Prosecutors Drop Half The Charges Against The Pirate Bay

from the research-anyone? dept

Tue, Feb 17th 2009 11:10am — Mike Masnick

We avoided reporting on The Pirate Bay trial yesterday because not much of interest actually happened. It was (as The Pirate Bay folks intended) more of a spectacle than anything interesting. However, this morning, the prosecutors dropped half the charges against the defendants, apparently after realizing that The Pirate Bay did not copy any files directly or produce any copyrighted materials for download. While the entertainment industry talking heads are trying to play down the significance of this, it is really rather stunning. Prosecutors have been working on this case (with tremendous assistance from the industry and even foreign government representatives) for well over a year. You would have thought that sometime during that process they would have examined how The Pirate Bay works, and whether or not it actually copies files. It kinda makes you wonder what the prosecution has been doing all this time.

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Filed Under: sweden, trial
Companies: the pirate bay

37 Comments

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Ragnar, 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:16am

it is obvious
...and very simple

The prosecurion and the industry have no idea what they're doing nor how to do it!
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- Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:28am
  
  Re: it is obvious
  FTA: "For the rest of the first day of the trial, prosecutor Håkan Roswall described how Internet e-mail works and offered details about the computer hardware seized in a 2006 raid, according to TorrentFreak.com"
  
  What does email have to do with anything? Are they suggesting TPB emailed infringing files to users?
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  - Nathan, 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:41am
    
    Re: Re: it is obvious
    I could be wrong here, but wasn't that raid deemed illegal. If so, wouldn't any evidence obtained as a result of that raid be inadmissible.
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    - TriZz, 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:57am
      
      Re: Re: Re: it is obvious
      ...yes. If they were being tried in the US.
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      - Nathan, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:03pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: it is obvious
        Sweden is a pretty liberal place (TPB has survived after all) so I would think they would have equivalent, if not more exacting, evidenciary rules than we do here.
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    - discojohnson, 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:58am
      
      Re: Re: Re: it is obvious
      ...in the US.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:59pm
    
    Re: Re: it is obvious
    You know, that could be a very interesting way to go... email many smaller parts of a file to an email account (Gmail accounts are pretty big) and then have something that can reassemble them again... good idea!
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    - CB, 17 Feb 2009 @ 1:13pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: it is obvious
      The last Blu-Ray rip I downloaded was 8.5 gigs... thats alot of emails.
      
      Hehe, the bottom line is as someone said above. It doesn't matter. They could take down every public tracker out there, and there would still be every private tracker. I haven't been on a public tracker in 3 years, the quality and speed sucks.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 1:15pm
      
      Go back to 95
      they want their usenet back
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      - Ass Key, 17 Feb 2009 @ 1:47pm
        
        Re: Go back to 95
        Sssshhh! There's no such thing as usenet. It's just a rumor made up by the sysadmins. There's no IRC either, and even if there were, nobody could or would ever distribute copyrighted material via either...
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Lucretious, 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:37am

I see this attitude in many of the comment forums on various sites......many people, particularly those who are anti-torrent, haven't the slightest idea of how torrents and P2P works.

Gotta love the spin they're putting on the announcement....."we're just simplifying the case and it changes nothing"......lol.
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- Chronno S. Trigger, 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:59am
  
  Re:
  Really, in the long run, it doesn't. If the persecution didn't drop that charge, it would have been out once the defense got to the stand. I think the persecution knew that but they figured they would throw it out there to see if it stuck. It didn't.
  
  The second part of the charges, making the material available, may be a little harder to defend against. I don't know how the law is in Sweden, but I'm still putting my bets on the Pirate Bay.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:49am

If being a torrent tracker is infringement then EVERY search engine is equally guilty of infringement because you can find torrents through just about any search service. If the talking heads from Hollywood succeed in this case you can expect them to come after every search engine, ISP, web host and YOU!
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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:52am

Not sanquin
IIRC, they're being prosecuted for "assisting in making available" copyrighted material. While that makes little to no sense, it may be enough to get them convicted.

