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Archive for the ‘#spectrial’ Category

August 17th, 2012

#spectrial, BitTorrent Network, Legal, Pirate Talk

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Pirate Bay Founder Appeals Passport Revocation

One of the founders of The Pirate Bay is this month engaged in yet another battle. Fredrik Neij currently lives in Laos, Asia, and he and his wife are expecting their third child very soon. However, they need to cross the border to Thailand to give birth which is proving problematic – the Embassy of Sweden in Bangkok has revoked Neij’s passport.

Following the criminal convictions of Pirate Bay founders Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, all but Sunde have kept a relatively low profile.

While the site’s former spokesman has been active online promoting his Flattr micropayment service largely from locations around Europe, both Svartholm and Neij took the decision to move to Asia.

Following his illness and subsequent no-show during the appeals process, little to nothing has been heard from Svartholm from his presumed Cambodia base. Neij too has been going about his business quietly but now finds himself in another battle.

According to a document dated August 6, Neij is currently appealing a decision by the Embassy of Sweden in Bangkok to revoke his passport.

The 34-year-old argues that the nature of his crime is not serious enough to warrant his passport being taken away and that by doing so the Swedish authorities will subject his family to unreasonable consequences.

Although it was long believed that Neij had been living in Thailand, according to embassy documents he actually lives with his wife and two children in neighboring Laos.

However, since Neij’s Thai wife is currently pregnant with their third child, the family want the freedom to go to Thailand for the birth. That means crossing the border which of course requires a passport.

“The children were born in the hospital on the Thai side of the border, where since birth they have received all necessary medical treatment,” Neij writes in his appeal.

“The reasons for this are primarily dictated by the standard of care and hygiene. As a result the family needs to occasionally cross the border for medical care and as a result of the pregnancy.”

Neij’s desire to have access to Thailand is understandable. Laos is one of the world’s few remaining communist states and is one of east Asia’s poorest countries. The country suffers from limited communications infrastructure and in rural areas electricity availability is poor. Aside from a short link across a bridge in the capital, Laos has no railways.

In June, the Stockholm District Court claimed that that despite an earlier ban, Neij – known online as TiAMO – had continued to have involvement in the operations of The Pirate Bay. As a result the Court handed him a 500,000 kronor fine ($74,400).

“There is no evidence, just the lack of evidence that I was not involved,” Neij told us.

“In civil cases it’s guilty until proven innocent and in a previous case I declined to give the details who I transfered the site to. They say if it’s not me, then I could easily say who it is.”

While Peter Sunde waits on the results of a public campaign for him to receive a pardon from Swedish authorities, the whereabouts of Gottfrid Svartholm remain unknown.

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May 19th, 2011

#spectrial, File Sharing, Net Stuff, Peer to Peer, Pirate Talk

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Google Boss: We’ll Fight Anti-Piracy Blocking Laws

During a speech on Wednesday, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said that proposals from both the U.S. and British governments to block access to file-sharing websites would threaten freedom of speech. Google, he said, is opposed to such measures and will fight them, presumably in court, if necessary.

There can be little doubt that when it comes to hot tools for dealing with sites allegedly infringing the copyrights of the music and movie industries, site blocking and web filtering is absolutely in fashion this year.

The United States (with its PROTECT IP bill) and the United Kingdom (with its Digital Economy Act), are both preparing what they believe could be their best chance at a silver bullet approach to piracy – the complete blocking of ‘infringing’ domains.

Yesterday though, they discovered that apart from the usual legislative stumbling blocks, an Internet giant intends to hinder their progress.

Google is set to come out in opposition of cumbersome DNS-style blocking, perhaps giving a boost to embattled sites like The Pirate Bay and Newzbin2. These sites are at the very top of the domain-blocking wishlists of both the U.S. and UK, but neither of them are in ideal positions to mount legal challenges of their own.

Speaking after this keynote speech at Google’s Big Tent conference in London, The Guardian reports Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt as voicing clear opposition to web censorship.

“If there is a law that requires DNSs [domain name systems, the protocol that allows users to connect to websites] to do X and it’s passed by both houses of congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it,” Schmidt said.

“If it’s a request the answer is we wouldn’t do it, if it’s a discussion we wouldn’t do it,” he added.

Schimdt went on to compare the notion of website blocking with methods used by the Chinese to censor the Internet, cautioning that when those further east see that the west aren’t opposed to censorship when it comes to achieving their particular aims, it might only encourage further crackdowns.

