The Pirate Bay trial to begin in Sweden
File swappers are expected to be keeping their eyes on a court in Sweden this week as a landmark copyright-infringement trial gets under way.
The four men behind the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay go on trial Monday in Stockholm, accused of helping millions of Internet users illegally download protected movies, music, and computer games. The defendants--Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, and Carl Lundström--face up to two years in prison and a fine of 1.2 million kronor ($143,529) if convicted of being accessories and conspiracy to break Swedish copyright law.
Two of the defendants insisted during a Webcast news conference in Stockholm Sunday that their site was legal and that the trial's outcome would have no impact on the site's ability to operate.
"What are they going to do about it? They have already failed to take down the site once. Let them fail again," Gottfrid Svartholm Warg said, according to highlights of the event printed by TorrentFreak. "It has its own life without us."
The Sweden-based BitTorrent indexing site has defiantly linked to pirated copies of films, TV shows, music videos, and other content while often boasting that it ignores Hollywood's requests to remove them. While The Pirate Bay does not host any unauthorized content, the site is accused of facilitating piracy by directing its some 22 million users to protected movies and music.
A civil claim brought by a group of media giants is also being heard with the prosecution. The plaintiffs--Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal, and EMI--seek 120 million kronor ($14.3 million) in compensation for lost revenues.
The Pirate Bay has already weathered several attempts by the governments of Sweden and the United States to shut down the site. Yet, this is likely the largest civil challenge the Web site has ever faced.
"It does not matter if they require several million or 1 billion. We are not rich and have no money to pay," said Peter Sunde, another defendant. "They won't get a cent."
John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said in a statement that the case was about protecting the interests of the artists.
"The criminal prosecution of The Pirate Bay is about protecting creators from those who violate their rights and deprive them of their deserved rewards," Kennedy said. "The Pirate Bay has hurt creators of many different kinds of works, from music to film, from books to TV programs. 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."
Prosecutors expect the trial to last 13 days.
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven. 
Now if they could only have a Pirate Bay for my students on-line labs.
You just can't kill a hydra by cutting off heads...
Also, someone is distributing the dvd and the retailer also expects a piece of the movie price.
This would not only mean most trackers are gone, but the other tracker servers would need to at least double to keep up demand. Meaning even if for a few days the majority of the Bit-torrent network could go down, apart from private trackers like Demonoid n co.
http://torrentfreak.com/p2p-researchers-fear-bittorrent-meltdown-090212/ - hers the article.
At least there is Waffles/What to pick up the slack left by Oink. The Oink.cd story is well worth reading... amazing the difference between UK and Sweden.
I'm betting I'd get sued even after paying each artist exactly what would have been given them otherwise.
It's never been about the artist. It's about greed. I'll pay the person who does the work but not the person standing beside him wanting several thousand percent more.
I agree with you that some people just object to the cost of the content, but there are a LOT of pirates are merely in it to save some money. They either don't know or don't care about the whole royalty situation. Even some of the people who claim that the royalty situation is their qualm are often in denial about their real reasons to pirate stuff.
Once upon a time, recording agencies were the only way for an artist to get his or her songs out there. There were literally no other avenues for marketing a song.
Today, this is no longer the case. A decent artist can publish directly to the Internet (last.fm, iTunes, etc) and make a decent living without the help of any RIAA member.
It's about everyone contributing to a system...the music distribution system. Artists would not sign up for labels if they weren't getting a return on the investment. Some don't and that's fine. It looks like you think you've come up with something new...sorry to burst your bubble.
I agree. The problem is, until the majority of people buy their music from non - *AA sources, artists will end up relying on *AA members to get their marketing done.
In a town where up-and-comers get wide recognition and a good fanbase (e.g. where I live), indie labels and indie radio stations are sufficient. Sadly, that's not the case everywhere else.
