Pirate Bay trial coming to a close
Defense attorneys representing the operators of the Pirate Bay made their final case Tuesday for the legitimacy of the site, as the Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm came to a close.
Prosecutors have accused the defendants of making available copyrighted material in violation of the law, and in their closing arguments on Monday, said each of the four defendants should be sentenced to a year in prison, according to news reports.
Defendants Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, and Carl Lundstorm have argued that Pirate Bay does not host infringing content on its servers, but merely acts as a search engine for visitors searching for content--such as Hollywood movies or commercial software--available via the BitTorrent protocol.
"It is a completely legal technology that is offered by The Pirate Bay," Jonas Nilsson, the defense attorney for Neij, said on Tuesday, according to Swedish news site The Local. "It is an open site where users themselves upload content... Bit torrent technology can be used for both legal and illegal means on Pirate Bay in the same way as by Google or MySpace."
Prosecutors during the trial have claimed that the majority of the material available on The Pirate Bay is copyrighted and have argued that every MP3 file swapped online amounts to a lost record sale.
"There is certainly a lot of copyrighted material, but this is an Internet problem, not a Pirate Bay problem," Nilsson said Tuesday.
Peter Danowsky, representing the International Federation of Phonographic Industries on Monday, said it was irrelevant that torrent files could be found using other sites like Google, The Local reported.
"To say that 'so many others also commit the same crime and therefore we shouldn't be convicted' doesn't hold, and that's something to which courts never give any consideration," he said.
The court is also hearing a civil claim from Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, and EMI.
A verdict is expected to be announced within a few weeks, according to news reports.
Stephanie Condon is a staff writer for CNET News focused on the intersection of technology and politics. She is based in Washington, D.C. E-mail Stephanie. 
http://thepiratebay.org/legal
1. cause an uproar of people against the industry.
2. cause new and upcoming artists to not want to be assosicated with there label
3. the massive amount of lawyers they'd have to hire.
4. what lawyer would take a commision of 10 20 or even 70 percent on a getting payback for a 20 dollar dvd
5. even if the lawyer was hourly paid, the lawyer would take about 10 hours preparing the charges (guesstamate)
6. Considering points 3,4, and 5, they would lose massive amounts of money trying to get "all" the users.
So, Yea, even if TPB turned over lists of users, which they won't, the industry would not come after us. And if they did, they would only do it initially, and in spurts, Using these example as propaganda against possible pirates.
BUT, All they have to do, is really prove it to the ISP. and then the ISP could block the IP. But considering TPB has 20 million users, I don't think any ISP will cancel service for that many requests.
So, just our sheer numbers protect us as a "Whole" but some individuals would be taken out. The ratio would probably be really really low. :)
The artist's organizations have lawyers on staff. It's not a matter of going out there and hiring someone by the hour. It's possible to file one lawsuit naming hundreds of John Does and have the ISP's sort it out.
Yeah, lots of brains there.
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Ya.Right.
This wasn't true years ago, and it's even less true today with the world economy in shambles.
They've cut the prices of DVDs to $2 - $5 for many movies. At those prices, most people would rather purchase the original DVDs--that's easier than wasting time downloading. So, its really more of a pricing issue--net downloading isn't "free" of cost: computers consume power when left on for days, then there's also the bandwidth useage (which some ISPs are now charging for.
I've seen some other smart new business models: e.g. artists merchandise (t-shirts, fashion items, bags, concert tickets, etc.) that includes a coupon for a free download of music from the recording company's site.
Many people willing to pay for music, would rather not purchase a physical CD because they can't do anything with the silver disk. Their iPod's can't play CDs. It's like blaming Radio Play for the demise of 8-track cartridges.
The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study For Industry Canada was conducted collaboratively by two professors from the University of London, Industry Canada, and Decima Research, who surveyed over 2,000 Canadians on their music downloading and purchasing habits. The authors believe this is the first ever empirical study to employ representative microeconomic data.
So in other words, for people who download music all the time, they are more likely to buy an extra CD every TWO AND A HALF YEARS. Yeah, downloading thousands of tracks and then buying maybe 12 of them...that sounds like a good deal for the artists and distributors.
http://www.slyck.com/story1218_Pirate_Bay_Traffic_Surges
I guess sanity and logic escape you.
