Today the project releases the film ‘In Guantanamo’ which makes a worldwide premiere on BitTorrent. The film documents filmmaker David Miller’s three day tour of the controversial camps, invited by the U.S. government.

“Although the event was presented as a chance to ’see inside’ the working of Guantanamo, it was in fact a carefully staged PR exercise designed to yield predictable, stale, controlled media images,” we read on the Gitmo’s VODO release page.

The film has been officially released on VODO today and is currently featured on both isoHunt and The Pirate Bay. With help from these sites and several other partners well known to the file-sharing community, the project is able to attract a lot of eyeballs for upcoming and already established film talent.

VODO founder Jamie King told TorrentFreak that the project’s first film performed really well. “I think the first VODO release was a great success,” he said. “Around 250,000 downloads through our DISCO partners — as the filmmaker put it, that was more than his terrestrial TV release in the UK.”

As the project’s name already reveals, downloaders are encouraged to donate to the filmmakers if they appreciate their work. King told TorrentFreak that quite a few downloaders have donated generously. Not enough to fund a new movie obviously, but as the project gains more attention it is likely to bring in some serious income for the filmmakers.

In Guantanamo can be downloaded for free here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The case continued Thursday in the Federal Court, with iiNet CEO Michael Malone taking the stand for the fourth consecutive day, and possibly his last.

Not unusually for a copyright trial involving BitTorrent, the issue of The Pirate Bay was raised.

Yesterday AFACT barrister Tony Bannon incorrectly suggested that iiNet’s very own BitTorrent tracker’s functionality had been taken down, later to discover that in fact the court’s network blocked BitTorrent transfers.

Bannon indicated that he would like to be able to give a courtroom demonstration of The Pirate Bay Thursday, and the judge agreed that it would be possible to lift the block so he could do so.

According to ITNews, Bannon was today true to his word.

After the demo, Bannon enquired of Malone whether iiNet had a desire for its subscribers to be able to access the world’s largest tracker, “…when the only purpose it serves is providing a way to download unauthorized copies of films?”

This question was met with objection from iiNet barrister Richard Cobden, who argued that customer “desire” was irrelevant to the case. The judge, Justice Cowdroy, was also keen to discover the relevance.

Bannon then became the latest in a long line of movie and music industry lawyers to reveal that should his clients win the case, they will take legal action to have not only the world’s largest tracker blocked from iiNet’s customers, but other similar sites.

He also revealed that around 50% of the alleged copyright infringements in the case came courtesy of The Pirate Bay.

Then Bannon attempted to show that by allowing its customers to access The Pirate Bay, iiNet effectively sanctioned and authorized their infringing activities.

“We seek Mr Malone’s position as to whether or not his customers should have access to sites such as this,” said Bannon.

However, after legal argument, Bannon withdrew the question.

Malone did, however, concede that iiNet had taken no steps to block The Pirate Bay, but qualified this by indicating that the company didn’t possess the means to do so. Bannon asked if it was technically possible and Malone replied that he could achieve a primitive block with additional equipment, but even that could be easily circumvented

“To completely and conclusively block access to The Pirate Bay, I believe it to be beyond our technical capability or of any ISP,” replied Malone.

Asked by Cobden if iiNet had ever blocked any web sites, Malone said the company had not.

This technical inability led to iiNet pulling out of the Australian government’s filtering trials, reports ComputerWorld. Malone has been an outspoken critic of the filtering scheme, labeling it “fundamentally flawed” and saying his company would only participate in the trials to prove that filtering would fail.

The case continues.

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Without any legal basis it would be unacceptable for the ISP to comply, so it was left with no option but to refuse.

“This would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered,” said Telenor’s Ragnar Kårhus.

IFPI, rarely one to make hollow threats, especially where lawsuits are concerned, made good on its word and sued Telenor.

The then-Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde felt that the lawsuit was an indication that IFPI was unhappy with the competition.

“They have had a monopoly on distribution and we’re breaking that monopoly, and in turn they sue people that allow access to our distribution method,” Sunde told TorrentFreak at the time.

The trial began on October 12th in Norway and for its part, Telenor argued that Norwegian law protects Internet service providers from liability for the actions of their subscribers. IFPI feels that the site is illegal and should therefore be blocked.

The verdict in the case was due to be delivered today, but there will be a delay.

According to Telenor’s Information Manager Atle Lessum, the judge has announced that due to illness the result will now be handed down next week.

