Big media companies know very well they are fighting a losing battle but are not going down without a fight, understand this.
Walt Disney Company very honestly told they are betting on children-oriented musicals because “while people will always find a way to crack the protections we put on CDs and DVDs no self-respecting parent will give his children a fake Hannah Montana DVD”.
They understood they cannot win in the long run so they are adapting.
But other companies aren’t: I remember buying a CD from a renown media house. 100% legal and quite pricey too: it didn’t play on any of my CD players because of the copy protection key they put on.
Later a friend of mine informed me that the same music album could be found on “peer-to-peer” websites for free. He even offered “ripping” a copy for me. I declined because I wanted the company to either provide me with a copy I could actually listen to or with a refund. I hate losing money.
Here we have “pirates” providing a better service than a large and respectable media company…

Well, to give you an update on the trial and the conviction…

All four involved were sentenced to 1 year in prison each and 30 million kronor (roughly 5 million dollars) in damages to be split between them.

In fact, only three people were actively involved in the site, the fourth one (as far as I understand it), was sentenced even though he never actually took part in the site. He only considered it, as has been shown in email conversations.

That is weird.

Another thing is that the conviction says, that the it had NOT been shown that the accused had any knowledge that the specific copyrighted material mentioned had been on the site. However, it was enough that they knew that there existed ANY copyrighted material on the site.

This in effect means that it is ok to sue ISPs. ISPs do not know WHAT material is being shared, but they are surely aware that SOME copyrighted material is being shared.

And supposedly this is the ultimate goal of this conviction, that the “industry” can sue ISPs, and force them to take out fees, which “the industry” then can expropriate for their own use.

However, this trial is only the first, out of a maximum of three (and I am sure that this will go all the way up).

To give you a background on the “wonderful” swedish court system, the juries in Tingsratten and Hovratten (which are the two instances below the supreme court, Hogsta Domstolen) are made up of politically chosen jurors. The ruling party faction get to elect jurors for the courts. While they dont necessarily HAVE to choose politicians, or politically connected people, they very often do (probably to no ones suprise). Hence, the people judging are not legally trained, and are, of course, subject to political pressure.

This is why for those of us who “know” how the system works, the conviction came as no surprise. The political pressure is on to sentence these people. Before the trial there had been rumours going around about what would happen if they were not sentenced to damages and jailtime. It was rumoured that sweden would be excluded from WTO and would be subject to all sorts of international pressures (mainly from USA, and EU of course).

So, this will definately be appealed, and it will go all the way to the Supreme Court. In all likelihood, this case will not be settled for a couple of years. And it is only in the Supreme Court that they will get anything even resembling a fair trial.

I dont really think they will end up going to jail either, but I do think they will be sentenced to jail and damages in the next instance, Hovratten, as well. Simply because the pressure is on the politically chosen jurors to find them guilty.

However, I am failry confident that they will be found not guily in the Supreme Court.

Regardless of it being a free good or not… a distinction that could not be grasped in the trial… their “crime” consists in sending a list of IP-adresses to user A, that tells him which computers are sharing file Z. This is all that they have done. There is really nothing illegal in that. Google does it.

What was “proven” in court was that their intent was to “ridicule” copyright owners, and to facilitate sharing of copyrighted material simply by referencing the NAME of the site “Pirate Bay”.

By the same logic, had the site been named “Swedish Meatballs”, their intent could not have been proven, and they would have been found not guilty? I doubt it… this whole trial has been a joke from start to finish.

Worth noting is that one of the accused, Gottfrid Swartholk Warg, is, as far as I know, liberal to the point of being an-cap.

However, it was enough that they knew that there existed ANY copyrighted material on the site.

Which is also weird, since no copyrighted material was on the site.

@Joakim
> True, no copyrighted material was actually ON the site,
> but it was shared THROUGH the site.
The Pirate Bay (TPB) just provides metadata (the torrents), that in some cases may reference real data (e.g. movies, music, …), which is provided by a third party, and when accessed, would constitute a violation of the law.

