Pirate Bay to sue music industry

Website block provokes damages demand

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 16th April 2008 12:08 GMT

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The Pirate Bay is threatening to seek damages from music industry lobby group The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for blocking access to its website.

In February the IFPI went to court to get Danish ISP Tele2 to block access to the website accusing it of aiding and abetting copyright infringement.

A blog post from one of Pirate Bay's administrators, Brokep, suggests the organisation will seek damages for the blocking should Tele2 win the ongoing court case. Tele2 is appealing the court's verdict, but the DNS block remains in place until the case is resolved.

The block had limited effect - the blog post quotes alexa.com figures showing Pirate Bay rose from 29th most popular site in Denmark to 24th as a result of the publicity around the court case.

Brokep said the money raised would be used to set up a fund to help aspiring Danish artists.

The amount demanded is not revealed but Brokep writes: "We will demand an amount of cash that we feel will be reasonable (Not counting like Ifpi themselves, we actually understand economy a bit more [sic])."

On 1 April the IFPI demanded $2.5m from Pirate Bay in damages for compensation for downloads of 24 albums, nine films and four games.

The Pirate Bay has previously promised to demand compensation from the Swedish government after police seized its servers. ®

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