Those 2 extra CD sales are 2 more than they would have gotten, and the downloader still wouldn't have bought the crap they downloaded.
it's like drugs, prostitutions and corruptions.
it's in the human gene.
the only way to eliminate it is to eliminate the human species!!! :-)
it's good for artists, too, especially lesser-known ones... free downloads give them a wider audience, which means more fans at their live shows - which is where they make most of their living anyway.
so the record companies are losing out. frankly, i don't see that as a problem. they are holdovers from a previous era, when the only way to distribute music was through physical mediums like records and tapes, and at that time they were needed as a bridge between artist and listener. now they're more of a barrier, like some toll-takers insisting you walk ten miles out of your way to use their bridge even though the chasm has been paved over for a hundred miles in either direction and it would be easier (and free) to go around. they should accept their obsolescence and find a new means of employment.
- by Denebola42 April 29, 2009 10:55 PM PDT
- I also think that the analogy that every downloaded causes a lost sale. If they were going to buy, they would not download. Besides, people are right. In this economy they are less likely to buy. Psychologically, downloading the stuff will keep the artist in mind more and make a future purchase more likely. Not everyone has a DVD burner, and so you lose features like the extras like commentary, bloopers, etc, that you get with a DVD. On top of that, DVD creating media you buy even of good quality, does not last as long as a DVD you buy in the store created by the movie studios. Not unless there is some more expensive DVD-R media I am not aware of, and there might be but I've never heard of it so I'll assume for now it doesn't exist. Well, I mean more expensive because it lasts as long as the movie DVDs. I'd much rather have a movie DVD, since it is easier to store, and I can just rip it to a Media Center PC to watch if I am only interested in the movie and not the extras. I hate long downloads, not to mention there are whitepapers out that show that especially for windows users, using P2P opens up ports and keeps them open, and makes it easier to break in. As if Windows needs help in that area. Now thing, this day and age, most people online are not that tech savvy and especially not security savvy. So, if you look at it from the factor of being sued/prosecuted, being hacked and having ID/passwords/bank/personal pictures/trade secrets from your job or whatever stolen, P2P is mainly not worth it. I don't side with the Media, cuz, for example, nobody mentions how they ripped off Peter Jackson and he had to take the studios to court and WON because he didn't get the money that was owed for the LOTR, so now someone else is making the Hobbit, oh but you see, they are the victims. But, I'll render to Caeser what is Caesers, cuz I like books better a lot of the time anyhow. Simply from a security standpoint, I'd tell the inexperienced to stay away from P2P, especially in the day and age when governments are creating Hacking Units, and so are terrorists, cults, organized crime, and god knows who else is doing that now. (Hacker being the new term usage, I apologize to old school real hackers.) I'd like to cite Hulu.com as a step in the right direction, but a bit of a slow reaction. Same for joost.com and there's probably others out there as well, like veoh.com. Great ideas, a bit slow but maybe not as slow as adapting to VHS, though I'm not sure on that either. But.... I also have to point out that there are artists like Disturbed, Trent Reznor, and I can't remember who else, that said they don't want to be represented by the RIAA or went independent. Some just plain went independent which is like voting with your feet. But there will be plenty of new artists that are offered a sweet deal or don't know better, and sign on with the RIAA/Music Moguls. I have to say I don't sympathize with the RIAA but am a big supporter of iTunes, namely because of Apple and my experience with them. I especially like iTunes now, without copyright. The RIAA is in the habit of suing grandmothers that don't know how to use the Internet, and I don't remember if the gal had kidney dialisis or pancreatic cancer, but she was getting treatment and couldn't answer the court summons and got in worse trouble or something, so some big shot lawyer with a heart is going to represent her for free. Nice. Not to mention the RIAA won't let cameras into the trials since they don't want the public to see their tactics. Also not nice at all. I heard they break you down psychologically and emotionally on top of suing your pants off. All this for a few songs? It's not like they lost physical merchandise and even then you don't do that. It's not like people are stealing your grandma's heart meds. :) I have to admit those commercials before you see a movie in theaters are kind of silly, where they say the little guy suffers when you pirate movies. Right. So, why do they suffer? They still get paid the same. I am sure if you look at salary.com they are getting paid what they always were. It's the CEO who already has his own island and his personal jet is not a Learjet but probably a Boing 747 set with dance poles and jacuzzi....Bummer, now the CEO might get 200 million less of his 1 billion a year salary....slight exaggeration but it's sort of to make a point. The little guy is gonna get paid no matter what, because he will find another job cuz he can't feed himself or a family if he's getting paid less, not to mention unions which have a lot of clout and laws saying you have to be paid such and such. It goes up until you hit the CEO....and they are swimming in money even if half the world used Pirate Bay, and it probably does since most of the people using it are most likely not American and mostly not even all European. The Internet reaches everywhere.
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