For everyone who enjoy(ed?) The Pirate Bay.

[Catbus]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8003799.stm

The site's still up though, and they're going to appeal.

[Merlock]

Heh, how they lost is beyond me.

I can see ways of accusing torrent program developers since their programs are used to transfer unpurchased content illegally, but charging torrent site creators...
Hell, if they did their homework, they'd look up major seeding hosts that are consistently up and seeding illegal content and trace those to their owners.
But as it stands, it really is just theatre for the press.

[Marvo]

The music industry used money to bend the swedish law, which is quite frightening.

[Man of Shred]

the thing is. if it wasn't for file sharing. I wouldn't have PURCHASED half of my entertainment products.

[John11]

the thing is. if it wasn't for file sharing. I wouldn't have PURCHASED half of my entertainment products.

Same here. I never bought any music before file sharing

[Bearsy]

Same here.


Oh well. Sucks for everyone, but public trackers are the problem when it comes to file sharing. 90% pf the people just download and don't give back.

Private sites ftw.
What
Waffles
PtP
ScL
ScT
TT
StM

etc...

[Ynot]

I won't ramble on on Copyright and such things, as I've said it all before....

However,
The Swedish Pirate Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_party) gained 3,000 extra members in 7 hours, following the verdict
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpress.piratpartiet.se%2F2009%2F04%2 F17%2Finternet-kokar-piratpartiet-har-nu-fler-medlemmar-an-fp%2F&sl=sv&tl=en
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-membership-surges-following-pirate-bay-verdict-090417/

This pushes the party into the top 5, based on membership numbers
(Sweden currently had 7 or 8 parties that compete for election - rather than just 2 or 3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Sweden

There's an election in Sweden in June of this year
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2009_%28Sweden%29

There's also an EU General Election in June of this year
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2009

Depending on public backlash, Copyright issues could very well be the hot topic in the EU elections very, very quickly

[Odd_Nonposter]

My ipod would be devoid of music if it weren't for piracy. I used Limewire back when it was popular.

Fanbases for certain video game series wouldn't be nearly as large if it wasn't for ROMs. I would have never known about Earthbound or Mother 3 otherwise.

As long as there is internet, there will be file sharing. This is just symbolic and in no way impacts anything at all.

[Catbus]

I'm a little worried about how they're going to raise the 30 million Krona though. I could see them raising 100k USD from donations, but we're talking about 3.6 million USD.

[arby]

I'm a little worried about how they're going to raise the 30 million Krona though. I could see them raising 100k USD from donations, but we're talking about 3.6 million USD.
They won't.

They aren't going to pay, even if it means claiming bankruptcy and everything.

Also, good find Tony. Interesting consequences ;P

[Demon Parasite]

I never cared for the shithole that was TPB, Demonoid was good for programs, and I recently got a PassthePopcorn account, and it's pretty nice.

[Bearsy]

PtP fucking pwns everything. I'm elite there. I was the 7th one.

[Ynot]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/judges-conflict-of-interest-surfaces-after-pirate-bay-trial.ars

TPB judge's pro-copyright links revealed, verdict questioned

The judge who handed a guilty verdict and jail time to the defendants in The Pirate Bay trial is involved with not one, but two copyright organizations in Sweden. Judge Tomas Norström says he believes such a thing doesn't represent a conflict of interest, but the new findings have lawyers for the other side pushing for a retrial.

Less than a week after the conclusion of The Pirate Bay trial, a new controversy has surfaced over the judge's possible conflict of interests. It turns out that Judge Tomas Norström—the judge who found The Pirate Bay defendants guilty and slapped them with jail time—is currently a member of the Swedish Copyright Association, an organization that works against piracy along with a number of entertainment industry members. As a result, lawyers for the defendants have made it clear that they will push for a retrial.

The Swedish media dug up information this week revealing that Norström is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association along with Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted—individuals who represented the recording industry in The Pirate Bay trial. Additionally, Norström also sits on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property, an advocacy group that pushes stricter copyright laws.

And these aren't just accusations. Norström acknowledged to Sveriges Radio, as reported by The Local, that the findings are true; he just thought that it wouldn't be a problem. "My view has been that these activities do not constitute a conflict of interest," Norström said.