Penguinisto - The 'net has been a very viable means of promoting new talent for some time now. If your argument is true that it's as good, or a better, option for artists to create a viable fan base that would support making a living as an artist (as opposed to using a record label), can you name an example of anyone who has reached stardom without a record label?
If a movie is worth the money, i'll still buy it on DVD...
If the album was really good, i'll buy the cd just so i have it in CD quality rather than ***** mp3, and i'll go see the band live too... assuming they bother to come to australia,
Downloading off torrents sites is more of a "try before you buy" thing for me personally
I find bands i like by listening to lots and LOTS of really terrible music that i've downloaded and subsequently, deleted!
The rest? Dunno about. Sometimes folks build up a collection just to pick and choose from later on when the mood strikes them. Some folks wqant to do trades at LAN parties. Some folks want to complete a collection. The reason vary as much as the people who do it, I suspect...
This argument is only an overused justification of one's actions. Applied to any "real world" -non digital- product, this statement is absurd.(There should be no difference between "real" and digital products but people continue to view them separately) When one goes shopping at a major grocery chain, do they steal produce from the store and later send $0.01 to the farmer because the rest of the cost just goes to "middlemen"? One may not like the middlemen, but they are part of life so either deal with them or take actual action.
Pirate all you want, just do not make it seem like you are the modern Robin Hood.
I also buy a lot of music directly from the artist themselves.
I admit, I download a lot of stuff, but that's because the music I tend to listen to is extremely obscure and incredibly hard to find retail. For that matter, a lot of what I listen to isn't even available on Amazon.
What I like to do is find people with similar interest, like on Last.fm, check their playlist, look for artists I don't know, check out some of their songs on last.fm, go to what/waffles to download and if I like it, I will do my best to try and find it and buy it. My CD collection is well over 1500 CDs... a good portion is back when I used to DJ, but I still buy CDs and I will first go to the artist's website to see if they have the option to buy from them. I like doing that cause often, the artists will sign the CD or include a nice little thank you note, maybe a sticker or something and to me, that personal touch is worth a lot.
There are a lot of bands I have discovered by downloading stuff I have never heard of, which in turn, I went on to purchase CDs from said bands. I never would have been able to do this without downloading, so it's a win win... the band gets a new fan and a CD purchase, I got the chance to sample a band that I otherwise never would have heard of, get to listen to some new music and if I like it, I will buy it.
Gone are the days of spending $20 on CD for 1 or 2 songs. The RIAA might as well get used to that fact!
It works for so many other products and industries, why should the music and movies industry be held to different standards?
I will continue to upload and download torrents even if TPB goes down. There will be others,
Artists should work just like everyone else. If musicians don't like the amount of $$$ they get from royalties, they should go on tour. If they can't sell tickets, then they should put their guitar case on the street and change. If they can't make it that way, then they should get a job.
I have no sympathy for whiny millionaires who blow all their money on blow.
Most of them are richer than probably most people in here, and for what?
"Oh look maw, i can makes a music in the computer"
It's pathetic. There are about 5% of the music business who i could even care about giving money to, the others are the cancer of the entire thing and have resulted in the industry being the REAL piracy in this.
Don't even get me started on movies... holy..
In a perfect world, this would be true. Why should kids and corporations continue making money off the backs of corpses?
everything is allowed here,why dont they run their server from Beirut?
It worked when one side did the creating and the other did the consumption. But what happens when the producers are also the consumers. The recording companies traditionally have often been considered an "unfortunate part of process", but never been loved... I'm trying to think, has their ever been a classic love song written about the RIAA? I can't remember one...
And iTunes sold what... 5 billion songs? Something like that. 5 billion, who can live on that?
As someone who took classical piano most of my childhood, I have to say that most music played on the
radio is formulaic crap. Yes some of the artists have talent but the vast majority of them have contracts
because they are photogenic/marketable. I tend to listen to indie music now, the major labels just produce
shovelware.
