The Pirate Bay's 'Lawsuit' Against Anti-Piracy Group More About Exposing Double Standards In Enforcement

from the looks-like-it dept

We stayed away from the story that made the rounds last week, concerning the claims that The Pirate Bay was going to file a lawsuit against Finnish anti-piracy agency CIAPC for setting up a site that parodies The Pirate Bay, using a copy of TPB's stylesheet. Knowing how TPB operates, we assumed that this was not an ordinary situation, even as eager reporters mocked the site for its apparent hypocrisy. Having seen how TPB has acted in the past, we figured there was more to this, and this week the details are starting to come out.

TPB has now said that it has reported the parody CIAPC site to the Economic Crime Unit. Why? Well, it appears the whole thing is really about exposing the double standard by Finnish law enforcement. You see, recently, Finnish prosecutors went after a parody site by Finnish "software developer, researcher and internet activist" Matti Nikki. So, TPB, is noting that it just wants to see the law applied equally (by which it means, showing how farcical the law is, knowing that law enforcement will never prosecute this):

“In a similar case, the prosecution and the Helsinki Court of Appeals have found that a parody site can violate the moral rights of the original author. Changing the logo or making slight edits to the text are not enough to remove this liability,” they informed the police.

The Finnish EFF supported this claim, explaining to TorrentFreak (in the link above) that seeing how prosecutors reacted would be quite telling:

“It’s interesting to see, how the police reacts to Pirate Bay’s demands. On facts the case is indeed very similar to Matti Nikki’s case, in which the prosecutor decided to bring the charges on behalf of Save the Children.

“The law should be the same for everyone so now the objectivity of the Finnish police is going to be tested. Anyway as others have already pointed out, even if Pirate Bay loses the case, it’s a victory for their cause.”

So, while others were mocking, it appears there was a much more serious thought process going on here. One of the following possibilities are likely to occur:

• Finnish prosecutors do absolutely nothing, thus exposing their complete double standard in enforcing the law.
• A lawsuit happens, and TPB "loses" the case, as it's an obvious parody situation which should be allowed -- and thus, TPB reinforces the protections for parody.
• A lawsuit happens TPB actually wins the case, which most people would equally recognize as preposterous after seeing the initial press coverage of the story.

It's looking like this was, yet again, a more clever move than many gave them credit for initially.

Filed Under: copyright, double standards, finland, law enforcement, lawsuit, moral rights, parody
Companies: ciapc, the pirate bay