“I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily [implementing] simple solutions to complex problems,” Schmidt said. “So, ‘let’s whack off the DNS’. Okay, that seems like an appealing solution but it sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say ‘I don’t like free speech so I’ll whack off all those DNSs’ – that country would be China.”

Google has a very much push-pull relationship with the content industries when it comes to infringement and potential ways of stopping it.

On the one hand Google has been helping to stop its Adsense platform being utilized by ‘pirate’ sites and has helped to partially filter some of its search features to remove ‘infringing’ suggestions. On the other it has been both help and hindrance to Hollywood by getting involved in their ongoing dispute with BitTorrent indexer isoHunt.

Yet when Google, a massively powerful organization which seems to be able to make most things turn to gold on the web, tried to reach licensing agreements with the music labels for its music locker service, it came away frustrated.

The message here is that Google is not on the side of the entertainment industries, nor on the side of the pirates. Like all companies with that all-important bottom line, it will do whatever suits its best interests. Time will tell what they are.

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April 23rd, 2011

#spectrial, File Sharing, General, Hot Topic, Legal, Legal Issues, Net Stuff, Peer to Peer, Pirate Talk

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Google, MPAA and isoHunt Clash in Court

Last year the BitTorrent search engine isoHunt filed an appeal in their case with the MPAA. With the appeal isoHunt hopes to overturn a District Court ruling that obligates the site to operate an MPAA-approved censorship filter. The case is still ongoing and the Appeal Court has now granted Google the opportunity to chime in as well, leading to critical comments from both the MPAA and isoHunt.

Two months ago Google got involved in a BitTorrent case for the first time in its history. The company took an interest in the ongoing legal action between isoHunt and the MPAA, fearing that the standing injunction has the potential to damage Google and other web services.

In February Google filed an amicus brief (third party testimony) at the Appeal Court, in the hope that the court would consider Google’s opinion on the case. The MPAA was against a Google contribution, but despite these concerns the Appeal Court has now allowed the search engine’s testimony to be added to the case.

Although Google did not dispute isoHunt’s liability in their testimony, the company stated that some of the reasoning in the District Court verdict went too far, and Google wants to see it scrapped in the appeal.

“While in agreement with the result reached in this case, Google is concerned that some of the reasoning offered by the district court goes too far and would upset the careful balance between copyright protection and technological innovation struck by the Supreme Court and Congress. Particularly because this case is not a hard one, it should be decided narrowly,” Google wrote.

The search giant addresses various issues they feel are not needed to arrive at the verdict, but can negatively impact other services on the Internet. Several of these conclusions are the result of suggestions made by the movie studios, which Google claims are misplaced and incorrect.

Google wants to address these issues because they fear it may otherwise lead to a negative outcome for themselves.

The Appeal Court agreed to accept and consider the amicus brief last month. This is the first time that Google have got involved in a BitTorrent case which is significant itself, but interestingly enough neither the MPAA nor isoHunt are happy with Google’s submission.

In a response to Google’s brief, isoHunt says it agrees with Google’s arguments that the District Court verdict is full of “fatal errors” and “omissions”. However, it doesn’t agree with Google’s conclusion that isoHunt is liable for copyright infringements by some of their users. isoHunt’s lawyer therefore asks the court to reject the latter arguments.

“Defendants submit that Google’s confusing arguments and fallacious reasoning should not obscure the importance of issues presented by this case. Defendants have proposed a practical way to deal with such issues; but Google, like plaintiffs, propose nothing other than affirmance of a factually flawed and legally ill-founded District Court Decision.”

The MPAA also responded to Google’s testimony, and was even less pleased to see the company chime in.

“Google is not a disinterested amicus. Google itself is a defendant in suits charging certain of its business units which intentionally promote infringement. Google’s arguments as amicus reflect its litigation interests in obtaining a legal ruling that facilitation of infringement, even if shown to be intentional, may still be immune from copyright liability.”

The MPAA’s legal team then goes on to refute nearly all arguments made by Google. The search engine wants to scrap all of the District Court’s conclusions regarding liability that could eventually be used against Google, but the movie companies clearly disagree.

“The Court should reject Google’s pleas for immunities for businesses that intentionally facilitate copyright infringement,” MPAA’s lawyers conclude.

Although Google weighed in on the isoHunt vs. MPAA case in self-interest, the mere fact that they got involved signifies the importance of the case. To some it may ‘just’ be a dispute between a BitTorrent site and the MPAA but if affirmed the District Court ruling may have far-reaching consequences for hundreds of other web-services.

