Copyright Law

MPAA Asks Swedish Court to Shutter the Pirate Bay

By soulxtc

Wants the BitTorrent tracker site to cease and desist facilitating the unauthorized distribution of its films.

Add the MPAA to the list of copyright holders targeting Swedish BitTorrent tracker site the Pirate Bay over allegations of unauthorized distribution.

Despite the fact that the site doesn’t host any copyright material its founders were convicted for the facilitation of copyright infringement this past April in a confrontation with the music industry so it was really only a matter of time before the movie industry followed suit.

Some 10 movie studios have petitioned a Stockholm District Court to force both the Pirate Bay and its ISP to cease and desist facilitating the unauthorized distribution of their films. The studios are also asking for a “substantial” fine if it fails to comply.

“We?ve been forced to seek a court order demanding that they stop the spreading of these roughly 100 films and television programmes,” said their attorney Monique Wadsted.

She also blasted the fact that the Pirate Bay’s 4 founders have yet to serve their sentence of 1 year in prison.

Wadsted says they aren’t seeking any damages at this stage and are only trying to get the site shut down.

As for Global Gaming Factory’s plan to make the site legit Wadsted is all for it.

“If the site becomes legal, that?s good for us,” she said. “We?re not opposed to it. But we can’t wait and see.”

GGF has said recently that it will complete its acquisition for the Pirate Bay on August 27th despite the concerns of some that the deal won’t go through. This suit by the MPAA won’t necessarily complicate the deal, but will surely make the site’s founders glad to be moving on to new projects.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on July 31, 2009 (boomark / email).