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16/2/2009: Pirates in the Dock
At the time of the copyright infringement trial, The Pirate Bay website, which was established in 2003, was one of the world’s largest free file-sharing websites offering users the opportunity to download practically every new film for free. It was able to operate in this way because no copyrighted files were stored on its servers and no exchange of files took place on the site, meaning, they argued, that they could not be guilty of copyright infringement. The prosecution countered by stating that by financing, programming and administering the site the four men had encouraged the infringement of property right’s by the site’s users.
A legal investigation into The Pirate Bay began in 2007 following a raid by Swedish police in May 2006 which resulted in the confiscation of 180 servers. Early in 2008 a Swedish prosecutor charged Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom with conspiracy to break copyright laws and other related charges, while the investigation itself, which produced 4,000 pages of legal paperwork, was only completed in December 2008.
The case, which attracted a packed courthouse and rumours of public gallery seats selling for exorbitant prices outside the courthouse, was closely watched by major studios such as Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia, 20th Century Fox, Sony, BMG, Universal and EMI, who were seeking damages of over 100 million kronor (approx. £8 million) to compensate for lost revenue.
Monique Wadsted, a lawyer representing a number of movie and media companies, said, ‘This is not a political trial, it's not about shutting down a people's library and it's not a trial that wants to prohibit file sharing as a technique. It's a trial regarding four individuals that have conducted a big commercial business making money out of others file sharing ... copyright protected works.’ A second prosecution lawyer, Hakan Roswall, argued that ‘the operation of The Pirate Bay is financed through advertising revenues. In that way it commercially exploits copyright-protected work and performances.’ The prosecution also claimed the site generated advertising revenue in excess of $3 million (approx. £2.1 million), a figure disputed as taken out of context by the defendants.
Roswall subsequently requested an $188,000 fine for the four defendants and for their computers to be confiscated.
Following the raid by police in May 2006 in which the sites servers were confiscated, the operators decided it would be beneficial if the servers were scattered across different countries and that even they were kept in dark about their whereabouts so that a repeat confiscation could not take place. As a result, Sunde was quoted as stating that, ‘In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many more.’ [ADD]
(Sources: Reuters; TorrentFreak)
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