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Many see The Pirate Bay as the materialization of the growing escalation between both sides, and recent events serve as a microcosm to the entire history of file-sharing. The major music and movie labels have the RIAA and MPAA as their representation, while file-sharers see The Pirate Bay as theirs.Interestingly enough, in the action/reaction environment that has become a constant in the file-sharing world, the MPAA, Antipiratbyrån and IFPI successfully persuaded Swedish authorities to extinguish The Pirate Bay on May 31, 2006. However like all prosecution efforts against alleged pirate operations, this action was successful only from a judicial and legislative perspective. The reaction from The Pirate Bay was to simply move its operation from Sweden to the Netherlands.The amount of pubic attention brought to The Pirate Bay’s situation appears to have only helped this BitTorrent tracker’s prominence and achieve a significant public relations victory for file-sharers. Since its return online, The Pirate Bay has not only regained its original traffic, but nearly doubled it.Considering the amount of media attention surrounding the events surrounding May 31, 2006, it’s not difficult to believe The Pirate Bay’s popularity has skyrocketed. With The Pirate Bay's database issues resolved, Peter’s contention is further backed up by Alexa.com, which serves adequately in determining the general growth or decline of a website.
“According to the Swedish constitution, it is not possible for the Government of the ministry to intervene in a specific case. I can however assure you that I follow closely the action taken by the police and the prosecutors in respect of copyright infringements on the Internet and I will not, in necessary, hesitate to initiate further measures to improve their effectiveness.”So what “further measures” were taken between March 16, 2006 and May 31, 2006? According to SVT, prosecutor Håkal Roswall met with high ranking Ministry of Justice officials who “prioritized” the case against The Pirate Bay. At the meeting, Mr. Roswall is informed what exactly is at stake if The Pirate Bay situation is not handled by June 15, 2006. Specifically, Sweden faces trade sanctions imposed by the United States if no action is taken. Although this type of purported back room negotiations would stir an endless tirade of denial, State Secretary Dan Eliasson readily admitted today on SVT.se and their live broadcast that Sweden indeed was threatened with trade sanctions."I know that the USA has opinions on the effectiveness in our system when it comes to copyright and that if Sweden and other countries aren't following their international agreements there are sanction mechanisms in the USA, which have been pointed out from their side."
For those of you who haven't followed the Swedish news, a quite funny (or tragic) thing has surfaced: Apparently, on several different occasions, MPAAs Swedish lawyers hired a private eye to stalk me! This must've been very entertaining for the poor Tex Murphy clone doing the actual groundwork, as my daily activites can basically be summed up as "eat, sleep, work" (often on very odd hours). It kind of flattens me to get this level of attention from my dear pals at MPAA, and it really adds nicely to the image of them being raving lunatics (the Swedish Antipiratbyrån are calm, rational and fair in comparision!). Because they started it, I'm going to do some stalking of my own! Hah! As a starter, I'll just note that MPAAs Swedish lawyer has forgotten to pay her bills on time on several occasions, mostly parking tickets (despite earning over $100k/year)...
American state officials say they didn’t threaten Sweden with economic sanctions if it didn’t crackdown on illegal file sharing here.On Wednesday, Sweden’s opposition parties demanded an explanation from the government over claims by SVT, Sweden’s public broadcaster, that last month’s police raids, which temporarily shut down the popular site Pirate Bay, were preceded by US pressure and heavy lobbying from American interest groups.The U.S. Embassy in Stockholm denied the report. ”The Unites States has not taken any action, or threatened to take action against Sweden with the World Trade Organization,” Robert Hilton, a U.S. Embassy public affairs official, told The Associated Press.
