as a precedent, oh it's in that same Wired article on page 3. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/08/71543?currentPage=3

I think the ‘Prosecutor is about to sink =)

I don't see how they could win this one..

If your concerned about people accepting money from immoral supporters or people with obviously conflicted views, try looking at your political parties funding roster some time. I guarantee you will find a lot of money coming from sources which really would seem to have no business supporting a mainstream political party!

Whats good enough for the politicians is good enough for TPB, no?

By the way, what exactly makes this Carl Lundstrom guy a neo-facist? Supporting an organisation which works to disseminate information to the masses (music and movies primarily i'll admit but its still information) and which stands up to and fights against authority doesnt sound like any facist ideal ive ever heard of...

If they take out puretna I might not have to buy more hard drives as often.

Just because other people do something doesn't make it right. I'd challenge anyone to get off with a crime having said "Bigger boys were doing it, so I figured that it was ok". As for politicians, I happen to be a member of a political party and if I found out that they were accepting payments from people/organisations who I thought were inappropriate, I would raise this matter with them. If it continued to happen, I would leave the party.

As for freedom of speech, I fully accept that people should be able to say whatever they want about the music/film industries and their products, I happen to think that much of their output is pretty lamentable. Having said this, I don't think that this justifies someone else in giving away products that the owners of are still trying to get money from. There is a transition from free speech into criminal behaviour - you can't stand up in a theatre and shout "Fire!", in the same way, think that saying "here are free copies of someone else's stuff, take it, it's free!" is getting pretty close to incitement or facilitating a crime to take place.

I would also point out that I don't think that this justifies the heavy handedness that many organisations are taking against individuals for 'personal transgressions'.

Well your wrong,

here's why

Morality is relative to the culture and or individual, Morality is a subjective value;

In 1920's america forces sterilization of alcholics was law in certian states and many people percieved this action to be morally correct

In 16th Century South America many civilizations believed that it was morally imperitive to sacrifice members of the community to keep the sun from falling down.

In 19th Century Britain it was morally acceptable to many men to refuse women the right to vote.

The list could go on .

Here is the modern dilemma;

Some people believe that it is morally acceptable as middlemen to charge extortionate prices for copyright materials and then to only give a small percentage of the profit back to the artist.

Others believe in response to this Privateering that it is morally justifiable to download free versions of this copyrighted material because they are unwilling to be exploited.

Whatever you believe is right is your opinion not Law, or absolute moral truth because there is no such thing as moral truth and moral relativity. As for me i am of the persuasion that if someone does not have the money to afford DVD's and the like but are constantly being remined through marketing and social interaction that other people can have these things but they can't by virtue of their deprived upbringing (itself caused by wanton corporate profiteering and wealth centralization) in psuedo-liberal democracies then they have every right to 'fight the power' .

What sort of world is it where a liberal (in the classic sense) party that calls for reduced government powers can be called fascist? SD want to return immigration control to the swedish government and let the swedish people decide on it, rather than have it dictated to them by the EU. That's it.

So your still a member of your political party after the "Cash for Honours" debacle? And dont claim your party wasnt involved because all of the major british parties were involved! That inappropriate funding went on for quite a while too so where was your protest then?

(This assumes that your in Britain, if your a seppo i merely laugh at your statement that your party doesnt receive funding from inappropriate sources!)

And just to clarify, my previous post was purely in response to your comment about the morality of accepting funding from someone with different views to you, not about the morality of torrenting in itself.

But by your statements in the above post i would read that sites such as ebay are as morally repugnant as TPB because a) they are providing a place where people can sell stolen or fake stuff and b) they remove part of the ability of the original distributors of items to sell to the marketplace. 2nd hand sales of items do not give any money to the artist and in fact stop money reaching the artist as the person who bought of ebay should have bought from a proper distributor. Thus they are taking money away from the artist just as torrenting does. That puts ebay in the same boat as TPB, by your logic does it not?