Copyright Law

Pirate Bay Trial Verdict Expected Tomorrow

By soulxtc

Faces $14.3 million in copyright damages claim from the entertainment industry and charges of “facilitating for other people to make available a copyright protected work via transmission on the Internet” from Swedish authorities.

Tomorrow we finally get to find out once and for all if public BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay is illegal in Sweden.

No matter the verdict the case is sure to go straight to appeal afterwards, but nonetheless it’ll be an interesting test of whether public BitTorrent tracker sites like The Pirate Bay are legal or not in that country.

The four founders of The Pirate Bay, Hans Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundströmface, each face up to one year in prison and fines as high as $180,000.

In addition, the entertainment industry is seeking over $14.3 million USD in compensatory damages.

In a post on The Pirate Bay blog, Sunde says they’ll be holding a small press conference afterwards for those interested in hearing their thoughts on the outcome.

He writes:

On friday we will get the verdict in the ongoing trial. It will not be the final decision, only the first before the losing party will appeal. It will have no real effect on anything besides setting the tone for the debate, so we hope we win of course.

Since a lot of people and press are really interested in the outcome of this part of the spectrial, we’ve decided to hold a small press conference on friday at 13.00 swedish time (GMT+1 / CET). It will be held on Bambuser, no-one is invited physically to participate, only digitally.

The URL for the Bambuser-stream will be posted on the front page of the site on friday some minutes before 13. If you’re from the press or just interested in hearing our thoughts about the outcome, you are welcome to join the stream and chat.

I must say I’m pretty excited to hear what the verdict is. I’m hoping, of course, that they win for I can think of no greater “FU” to the entertainment industry than for The Pirate Bay to be acquitted for copyright infringement.

But, even if The Pirate Bay loses we still win in the long run, because as history has proven over and over again, technology always prevails in the end.

Speaking of history, it seems some people in the Swedish govt also find the case of particular importance to the public.

For according to an AP story this morning, one of the servers seized by Swedish police last year as part of the case against The Pirate Bay was bought by Sweden’s National Museum of Science and Technology from The Pirate Bay for 2,000 kronor ($243 USD) to be included in a display of inventions that “impact people’s lives.”

“The museum says making copies of copyright-protected material is nothing new and that music tapes were also controversial in the 1970s,” reads the article.

So who do you think will win the case and why?

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on April 16, 2009 (boomark / email).