Music Industry Threatens to Bankrupt Pirate Party Members

[silicon_toad2000]

Music industry group the BPI has threatened legal action against six members of the UK Pirate Party, after the party refused to take its Pirate Bay proxy offline. BPI seems to want to hold the individual members of the party responsible for copyright infringements that may occurs via the proxy, which puts them at risk of personal bankruptcy. Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye criticized the latest music industry threats and reiterated that blocking The Pirate Bay is a disproportionate measure.

After an expensive legal battle a group of music labels achieved their aim of having The Pirate Bay website blocked in the UK.

With the official site blocked, millions of users switched over to proxy services, and the proxy of the UK Pirate Party soon became one of the most visited websites in the region.

These proxies are a thorn in the side of the music industry, and earlier this month the BPI asked the UK Pirate Party to take its website offline. The Pirate Party refused to do so, and in a response the BPI’s boss said that the Pirate Party would hear from their lawyers.

The BPI kept its word, but with a twist.

Instead of targeting just the Pirate Party, the BPI’s solicitors are now threatening legal action against six individual members. Aside from its leader Loz Kaye, the BPI also sent threats to four other members of the National Executive and the party’s head of IT.

“We had been anticipating legal action ever since I received an email from Geoff Taylor of the BPI. What has taken me aback is that this threat is personally directed. I simply can not see what the music industry think can be positively gained by threatening to bankrupt me and other party officers,” Kaye says.

http://torrentfreak.com/music-industry-threatens-to-bankrupt-pirate-party-members-121215/

I wonder what percentage of the legal profession is employed by these copyright wars

[GhostShip]

Its pretty clear that under UK law the pirate party are not doing anything illegal and thus the threats of civil court action are simply made to test the resolve of the individual members, this divide and conquer approach is pathetic as well as likely to backfire on the industry as more members of the public will join in a "virtual jihad" against such attempted censorship and extortion.

Whats not been made clear anywhere is that the block against the pirate bay was undefended on various grounds as the blocking order was directed against ISP companies only and they did little if anything serious to fight the block, being after all neutral third parties, this wont be the case when the same method is tried on a political party, the media mafia extortionists can expect to face a serious amount of legal blowback if they actually start legal proceedings instead of making hollow threats for the past fortnight.