Peter Sunde departs Pirate Bay
Peter Sunde
(Credit: The Pirate Bay)Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, one of the three founders of The Pirate Bay, has stepped down as the site's spokesman and has said he is moving on to new projects.
"I have decided to not be the spokesperson for The Pirate Bay anymore," Sunde Kolmisoppi wrote in a blog post Monday. "The reasons are many, but most importantly it takes too much of my time. I want to build something new and I want to focus my energy in a different direction. I have projects waiting to be finished, a book is waiting to be finalized and many more books are waiting to be read."
For the past several years, Sunde Kolmisoppi has become the voice of the controversial BitTorrent tracking service that enabled millions to find and eventually download unauthorized copies of movies and other content. His departure follows a series of crushing legal setbacks for The Pirate Bay.
Last spring, a Swedish court found the Web site's founders: Sunde Kolmisoppi, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, guilty of copyright violations. The three men were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay $3.6 million in damages.
Last week, the Netherlands banned The Pirate Bay in that country and issued a threat that unless the site discontinues operation there, the operators will be fined $42,227. Also, a group representing copyright owners in Italy filed a $1 million copyright lawsuit.
Peter Sunde holds up a pretend IOU after The Pirate Bay founders were sentenced to a year in jail and fined more than $3 million.
(Credit: Mats Lewan/CNET News)In June, Global Gaming Factory said it intended to acquire The Pirate Bay. Last week, the company's CEO said the Swedish company has managed to find the funding needed to complete the sale. The transaction is supposed to go through sometime after August 27.
Should the sale go through, copyright owners say they will try to seize any of the proceeds from the sale.
Sunde Kolmisoppi has maintained the three founders haven't owned the site since 2006. They transferred ownership to Reservella. The Motion Picture Industry Association of America claimed recently that the founders control Reservella. Sunde Kolmisoppi denied the allegations.
Napster sowed the seeds of sharing unauthorized music files on the Web and The Pirate Bay harvested the hunger for free content by building a file-sharing community that extended across the globe, according to the founders. Among many young techies and hardcore Internet users, Sunde Kolmisoppi, Neij, and Warg are revered.
The music and film industries have alleged that The Pirate Bay was nothing more than a group of men who used technology to steal from artists and pocket the illegal proceeds for themselves.
Our issues have "been raised to another level and it's time for biological dispersal," Sunde Kolmisoppi wrote. "At the same time, I have a feeling of being sessile when I need to be the most motile creature ever. The regeneration will continue with me in another place.
"Today marks the end of a small era for me, but I am simply leaving a role in order to be a person instead."
Sunde Kolmisoppi suggested that he may return to the copyright/file-sharing debate one day. "It's an important cause and I will not give the fight up."
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
Would have to laugh though if he starts getting pissed because people pirate the hell out of it.
If he plans on making any money with it he'll probably go the "download for free, donate if you like" rout.
what no editor? What did they sew with then? Needle and thread? I think you'll find they sowed the seeds. Sewing the seeds would have acheived something entirely different. Maybe a fetching item of clothing...
As a professional (and I use the word lightly after the atrocitiies in this article) journalist/writer you should know better...
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sewed
Ideas are not that unique. At any given time there are thousands with the same idea. And that distills down to just one person who first publishes that idea and granted the copyright.
All I see in your rant is some guy with no original idea of his own whining because he can't use someone elses. Despite you cynical view of the matter, original ideas are still possible. Maybe you should change your focus on being original instead of just copying the ideas of others.
No one creates in a vacuum.
Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and the up coming Rapunzel are all Disney movies based on the public domain works by the Brothers Grimm. There are still others, like Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Mermaid), who's work Disney has been able to adapted because it is in the public domain much to the delight of children everywhere. So no, I am not wrong and as I said above you're free to verify these facts yourself.
And just in case anyone needed a translation:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sessile
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/motile
;)
http://torrentfreak.com/playing-whack-a-mole-with-data-the-pirate-bay-lives-on-090703/
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<a href="http://harvey-mars.com/">Harvey Mars</a>
It is just a question of time before a better and stronger protected Pirate-Bay name sake will appear somewhere else.
People are getting sick and tired of American copyright protections.
- by Ryan_Spahn August 3, 2009 6:57 PM PDT
- THis guys are great and had solidified their place in the Internet' history.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(19 Comments)No matter how you feel about them (love or hate) you can not deny the impact their work/effort has had re: the evolution of copyright in the digital age.
Thanks to these guys we now free streaming legal alternatives like Hulu, Fancast and others. If not for their efforts copyright would had no reason to offer us these great streaming services!
cheers to them and thank you!