The Pirate Bay is served with 4,000 pages of legal documents

[Ihmhi]

From ArsTechnica, courtesy of /.:

Swedish prosecutors dump 4,000 legal docs on The Pirate Bay

By Eric Bangeman | Published: January 14, 2008 - 11:33PM CT


As the calendar pages turned from 2007 to 2008, one constant remained for the motion picture and music industries: The Pirate Bay's willingness to ignore their threats (and copyrights) to the point that the Swedish group's site has become the go-to destination for torrented content on the Internet. But there may be dark clouds looming on the horizon for The Pirate Bay. Swedish prosecutors are close to bringing charges against admins Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm.

In May 2006, Swedish law enforcement officials seized The Pirate Bay's servers and took a couple of the site's operators into custody. They were soon released, and just a couple of days later, the web site for the Swedish national police was taken down by a DDoS attack. But while the raid may have won Sweden some friends from the world of Big Content, it angered many Swedes. They were upset about reports that the Swedish government carried out the raid at the behest of the US government.


In fact, many Swedes are nonchalant about copyright, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription). A 2006 report showed that 87 percent of all films viewed illegally in Sweden were acquired via P2P networks, rather than via bootlegged physical media (France was second at 62 percent and the figure is just 34 percent in the US), and the Journal describes the country as a "file-sharing free-for-all."


The antipathy towards copyright enforcement extends far beyond the Pirate Party in Sweden. Seven members of the Swedish Parliament from the free-market friendly Moderate Party (which is a member of the governing coalition) recently penned an op-ed piece in a Swedish tabloid (English translation) calling for the complete decriminalization of file-sharing. "Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution," the MPs wrote. "It's the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet."


That op-ed had to send shudders up the collective spine of the IFPI, which has its own agenda for copyright reform in Europe, one that involves blocking P2P applications and filtering ISP traffic.
No worries

One group that remains unconcerned in the face of possible prosecution is the administrators of The Pirate Bay. Last November, Peter Sunde told Ars that, should charges come, he's sure of a legal victory. "I'm quite confident we're gonna win and I was expecting this to happen," he said. "[Swedish prosecutor Håkan] Roswall is also a very biased man, so I'm glad to take it to court instead of letting him dig around my personal life for no apparent reason. Actually, it's kinda funny."


Time hasn't changed his feelings on the charges, as we checked in with the Sunde. "I'm quite sure we won't be convicted anyhow," Sunde told Ars today. "[If we are], we'll just appeal all the way to the European Union court. So in five years time this might be settled."


Sunde also accused Roswall of having a vendetta against The Pirate Bay. "The prosecutor decided before the raid that he was going to charge us," Sunde said. "He has until the last of January to press charges."


According to Sunde, he and the other potential codefendants just received over 4,000 pages of material related to the investigation from the prosecutors. "He doesn't want us to have enough time to even read through the material. To compare: the second-biggest murder case in Sweden had 1,500 pages of documentation."


Even if the case is successfully prosecuted, there may not be much the Swedish government can do to put a crimp in The Pirate Bay's operations. Since the 2006 seizure of its servers, the group has made a point of decentralizing its operations; the tracker site is mirrored on several servers around the world. So even though a conviction might cost Sunde, Svartholm, and Neij a few kronor, The Pirate Bay is all but certain to keep dishing up links to movies, music, applications, and more. And, thanks to the threat of a high-profile legal action, plenty of free advertising.



Link:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...irate-bay.html

[Damascus]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING!!

[Innoc]

A few corporate ninjas in the employ of the RIAA would make keeping things like The Pirate Bay running VERY unpopular...

[Ihmhi]

They can shut it down, but it will always continue. They have decentralized their operation and are using the protection of international law to save their asses.

Now if only they can get their own island...

[פֿяαιп βαмαgεפ]

Pwned...

[Focksbot]

L33T PI3R4TS R0x0rZ MY B0x0rZ.

[Ihmhi]

Wow, four of the pirates were indicted today.

None of them seem terribly concerned and they say that "The Pirate Bay will be running for many years to come."

I imagine that if they set up a legal defense fund, they would be raking in the money fairly quickly.

This is the most recent blog post on TPB:

Celeb-ration!

We've got reasons to celebrate. Millions of them!


This week we've hit some magic numbers. We're tracking over 1 million torrents. We have had over 10 million simultaneous peers on the trackers. We're at 2.5 million registered users (and they are active as well). And this is blog post 100!


Tomorrow we will (hopefully) finish the long story about the site until now, as a celebration. If you can find the URL for it, go ahead and read it, but please don't tell anyone the URL in the comments if you do find it. The text is not ready yet, we're missing some entries and the pictures are not always at the correct place. But it would be cool if you wrote a comment that you _did_ find the page


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.


It also came to our attention that it's now possible to buy the documents, from the police!, in the current investigation about The Pirate Bay. But only on paper. And it's not 4000 pages, it 4620 pages. And they cost 6050 SEK for all of them (about 1000 USD). Our view of it? Why not just make a PDF, make a torrent of the PDF and seed it. We know a perfect place you can do that for free, and nobody would have to pay for all those pages of investigation. And a hell of a lot of trees would be saved... And even though the information in the investigation might be a bit personal at times (alcohol intake, sex addictions) we're not suing the police for commercially exploiting the material they took from us without permission.
Sharing is caring - to care for us please share even more then before! (and btw - Thanks to Pepsi for the AMAZING logo on the frontpage!

Posted Y-day 02:06 by tpb2003-2099

[Adamido]

[פֿяαιп βαмαgεפ]

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR WE WIN MATEYS, WE WIN!

[Mooga]

The Pirate Bay is like a popular whore.
She be really good for a night, but the next morning you've got AIDs and the feds are knocking on your door.

[uBeR]

I didn't know the feds cared so much about whores.