After filing the amicus brief Google’s role in the case has likely ended, but isoHunt and the MPAA will continue their battle in court.

There’s a hearing planned in early May where we will find out more about where the case is heading. Interestingly, this hearing is scheduled on the same day and in the same court as Veoh’s appeal hearing. Another DMCA case, but one where the service provider was not held liable.

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September 29th, 2010

#spectrial, Hot Off The Press, Hot Topic, The Pirate Bay

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The Pirate Bay Appeal Day 2: Lost Sales

The Pirate Bay appeal is moving forward faster than expected. On the second day representatives for the music and movie industries talked about lost sales and revenues they claim can be attributed to The Pirate Bay. In addition, the prosecution uncovered ad sales and money trails to portray The Pirate Bay as a commercial organization.

The second day of the trial began with the announcement that Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij is not present because he didn’t slept much last night. According to Neij’s lawyer he has been under the weather lately. He is trying to get some more sleep before coming to the court room.

After this minor interruption the hearing started where it left off yesterday, with prosecutor Håkan Roswall presenting more evidence to the Court regarding ad revenues and other financial transactions that involve the defendants. Roswall showed emails and bank statements which he claims proves that all defendants received money for their involvement with The Pirate Bay.

Most, if not all of the information that is being brought up has already been discussed in the District Court hearings last year, and it is assumed that the prosecutor is trying to label The Pirate Bay as a commercial operation. Several advertising deals were discussed, most of which involve an Israeli businessman and his advertising company. Aside from ad revenue, Roswall also discussed the money trail behind the servers that were bought for The Pirate Bay.

Roswall then went on to explain the various tasks the defendants fulfilled according to his claims. Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik were the main programmers. Peter Sunde is seen as a general ‘office manager’ who coordinated the programming and helped with optimizing the database, layout and search of The Pirate Bay. In addition, Sunde was involved in contracting advertisers. The fourth defendant, Carl Lundstrom, was a financer and was involved in strategic planning according to Roswall.

After the prosecutor finished, Peter Danowsky of music industry group IFPI took the stand. His introduction caused a few chuckles in the audience as Roswall mispronounced IFPI and introduced him as a member of the “International Federation of the Pornographic Industry.”

Danowsky asked the Appeal Court for extensive damages to compensate the record labels he represents for claimed losses. The defendants willingly ignored copyright law and allowed users to freely share copyrighted music, he said. The Pirate Bay’s download counters were used as evidence to show how many albums were downloaded.

According to Danowsky, the damages claimed from The Pirate Bay are the same as if the site had ‘legally’ obtained licenses to distribute the music world-wide, regardless of whether all the downloaders had later decided to buy the music or not. Effectively, he is trying to say that one download equals one lost sale.

Danowsky further argued that for some recordings the damages per infringement should be significantly higher. Beatles albums are given as an example because the band’s music isn’t available legally online. This is an interesting argument, since there would be no need to download these albums if they were available online. Music that is shared before the official release date should also receive greater compensation, he argued.

After Danowsky finished talking, Henrik Ponten – representative of the movie studios – issued his claims. Ponten stated that he will detail the request for damages next week when Bertil Sandgren, a board member of the Swedish film institute, is scheduled to testify.

The hearing continued after a lunch break with Monique Wadsted, representing the U.S. movie industry. She explained how The Pirate Bay can be used to transfer large files quickly. She further noted that it is very easy for the operators to delete a torrent file, but that the defendants nonetheless chose not to remove any infringing files.

Wadsted further stated that The Pirate Bay is not a ‘passive’ site. The categories, which have been ‘actively’ put up by The Pirate Bay’s operators, make it easier for users to find torrents. She further reiterated what the prosecution has already said, claiming that the defendants earned a significant amount of money, up to 35 million Swedish krona according to an expert report.

Wadsted concluded by saying that the movie studios want compensation for the titles in the lawsuit, but also damages for the losses the industry suffered in general due to The Pirate Bay. She said that The Pirate Bay makes it harder for copyright holders to recoup their investments in films.

The last one and a half hours of the day were for the defense team, starting with Jonas Nilsson, Fredrik Neij’s lawyer. Nilsson rejected most of the prosecution’s claims and started by refuting the claim that the majority of the torrents on The Pirate Bay point to copyrighted material. The lawyer said that the opposite is true.

The lawyer continued by stating that his client has three objections to the indictment.