I am somewhat relieved to see that, after all this time, the prosecutors still have no clue about how any of this stuff actually works. I am worried, though, that the judge(s?) willl be equally clueless.
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- Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 2:09pm
  
  Re: Not sanquin
  "assisting in making available"?
  
  What is that? Two layers of indirection? That's stretching credulity.
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- M Hagston, 24 Feb 2009 @ 6:44pm
  
  Re: Not sanquin
  "IIRC, they're being prosecuted for "assisting in making available" copyrighted material. While that makes little to no sense, it may be enough to get them convicted."
  
  Under this logic, they would also have to prosecute the public library right. :-)
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R. Miles, 17 Feb 2009 @ 11:53am

So what are the other charges remaining?
Given the significant charges dropped, I'm at a loss on what these industries could be continuing with since it seems their "lost revenue" claim was just flushed down the toilet.

Such stupidity.
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- discojohnson, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:03pm
  
  Re: So what are the other charges remaining?
  you start small. don't pin someone for murder first, get them on the home invasion since it's easier. then you get another trial for the unregistered handgun. another for the weeks of harassing phone calls. then you go for murder now that you have someone found guilty of all sorts of other crimes. my guess is that they don't have enough for the worst charges, but it'll have more effect down the road, if nothing else but for precedence.
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  - Matt, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:08pm
    
    Re: Re: So what are the other charges remaining?
    where do you come up with this crap?
    
    They have no evidence of anything. This is not a slow prosecution to go from small things to big things. This is a giant and worldwide publicized trial that probably bigger heads of governments than we can imagine not only have a hand in moving the prosecution to trial, but also in watching how this trial plays out. I can guarantee you every torrent tracker in the US is going to be watching very carefully how this plays out and the rest of Europe too.
    
    Just wait for the courts to claim the word Piracy. You'll see the pirate bay explode about how inaccurate that is.
    
    Or have you not noticed that this is about copyright, and not "piracy". Once the prosecution mentions piracy they'll have lost any and all credibility.
    
    Also, they haven't gotten to piratebay's counterclaims. When those come, this will be fun.
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    - brad, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:19pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: So what are the other charges remaining?
      What are their counterclaims?
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      - Matt, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:22pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: So what are the other charges remaining?
        They haven't announced any yet. I don't know what the timeframe is for them or if there is one, either.
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        SteveD, 17 Feb 2009 @ 1:37pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: So what are the other charges remaining?
        "They haven't announced any yet. I don't know what the timeframe is for them or if there is one, either."
        
        Defence starts on Thursday I believe.
        
        To clarify what has happened, the prosecutor has dropped charges of "assisting copyright infringement", the remaining charges are "assisting making available".
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  - Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 2:11pm
    
    Re: Re: So what are the other charges remaining?
    But prior bad acts aren't admissible in a trial. There goes your strategy.
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Jeff, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:10pm

As I said before...
TPB will come out victoriously.
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- Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:22pm
  
  Re: As I said before...
  It is really irrelevant whether they win or not. Shut down TPB and 10 others will rise up to take their place. Attempting to stem the tide of P2P and torrent trackers is like trying to un-invent gun powder. The knowledge is out there - you can't make it go away because you find it inconvenient.
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  - Lucretious, 17 Feb 2009 @ 2:03pm
    
    Re: Re: As I said before...
    I agree that TPB going down won't stop P2P but TPB is an important figurehead for both sides of the argument.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2009 @ 12:13am
      
      Re: Re: Re: As I said before...
      In the grand scheme of things it's about as important as Kazaa or warez sites.
      
      Simply put, meaningless. The quantity of copy infringed material will simply continue to increase unabated with or with TPB.
      
      Asking around my office recently, there was not a single person I spoke to who did not utilise torrents. This is coming from a completely non-tech office where 99% of my fail to distinguish between "reply" and "reply all" when responding to email.
      