The Pirate Bay is no stranger to blockades. From September 1st, an out of court settlement between Irish ISP Eircom and IFPI came into effect, which blocked customer access to the ‘Bay. Similar blocks are pending in Italy and The Netherlands.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

While awaiting the appeal that was announced immediately after the verdict, The Pirate Bay continued to operate as if nothing had happened. In the background, however, both the defense and prosecution teams were preparing for the appeal which was scheduled to take place next month.

The timing of the appeal was not ideal for several of the defendants and their lawyers. They consequently tried to postpone it to a later date but this request was initially denied. However, thanks to concerns about the objectivity of some of the judges involved, the appeal has been rescheduled after all.

“I just came out of a meeting where we decided to postpone,” Appeal Court Council Ulrika Ihrfelt said this morning.

The reason for the delay are the bias accusations against two of the main judges appointed to the appeal. Both judges have ties to pro-copyright groups and last week defense lawyer Samuelsson announced that he will take the bias question to the Supreme Court. This, after his initial request failed at the Appeal Court.

Samuelsson now has to file his complaints at the Supreme Court within four weeks, and because the appeal is supposed to start close to the end of this deadline the Appeal Court decided that it was best to postpone the case.

No official date has been set for the delayed appeal but according to Ulrika Ihrfelt it will take till at least summer 2010 before the Court has time to handle the case. Until then it will be business as usual for The Pirate Bay, providing that the operators can solve all the technical problems they’ve run into during the past days.

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The appeal is scheduled to start in November and will be handled by three judges. As with the initial trial, controversy surrounds the appointment of the judges in question. According to defense lawyer Per E Samuelsson, two of them could be susceptible to bias.

One of the judges, Ulrika Ihrfelt, has been a member of the Swedish Copyright Association (SFU). The second controversial judge, Christina Boutz, is a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (SFIR).

A few weeks ago Samuelsson submitted his complaints to the Court of Appeal, but failed to get the desired result. The Court ruled that the connections of the two judges to the various pro-copyright groups will not influence their judgment.

Samuelsson did not agree with the verdict of the Appeal Court and announced that he will take the bias question to the Supreme Court, and possible delay the appeal schedule.

“There is obviously a possibility that the Supreme Court says no quickly, but it would be strange,” Samuelsson commented, adding that it will probably mean that the current trial planning will be delayed.

The defense team had previously requested the trial to be postponed because of personal reasons, but this request was denied last week. Now, with the question of bias being tested by the Supreme Court, they may get what they want after all.

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The defendants – Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström – had hoped that they could get a ruling from the European Court of Justice (EC) before their appeal is heard in November.

Time and again during the original trial The Pirate Bay was compared in functionality to Google, so the defendants lawyers wanted to know if the EC would classify The Pirate Bay as a legitimate search engine.

Jonas Nilsson, the lawyer for Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), now says that the Court of Appeal does not want a decision made by the EC as they hope that the issue will be addressed by the Court of Appeal itself.

If, however, the Court of Appeal makes a positive interpretation of e-commerce law in favor of the site’s legality as a seach engine, Nilsson says the four could go free.

The defendants also made a request for the trial to be moved to a new court in Skåne in order to get new judges, this following a growing lack of confidence in Stockholm’s Court of Appeal.

That request has also been denied by Judge Ulrika Ihrfelt, who said that the court had seen no reason to have the trial in any other place other than Stockholm.

A further request by the defendants to change the date of the appeal for personal reasons, was also denied. The appeal will start next month, as was previously scheduled.

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Last week music industry body IFPI requested Niemelä to be taken off the case, since he is connected to the music streaming application Spotify which is partly owned by the major record labels. This request was soon backed by movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted. “There should not be any doubt in this case,” she said in a response.

The Court today agreed with this assessment and disqualified Niemelä because he holds stock options in Spotify. This despite the fact that Niemelä himself denied a conflict of interest. The decision by the Appeal Court is unanimous and can not be appealed.

The question remains why the music industry was so eager to have this lay judge removed, since they usually keep quiet when the person in question supports their case. However, as we’ve pointed out before, there could be more to this lay judge issue than initially meets the eye.

Niemelä’s involvement with Spotify was limited to the technical side. In fact, he is a tech savvy programmer who co-owns a streaming technology patent along with the original developer of uTorrent and knows the ins and outs of BitTorrent.