Needless to say, the defendants feel otherwise. The lawyer representing The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde (also known as brokep), Peter Althin, announced Thursday that he would seek to have the decision thrown out and the case revisited. "In the autumn I received information that a lay judge could have similar connections. I sent these to the court and the judge was excluded in order to prevent a conflict of interest. It would have been reasonable to then review this situation as well," Althin told The Local.

In fact, The Pirate Bay case has been laced with conflict of interest controversies for some time now. In addition to the current and lay judge's conflict of interests, in June of 2008, it was revealed that the police officer leading the investigation was also employed by Warner Bros. at the same time he was investigating the torrent kings.

The Pirate Party—a Swedish political party that is not directly related to The Pirate Bay, but supports copyright reform and privacy rights—agrees that this chain of events isn't flattering to Sweden's political system. "The copyright lobby has really managed to bring corruption to Sweden," Pirate Party chairman Rickard Falkvinge said in a statement.



*edit*
also covered by the Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5208528/Pirate-Bay-trial-judge-denies-accusations-of-bias.html

The judge who sentenced the four founders of torrent site The Pirate Bay to a hefty fine and a year in jail for copyright infringement has denied a conflict of interest after it was revealed that he is a member of pro-copyright lobby groups.

The judge who presided over The Pirate Bay trial has denied a conflict of interest after it was revealed he is a member of pro-copyright lobby groups.

Swedish radio station Sveriges Radio said that Tomas Norström, the judge who presided over the recent trial against The Pirate Bay, was a member of two copyright advocacy organisations, representing a possible conflict of interest.

Judge Norström is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and a board member for the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property, which lobbies for stricter copyright regulations.

But he has denied his involvement with either organisation "constituted a conflict of interest”. However, lawyers for Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström, the founders of The Pirate Bay, are calling for a retrial.

“I will point that out in my appeal, then the court of appeal will decide if the district court decision should be set aside and the case revisited,” said one of the lawyers in The Pirate Bay’s legal team.

“All types of interest conflicts are a problem for the judiciary. It should be a matter of course as a judge to ensure that you keep your house in order. This is a high profile case and that is an additional reason to keep a check,” said another member of the team.

The guilty verdict against the four men was leaked online hours before they official ruling in court. The four co-founders were last week jailed for a year and ordered to pay £2 million in damages for facilitating the illegal sharing of copyrighted material.

Although The Pirate Bay did not host music, games or movies on its site, it did provide links to other web pages where internet users could find and download songs and films for free. The music industry hailed the ruling as a major victory, but critics have questioned whether the case sets a dangerous precedent that could potentially even see companies such as Google accused of copyright infringement purely for returning links in their search results that send web users to sites that host illegal music or movies.

[Oneironaut]

Lmao.

And it gets better...


A second judge has been removed from the Pirate Bay trial, following accusations of pro-copyright bias.
The Pirate Bay trial could charitably be called a 'tumultuous' and more honestly be called a 'shambles'. Half the charges were dropped on the second day and after the guilty verdict was eventually announced, it was discovered that judge Tomas Norström belonged to two pro-copyright lobbying groups, the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association.
Following this discovery, one of the defendant's lawyers requested a retrial and judge Ulrika Ifrfelt was assigned to the case by the court of appeal. Guess what? She also belonged to the two organizations and has subsequently been removed from the case.
A statement from the appeal court reads, "The reasons for [Ifrelt's removal] is that the question of whether the original judge was biased needs to be tried by other judges other than those that later may have been given the case. Furthermore, because of the content of the claim of bias, it has been deemed proper that the question should be answered by a division that is not specialized in copyright."
The case has since been assigned to a trio of judges who will hopefully reach a decision on the issue of bias with the next few weeks
Source: MCV (http://www.mcvuk.com/news/34385/Second-judge-removed-from-Pirate-Bay-case)



http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91919-Second-Judge-Removed-From-Pirate-Bay-Trial


:chuckle:

[Ynot]

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-wins-and-enters-the-european-parliament-090607/

Pirate Party Wins and Enters The European Parliament

The Pirate Party has won a huge victory in the Swedish elections and is marching on to Brussels. After months of campaigning against well established parties, the Pirate Party has gathered enough votes to be guaranteed a seat in the European Parliament.

When the Swedish Pirate Party was founded in early 2006, the majority of the mainstream press were skeptical, with some simply laughing it away. But they were wrong to dismiss this political movement out of hand. Today, the Pirate Party accomplished what some believed to be the impossible, by securing a seat in the European Parliament.