      File sharing is mainstream now, with your mum/dad/aunts/uncles/colleagues/kids/friends doing it. Trying to stop that is like trying to stop people breathing air.
      
      Good luck.
      
      PS. Who even uses torrents these days? They're so slow....
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      - Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2009 @ 12:00pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: As I said before...
        you didn't ask what they torrent, did you? many people torrent legal stuff.
        
        also, if you think torrents are slow then you don't know how to use them properly
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:36pm

Duh
"It kinda makes you wonder what the prosecution has been doing all this time."

Isn't it obvious? They've been torrenting their lawbooks.
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Thomo, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:51pm

Watch my left hand
This is the sort of move by a prosecutor to finally unveil the best case against defendants, and up to that point to keep the defense guessing about the scope of the case that'll be presented at trial.
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Claes, 17 Feb 2009 @ 12:51pm

I think the article and your blog post is a bit off mark. The prosecutor gave an explanation of the bittorrent protocol to the court so I'm sure that he realizes that the PB persons don't directly engage in copyright infringement through their site. I think what made him drop these charges was rather that he realized that it would be very difficult to prove, using the documentation at his disposal, that the Pirate Bay tracker was actually used in the concrete file sharing cases brought up. He admitted himself that he wasn't familiar with the tracker-less DHT mode of bittorrent clients. Furthermore, it's possible that he didn't know that a torrent file can refer to multiple trackers. And finally, quite surprisingly, he doesn't have a copy of the torrent files (or he has, but for some reason has nothing to gain from presenting them). I believe it's these three things taken together which motivated his decision to drop these charges.

Nathan wrote: "I could be wrong here, but wasn't that raid deemed illegal. If so, wouldn't any evidence obtained as a result of that raid be inadmissible."

Actually, you are wrong. According to Swedish law it's possible to present almost any kind of evidence (some exceptions include classified lawyer and medical records) even if it was obtained in an illegal manner. Being as we are greatly influenced by american movies I think the average Swede would be just as surprised as you probably are to learn this.
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Nick Nack, 17 Feb 2009 @ 3:07pm

I wonder..
I wonder what the whole case and all the publicity it has received has done to advertise p2p/torrents etc.

How many (less knowledgeable) people who would have just used limewire (oe) have now found out about torrenting?

How much this case, against TPB has increased world piracy?
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Daniel, 17 Feb 2009 @ 3:19pm

The Pirate Bay actually has a page full of the demands of various big names (EA, WB, among others) to cease and desist, along with their cheeky responses. But I don't think they even launched the site before figuring out exactly how they were going to defend it in court. The prosecution stands no chance.

According to newsy.com, the companies are only asking about $13.6 million in reparation. Does this number seem low to anyone?
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zxcv, 17 Feb 2009 @ 5:35pm

i personnally feel TPB do loads of harm to content creators. If you actually look at their site and how its set up its a really nice gravy train. they host no content only link to it which means a minimal hit on upload costs. they are in the top 100 sites visited which means lots of traffic, and for the few adds they do run on the site the ammount of visitors they get must more than pay the bills.
and while they keep making money all those millions of potential sales go up in smoke.
i dont really give a crap about the music or movie industires but the games industry really gets hit by thier site and similar ones.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 6:02pm

Can you combine Civil and Criminal charges in Sweden? It seem wrong that they are facing both civil damages to the entertainment industry and jail time.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2009 @ 7:05pm

The Simple Answer Is Probably The Most Correct Answer
Prosecutors dropped half the charges against the defendants because they realized that the court was not buying their BS.
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Claes, 18 Feb 2009 @ 12:15am

Anonymous Coward said: "Can you combine Civil and Criminal charges in Sweden? It seem wrong that they are facing both civil damages to the entertainment industry and jail time."

Some of the PB persons and their lawyers insisted that the two types of charges should be separated, but the court didn't agree to that. This matter is also mentioned in this Wired blog post where a Swedish tort law professor criticises the choice of handling both criminal and civil charges in the same trial. See also: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/prosecution-dro.html
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