Instead of having a bias towards the music industry, as IFPI wanted the Appeal Court to believe, he might actually be one of the rare candidates who knows how BitTorrent really works. Judging from the plaintiff’s discrediting of other tech experts in the previous trial, it might be that IFPI’s true motivation to remove Niemelä was not that humble.

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A few weeks ago the Court announced that it has two weeks set aside for the Pirate Bay appeal, starting in November. The appeal will be handled by three judges, and according to defense lawyer Per E Samuelsson, two of them could be susceptible to bias.

“It is profoundly inappropriate that even in the court of appeal we have judges who are or have been members of organizations closely related to the copyright industry,” Samuelson wrote, objecting to the appointment of two of the three judges.

The appeal will be handled by judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was previously removed from the bias investigation of Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström, because she was linked to pro-copyright groups herself. Now she is facing the same allegations together with judge Christina Boutz.

Ihrfelt has been a member of the Swedish Copyright Association (SFU) and Boutz is a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (SFIR).

It is doubtful whether the objection will have an effect. After the initial trial Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity was called into doubt by the defense lawyers because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups, but the Appeal Court later ruled that this had not influenced the verdict.

Earlier this week we reported that one of the planned lay judges in the appeal could also be disqualified from participation, since he is an employee of Swedish music outfit Spotify – a company partly owned by the plaintiffs. However, there could be more to this lay judge issue than initially meets the eye.

TorrentFreak has been informed that the man in question is a bright programmer who co-owns a streaming technology patent along with the original developer of uTorrent, so there can be little doubt that he is somewhat of a BitTorrent expert. So far the defendants haven’t objected to him but there is speculation in Sweden that IFPI could be more afraid of this lay judge than their opposition is, partly since his background is at a technical university where support for Pirate Party values is strong.

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However, that eventuality was denied after the Appeal Court investigated the bias issue and ruled that the judge’s ties to these groups did not influence his judgment.

Instead of a retrial an appeal has been granted which will take place in November. The case will be handled by judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was previously removed from the bias investigation of judge Tomas Norström, because she too was linked to pro-copyright groups.

Today there is yet another question mark hanging over the head of another judge scheduled to play a major part in the appeal.

Launched as an answer to the file-sharing problem and the possible savior of the music industry, Sweden’s Spotify music service has been widely well received by both the industry and hardened pirates. But there is a problem.

According to an SR.se report today, one of the lay judges in the case has been revealed as an employee of the fledgling streaming music service.

“If the man is not judged to be biased he will be part of the court’s team at the right time,” said judge Ulrika Ihrfelt.

“I would not say there is a problem, but we definitely consider it a factor to which we must draw the attention of the parties, given that Spotify is a company that provides online music,” Ihrfelt added.

But of course, the problem goes just a little bit further than Spotify simply being a provider of online music. It also counts the major music labels – the absolute arch-enemies of The Pirate Bay – as shareholders.

Both the plaintiffs and defendants in the appeal have been notified of the lay judge’s affiliation with Spotify and it will now be down to the court of appeal to decide if there is a conflict of interest.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

On day two of the trial the prosecutor announced that half of the charges against the four defendants had been dropped. The prosecutor couldn’t prove that the .torrent files that were submitted as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay’s tracker, and he had to let go of all charges that accused the Pirate Bay folks of ‘assisting copyright infringement’.

What remained is the claim that they were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. The prosecution argued that this was indeed the case and brought in screenshots of websites and torrent files in as evidence, and the judge agreed with this assessment.

On April 17th all four defendants were found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of $905,000 to cover the entertainment industry’s damages. Despite this verdict The Pirate Bay continued to operate while the defense filed for an appeal.

For a while it looked like there could even be a retrial instead of an appeal, since judge Tomas Norström was involved with pro-copyright lobby groups and never declared these activities before he took on the case. The Appeal Court investigated the bias issue and ruled that the judge’s ties to these groups did not influence his judgment.

Instead of a retrial there will be an appeal, and the Court announced this week that it has two weeks set aside for the case starting November 9. The defense team is not happy with the dates, and Peter Sunde – one of the defendants – told TorrentFreak that the defense team will try to get the appeal date postponed because several of the people involved have other obligations.

