Pirate Bay

The Court of The Hague has handed down another ruling that restricts access to The Pirate Bay website. The Court has forbidden the Dutch Pirate Party from linking to, operating or listing websites that allow the public to circumvent a local Pirate Bay blockade. The political party is further ordered to shutdown its reverse proxy indefinitely and block Pirate Bay domains and IP-addresses from its generic proxy.

After two Dutch ISPs were ordered to censor The Pirate Bay earlier this year there was an influx of visitors to Pirate Bay proxy sites. In an attempt to take these proxies offline the Hollywood funded anti-piracy group BREIN obtained an injunction against one of the sites and used this to convince others to shut down as well.

The list of secondary targets included the local Pirate Party, who initially refused to give in to the demands but were later ordered to take their reverse proxy offline by the court. The Pirate Party claimed that the case against them amounted to a restriction of their freedom of speech, and sued BREIN over the order.

The Court of The Hague then delivered its verdict, which confirms most of the earlier injunction. The Pirate Party is now forbidden from encouraging the public to circumvent the Pirate Bay blockade and from listing or hosting tools that can enable others to do so. Should the Pirate Party fail to comply with the Court's ruling it faces fines of EUR5,000 per day to a maximum penalty of EUR250,000.

Pirate Party chairman Dirk Poot told TorrentFreak:

For many who where hoping for the law to come to the rescue of basic civil liberties, today must be a rough awakening. This ridiculously broad verdict allows BREIN to take down any site that is posting information that displeases their censors.

A first in Dutch law is that a judge has now also ordered a generic proxy to filter internet traffic as well. BREIN has created jurisprudence that will now allow them to come after any open proxy they have set their sights on.

After its previous bandwidth provider had to take the site offline due to concerns over an aggressive Hollywood injunction, The Pirate Bay is back in operation with a surprising new supplier. In a move claimed to stand up for freedom of expression , the Swedish Pirate Party became the site's new host.

Following an injunction obtained by several major Hollywood movie studios, the previous Pirate Bay bandwidth provider CB3ROB took the decision to take the site offline while it digested the legal implications.

That meant that for several hours The Pirate Bay, for the first time in many months, was taken offline. But it soon returned via the Pirate Party.

Today, on 18 May, the Swedish Pirate Party took over the delivery of bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, says the Party's Rick Falkvinge in a statement: We got tired of Hollywood's cat and mouse game with the Pirate Bay so we decided to offer the site bandwidth. It is time to take the bull by the horns and stand up for what we believe is a legitimate activity.

The Pirate Party say they will provide bandwidth to the site's homepage and search engine. The Pirate Bay is a search engine, and as such it is not responsible for the results, notes Falkvinge.

Film Studios led by Disney, Universal and Columbia have decided that the best way to deal with the filesharing site Pirate Bay is to kill it off for good.

Under the auspices of the MPAA, they have launched a new legal action in the Swedish courts aimed at closing down the site permanently. They say that despite the three founders - Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg - having been sentenced to a year in the clink, they are nonetheless continuing their nefarious operations.

The suit also alleges that Reservella, the Seychelles-based company that The Pirate Bay founders insist owns the website, is in fact merely a front company owned by Neij. Naturally, the three former Pirate Bay principals deny this.

When Pirate Bay lost the earlier lawsuit brought by International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the entertainment companies it represents in the Swedish courts last April, the founders were also fined $3.6 million. However, Internet cafe company Global Gaming Foundry said in June it would buy Pirate Bay for $7.8 million and turn it into a legitimate operation. GGF has since had second thoughts and the MPAA has vowed to seize any money from the sale that might end up in the hands of the Pirate Bay founders.

Based on article from torrentfreak.com

The Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has won its court case against The Pirate Bay. The Amsterdam court ruled that the site must cease all operations in The Netherlands within 10 days, or else pay penalties of 30,000 euros ($42,300) a person, per day.

BREIN's lawyer argued that The Pirate Bay is responsible for millions of copyright infringements every day, and that the site should therefore be blocked to visitors from The Netherlands.

After the announcement of torrent site The Pirate Bay being sold to Sweden's Global Gaming Factory, which are to be list on the Swedish stock market, it has been learnt that one of the mega-popular site's co-founders, Peter Sunde, has confirmed comprehensive changes, which might result in the iconic web service switching to a new business model.

