Waiting on the Pirate Bay verdict
The four defendants in the high-profile Pirate Bay trial face year-long jail terms if found guilty when the verdict gets announced in Stockholm, Sweden, on Friday. But even if prosecutors get their way, it's less evident whether a legal victory would also translate to a broader deterrent against illegal file sharing.
Clearly, this case is being viewed on both sides of the Atlantic as a potentially landmark decision in the heated controversy surrounding unauthorized Internet file sharing. The prosecution accuses the four men standing trial--Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstrom--of making copyright-protected material available through the Web site thepiratebay.org, one of the most visited BitTorrent destinations in the world.
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The challenge for prosecutor Hakan Roswall has been to prove that the site actually can be legally linked to copyright infringement. He got off to a bumpy start. On the second day of the 13-day trial, which began in February, Roswall was forced to drop accusations that the defendants facilitated making illegal copies. Now the prosecution's case hinges on whether it can prove that the four men were guilty of making the files accessible.
No actual material is stored on the Web site that features a search function for torrent files used for file sharing with the BitTorrent technology--which is legal in itself, but commonly used for illegal file sharing.
It also offers a "tracker," which is a server linking users who swap specific files. The defendants insist Piratebay.org is no different from ordinary search engines, whereas copyright holders accuse it of being the most popular font of copyright infringement around.
Along with the criminal case, a civil claim was filed by media giants Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, and EMI. They demand 120 million kronor ($15 million) in compensation for lost revenue from allegedly illegal file sharing of 20 songs, 9 movies, and 4 computer games.
The judge, Tomas Norstrom, his assistant, and a three-person jury will have to decide whether the defendants could have had knowledge of the files being illegally shared, and whether that is a sufficient basis for sending them to jail.
If the defendants go free, the decision would deal a major blow to the music and movie industry's fight against piracy and its struggle to preserve current copyright legislation protections. If the verdict involves a prison sentence, Piratebay.org is still unlikely to go down.
After a search and seizure of servers by Swedish police at The Pirate Bay's offices in May 2006, which eventually led to the trial, the site was up and running after a few hours. Indeed, sending the four men to jail could also turn them into heroes or martyrs, inspiring others to find new ways to develop piracy.
This much is clear: the technology is already developing to let people share files without fear of being spotted by police or copyright holders.
Services hiding a computer's IP numbers have already been offered for some years, but even easier is a recent kind of second-generation peer-to-peer tool called OneSwarm, developed at the University of Washington in Seattle with the aim of letting file swappers preserve their privacy.
Even after Friday's decision, the case might last for years on appeal. If convicted, the defendants have already promised to fight the decision. And by the time any final verdict gets handed down, the court's opinion may be rendered obsolete by changes in the technology landscape.
CNET News will be covering the verdict, which is expected to be handed down around 2 a.m. PDT Friday, so check back for updates.
Audio
Pirate Bay watch
Mats Lewan and Erik Palm, Swedish journalists spending several months at CNET News as exchange reporters, talk with editor Leslie Katz about the Pirate Bay trial and its broader implications.
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whats happens if i want a movie in a GOOD format that i already own though? spend 2+ hours ripping it only to have the quality pale in comparison to a scene release?
I don't watch MTV and almost all radio stations suck in my opinion. So I download random stuff to find new bands that I might like. I hate to call it piracy, with all the real piracy going on in Somalia but there's a lot of great bands I never would have discovered if I hadn't downloaded their albums.
I have a job and because of that job, I will buy CDs if the band / album is worth buying.
@thelemurking: this is the sampling argument that's been tried unsuccessfully since the first file sharing case. It's fine that you just download and sample music, but you're not on trial. Instead, it's people who provide access en masse for the purpose of wholesale consumption, not sampling.
Should Google be on trial because it provided me with search results for a torrent?
i hope this 'technoligically-disabled' explanation helps you out a little more friend :)
But so is most media's digital release strategies. Until big companies understand their customer base, and figure out good ways to leverage that digitally (i.e. iTunes), they won't make money off of digital media.
And they will NEVER stop piracy. Anyone media exec who thinks they can has had their head puffed up by too many yes men. Piracy will ALWAYS exist. The best thing to do is to leverage it. Use it as free marketing, and generate reasonably priced digital media that is easier to by than to pirate. Then you will make money by the truck full.
Namely, iAnything.
Digital releases need to be like DVD's. I don't need an Apple or Sony DVD player. It needs to be a standard that any hardware company can license.
This was what was so wonderful about Amazon's MP3 store, except now, like iTunes and other digital music stores, they are raising prices on newer songs to cash in on popularity. It begs to question, how much of that price increase actually goes to the artists, musicians, and the people who wrote the lyrics as opposed to how much fattens the wallets of the record label hotshots?
Not the case anymore. While the iPod comment is valid (the iTunes store was always about selling iPods... Apple stated this from day one) iTunes music doesn't have DRM any more an can be played on anything that can play mpeg audio (my two year old nokia cell phone, my PS3, Windows media player and so on). There is an alternative to apple, namely amazon (though not available here in Canada) but the real problem is the record companies (I know, broken record.. bad-um-tis!) it's them that impose contradictory license restrictions and prices that isn't uniform with all parties (the studios could have said, "sure you can sell our music, but we want it playable on all players to preserve longevity", but didn't. THEY want you to re-purchase and really.. why should Apple look out for compatibility with Creative Labs). Both Apple and Amazon are big players in the digital distribution game but that's not their focus is not solely music sales. They aren't a music store that sell iPods. they are a Hardware manufacturer who sells music to complement their hardware. There is no reason to out and out support all players. It's a bit different with Amazon. they aren't specifically a music store, they are any "everything" store with no allegiance support them if this is really a problem for you but I assure you, if the kindle played music and was released a year earlier, there digital format of choice probably wouldn't have been Mp3.