With 99.9% of the districts counted the Pirates have 7.1 percent of the votes, beating several established parties. This means that the Pirate Party will get at least one, but most likely two of the 18 (+2) available seats Sweden has at the European Parliament.

When we asked Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge about the outcome, he told TorrentFreak: “We’ve felt the wind blow in our sails. We’ve seen the polls prior to the election. But to stand here, today, and see the figures coming up on that screen… What do you want me to say? I’ll say anything”

“Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it,” Falkvinge said. “This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it’s time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples’ lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities’ mass-surveillance,” he added.

The turnout at the elections is 43 percent, a little higher than the at the 2004 elections. This would mean that roughly 200,000 Swedes have voted for the Pirate Party. This is a huge increase compared to the national elections of 2006 where the party got 34,918 votes.

Both national and international press have gathered in Stockholm where the Pirate Party is celebrating its landmark victory.

At least partially, The Pirate Party puts its increased popularity down to harsh copyright laws and the recent conviction of the people behind The Pirate Bay. After the Pirate Bay verdict, Pirate Party membership more than tripled and they now have over 48,000 registered members, more than the total number of votes they received in 2006.

With their presence in Brussels, the Pirate Party hopes to reduce the abuses of power and copyright at the hands of the entertainment industries, and make those activities illegal instead. On the other hand they hope to legalize file-sharing for personal use.

“It’s great fun to be a pirate right now”, Christian Engström, Vice Chairman of the Pirate Party told the press when he arrived.

Update: Sweden has 20 seats, but until the Lisbon treaty passes only 18 with voting rights. This means that the Pirate Party will have 2 seats.

Update: In Germany the Pirate Party got approximately 1 percent of the votes, not enough for a seat in the European Parliament. Andreas Popp, lead candidate for the German Pirate Party is pleased and told TorrentFreak: “This was the first time, we ran for the European elections. And although many voters have hardly known us, we got a great result. This shows, that many citizens identify themselves with our goals. I want to thank all people who supported us, we could not have done that without them. We have fulfilled our minimal goal of 0,5%. Now we can start up for real!”

Update: Tomorrow we will publish a feature article on the election night and outcome.

[Invader]

Ynot... That gave me the biggest smile I expect I'll be having all day long.

“It’s great fun to be a pirate right now”

[Ynot]

In case there's any doubt,
English translation of the party's policy

http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english


*edit*
Ynot... That gave me the biggest smile I expect I'll be having all day long.Yeah, me too :D

[[SomeGuy]]

Haha, badass.

[Ynot]

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-enters-the-german-parliament-090621/

Just two weeks after the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament, the German PiratenPartei has gained a seat in the German government. Jörg Tauss has left the Social Democrats Party (SPD) and has joined the Pirate Party.

When it was said by some that the Swedish win in the European elections would act as a catalyst, nobody would have thought that the results would start to show so quickly. Two weeks after getting 230,000 votes in the EU elections, the Pirate Party has gained a seat in the German Federal Parliament.

Politician Jörg Tauss left the SPD yesterday over concerns about Internet censorship. The German Pirate Party had been running a petition against an attempt by the German government to have a censorship list, which, although at first applied to child pornography, has already been considered for expansion to cover other areas.

Faced with this censorship system, which has not been proven to do anything to protect children or do anything except stifle free speech, Tauss decided to leave his party and join the Pirate Party instead.

In a statement the Pirate Party welcomes him into the party as “one of the most experienced politicians in the areas of education, research and new media,” and calls the defection the “culmination of a long chain of failures of the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) in the areas of civil rights in the digital age and shows a dramatic loss of their credibility inside and outside.”

However, there is also controversy as Tauss is currently under investigation over allegations that he was improperly in possession of child porn images. Tauss claims that such images were sent to him during the basis of an investigation into that subculture, in line with his official government work. Criminal charges on the possession of the images may be pending soon, with Die Welt quoting the prosecutor as saying charges will be brought “within a few weeks”.

Regardless, the Pirate Party is standing by Tauss, who has been a member of the parliament since 1994, at least until a determination of charges is announced. “As long as there will be no criminal conviction against Mr. Tauss, the Piratenpartei has no reason to question Mr. Tauss’ innocence and moral integrity.”

With their seat in the German Parliament the Pirate Party hopes to do something about the increased censorship of the Internet and abuse of copyright by multi-billion dollar companies.

