Intellectual Property Law

Music Labels Want Pirate Bay Shuttered

By David Kravets

Frustrated record labels ask a Stockholm court to levy more fines on the four Pirate Bay founders. The labels demand the world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracker block users from file-sharing copyrighted material.

According to Swedish media DN.se, labels EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal are attacking the site’s bandwidth provider, Black Internet, and demanding that it stop serving the site that has 20 million users.

After weeks of testimony and delays ending April 17, Pirate Bay administrators Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde were found guilty of facilitating copyright infringement. Carl Lundström was convicted of funding the five-year-old operation.

In addition to one year each of jail time, the defendants were ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) to a handful of entertainment companies, including Sony Music Entertainment, Warner, EMI and Columbia Pictures. The case was brought by the Swedish government and Hollywood, in a joint civil-criminal trial.

The labels now say they are entitled to new monetary fines against the group because they say it continues facilitating copyright infringement.

The legal twist came days afterthe latest allegations surfaced, questioning the legitimacy of The Pirate Bay trial. Lawyers for the four file-sharing defendants accused the Swedish courts of secretly steering the case to a hostile judge, who is a member of pro-copyright groups.

The four remain free pending the outcome of a retrial motion.

Hat nod: TorrentFreak

See Also:

• Pirate Bay Opponents Hit by Denial-of-Service
• Pirate Bay Judge Exposed as Member of Pro-Copyright Groups …
• Facebook Divorces Pirate Bay
• The Pirate Bay’s Anonymity Service Signs 100000 Users Pre-Launch …

Full post as published by Threat Level on May 19, 2009 (boomark / email).