Swedish court orders shutdown of The Pirate Bay
8-25-09, 8:07 a.m. To include that The Pirate Bay is back online. To see a detail story on the site go here.
A Swedish district court has ordered an Internet service provider there to stop servicing The Pirate Bay.
The most popular BitTorrent tracker in the world appeared to be inaccessible to many in the U.S. on Monday morning but the blog TorrentFreak reported that the site had found a new connection to the Web and there were reports from readers that they were able to log on to the site. Citing a source close to The Pirate Bay, TorrentFreak said that the tracker was still down but would be back up on Tuesday.
An executive with Black Internet told Swedish newspaper SvD that the court informed the company that it would either shut off The Pirate Bay or face penalties. The founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty of copyright violations last April.
The executive told the newspaper that Black Internet is not the only ISP servicing The Pirate Bay but is probably the largest. He said none of the other ISPs were affected by the decision. He added that the company is considering options.
It's unclear how long Black Internet will be forced to stop service for The Pirate Bay. The company may not be able to resume service until the appeal filed by The Pirate Bay founders is settled, SvD reported.
The news comes on the heels of a victory for the founders of The Pirate Bay.
Sweden's government run debt-collection agency, commonly referred to as the bailiff, said it could find no attachable assets belonging to three of the four founders of the site. A group of media companies had asked the bailiff to collect the $4 million a court had awarded them after finding the four Pirate Bay founders guilty of copyright violations.
At this point, the future of the site, at least in name, appears to rest with the software maker Global Gaming Factory X, the software maker and operator of Internet cafes. The company said in June it would pay $8 million to acquire The Pirate Bay and the deal is supposed to close on Thursday. But Swedish regulators halted trading in Global Gaming on Friday over questions about the company's financial readiness to complete the transaction.
At the very least, the launch of a new Pirate Bay, one with authorized film and music copies, is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry issued a statement applauding the decision by the court and Black Internet.
"The Court's ruling yet again confirms the illegality of The Pirate Bay's operation and demonstrates the liability of ISPs that provide internet services to The Pirate Bay," the IFPI wrote. "The Pirate Bay seeks to continue to infringe our members' rights on a commercial scale and further actions against ISPs who enable access to The Pirate Bay are planned."
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. 
As to breathing - that's an inalienable right, given to man by his creator. Listening to someone else?s Music and watching DVD movies are not God given rights. Sorry.
What would be the motivation to make anything if people are just going to steal it?
May we need to ask a priest who owns the work,
So people in your mind should not be millionaires? The right to copy, and or steal is not a right, it still is a crime. The market is what decides what the value of a product is. Not the pirates.
Under your belief I should steal my electricity and gas because the guys at the top of the food chain are rich?
So we should all sit in a circle and sing happy songs, and give everything away free? Yes?
So just because you don't agree with a price, theft is still theft.
2. TPB does not host any copyright infringing material. It does nothing different then what you can do using Google.
You are right on somethings TPB is not the thief, they are merely accomplices to theft. The thieves are people who download the music illegally. From your attitude there seems to be a good chance that you are one of them.
With traditional theft like burglary the law does not excuse a jeweler or pawn shop if they buy and sell stolen goods just because they did not personally commit the act of theft itself. Instead the fence and other accomplices are charged with handling and can go to jail if caught.
I am an artist and do not like rapacious middle men like record companies with rip-off methods who profit from our work but that does not excuse theft which affects the artist as well as the middleman. Your example is nonsense since there are plenty of affordable ways of legally purchasing music. iTunes with its ability to sell you just the song you want is a good example but there are many others.
I do not like the record companies but they look like angels when compared to those who are not prepared to pay anything for products they obtain and then make dubious moral claims to justify their actions.
I'm interested in how this will play out.
The founders were found guilty of copyright infringement, but was the web site itself found to be not legal? On what grounds are they mandating the ISP shut them down?
BTW, just because you took a DVD or Game or Music CD that you purchased, ripped it then zipped it up does not make the material yours to freely re-distribute.
I call BS on that, viper396 - and I also call your name appropriate, because you sure act like a snake. ;)
But of course that doesn't matter to you, O venomous lackwit. After all, I don't own the copyright to (insert piece of F/OS software and/or media here), therefore I shouldn't distribute it, even if the creator has explicitly said to go ahead and do so.
No method of distribution is "more legitimate" than another, thou of the toxic nature. All methods are equally legitimate in concept. It is the uses to which the methods are put that causes the problems, especially given the perversion of copyright that has occurred in the past few decades.
After all, if Joe Blow the cocaine dealer were to ship his Bolivian marching-powder from New York City to Albany in a General Motors truck by way of the New York State Thruway, the cops wouldn't go after General Motors for making the truck he used, because trucks can just as easily carry legitimate cargoes (such as cases of Sprite or pallets of TVs) as illicit ones.
Nor would they try to dismantle the NYS Department of Transportation (which maintains the Thruway) simply because he drove his truckful of cocaine up to Albany on the Thruway. They're just there to keep the roads in good repair.
Except . . . that's what's happening here. All you need to do is substitute computers for trucks, data for the cargo they carry, and BitTorrent for the NYSDOT/interstate highway system.
TorrentBlaze.com
Mininova.org
Demonoid.com
list goes on and on...
Anyway, yeah. Go go MafIAA. Seriously though, I can't wait til those companies are dead. I don't really listen to music or watch movies - I'm a gamer, but I'm sick of hearing crap like this. I've used TPB to find linux distros, WoW patches, and archaic software to support some of our old business apps (Netware 3.12 anyone?) It was the only place I could find the netware software, even though we're licensed for it - the floppies we had were bad.
Yeah, just like Napster did.. {roll eyes}
- by Phategod1 August 24, 2009 2:34 PM PDT
- For last time its not stealing when someone offers up the file freely and willingly. its sharing not stealing wow why do we prosecute someone for sharing something thats already theres. Why not hunt down people who make copies of CD's for there friends or remove the Burn feature from most PC's and CD software. How about fining everyone who ever made a "mixtape" for there girlfriend jeesh!
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- by viper396 August 25, 2009 12:59 AM PDT
- "For last time its not stealing when someone offers up the file freely and willingly. its sharing not stealing"
- Like this
-
- by benjamin_dover August 25, 2009 3:07 PM PDT
- Sounds like a thief, plain and simple. What if your daughter made some artwork and then made one hundred copies to sell to help pay for her college. Then she gave one to the next door neighbor.
- Like this
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (63 Comments)Yeah, just keep telling yourself that.
Maybe your parents didn't teach you well enough, but it's simple right from wrong. You're obviously just trying to justify your own actions. Everyone has probable done it in some way or another, but at least be man enough to acknowledge it without making lame excuses.
And then your neighbor made 10,000 copies and "shared" them away and then no one wanted to buy one from her, since they already had a copy.