The appeal will be handled by judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was previously removed from the bias investigation of Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström, because she was linked to pro-copyright groups herself. Nevertheless, handling the appeal doesn’t seem to be a problem. This is guaranteed to cause some controversy in the months to come.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Just a few short months ago, Ernesto and I were toiling for hours and hours every day, neglecting our regular jobs (yes, we’re only part-timers on TorrentFreak and FreakBits) to ensure that our readers had every conceivable detail of the Spectrial, every nugget of information from every source we could find.

No translation was too much trouble, no mountain of RSS too time consuming and no live feed in a foreign language too daunting to decrypt, in order for us to bring the facts of this important case to the world.

On the whole, people were happy that we did so. But things have changed.

The outcome of the Spectrial was open – the defendants could’ve walked away free men, or, as we were all soon to learn, be punished far beyond what any of us expected. Nevertheless, throughout there was hope for a victory – a triumph for the file-sharing masses, a beacon of encouragement for the millions of BitTorrent users.

Because of these hopes and optimism, no-one minded the wall to wall blanket coverage and few complained that every movement of the trial was relayed in high detail.

But now I sense that even amongst the faithful, the hope has gone. People are resigned to the likely reality that rather than the proposed purchase by Global Gaming Factory signaling a new dawn for the site, it really signals the end of The Pirate Bay. Why would anyone from the community enthusiastically read about that?

Rather than being greeted as the savior of the world’s largest tracker, GGF are increasingly seen as an irrelevance. If you believe all the hype, they will soon buy and “legalize” the site, part the oceans, turn lead into gold, feed the users and the music and movie industries, and line their shareholders’ pockets, all with the BitTorrent equivalent of five loaves and two fishes.

Unfortunately for GGF, on the whole the BitTorrent community either doesn’t believe them or in increasingly large numbers, simply couldn’t give a damn.

Whatever GGF does with The Pirate Bay is open to speculation (god, please, no more you say…) but let’s face it – it aint gonna be The Pirate Bay that we know any longer. If anything it will be a largely unrecognizable site whose owners are in bed with the entertainment industries – the very people that have been trying to kill the site for all these years. The same opposition that, on the whole, has united the masses in support for The Pirate Bay.

No longer will people be able to go to the GGF Bay to download yesterday’s TV show or the latest cam of a Hollywood movie. No more will people be able to download the frankly mind-boggling array of other media indexed by the world’s largest tracker or just about any song they fancy – i’ll stake my (ever dwindling) pension on it. Things will have to change, drastically, and that’s the last thing the current users want.

And this is why I believe people have lost interest. Whatever GGF have up their wizard’s sleeve and no matter the magic promised to spurt forth from Hans Pandeya’s wand after the 27th, we aren’t talking about The Pirate Bay any more, merely its domain name. We certainly aren’t talking about The Pirate Bay mentality and definitely not its spirit.

No Gottfrid, no Fredrik, no Peter. No fun publicity stunts.

No flipping the bird to the **AAs – everyone has to be on their best behavior now. Forget anarchy – stand in line nicely and do as you’re told, a lot of money rests on the success of this project and there must be order for the shareholders. Things have to make financial sense now, with all the fun that entails.

The only thing that will remain are the legal threats, and I can’t imagine GGF handling those in the traditional Pirate Bay way – can you?

But yesterday, when I started writing this little opinion piece, something happened. Yet another Pirate Bay story broke – the Swedish authorities had effectively shut down the site. And guess what? Interest in The Pirate Bay peaked again, many of the reader comments expressed those familiar warm feelings towards the site and indeed, towards news about the site.

Momentarily the proposed sale to GGF was forgotten, with the majority of onlookers as enthusiastic as ever. Once again there was unity. But sadly, it’s unlikely to last, because its highly probable that the next piece we write about The Pirate Bay will be about the sale and as explained, most people don’t want to know about it.

So, when the inevitable happens and, as TorrentFreak, we have little choice but to grit our teeth and cover what is happening with the sale, spare a thought for us. We read dozens of these articles every day so that you don’t have to.

Normal service will be resumed around here as soon as possible – just don’t expect anything like normality if GGF acquires The Pirate Bay.

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The interest has been absolutely unprecedented. Issues that niche sites like TorrentFreak have covered for years are now suddenly mainstream fodder, the public’s interest peaking along with their interest in real-life participation in the file-sharing phenomenon. The existence of The Pirate Bay has played a huge part in this new awareness but, as is often the case, it became a victim of its own success. No amount of bravado and no amount of public support would enable the world’s biggest file-sharing site to continue the work indefinitely – at least not in its current format.

