Italian Recording Industry Sues Pirate Bay As Well

from the but-of-course dept

Another day, another lawsuit for the Pirate Bay team. This time, it's taking place in Italy, where the local recording industry associations FIMI (Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana) and FPM (Federation against Musical Piracy) have announced plans to sue three of the individuals believed to be responsible for The Pirate Bay. This isn't a huge surprise. A year ago, after complaints about The Pirate Bay, a court ordered ISPs to block access to the site, only to have a court overturn that ruling. And, of course, in the end all it really did was bring a lot more attention to The Pirate Bay in Italy. Considering that The Pirate Bay doesn't appear to have any operations in Italy either, it's not entirely clear that this lawsuit actually matters. And, also, there's the issue that the three guys being sued here claim to not have any ownership of The Pirate Bay at all.

Filed Under: italy, lawsuit
Companies: the pirate bay

Dutch Court Sides With Anti-Piracy Group; Says Pirate Bay Must Block Dutch Web Surfers

from the or-else-what? dept

We've seen more than enough stories already about questionable court rulings around the globe saying that certain ISPs must block access to The Pirate Bay or other sites. Historically, such blocks have been a disaster. They don't work (people find an easy way around them) and the announcement of the ban itself almost always generates a lot more traffic to the banned site. It's like free advertising. However, the anti-piracy group BREIN appears to have taken a different strategy in the Netherlands. Rather than asking the court to have ISPs block The Pirate Bay, it asked the court to tell The Pirate Bay to block Dutch web surfers. BREIN, of course, has a history of overreaching, including demanding names of file sharers against local privacy laws and declaring that a usenet group, by itself was illegal.

And yet again, a court has ruled in the entertainment industry's favor, going against basic civil rights. The court has said that The Pirate Bay must start blocking Dutch web surfers from reaching the site. Somehow, I doubt the folks at The Pirate Bay will comply. They've already complained about the process, noting that they were never summoned to the court to defend themselves, while the ruling itself actually spends a fair amount of time claiming that the folks from The Pirate Bay were fairly summoned through a variety of means. The court basically concludes that they should have known about the case, and their failure to show up will not stop the case from moving forward.

Not surprisingly, the Pirate Bay folks find the whole thing to be a farce. They're already suing BREIN's lawyers for falsely claiming that The Pirate Bay had launched a DDoS attack on BREIN's website. Also, amazingly, the court wouldn't even give them a copy of the ruling against them. Of course, as brokep notes, The Pirate Bay doesn't have any operations in the Netherlands anyway, so what can the court do?

In the meantime, is it worth mentioning that it was a Dutch study that recently said that file sharing had a positive impact on the economy?

Filed Under: blocking, netherlands
Companies: brein, the pirate bay

Pirate Bay Sale Looking Even Less Likely

from the was-it-ever-real? dept

At the beginning of July, we questioned whether or not the announced purchase of The Pirate Bay by GGF was ever really going to happen. From the statements made by GGF CEO Hans Pandeya, it really seemed quite doubtful. Not only did he do a terrible job of explaining the plan, he contradicted himself multiple times and suggested a few times that the deal could fall through. That may in fact be happening. Two weeks ago, we noted that Pandeya had supposedly hired Wayne Rosso (former Grokster boss) to negotiate with record labels concerning a business model that didn't make much sense to us. Rosso has now admitted that he's no longer working with GGF and doesn't believe the company has the money to make the purchase, and has problems with Pandeya's credibility. So, once again, we're left wondering if this deal will ever happen.

Separately, it should come as little surprise that a bunch of entertainment companies are demanding that the Swedish courts shut The Pirate Bay down. It was noteworthy that in the original ruling against the four people associated with The Pirate Bay, the court did not issue any sort of injunction to stop the site from functioning. The folks at The Pirate Bay are claiming this sudden demand for a shut down is because the entertainment industry is trying to mess with the sale to GGF, but it certainly looks like that's falling apart on its own (as if there was ever any real meat there). Still, for all of the complaining by the entertainment companies, it seems quite premature to shut down the site when the original ruling is still under appeal. But, since when has that ever stopped the industry? In the meantime, it might not matter much even if it is shut down. Since the announcement of the GGF plan, lots of others have stepped up to try to take the place of The Pirate Bay as a key source for torrent searches. It makes you wonder who the entertainment industry will single out next? After all, The Pirate Bay was a relatively small player itself before the US entertainment interests first called it out...

