Topic: Pirate Bay Trial
Lynann's photo
Mon 02/09/09 09:40 AM
Okay, I am not sure just where I stand on this. It isn't surprising to me that this story hasn't been widely reported in the U.S. given corporate interests.

So here is some info on the issue. I wondered if posters had any thoughts.
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This coming Monday will see the start of one of the most important court cases in the history of P2P filesharing, if not the whole internet. Infamous torrent website, The Pirate Bay, will be standing in the dock of Stockholm's District Court facing trial for their involvement in distributing illegal media.

The Pirate Bay have been gearing up heavily for the trial, but aren't best pleased with the court's choice of location for the hearing, demanding that the room be moved to one that can hold more than 35-40 people, as that's not even enough for the four defendant's families.

The Pirate Bay want the whole world to be able to watch the trial, saying that the seats in the courtroom shouldn't just go to the mainstream media, but that bloggers should be given an opportunity to sit in on the hearing. Peter Sunde (aka Brokep) claimed:

“Traditional media is 90% owned by the opposition in this case and that is something that really must be taken into account.”

The court have apparently set up a second room, which will run an audio feed from the courtroom, but he doesn't think that's enough either, saying:

“I NEED a room for at least 150 people, 20 reserved for the family and 80 to 100 reserved for the press and public. It need not be in the same room, but we need several rooms REQUIRING video too, not just sound,” he demands.

And, most notably there's still discussions about the concept of doing a live webcast of the court case, but nothing has been confirmed as of yet.

“We want to show how it works. Cards on the table, everything should be transparent!”

I kinda agree that everything should be transparent, i mean why shouldn't they have a live (or even slightly delayed) webcast of the court case?

added by mattbrawn on Monday, February 09, 2009 8:02:24 AM

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What Good Will A Swedish Lawsuit Against The Pirate Bay Do?
from the hydra dept

It's been expected for a while, but reports are coming out that Swedish prosecutors will finally get around to filing charges against The Pirate Bay this week. If you don't remember, Swedish authorities bowed to US pressure a year and a half ago, and seized the servers of The Pirate Bay, a bittorrent search engine. As was noted at the time, the Pirate Bay doesn't host any infringing content, but simply acts as a search engine -- one that some artists have learned to use to their own advantage. The raid, which the entertainment industry quickly announced represented a "significant blow" against piracy, actually did the reverse. The resulting publicity, garnered the site a lot more attention, which has only continued to grow. It quickly set up new servers outside of Sweden, and it's hard to see a lawsuit doing very much but increasing the amount of attention given to the site. When the actual lawsuit is announced, expect quotes from the RIAA and MPAA about what a big deal this is -- but the only really big deal is how little this lawsuit will do to help the industry. It won't help them adjust to a changing market. It won't help them to adopt necessary new business models. It will only increase the attention given to the Pirate Bay and other sites. We've seen this before with Napster. We've seen this before with Grokster. We've seen this before with Kazaa. So why does the entertainment industry keep doing this?

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080128/19330699.shtml