Firstly, The Pirate bay is merely a search engine and does not store any copyrighted material. Besides, Neij is not aware of all the content that can be downloaded via the site, so he cannot be seen as aiding or abetting copyright infringements. Lastly, The Pirate Bay is a transmission instead of a hosting service, meaning that under the E-Commerce Act the operators can’t be held responsible for the actions of the site’s users.

Nilsson continued by saying that Fredrik Neij was not involved in founding the site, but that he merely agreed to help out on the technical side. The Pirate Bay itself was never a commercial operation and all the proceeds went to investments in hardware and other technical equipment.

The defense lawyer further said that the purpose of The Pirate Bay website is to share files, not to infringe copyrights. Users interact with the site automatically and the people who are operating the site are not involved in the actual file-transfers or the uploading of .torrent files to the site. BitTorrent as a file-sharing protocol is perfectly legal, Nilsson stated.

Nilsson then went back to the E-Commerce Act, stating the the operators of The Pirate Bay never changed or edited any torrent files, because they are not considered to be liable for what users share. Under the Act the site should be seen as merely a transmission service, not a hosting platform, he argued.

The last speaker of the day was Peter Sunde’s lawyer Peter Althin, who spoke twenty minutes. He refuted the claim of the prosecution that his client was actively operating the website. Sunde did have contact with the Israeli businessman who handled the advertisements, but that was because he was contacted as a spokesperson of the site when others were too busy to respond.

Althin further said that The Pirate Bay is not engaging in criminal activity, and even if the court decides otherwise, his client should be acquitted because he was acting merely as a spokesperson. Sunde appeared in the press many times as a representative of the site, but was never responsible for the financing, programming or other daily operations.

Finally, Althin noted that the plaintiffs have not suffered any financial damage that can be attributed to The Pirate Bay, contrary to what the prosecution has claimed today and yesterday.

That concluded the second day. Thus far the trial is mostly a repeat of the District Court hearings. Everything seems to go smoothly and the hearing conclude faster than planned. The trial continues of Friday.

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September 27th, 2010

#spectrial

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The Pirate Bay Appeal Starts Tomorrow

Last year The Pirate Bay Four were sentenced to a year in prison, and each ordered to pay $905,000 in damages. Tomorrow the appeal of the trial will start, but unlike last time there is is an awkward silence in the media, blogs and even on The Pirate Bay. Is this the proverbial calm before the storm, or perhaps a change of course?

Millions of BitTorrent users all around the world followed the Pirate Bay trial with great interest last year. Many had hoped that the court would decide that operating a BitTorrent tracker was no offense and that the defendants would walk free.

That didn’t happen.

On April 17th 2009, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom were found guilty of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. The Court sentenced the four to one year in prison and a fine of $905,000 each. Within days, this verdict was appealed by the defendants.

The Pirate Bay, meanwhile, continued to operate as if nothing had happened and the “Pirate Bay Four” picked up their lives and continued to work on non-Pirate Bay projects. In the background, however, both the defense and prosecution teams were preparing for the appeal which will start tomorrow.

During the initial trial there was a flood of media attention, ignited by some of the defendants themselves who dubbed it the ‘Spectrial.’ On The Pirate Bay website a trial blog was started and The Pirate Bay’s founding group Piratbyrån organized a joint press conference at the Museum of Technology in Stockholm one day before it started.

The first day of the trial was a true spectacle, as predicted and called for. Dozens of Pirate Bay supporters gathered around the Court waving skull-and-crossbone flags as both parties entered the court house. Free candy was handed out to passers by in the streets, and online the hash tag #spectrial was the most searched term on Twitter.

Pirate Bay supporters at the first day in Court last year

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Those expecting a similar show around the appeal will be disappointed. There’s nothing but silence coming out of the defendant’s camp. Piratbyrån, the group that coordinated most events surrounding the trial last year, has been disbanded, and no rallies or support gatherings have been announced thus far.

Content-wise there won’t be much news either. There are 8 trial days scheduled between September 28 and October 15 and most of these hearings will be based on recordings from last year’s proceedings. Even though some of the defendants would have preferred to have their say in the appeal, this was denied by the Appeal Court.

“I was denied [to talk] even though I demanded to talk. It’s pretty crazy and totally incomprehensible,” former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde said.

There is no doubt that the appeal will be less ‘provoking’ than the initial trial, but we will nonetheless follow all developments closely. After all, this is a landmark case involving three of the key figures to which BitTorrent owes much of its popularity. The story is far from over yet, and it has to be told.

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