A number of Swedish political parties have demanded an investigation by the Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution.Bodström denied that politicians had attempted to direct police operations, and refuted the accusations that American officials had threatened Sweden.Håkan Roswall says he does not feel as though he was subjected to political pressure when he met two Justice Department officials on April 7th.My judgment was that they had a duty to inform me why copyright offences were to be made a higher priority, that is to say because it was a question of national interest,"."But nothing was said about what I was expected to do, or how, or why. They are quite simply not capable of telling me how to investigate this kind of offence."The meeting had been preceded by a conference in Washington D.C. regarding file sharing, financed by the American Embassy and the Swedish government, but Roswall says he did not take part. He claims it would have been unsuitable, as the conference would be attended by 'lobbyists'.Chief prosecutor Sven-Erik Alhem did attend the conference together with another prosecutor and police representatives. Alhem defines the entertainment industry representatives not as lobbyists but as "crime victims"
A Stockholm court today rejected an application to return servers seized in raids against file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.Internet hosting company PRQ had demanded the return of both paperwork and computer equipment seized by police, saying that the material had no significance for the investigation and arguing that it was vital for PRQ's work.But Stockholm District Court rejected the application after a hearing held behind closed doors on Wednesday.The company said it intended to appeal
Advertising revenue could be the Achilles heel for the popular Internet file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. Prosecutors have said that because the company is profiting from ad sales, it could face stricter laws.In late May, Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay and confiscated the site’s servers. The men behind the site have said The Pirate Bay was a hobby project, but according to newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, hundreds of thousands of kronor are being made each month from advertisers more than willing to appear on one of the Internet’s most popular pages.“If there is money left over, it will go to us who work at Pirate Bay as salaries,” site founder Fredrik Neij said to Svenska Dagbladet on Wednesday, adding that he plans on investing money in the site to prevent police from shutting it down again.Prosecutors and police are combing through the servers taken in the raid nearly five weeks ago and are looking for evidence.Swedish prosecutors are going to give special attention to any profits made by The Pirate Bay. Police will be looking at the book keeping and payments made with a focus on advertising revenue and taxes
Last week, reports recirculated that Empornium.us has been purchased by the online advertising company TargetPoint. While numerous articles purport that TargetPoint has purchased Empornium, evidence of this is virtually non-existent. Caught up in the rumor mill is ThePirateBay and MiniNova, two large BitTorrent indexing/tracking sites accused of selling a percentage of their ownership to TargetPoint.
The closing up of ThePirateBay, the popular P2P Swedish website, was agreed by local Government and Hollywood Studios, as the Internet Community suspected. The issue of Pirate Bay, that has already been reported by Zone-H has come out again after the Swedish newspaper SVT.se published the whole text of a letter that was delivered to the Secretary of State and to the Minister of Justice. The letter is signed by John G. Malcolm, the director of the MPAA anti-piracy division, who formally expresses his concern about the fact that Sweden has become a sort of “Paradise for International Piracy”. He gets on hinting at the requests by American Embassy to Swedish Government to stop the activity of ThePirateBay and then he alludes to the fact that Sweden should safeguard national reputation that could be shadowed by the heavy accuse of tolerating with crimes against intellectual property. This was the sparkle that made the fire burst out: ThePirateBay was temporarily closed and the website server was seized... Watch the Swedish TV video coverage in which it is well explained how US government applied pressure to the Swedish government in a form of a threat of being delisted from the WTO or read the documents by yourself
STEAL THIS FILM - DOWNLOAD THIS FILM: In 2006, a group of friends decided to make a filem about filesharing that we would "recognise".There have been a few documentaries by "old media" crews who don't unnderstand the net and see peer-to-peer organisation a a threatto their livelihoods. They have no reason to represent the filesharing movement positively, and no capacity to represent it lucidly .We wanted to make a film that would explore this huge popular movement in a way that would excited us , engaged us , and most importantly focussed on what we know to be the positive and optimistic vision that many filesharers and artists (they are often one ) have, for the future of creativity.Hopefully you,ll enjoy the first part of "steal his film" ('Stockholm, Summer 2006'). The league of noble peers. August 2006 -
