Pirate Bay Founder Takes Fight To EU, Argues Swedish Censorship Violates Human Rights

from the legal-challenges dept

While The Pirate Bay has lost all of its appeals in Sweden, one of the founders, Fredrik Neij, is apparently going to take his case to the European Courts, arguing that shutting down a site like The Pirate Bay is a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As Neij's lawyers point out, since TPB does not host or transmit any material covered by copyright, shutting it down (or fining and jailing Neij based on its usage) rejects his rights "to receive and impart information."

While I understand where he's coming from, I do worry that courts to date have been particularly bad at comprehending the fact that The Pirate Bay neither hosts nor transmits any unauthorized information. While they are seeking to make analogies, the courts seem to zero in on the way many people use the tool, rather than separating the tool from the usage.

The lawyer also notes that since the torrent file information itself wasn’t illegal, the function should be covered by Article 10. He adds that he will also ask for further scrutiny as to whether it was indeed correct to hold Fredrik Neij responsible for what other people did when they used The Pirate Bay.

“In our opinion, it is like being held guilty in court because someone delivered a letter with illegal content. Another, and perhaps even more relevant analogy, would be if the founders of a buying and selling site were found guilty after someone sold a stolen bicycle after it was advertised on the site,” Nilsson explains.

Basically, it sounds like they're going with a typical secondary liability protection argument, which makes sense in theory. Once again, however, the courts have been pretty resistant to recognizing such an argument, especially when so much of the usage is for infringing purposes and (especially) when the operators of the site were quick to mock those who challenged how much of the usage was infringing. The courts just don't have very much sympathy there. Thus, I'm not confident this will turn out all that well -- and I actually worry that the end result may be a precedent that cuts of secondary liability protections for other sites as well.

Filed Under: european convention on human rights, european union, fredrik neij
Companies: the pirate bay

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

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

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.

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