Intellectual Property Law

Studios Demand Court Shutter Pirate Bay

By David Kravets

Hollywood is urging a Swedish court to shutter The Pirate Bay, the world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracker. The site’s four co-founders were convicted of facilitating copyright infringement.

“They’ve been sentenced to prison for criminal activities but haven’t stopped carrying out those activities,” Monique Wadstad, the lawyer for Disney, Universal, Warner Bros and Columbia Pictures told English-language Swedish media.

Pirate Bay administrators Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde were found guilty in April of facilitating copyright infringement, along with Carl Lundström, who was accused of funding the five-year-old operation.

The April verdicts were on appeal amid allegations the judge who presided over the case was biased because he was a member of pro-copyright groups. That appeal was rejected, however, and the operators are expected to appeal the case on a host of other grounds, including contentions that the verdicts are unjustified because the site does not host copyrighted material and only points to it.

The defendants remain free from their one-year sentences, pending resolution of the appeals.

That said, it’s unclear whether an injunction is necessary.

Last month, software concern Global Gaming factory X AB agreed to purchase The Pirate Bay and turn it into a pay-for-play site. The deal was expected to close next month. But an attorney for the Swedish software maker said it might back out of the sale and an executive close to the deal said Tuesday he “doubts” the deal would close.

Illustration: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

See Also:

• Pirate Bay Retrial Denied
• Pirate Bay Heads to Davy Jones’ Locker
• Pirate Bay 2.0: Pay Pirates to Become Consumers
• Pirate Bay Unveils YouTube-Like Site
• Insider Trading Suspected Ahead of Pirate Bay Sale
• The Pirate Bay Guilty; Jail for File-Sharing Foursome

Full post as published by Threat Level on July 28, 2009 (boomark / email).