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A Short Summary Following the Pirate Bay Trial

Posted by kdawson on from the all-over-but-the-sawdust dept.

Dan B. writes "The Guardian has a nice piece wrapping up the trial in Sweden for the co-defendants in the P2P trial-of-the-decade, that of The Pirate Bay. 'Today, the defense lawyers summed up. It was a short trial and not a particularly merry one, but it could have far-reaching effects.' Surprisingly, when the defendants hit the stand they didn't bash copyright or take a libertarian approach; it all came back to the tried and tested formula for criminal defense, 'I am not responsible.'"

3 of 500 comments (clear)

  1. Failed Prosecution? by jomiolto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The really interesting thing about this trial is that the record companies seem not to have done their homework at all (although part of that could be bias from TorrentFreak, which seems to be the major English news source about this trial). They seem to have failed in pretty much every front: they failed to show any real statistics on the effects of file sharing or the amount of copyright infringing material on the Pirate Bay, their "evidence" of illegally downloading things from the Pirate Bay didn't hold water (because they could not show that the Pirate Bay tracker was actually used in their downloads), and they couldn't even show that what the Pirate Bay is doing is illegal in Sweden.

    I can't really understand why they failed so hard. They had time to do their homework and I'm sure that they are not lacking in funds or other resources either. They could have collected some actual statistics on the amount of copyright infringing torrents or they could have done much better research on downloading copyright infringing stuff through the Pirate Bay -- disable DHT and all the other trackers beside the Pirate Bay, and you can be sure that the Pirate Bay tracker is used for the download.

    Are the record companies really this inept at grasping the Internet (and hiring people that do understand it) or did they just think that they would win by default? Either one seems unlikely to me, but who knows?

    1. Re:Failed Prosecution? by KeX3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It is not due to TorrentFreak-bias, they were exactly that inept in swedish as well.

      Three years of investigation, and they understand less about bittorrent than 10 minutes on wikipedia teaches you.

      They had no statistics, no _actual_ evidence (messed up downloads, screenshots of cut urls to torrents, vague and repeated accusations of child pronography, a few random looks at top 100-lists with nothing to back it except "i looked at it, you should trust me", ridiculous claims "99% of the files on pirate bay are copyright protected" and "100% of the people downloading from pirate bay would have bought the album if tpb wasn't there"), the witnesses they called were all media-moguls with absolutely no grasp of internet or technology, and generally a case built on "we sell less CDs, therefore the pirate bay is to blame" instead of realizing that "people don't want CDs anymore, that's why the sales are declining".

      Add to this the COMPLETE inability to understand the "cluster mentality" that the internet has brought to a more visible level, where there are no leaders, no decision-makers, no controlling people. People do what needs to be done, and that's the end of that. They spent half the trial trying to pinpoint someone as "the leader", something that in the case of TPB simply doesn't exist. There is a core group, but what makes them more important than the people outside that is simply server-access. Remove that from the equation and no matter who you are, you can do things without asking for permission.

      Not to mention that after these 3 years, half of the charge is dropped during the 2nd day because they completely misunderstood the nature of bittorrent, and HOW the file-sharing actually happened.

      "Botched", is the word that comes to mind.

      But I think this is because of who's behind them. The media-companies, who have never had any problems going forward brute force, waving money and ludicrous demands for more money, who are used to the other party bowing their heads and going "yes massa". When actually faced with _opposition_, their lack of preparation and knowledge shines through like the headlights of an 18-wheeler at 2 am (see, a car-analogy).

      And that's the end of this rant.

    2. Re:Failed Prosecution? by KeX3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Oh, and I completely forgot:

      Spending most of the time trying to discredit the personal and political opinions of the prosecuted and the witnesses they called, instead of trying to prove that crimes had been committed.