Court Tells Pirate Bay Founders They Can No Longer Work On The Pirate Bay

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

Thu, Oct 29th 2009 11:41am — Mike Masnick

You can't say the entertainment industry isn't persistent in their attempts to shut down The Pirate Bay (though, a portion of the site's popularity can be attributed to their neverending campaign against the site). While the industry won its lawsuit against four of The Pirate Bay's founders earlier this year, the ongoing appeals process is taking too long for the industry -- and the court had not issued an injunction against the site, so it's still running (though, plenty of users have since bailed out due to concern about the failed attempt to sell the site). Still, the entertainment industry has been trying a bunch of different ways to shut down the site in the meantime. Initially it got an ISP serving the site to stop, which caused a brief downtime. However, the latest, as pointed out by brokep, is that the industry appears to have convinced the court to bar two of the defendants -- Gottfried Svartholm-Warg and Fredrik Neij -- from doing any work on the site (Google translation from the original, so would appreciate any detail corrections if the translation isn't accurate).

It's difficult to see what this accomplishes. Brokep points out that the two aren't involved with the site in the first place, and don't live in Sweden any more as well, so it's not clear what this does. On top of that, even if they were involved, it's not like others wouldn't quickly take their place anyway. The whole crusade continues to be a massive waste of time and resources by the entertainment industry for no clear gain.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: copyright, fredrik neij, gottfried svarthold-warg, lawsuits, sweden
Companies: the pirate bay

24 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Melamine Toothpaste, 29 Oct 2009 @ 12:09pm

Something worked
I haven't been able to get on the site for 2 days now...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Will, 29 Oct 2009 @ 12:37pm
  
  Re: Something worked
  I was on there last night. The issue is probably somehow on your end. Maybe your ISP or something else is blocking it.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Spanky, 31 Oct 2009 @ 5:02pm
  
  Re: Something worked
  no problem here! i'm on it as i type
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
TheStupidOne, 29 Oct 2009 @ 12:18pm

I find it interesting
That 2 people have been banned from working on something that may yet prove to be legal (pointing to torrents) while the appeals are in progress
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- :Lobo Santo (profile), 29 Oct 2009 @ 12:36pm
  
  Re: I find it interesting
  As if legality ever had anything to do with rights...
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Skout (profile), 29 Oct 2009 @ 12:35pm

...but the judges involved aren't biased or anything.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jeff, 29 Oct 2009 @ 12:41pm

How do I contact the entertainment industry?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Hex (profile), 29 Oct 2009 @ 12:59pm
  
  Re:
  You could always try putting up your own Pirate Bay clone, gaining thousand of followers and file share the shit out of all of their content, and they will get in contact with you!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Al, 29 Oct 2009 @ 1:24pm
  
  Re:
  Make some sort of anti-semite remark, and they will come find you....
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2009 @ 12:52pm

sites up from the us, i havent had any problems at all through all this
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
sehlat (profile), 29 Oct 2009 @ 1:18pm

Waste of time and money by Big Content?
Good. It means the illegitimi aren't using it to buy Congresscritters.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2009 @ 1:28pm

Precedent?
I can see this as a means to create a precedent. There is no reason for TPB to fight it. Next time they will go after actual workers....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2009 @ 2:03pm

If they can control information distribution they can prevent indie movie makers from competing with Hollywood.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Chucklebutte (profile), 29 Oct 2009 @ 2:52pm

Ugh
Id kill for anyone to use any of my pics, my posts, my anything! Drive traffic to my site, have users sign up for my forums. It would make me piss my pants to have a chance like that, for my works to get out there. I'm not saying I'm a great photographer or my blogs will rock the world, I'm just saying it would be nice to get that kind of attention. The industry should be so happy to have droves of idiots work for them for free. The amount of money they save for these people doing all the grunt work for them must be astounding. I offer all my works to be used by anyone, someone make my stuff better! Please! It would do me more good than harm.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
MonicaS (profile), 29 Oct 2009 @ 3:05pm

Give UP!!
Seriously do these people not get it! This is completely useless in every sense. Even if this was just simple posturing, it fails miserably as you at least have to have something to stand on. This is a perfect example of clueless legislature following clueless corporations. Monica S Los Angeles Computer Repair http://www.sebecomputercare.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2009 @ 3:15pm

What I don't get is that brokep isn't part of TPB, yet he speaks for them and intimately knows who doesn't work there.

