Landmark copyright trial against Pirate Bay gets underway
'They won't get a cent'
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The copyright infringement trial against the four men behind The Pirate Bay kicked off in Stockholm this morning.
Charges were brought against the defendants (Carl Lundström, Peter Sunde, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg), who are behind the operations of the infamous website, in January 2008.
The four are accused of being accessories to breaking copyright law and face up to two years in prison and a fine of 1.2m kronor ($143,500) if they are found guilty.
At a news conference yesterday The Pirate Bay remained characteristically defiant that the site would live on regardless of the outcome of the case.
“What are they going to do? They have already failed to take the site down once. Let them fail again,” said Svartholm Warg, according to TorrentFreak.
“It isn’t the site facing the courts,” said Sunde. “It has its own life without us.”
The Pirate Bay creators have continuously insisted that the website merely acts only as a search engine and does not carry any infringing content itself.
Unsurprisingly, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents 1,400 member record companies worldwide, disagreed with that stance.
“The criminal prosecution of The Pirate Bay is about protecting creators from those who violate their rights and deprive them of their deserved rewards. The Pirate Bay has hurt creators of many different kinds of works, from music to film, from books to TV programmes,” said IFPI boss John Kennedy on Friday.
“It has been particularly harmful in distributing copyrighted works prior to their official release. This damages sales of music at the most important time of their lifecycle.
“The evidence in this case will show that The Pirate Bay is a commercial business which made substantial amounts of money for its operators, despite their claim to be only interested in spreading culture for free.”
The Stockholm district court will also reportedly rule on the entertainment industry's compensation demands of around 117m kronor ($14m) for lost sales income.
But The Pirate Bay founders disputed the allegations that the website's operations were continuing to turn over a hefty profit.
“It does not matter if they require several million or one billion. We are not rich and have no money to pay,” said Sunde. “They won’t get a cent.”
Swedish police first raided server locations connected with the notorious site in May 2006, following pressure from the US government.
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall expects the landmark case to last 13 days. ®
COMMENTS
@Saucerhead Tharpe
I agree - there is nothing more annoying than buying the DVD or BluRay and then being given a 3 minute anti-piracy video that you cant skip. I've slapped the 10-25 quid down for that product - i dont need those lectures. and no, stealing a car is nothing like making a copy of a DVD anyway! Pure FUD!
anyway, back on topic - any pirate who's selling 'knock of Nigel' (poor people called Nigel these days! incriminated just by your name) would rip the DVD, edit those messages and be hawking off a better product than what I bought. how ironic, it sucks.
Re: Pirate or not ?
Most, if not all, copyright notices on CDs/DVDs that I've read strictly prohibit lending. I'm not saying it's right or reasonable, but it's there.
Re:Pirate or not?
quote:
"Isn't the borrowing a CD the same as downloading? Either way you get to listen to the music and no money goes to the producer of the CD."
....
Yes, which is why the pigopolists have restrictions on the boxes telling you not to lend or resell.. Have you been pirating for so long you don't recall a dvd or cd case ;))
As for me, I download a lot, I also buy a lot. I only have a finite amount of money I can spend on movies and music as I have yet to consider it worthwhile to take out a loan for dvd's.
Most DVD's I have bought are movies I previously downloaded first. If a movie was tripe I don't buy it and have saved myself £10-£15 and I buy something else.
At no point does anyone "lose" a sale as I really won't spend any more than what I do already regardless of if I downloaded or not. What I do have however is a dvd collection of around 300+ titles which I have managed to keep to 90% *great* movies, ones I really like and watch time and again rather than the crap hollywood sometimes shovels out.
The Pirate Bay and its ilk have helped me to make informed buying choices (isn't that what we are told to do?), and as far as I am aware they haven't broken Swedish law have they so wtf are the yanks doing. Lets hope the judge in the case is legit or its all gonna go pete tong.
Paris Hilton as thats a nice download if your stuck for one :]
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