I am sure that people who make movies and music would not like to be missing out on any payments owned to them but it seems that it is only the big companies that are pushing for some kind of justice so maybe they are just being greedy? I wonder if this REALLY does have a negative impact on the artists themselves.
I myself do download a lot of stuff but I do also pay for compilation albums occasionally to balance things out.
Well there's my two pennies worth.
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Hopefully what they do about it is toss these cocky morons in jail.
Sorry Lars, not everyone makes $10,000,000 a year and can afford to buy every single little thing they want... but I remember way back when Metallica actually encouraged their fans to make copies of their cassettes to give to friends. It was a great way to get known... but once they got known, that had to stop cause they became greed pigs and wanted all that money. Amazing how quickly that changed.
I'm fairly certain the execs at the record companies make WAY WAY more than anyone who would post here... so trust me, they really aren't hurting! Most of the artists aren't hurting. It's the indie bands that they would never push or promote to hell and high water that need the support. Do you really think Madonna is going broke because of downloading?
The Pirate Bay. Treat them as what they acknowledge themselves to be. Hang em high.
If I steal your car, you lose your car. If I make a perfect copy of your music collection, you still have your music collection.
"All musicians are millionaires."
Few musicians are millionaires, but most record company execs and A&R men probably are. Therein lies the rub. ;)
/P
COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS NOT THEFT. It is not stealing. Stop spreading your false information.
If I have a million grains of rice in a big pile and you take one, is it still stealing if I can't count them all? How about when a million people show up and each take a grain of rice. Where'd my pile go?
@penguinisto --- you're right, the origin does come from civil tort. That's where the whole stealing thing comes from too. If you come into my corner store and grab a sausage on a biscuit and dash out, it's between you and me, right? But society chose to define that as better handled impartially in a court, instead of letting me knock you upside the head. Same thing applies here --- it's more of a theft of service, but people need to get through their thick and greedy skulls that like dashing out the store, it just isn't cool.
Yes, because that grain of rice will be gone forever from your inventory. If I made a %100 genetic copy of one of your grains of rice, and ate it, would you still be mad? I'm sure you can find a reason to be mad, but at the end of the day, I have not physically removed anything from your pile of rice... therefor theft has not occurred.
Now if you had a special grain of rice and I made a copy of it without your permission, then perhaps COPYRIGHT infringement has taken place. Especially if I tried to sell this special grain of rice as my own.
In short, your rice point is a bunch of hot air.
P.S. Read wikipedia for "theft" and find where it includes copyright infringement.
The trackers themselves may not be copyrighted, but that's a preeeeeetty narrow argument since the trackers have but one purpose: unlimited distribution of copyrighted content.
If it is licensed software or copy-righted material, you should be paying for it, because somewhere someone put a lot of time and money into making that product. Getting it for free online makes the honest people have to pay more for it to make up for profit losses, but you don't care, I'm sure. The same old selfish attitude that plagues humanity today.
And I don't support anything that is littered with links to child pornography like The Pirate Bay is. Find it hard to believe? A five minute search yields thousands of links to illegal, underage-pornographic (in the US anyway) content.
Free stuff is cool, but only when someone gives it to you. Stealing is wrong, spreading filth like child porn is wrong, and I say shut the little bastards down and lock them up for a lot longer than two years!
You all should be ashamed of yourselves for supporting the disgraceful acts of these four punks.
Look where we are now :|
And I bet you can't substantiate that claim unless of course you're more aware of the search terms necessary.
Anyway, I find it below standard to drag child pornography into the discussion and put copyright infringement on the same level and even accuse the TPB operators of this.
And for what it's worth, I tried out cracked copies of several games and bought them afterwards, listened to several bands and bought their CD's afterwards.
These music corporations NEVER mention the fact that a some people like to listen/play/use first and then decide to buy the originals...
- by jtjt145 February 16, 2009 1:11 PM PST
- American greed knows no limits. I hope the the Pirate bay wins.
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