Only to compete with Zune Marketplace though. Which was offering DRM free music and subscription.
Only to compete with Zune Marketplace though.
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Sorry, my brain can't make sense of that statement. What's a zune marketplace? Who's competing with this unknown market thingie again?
Oh never mind, I neglected to notice who was flinging this feces from the trees. Hi Monkeyboy!
Too bad, because I like the Pirate Bay. I've found music tracks that are simply not available anymore,no matter how hard and long I look. And I agree w/ WaffleGadgets and hope they prevail as well.
The guys will be sentenced to some kind of fine. But it will be appealed by both sides as soon as they read the verdict.
Cheers.
If I picked "childmurderer" as a nickname yet never harmed another soul, would that make me a bad person? If I instead picked "superniceguy" as a nickname and maliciously slaughtered every child I ever saw again throughout my life, would I be a decent person?
What about that Sunday school teacher and mother they recently arrested for sexually assaulting and murdering 8 year old Sandra Cantu in California? Being a mother and Sunday school teacher, Melissa Huckaby must be a super nice person right? Despite raping an 8 year old with foreign objects and killing her (assuming it's proven in a court, of course - at this time I admit she's a "suspect" and not "guilty" until proven so)?
That really isn't a big diversion from what we have here. The Pirate Bay has been hounded for years for basically being a search service, and like Sandra they really have done nothing wrong (The Pirate Bay isn't ripping anything, nor are they storing any illegal content - they're a search service like Google, Yahoo, M$'s tragic Live, Ask ...). Yet the "angelic" one (RIAA's side) is not only persecuting them maliciously in an attempt to kill them, but is actually performing pure evil acts in doing so (raping them with the foreign object of the DMCA).
LONG LIVE THE PIRATE BAY! ARGH!
Uh-oh, did I just figure out the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?
;-)
BTW, sharing culture is not illegal and helps PROMOTE culture. Activity against piracy is cramping culture and will hit their bottom lines 3x more than sales lost from piracy.
Dare I remind you that the torrent technology and file sharing in itself is not illegal and its status is not being debated in the trial (oop I dared!).
The Pirate Bay allows search access to torrents - it cannot be expected to differentitate between those that are legal and those that are illegal just like google cannot be expected to differentiate between displaying images on its image search that might be infringing on copyright or not by merely displaying them in its search. It is up to the copyright holder and the users to do this. The image copyright holders understand that it is a cost of doing business (despite a couple unsuccessfully taking google to court over it). This is the same for torrents.
Not piracy, which is pretty insane to use this word to describe it.
Not theft.
Just copyright infringement.
Enemy of Enemy is my Friend .
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Exactly (though not really well said, isn't the phrase "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"?).
The RIAA is the enemy of the people, of everyone in fact except for the few sleazy stuffed suits and their lawyers that are benefiting from this extortion scheme they developed. Even the artists they represent are getting raped - or can anyone point to even a dollar of this "let's sue children and grandmothers" nonsense that has been shared with an artist?
Truly the enemy of my enemy is my friend. LONG LIVE THE PIRATE BAY!!
impossible war
Most popular "font"? What the hell does that mean? Perhaps "form" or "front for"? To paraphrase Walter Sobchak, Am I the only one around here who gives a **** about the grammar rules?
As for illegal downloading, people will try to steal what they can. The music industry needs to adapt to current technology and find a way to make it work for them.
If the music companies are worried about profits, what is better, to sell 100 CDs at $10.00, or 1000 at $1.00. Either way their profit is $1000.00. If an album is sold for a lower profit margin, it is still better than having it illegally downloaded in which case the profit is zero.
It is better to get some money than none, I think most people would rather get a deal than steal. Why not offer a "starving college student" download in which one could pay a significantly reduced price? Even if the price was $1.00 for the entire album, that is one dollar that they would not have. I don't claim to have the answers, but arguing what is right or wrong doesn't get anything solved.
I for one have given up buying new CDs if they are priced higher that $10.00 since I can either buy the mp3 album for $9.99 or less, or the used CD for $8.50 or less.
Herein lays the problem, the Music Industry is still stuck back in the 60s/70s, the only way they are going to change is for the musicians themselves to take control. They are the producers of the product and only they can take the control, the problem ultimately rests with them.
@ xenophod: I'm glad to see some artists, Trent Reznor, Radiohead, and a few others have bucked the studios and released their own material, to various degrees of success. Sure, their material still may be shared illegally, but its a first step. Hopefully, it will just continue to grow.
Technology is our friend, we should embrace it and bend it to our will.
I knew there were smart thinking people in the world! I knew it!
:-)
http://www.frugalgadgets.com/amazon-mp3-daily-deal.php
- by W1gglesnarf April 17, 2009 2:44 PM PDT
- I dont think this trial will stop anything. People will continue to do this as it provides free goods and presents a challenge for people who find it either worthwhile or entertaining to kick large companies around.
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