Filed Under: hans pandeya, wayne rosso
Companies: ggf, the pirate bay

Now BREIN Says The Pirate Bay Should Block Dutch ISPs

from the either-way dept

Various entertainment industry lobbying groups have pushed for courts to force ISPs to block access to sites like The Pirate Bay, but now it looks like BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group, is trying to hit this from a variety of angles. If it can't get ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay, it's demanding that The Pirate Bay block access from Dutch surfers. Even more bizarre, it's already dragged representatives from the proposed buyers of the The Pirate Bay, GGF, into court, despite the fact that the deal hasn't concluded (and may never actually happen). When do judges recognize that these organizations don't have any logical basis for what they claim, but that they'll simply throw everything at the wall to see what sticks in a mad dash to protect an obsolete business model from innovation?

Filed Under: blocking, netherlands
Companies: brein, the pirate bay

Pirate Bay's Plans Too Clever By Half: Arbitrage Consumer Bandwidth

from the this-looks-like-a-mess dept

There's a bunch of news coming out about the sale of The Pirate Bay to GGF, though it's still not making very much sense, I'm still wondering if the deal will really happen. However, it appears that GGF has started working with Wayne Ross, who ran Grokster and Mashboxx, in an attempt to get him to negotiate with the labels. In an interview, he more or less reveals GGF's plans for The Pirate Bay.

Basically, you'll have to pay to leech, but the more resources you "contribute" to the system, the less you'll have to pay, and if you contribute enough resources/bandwidth, then you might actually make some money. Then, on top of that, they believe that some content providers/ISPs will pay for offloading their bandwidth. That explains some of the earlier statements made by GGF. In theory, the idea is that it makes everyone happy. Those who pay for bandwidth on hosting content can pay a lot less. Users who contribute bandwidth end up getting free content (or potentially even making some money). And, of course, the content owners get paid.

Except... that idyllic picture starts to break down when you start to run through the details. The second the paywall goes up, an awful lot of users will abandon The Pirate Bay for friendlier non-barrier-happy sites. That takes away pretty much the entire advantage of The Pirate Bay to make this work. Even the appeal of potentially making money probably won't attract enough users. Second problem? There's no way the economics works out nicely on this one. We've already seen the sort of ridiculous rates that the RIAA wants to charge for individual streams/downloads of music. Put those numbers into this model and start doing the math... and start laughing. There's no way that much money comes into the system. None.

Finally, it leaves out an important party who clearly will not like this setup at all -- even if all the rest of it works: consumer ISPs. The real "ingenious" part of the plan appears to be that some content hosters/service providers are effectively pushing bandwidth costs away from themselves, and dumping them on retail ISPs, who offer flat-rate connections. So the real "costs" are hidden in the typical flat-rate plans of ISPs.

It's effectively a sneaky arbitrage play, whereby The Pirate Bay tries to aggregate all the unused flat-rate ISP bandwidth, and wholesale it to others, paying copyright holders in cash, and downloaders in free/cheap content. But the ISPs whose bandwidth is getting used don't get paid, meaning they're more likely to push back even more against unlimited connection plans. I just can't see how this works.

Oh, right, in the meantime, it's not clear the recording industry has any interest in playing along. They're already demanding that cash from the sale go to them, rather than the founders. Of course, that's a bit misguided, since the founders no longer own The Pirate Bay, having handed the ownership over to others in 2006. So they won't be getting any of the money from the sale. The recording industry basically says it doesn't believe that to be true, and will use the sale as evidence that the founders should pay up. Thus, it's difficult to see them rushing out to embrace this already questionable arbitrage play.

Filed Under: arbitrage, bandwidth, bittorrent, business model, content, file sharing, wayne rosso
Companies: ggf, the pirate bay

Norwegian ISP Fights Back Against Pirate Bay Ban

from the democratic-principles dept

The IFPI (the international version of the RIAA) has been working around the clock lately to try to get various ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay and other file sharing sites. Some have caved in, while others have lost lawsuits. In Norway, however, leading ISP Telenor is fighting back, saying that taking orders from the entertainment industry to block sites it doesn't like goes against democratic principles:

"Instead of demanding that Internet providers censor the Internet and monitor the content that's transferred, Telenor believes that the best way to decrease illegal file sharing is to put more effort into making legally downloadable content available."

But, as we've seen over the years, there are still many in positions of power within the recording industry who believe that the best new business model is to try to stomp out anyone who challenges their old business model. Eventually, they'll realize what a failed plan that is.

