MPAA Seeks $15 Million From The Pirate Bay

praps writes "Having tasted blood with its victory over TorrentSpy, the MPAA is now stepping up its attack on The Pirate Bay. The association is claiming damages of over $15 million, based on The Pirate Bay's distribution of four films and a TV series — Harry Potter, The Pink Panther, Syriana, Walk the Line and the first season of Prison Break. The Swedish court is unlikely to be as generous as the one in California, although the four Pirate Bay founders are already facing charges of being accessories to breaking copyright law." TorrentSpy, in the meantime, has declined to pay the settlement awarded to the MPAA on Wednesday. In addition to appealing the decision, they have filed for bankruptcy.

Comments

Ambiguities

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm puzzled about whether the pirate bay guys are just attention seekers, or if they are actually willing to potentially screw up the rest of their lives for this cause.

They must have seen it coming and they've had a lot of time to back down.

Either way, big balls.

Re:Ambiguities

[Xest]

It's easier for them than someone in say the states. In the states you'd be screwed, it would be the end of your life, it would be the end of the story.

In Sweden they have both public support and political support from many serving politicians. As such any legal ruling against them has the potential to lead to a political shit storm to the point where political supporters of the ruling simply wont ever be elected ever again.

In many countries citizens like file sharing, they disagree with rulings against it and support of the RIAA/MPAA but simply don't care enough to do anything about it. In Sweden it's a big enough issue for people to both care and act.

Nations like Britain, the US and so forth have bigger worries from terrorism/wars in Iraq/Afghanistan to economic worries to general social problems and issues with their health care systems (or in the states, lack of).

Re:Ambiguities

[cliffski]

A quick question:

does 'the next generation' of Swedish voters assume they will be working for free making movies for everyone? or do they want to continue a system where foreigners (Americans mostly) do all the work making stuff, where the swedes just get to take it all for free whilst sat on their ass?

Just asking.

Is the Pirate Bay rich ?

[Rastignac]

Does it gain a lot of money from its site ? How many millions do they get from ads and such ? Can the court force them to publish the real numbers ? Or will its fortune stay secret ?

Or does it gain nothing at all (really no profit) from their activities ?

Re:Is the Pirate Bay rich ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no lawyer, but first of all they certainly won't be able to pay since the numbers are RIAA pulled out of the ass, "we lost this much" numbers and hence one or two orders of magnitude above any real figure.

However, this shouldn't matter since the chance that they are found liable is probably rather small ( "assisting copyright infringement" is not a crime in Swedish law, yet that is what they are being sued for ).

Now if they are found liable anyway, it would still be the company that is held responsible. The individuals in question probably would not suffer from it at all, and even if they killed all of their servers it would just be weeks ( if not days ) before somebody else created a similar page with slightly different implementation, thus forcing a new investigation and court process.

Even if the RIAA do win this case all they achieve is make TPB into martyrs and ensure that whoever succeed them will be even more difficult to stop.

Both Swedish and foreign downloads

[the_arrow]

The MPAA does not differ between downloads from Sweden and from abroad, which I think is not going to fly well with the court. Unlike US courts that (apparently) doesn't care about things like national jurisdiction, Swedish courts do (at least I hope so).

Re:A solution...

[L4t3r4lu5]

To quote Orwell, "The Proles will never revolt."

As long as we HAVE our X-Factor, our America's Next Top Model, our Pop Idol, and our never ending Lost series, we'll let them do whatever the fuck they want.

Bah... Baaaah...

Re:You are so right - but...

[Xtense]

This is, of course, correct, but while we are not a significant part of consumers out there, well, there are sure a lot of us anyway :) . This is why picketing might have some success, but it would of course require lots of organizing and thinking through. I am looking right now at the Anonymous protests. Last time I've checked, there were a lot more anti-MPAA/RIAA blokes around the internet than /b/tards, EDiots and others who joined their protests. My point being, if the *chans were able to muster such large numbers, i think we could, too. We just require a bit more, forgive the term, "nerdrage" :) .

Re:The Marketplace

[aproposofwhat]

How does Pirate Bay make money from other peoples work?

If by that you mean they sell advertising space because they are a popular indexing site, then how is that 'making money from other peoples work'?

It isn't, any more than Google providing a search service then selling advertising space is.

What strikes me is that the target market in the Pirate Bay's case is (according to the **AA spin) a bunch of freeloaders and pirates who won't pay for anything, so why would advertisers pay good money to access that market?

Obviously the users of the service must have some interest in purchasing whatever is advertised there - so there's a message for the **AA there somewhere :o).