The Swedish court has now ruled that this is illegal.

Let me provide a reductio ad absurdum argument by performing one more iteration. Mentioning TPB also provides metadata (name of their website) that references data (their website), which is provided by a third party (TPB), and when accessed, would constitute a violation of the law. Therefore, anyone who mentions TPB is violating the law.

Cheers,
Peter

Yes, well… In fact, from what I understand they dont even reference real data. They reference the location of real data… clearly an important distinction, one would think.

The accused is actually in the process of making a movie of this whole trial debacle. I believe it is called “Spectrial, a movie in 3 acts” (3 bc thats the number of instances the court system here has). It will be interesting to see it when it is done

And, again, this is only the first ruling of a possible of three. So there will be absurdities coming from Sweden for years to come.

Perhaps this will open people up to at least a few deficiencies in the current system, although perhaps that is really too much to hope for.

The large media companies are fighting a losing battle. As technology continues improving and lowering the costs to hobbyist and amateur musicians to make their own music, eventually the copyright model for creating music, movies, etc., will go the way of the dinosaur.

I’m an accountant by trade and a hobby musician. I’ve spent roughly $900 on recording equipment with which I can produce a song (this excludes the cost of the musical instruments). Granted, I’m not that good a musician, singer/songwriter, and nobody would likely pay to hear me and the $900 equipment isn’t the same as Abbey Road studio’s (famous studio where the Beatles recorded). But the equipment gap is much narrower than say 40, 20, 10 years ago and its getting smaller every year. The $900 of equipment I have is many times better than what was used 20 years ago, and in the hands of competent users can produce a sonically better album than was produced 20 years ago. The noise thresholds are lower, the effects processing is better, and the control of the sound stage and spectrum is much more finely nuanced. There are out there new artists and entrepreneurs that will come up with a successful business model without all the DRM and copyright rules. And once that reaches a tipping point, you’ll see the whole industry rapidly change.

This will happen with movies too, but it will take a bit longer than music as the gap in prof equipment to produce a good movie is a bit wider than the audio only portion. I dabble in video production, albeit quite minimally. But I as a complete self-taught amateur performed a 3 camera shoot (2 other amateurs helping) of our local church’s Christmas play, edited, cut it, post-production sound, etc., etc. It definitely didn’t have the polish of a commerical product (but neither did our children who were the play’s actors). The point is that there are people out there who do event videography, weddings, etc., who aren’t the big media and Hollywood types, but are obtaining better equipment at decreasing prices. Technology improvements further lessen the gap between pro and amateur, and eventually even the movie making business model will be revised, with the removal of copyright/DRM at its core.

I don’t pretend to know what the business model will be (if I did, I would be busy doing it, not typing this). But someone, somewhere is going to develop it.

This is also happening in the software development world. There is a small software company called Stardock, that is creating a revised business model for publishing computer video games and other software. For example, once the user buys the product, he no longer needs the DVD/CD to run the game and can load it on more than one of his own computers.

One last point. I find it amusing that Sony, a mega company involved in media management/distribution of music and movies, is at the same time a company that produces audio and video production software (i.e. Sony Vegas software) and equipment (i.e. Sony HD cameras) that will eventually be the undoing of its media management/distribution copyright business model. To the obvious question one would ask, why would Sony do this, the answer: COMPETITION. If they don’t continually produce a better audio/video product, someone else will and thereby earn their market share, resulting in lost revenues to Sony. And in addition, there may ultimately be more revenues to be earned by providing more and more people access to software and equipment with which to produce audio/video content than by using copyright laws to restrict the content pool.

Adding onto James’ excellent description of how BitTorrent works, and echoing arguments made in the Pirate Bay’s vulgar (though entertaining at times) responses to threats of lawsuits, the Pirate Bay is conceptually no different than a phonebook that lists the addresses of libraries, music stores, and video stores, all of which possess copyrighted materials.

I think there is a fairly good chance they will get into the European Parliament, and maybe even the Swedish one.

Although, I must admit, I am not really following politics too much these days.