Hmmm. I think he may have just put his foot in his mouth.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jesse, 29 Oct 2009 @ 5:54pm

Can they make a new site called Bay of Pirates?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tor (profile), 30 Oct 2009 @ 1:09am

Some analysis
This case is very interesting because none of the earlier court decisions have weighed the interest of access to files spread via TPB legally against the interest of rights holders to stop infringements (assuming that TPB is legally responsible for such infringements). The verdict against the Pirate Bay founders was only about ~30 copyrighted works and not about the site as such. The injunction against an ISP wasn't based on any proportionality assessment of the kind mentioned above since the ISP failed to bring this information to the table and the court in this kind of case is only allowed to consider the information brought forward by the parties involved (the TPB guys failed to respond because they were not at home and didn't get their mail in time). The ISP decision also didn't mention anything about blocking the whole site - that that was the only technically viable way of blocking the specific works mentioned in the injunction is another matter.

Now one of the TPB founders have for the first time forced the court to weigh legal file-sharing against illegal file-sharing by providing relevant information. Here's how the judges argues - a translation of an excerpt from the court decision protocol:

"Fredrik Neij has objected against the charges by claiming that there is a significant amount of legal material on The Pirate Bay and that artists use The Pirate Bay for spreading their works. There is no reason to doubt this information, but it does not result in any change to our assessment. Nor can the circumstance that a prohibition, because of technical difficulties, may have the consequence that certain legal material cannot be spread via The Pirate bay cause a prohibition to be viewed as an unproportional measure or result in a different conclusion."

Not a very satisfactory explanation IMO. If proportionality is always assessed in that manner I'm afraid that it will have very bad consequences sooner or later.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tor (profile), 30 Oct 2009 @ 1:20am

Error in the linked article + a couple of reliable sources
Although I'm not sure that it's the translation that is wrong (could be the source too), there are some incorrect things in it, but you seem to have gotten everything right in your blog post. Some sources claim that the Pirate Bay founders will need to pay up if the Pirate Bay stays online. That's not true. They will need to pay up if it can be proven that they themselves assist in the maintenance of the site. If someone else runs the site and they are not involved (the decision doesn't involve Peter Sunde btw) the injunction means nothing.

Swedish Radio has some short coverage in English too (everything in this article is correct) on their SR International site.
Everything in this TorrentFreak article is correct as far as I can see.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2009 @ 5:11am
  
  Re: Error in the linked article + a couple of reliable sources
  The problem for brokep and such is that they are trying really hard to be way to cute and coy about all this.
  
  brokep's only comments on anything to do with TPB should be "I don't own it or run it, ask someone who does". Instead, he keeps making public statements that make it clear that he is involved with running the site.
  
  Basically, they are going to "cute" themselves into personal liability.
  
  Are torrents used for legal material? I am sure some people have used it to get legal material at some point. Was TPB's top 100 traded files legal? Not a single one, last time I looked.
  
  http://thepiratebay.org/top/all
  
  Not a single item on the list at 5:10am pacific appeared legal.
  
  So the concept that the distribution of legal material would be harmed by shutting down TPB is a laughable concept at best.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Tor (profile), 30 Oct 2009 @ 12:12pm
    
    Re: Re: Error in the linked article + a couple of reliable sources
    "So the concept that the distribution of legal material would be harmed by shutting down TPB is a laughable concept at best."
    
    If I'm not mistaken the court may only consider the information actively presented by the parties involved (that was the case in the ISP injunction case and I assume it's the same here). From what I have seen the plaintiffs have not provided anything that dispute the statement that a significant amount of material spread via TPB is done so legally and the judges say themselves in the protocol that there is no reason to doubt this information. Neither have the plaintiffs argued about the overall contents of TPB (unless I have missed something) but rather concentrated on the works relevant to this case.
    
    If the court were not allowed to consider other things than what the parties presented in the ISP case, why should it be any different in this case? Besides the whole case is not about TPB as such but only about a couple of hundred works.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
lol, 30 Oct 2009 @ 5:15am

lol
The australian media seems to have given up reporting incidents relating to this, probably because TPB was getting too much awareness.

Any publicity is good publicity.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
bshock, 30 Oct 2009 @ 9:34am

"The whole crusade continues to be a massive waste of time and resources by the entertainment industry for no clear gain."

Indeed. And I am very, very happy about this. I'm trying to think of more ways for the "entertainment industry" (meaning Hollywood's schlockmeister accountant-managers) to waste its time and resources. Little help?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
bishboria (profile), 31 Oct 2009 @ 11:25am

What is the gain?
From the last sentence in the article: "The whole crusade continues to be a massive waste of time and resources by the entertainment industry for no clear gain."

Perhaps the entertainment industry will use the sentence "Not only are we losing billions of dollars in sales, look how much piracy also costs us in legal costs!" in future lawsuits... Wouldn't surprise me. This could push the opinions of people, not knowledgable on the subject, in the jury in courts
[ link to this | view in chronology ]