RSS RSS Twitter Twitter
electronista

01/31/2008, 11:30am, EST

Thursday, January 31st

Labels charge Pirate Bay with copyright violations

Well-known pirated material site The Pirate Bay has been charged with its first clear copyright infringement case, according to reports. A combination of major movie labels and music studios, including EMI, Fox, Sony BMG, and Universal, accuse the Swedish-run site of profiting from linking to BitTorrents from pages with advertising; as much as $4 million US a year is generated through normal traffic, according to the Swedish prosecutor in the case, Hakan Roswall. Labels involved with the suit are demanding as much as a $188,000 fine for each of the four principal site operators and that computers they own be confiscated.

The investigation is said to be the result of a raid by Swedish police in May 2006, which collected information about The Pirate Bay's activities but drew attention through its motivating factors. Critics of major media companies as well as Pirate Bay supporters have accused the Swedish government of bending to requests from the British- and US-based media producers regardless of actual regulations.

The Pirate Bay has so far said it has no reason to fear the results of any court action and believes it will escape any punishment based on Swedish law. "[The plaintiffs] want to try to criminalize something we already know is legal," says site co-founder Peter Sunde.

A defeat is not expected to shut the site down; since the 2006 raid, the site has increasingly distributed its servers and other facilities to countries where few if any laws exist to shut down such content, preventing labels from issuing simple takedown requests or requesting help from local police.


Filed under: industry
Other story tags: Universal, EMI, Fox, Sony BMG, Pirate Bay

, , 1 comment, del.icio.us, slashdot, digg, buzz , Twitter
1 comment
Reader Reactions (Please use <i></i> for italic text)

subscribe to comments
for this article




Expand All   Global Settings
ha, ha
0
01/31, 1:51pm, EST
go read over at Pirate Bay how they have responded to past legal threats. They are not intimidated whatsoever by threatening letters.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined Sep 2001
User is offline
Your Comments

In order to post comments: If you are a registered member, please login with your MacNN Forums username and password otherwise please uncheck the checkbox below.


Registered Member?
macnn forums login:

macnn forums password:

Not a member of the MacNN forums? Register now for free.

www.cashforiphones.com - Sell your iPhone or iPod today! Get an instant online quote. Top cash, FREE shipping.

Internet Marketing School - 100% Online: Master SEO, SEM, E Commerce, Media & More with a U of San Francisco Certificate.

Autodesk Inventor For Digital Prototypes: Use Inventor To Virtually Model, Test, and Iterate in 3D & Get To Market Faster!

Buy from The Apple Store, iTunes.com, Amazon.com, TechDepot, OfficeDepot, Computers4Sure, or donate.