They're simply adopting the easiest legal defense: we don't have any copyrighted materials on our site. I've read some articles about this trial, and the Pirate Bay people are almost certain not to get any jail time or significant fines. After the first few days of the trial, the prosecution dropped half the charges...the ones that carried jail time. Basically because they knew they couldn't win. The Swedish legal system has three tiers. The first one is basically a city-level court, then something like a county-level court and finally a Supreme Court. Each higher tier has more experienced judges. It's possible that they will be found guilty in the lowest level, but they would then immediately appeal it up to the next level. From what I've read, it's virtually certain that such an appeal would be upheld and the lower court decision (if it were a guilty verdict) would be overturned. Not that I think these guys have some brilliant philosophy. But how they're handling their case is smart, not frightened (as the Wired columnist seems to be trying to cast it).
What I find is amazing is that the very groups that are suing them, could be making a hell of a lot more money if they would just use digitial distribution instead of their current model. They talk about losing money due to pirates. They would not be losing so much if they had a digitial distribution pipe and gave folks an easy way to purchase their product.
agreed. The way I see it, this whole piracy thing isn't some ideological thing, it's just a bitchslap to an outdated business model. For example, I used to illegally download episodes of the Daily Show fairly regularly. Then, they finally put them online for free, put in a few ads, and now they're getting revenue out of me. Everyone wins. The sooner all sporting events, movies, TV, etc. are available on demand online supported through commercials the better.
I am not sure they will be making too much money selling their products online, the ads are the way to go, IMO. Similar to the Google model.
Jail is the sentence in the lowest court system. It will be appealed up the chain. I think there's very little chance of jail time being upheld. But pretty surprising that even the lowest court decided on jail, considering the prosecution dropped half their charges, the most severe, after day 1.
This court decision as it is stated, is dangerous. Basically by this ruling, all web search engines are also guilty of file sharing.
I guess by the Swedish Supreme Court if you have a coat in your hands you must be guilty. Edit: More on the subject. Google (Unofficially) Becomes a Torrent Search Engine
that was a nice article by wired, thanks for posting. this is precisely like the Napster case from several years ago. by the time they got around to prosecuting Napster, it was peanuts compared to the million other ways to get music files. now piratebay, while perhaps the torrent leader, is only one among hundreds of other torrent sites. it's kind of a joke and just shows even further how out of touch with reality these entities really are.
There is a chance the case will be declared a mistrial as it's come to light that the judge in the case may have been a wee bit impartial. TPB judge a member of two copyright advocacy groups
I can sympathize with Pirate Bay... they are being held responsible... but you could say their ISP... the computer makers... Cisco's switches... their parents =)... are also responsible. It is like holding the phone company responsible for drug deals made over the phone. Silly really. Now on the same hand... I have never copied software or music illegally. As someone who has worked in book publishing and now for a software company... I have a great deal of respect for intellectual rights and wish that everyone would pay for what they should. Here is a freaking sad thing though... the digital millennium copyright act makes it against the law to make a personal backup copy of a dvd you own (if you are bypassing encryption). For myself... I have a Windows Home Server, and would love to put my DVDs on there so I can play them all without finding the disks. I can't though... because courts has decided that is criminal. And oh... exporting your ITunes music to DVD as unencryped MP3s... that is bypassing encryption even though ITunes has support for it. Will they go after Apple? Of course not. People like Pirate Bay are easier targets. I won't buy protected music anymore. I don't share the music with anyone... but at least I have flexiblity to move it around. A repair shop was even sued for playing radios at work a few years ago. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7029892.stm