[Ynot]

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-sold-to-software-company-goes-legal-090630/

According to gaming company Global Gaming Factory X, it is in the the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay for $7.8m (SEK 60 million). The acquisition is scheduled to be completed by August and will see the site launch new business models to compensate content providers and copyright owners.

Software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) says it is in the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay and file-sharing technology company Peerialism. GGF claims to have the biggest network of internet cafés and gaming centers in the world.

The changeover of ownership is scheduled for August 2009, whereby GGF will take over the operation of the site.

The company says that after it has completed the acquisition it will launch new business models so that copyright owners get paid, which is clearly a huge diversion from TPB’s previous modus operandi.

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” said Hans Pandeya, CEO GGF.

“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary,” said Pandeya.

“Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers’ need faster downloads and better quality,” he added.

GGF will acquire the site’s domain names and sites for SEK 60,000,000 ($7.8 million) - SEK 30,000,000 in cash and the rest in newly issue shares.

File-sharing technology company Peerialism will also be acquired by GGF for a total of SEK 100 million, of which at least SEK 50 million will be in cash.

According to GGF, Peerialism has developed a new P2P distribution technology which will be used on The Pirate Bay. The technology is said to be backwards-compatible with BitTorrent although details are scarce at the moment.

At the time of writing, shares in GGF are up 155% - this will quickly become outdated, so check here for latest stats.

This is breaking news and this article will be updated constantly - please keep checking back.


http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-closes-its-tracker-removes-torrents-090630/

Alongside the news that The Pirate Bay will sell shares on the Swedish stock market come some other significant changes. The site itself will decentralize and stop hosting and tracking torrents. Instead, The Pirate Bay will use a third party tracker and torrent hosting service to serve its users.

Earlier today The Pirate Bay announced that it would be acquired by Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) who are listed on the Swedish stock market. So, Pirate Bay users can not only share files but they can buy a share of the site as well.

Perhaps even more significant for the BitTorrent community is the thus far unreported decision to close down the BitTorrent tracker. Up until today Pirate Bay’s public tracker connected more than half of all BitTorrent users but this is about to change.

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has informed TorrentFreak that the site will soon decentralize and stop running a BitTorrent tracker of its own. Instead they will encourage their users to use a yet to be launched third party tracker for their torrents.

To decentralize even further, the torrents that will be listed on the site wont be hosted on The Pirate Bay’s servers anymore. In the near future the site will use a new torrent hosting service that will store the torrents for them. This new hosting service will be open to other torrent sites as well and can be accessed through an API.

In the end The Pirate Bay is making these changes to ensure that the BitTorrent ecosystem stays intact no matter what happens, Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak. By decentralizing the different aspects they hope that BitTorrent users will be less reliant on the uptime of The Pirate Bay’s servers alone. The burden will now be spread among several independently operated services.

For now it remains a mystery what GGF CEO Hans Pandeya meant with “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.” That’s worrying to say the least.

In addition, GGF also acquired Peerialism who apparently have developed a new P2P distribution technology which will be used on The Pirate Bay. How this related to the new tracker and external torrent hosting remains unknown.

This is a breaking story, more info will be added as it comes in.

[Merlock]

Heh, everyone sells out when the price is right.

[Bonsay]

Has anyone seen this?
http://imgur.com/VMI4j.jpg
I find it quite funny.

[Exhalent]

What
Waffles

I have been wanting to get into these sites for some time now.

[Black_Eagle]

Has anyone seen this?
http://imgur.com/VMI4j.jpg
I find it quite funny.

How did that woman get caught for 24 illegal downloads when the rest of pirates are illegally downloading literally hundreds of songs, games, and movies?

[Demon Parasite]

How did that woman get caught for 24 illegal downloads when the rest of pirates are illegally downloading literally hundreds of songs, games, and movies?
She probably bragged about it to the wrong people, lol.

[Ynot]

she was using Kazza and fell into a trap

[Exhalent]

she was using Kazza and fell into a trap

I hate when I tell people about the traps set out to get them. They never believe me.

[Ynot]

Oh I don't know
the more easy targets there are to catch
the less they'll go after the difficult targets

Cannon fodder

[Exhalent]

hehe good point.

[Bonsay]

The point was the message. 1 illegal download = 3 1/3 dead relatives.