The Pirate Bay is also thinking of stopping directly hosting torrents, which are used to connect file sharers with each other.

It should be noted that these announcements have come at a time when the possibility of stiff fines and jail terms to be imposed on the Pirate Bay founders looms large.

It is being predicted by many that it is a good thing for Pirate Bay to decentralize its torrent tracking service and hosting torrents across a range of third party services, since it could discourage any future attempts by the recording industry and Hollywood, to attack the BitTorrent file sharing service via legal means.

It is also being forecast that soon the Pirate Bay could become a legitimate pay-to-download service, going by an announcement from Global Gaming Factory CEO Hans Pandeya, which confirm that they would work with copyright owners to see that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.

All four defendants linked to the file sharing website PirateBay have been found guilty of assisting in making copyright content available.

Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were each sentenced to 1 year in prison with a $905,000 fine.

The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were assisting in making copyright content available and demanded millions of dollars in damages. The four all pleaded not guilty.

The court has found that by using Pirate Bay’s services there has been file-sharing of music, films and computer games to the extent the prosecutor has stated in his case, said the district court: This file-sharing constitutes an unlawful transfer to the public of copyrighted performances.

The court said that the four defendants worked as a team, were aware that copyrighted material was being shared using The Pirate Bay and that they made it easy and assisted the infringements. It categorized the infringements as severe . The judge said that the users of The Pirate Bay committed the first offense by sharing files and the four assisted this.

It appears that the court chose to not take any of the technical details into account and only judged based on intent. They find it clear that the intention of the defendants is to facilitate sharing of copyrighted works and based their verdict on this.

While the court did not agree with the plaintiff’s exaggerated estimates of losses, it still set the damages at 30 million SEK ($3,620,000). The judge also stated that the usage of BitTorrent at The Pirate Bay is illegal.

The defense put it to the judge that he had folded under intense political pressure. The judge denied this stating that the court made its decision based on the case presented.

Peter Sunde explained that this decision does not mean the end of the line in this case. There will be an appeal which means we are still far away from the ultimate decision - possibly years away. Any appeal from either side must be submitted to Sweden’s higher Court by 9th May 2009.

As for the fate of the site, Peter has already promised that The Pirate Bay will continue. The site itself was never on trial, only the four individuals listed above.

Implications

Based on article from telegraph.co.uk

Mark Harding, director of intellectual property at KPMG, said the verdict was a big shot across the bows of file-sharing sites. He expects the case will spur prosecutors across the globe, especially in the UK if proposed copyright laws come into force, to take a tougher stance against file-sharing websites. But warned that only a sea change in consumer’s attitude to downloading will put end to the practice.

Simon Levene, joint head of DLA Piper’s intellectual property division, warned that the ruling could also have implications for legitimate websites, including Google, Facebook and YouTube, which host or provide links to copyright material.

And as Phantom pointed out on the Melon Farmers forum, the decision may have opened up websites to be liable for general illegal content on linked sites. Not just for the narrow copyright infringement mentioned above.

Update: Swedish ISP continue to allow access to PirateBay

28th April 2009. See article from neowin.net

After the recent Pirate Bay lawsuit and sentence, there has been a lot of noise made about the questionable attitude of the website, regarding complying with their fines. It seems Swedish internet service providers aren't too keen either; according to ZeroPaid, they're refusing to block the website because, the ruling applies to those charged and convicted, not to them.

Update: Appeal

27th November 2010. See  article from  theregister.co.uk

Three men who were found guilty of being accessories to breaching copyright laws in The Pirate Bay trial in April 2009 lost their appeal against the ruling in a Swedish court.

Peter Sunde, Carl Lundström, Fredrik Neij saw their prison sentences reduced in the Svea Court of Appeal in the past few minutes.

However, the men have been ordered to pay more in damages, with individual fines jacked up from 32m kronor to 46m kronor each.

But court officials took the decision to reduce the three men's prison sentences based on what it described as an individualised assessment .

As a result Neij will be imprisoned for 10 months, Sunde to eight months and Lundström to four months.

The TPB four were handed one-year prison sentences and hefty fines for their involvement in the running of the infamous BitTorrent tracker site last year.

Immediately following the verdict the men said they would take their case to the appeal court.