Filed Under: ban, democracy, norway
Companies: telenor, the pirate bay

Fact Checking? Reporter Claims It Costs $27 To Use The Pirate Bay

from the fact-checking-is-for-sissies dept

One of our readers, going under the name "slogger," pointed out that a recent column by PC World writer David Coursey had some amazing factual errors in it -- though, by the time I read the original it had been "corrected" without any mention of the correction. Apparently, the big professional press not only doesn't need to fact check, it also can just "disappear" the false info when it comes to light and pretend it didn't happen. Except... PC World syndicates its content to other publications, and the San Francisco Chronicle republished the mistaken column in full.

The two big mistakes? First, claiming that The Pirate Bay sells $27 lifetime memberships, and second, that The Pirate Bay's founders are in jail. Neither is true. The second mistake remains in the "corrected without a correction notice" column at the time of this posting -- but perhaps it, too, will soon disappear. The actual column is a misguided rant by someone who doesn't quite understand how The Pirate Bay actually works and what it does (basically: he thinks "stealing" is evil and he'll never support the site even if it goes legit because he can't support the brand). But, considering that he can't get the basic facts right, perhaps it's not surprising that he doesn't understand the difference between "theft" and "infringement" -- and, more importantly, doesn't seem to understand the difference between search engines/trackers and actual infringing content. These are the sorts of basic tidbits of info you'd think that a famed tech reporter/columnist like Coursey (who's been around for ages) would take the time to get right. After all, aren't we told that the professional press is necessary because it's the bloggers who make up stuff?

Filed Under: david coursey, fact checking
Companies: the pirate bay

Will GGF Really Take Over The Pirate Bay? Could Be Doubtful

from the is-it-all-a-ruse dept

Martin points us to a video interview with Hans Pandeya, the head of GGF, the supposed new owners of The Pirate Bay. To be honest, the interview seems somewhat incoherent, where he doesn't actually answer the questions, and does little to elaborate on the confusing business model he's talked about with others: But what I found most interesting about the interview is that Pandeya repeatedly notes that his shareholders will vote on the acquisition in August, and if the company cannot show a clear legitimate business model, he doesn't think they'll approve the acquisition. The questions try to dig down on this, and Pandeya doesn't really do much to answer them, but it certainly sounds like the company has a giant out. There are some other contradictions in Pandeya's statements, as well. At one point he implies that they'll have agreements in place with record labels in time for this vote, and if they don't, then people will vote against the deal -- but then says that it will take much longer to get those deals in place, and there's no way they'd be ready in time for the vote. The whole thing remains a bizarre mystery that is more confusing than enlightening... but I'm beginning to wonder if the deal will ever happen, in reality.

Filed Under: hans pandeya
Companies: ggf, global gaming factory x, the pirate bay

Could Someone Just Recreate The Pirate Bay?

from the bet-on-it-happening dept

As plenty of people have been pointing out, if The Pirate Bay goes away/changes/shuts down/whatever, there are a ton of sites ready and eagerly waiting to take it's place. But JJ King makes an even bigger point: the whole of The Pirate Bay is not a lot of data, such that it would be rather easy to just copy the entire site and recreate it. In fact, it seems likely that others are probably making use of this fact already, and there may be multiple "copies" of The Pirate Bay quickly being set up. So, even if the site goes away, all it will really do is further splinter the sites that upset the entertainment industry -- but it will hardly stop them or even slow them down.

Filed Under: copying, trackers
Companies: the pirate bay

Insider Trading Suspected In The Pirate Bay Sale

from the getting-weirder-every-day dept

The whole story of the supposed sale of The Pirate Bay gets odder and odder as more news comes out. Beyond the questionable business model the new owners are discussing, now comes the news that trading in GGF shares were halted prior to the transaction due to suspected insider trading. There was an unexplained bump in trading the week before the sale was announced, leading to suspicion that people were trading on non-public news. This could create more problems for GGF. On top of that, the stock exchange GGF is listed on is apparently already threatening GGF for owning The Pirate Bay, noting that it "wants to make sure that the companies that are traded on the list are managing legitimate businesses." Given the conviction against the four people associated with The Pirate Bay, their assertion is that it's not a legitimate business. Honestly, the story is somewhat surreal and feels quite like the trial itself: a lot of people not really taking things seriously.

Filed Under: insider trading
Companies: ggf, the pirate bay