This from The Local, the Swedish English language newspaper:
A lawyer representing one of the men convicted in the Pirate Bay trial has called for a retrial after reports that the judge was a member of the same copyright protection organisations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives.
The judge in the Pirate Bay case, Tomas Norström, has been a member of several of the same copyright protection organisations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives, Sveriges Radio’s P3 news programme reports.
I think we may have a problem. Full story here.
admin Miscellaneous law, piracy
Pirate Bay was found guilty in Sweden. It’s all over the web, with
Corry Doctorow’s post on Boing Boing a good place to start:
A more interesting question is whether The Pirate Bay will disappear now. After the illegal seizure of its servers in 2006, The Pirate Bay supposedly adopted a distributed architecture with failover servers in other jurisdictions that were unlikely to cooperate with EU orders. If The Pirate Bay shuts down, it’s certain that something else will spring up in its wake, of course — just as The Pirate Bay appeared in the wake of the closure of other, more “moderate” services.
The Guardian has a cool timeline and story here. Guess we’ll just have to wait for the appeal.
admin Miscellaneous law, piracy
James “Dela” Delahunty posts:
“Cross-border trade in counterfeit and pirated goods is a growing global problem that often involves organized criminal networks,”
The information released shows how 37 countries are working to find a way to cut copyright infringement and counterfeiting globally. Interestingly, the summary indicates that the countries are trying to figure out how to (if at all) involve Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the fight against piracy.
Link to PDF document.
admin Miscellaneous piracy, trade
The Pirate Bay case taking place in Sweden will set precedents for the role that BitTorrent sites play in the distribution of copyright material. This snip from the
Arstechnica site describing the prosecution’s closing remarks:
Wadsted … claimed that The Pirate Bay was built for piracy, and she noted that site admins do in fact police the site for child pornography, inactive torrents, and misleading descriptions. Given that sort of control over the material, is it credible simply to see The Pirate Bay as a hand-off forum that allows all sorts of user postings for which it cannot be held liable?
The defence is still to make their closing remarks.
admin Miscellaneous BitTorrent, copyright, piracy