A few P2P sites have previously tried to gain legitimacy or avoid legal action by “going legal” to a greater or lesser extent, but nothing really compares to the revolutionary plan put forward by GGF for The Pirate Bay.

Due to the mass press coverage, almost everyone has heard about the audacious and wildly ambitious plan to keep the site going with (hopefully) all of the torrents still on board, to allow people to carry on sharing while paying them to do so, selling off excess bandwidth to ISPs and paying the rights holders. And taking responsibility for any copyright claims that may come along. And selling Pirate Bay branded merchandise including vodka and baby accessories. And, of course, making a profit.

We’re continually informed by GGF CEO Hans Pandeya that the multitude of problems that have made the press almost daily are part of a conspiracy against him, and that people need not worry since all the funding is in place. The purchase of the world’s biggest tracker will go ahead as planned he says, providing the GGF shareholders agree.

But what about the current users of the site, the people who know the site best and have its future close to heart? You’ve read the stories, unencrypted the rumors and experienced the drama. So, regardless of if you’d like it go ahead or not, or whether you’d just like the whole thing to just go away, what do you really think of the deal’s chances?

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Perhaps the most insidious aspects of propaganda is that you often don’t know when you’re witnessing it. One of the easiest ways to define it is as something that presents a clear position on a topic, good and bad, with little reference to the facts in an attempt to sway a group of people into believing a certain thing. There are three examples of this to draw on. One is the term ‘intellectual property‘. It’s a term that infers that copyright is a property that can be owned, and by extension, can thus be ’stolen’. In actuality, it is as its name suggests, a right of copying. However, the term ‘Intellectual Property’ continues. It’s also got the secondary aim of making it seem appropriate to lengthen terms, as by terming it property, and not a right to an action, it’s defined as an asset. Assets are easier to ‘protect’ than a right to do something, certainly over a monopoly-control of distribution.

The second is the association with ‘theft‘ and stealing. Copyrights can only be ’stolen’ if the actual rights are taken by someone. That is, if the person who owns the right has the right taken from them by someone else. That is also why copyright cases are not theft cases, although cases treated as such would actually be better, as criminal cases have a lot fewer of the problems identified in part 1, as we have also pointed out in the past. It would also significantly reduce the penalties. As Prof. Lessig pointed out in Free Culture (Pg 190), under California law the biggest penalty for stealing a CD is $1,000 – for infringing the copyright of that same CD it’s $1,500,000 (assuming 10 tracks).

The third and most important, are the oft touted ‘loss figures’ and studies. Every month or two an industry group, or company paid by an industry group publishes a ‘losses due to piracy figure’ or other claim. These figures attempt to quantify the unknown (and unknowable) and give a number that can be used in statements. The problem with all of these numbers is that they’re guesswork and estimation, just dressed up nicely. It’s impossible to tell what people are doing, and how many are actually infringing copyright so any figure on the amount of copyright infringement is just a guess. Then there is the question of how much that infringement impacts sales. So far industry data says it reduces sales, while independent studies show it either doesn’t affect them, or increases them. However, they’re not consistent on how much effect there is – some industry studies vastly contradict others with their values for the same thing (such this example)

Nor is this a new thing. Who can forget then MPAA president Jack Valenti calling the VCR the ‘Boston Strangler’ of the film companies. A few short years later that same Boston Strangler was providing those film companies with the majority of their income. The same thing happens time and time again, player pianos, radio, cable TV, the VCR, and now computers and the Internet. Like Chicken little, the sky didn’t fall down the last few times, and is unlikely to now for those companies, if, as before, they adapt and embrace the new technologies. Else they’ll go the way of the big train companies when 40-ton trucks became common, or saddlers and livery stables when the car was made affordable; an anachronism of old technology.

Of course, at the end of the day it comes down to the law. Again, there’s a problem. When you have politicians that are paid heavily by the copyright industry, or judges that are part of an industry group, then the laws are not going to have a firm basis in reality, nor will there be a fair and impartial evaluation of those laws. In some cases, prominent members of the music industry have been let off their crimes by court systems, such as in Nashville where Universal exec Ken Robold and singer-songwriter John Hiatt have had their traffic offenses dismissed.

Given everything we’ve covered, at least briefly, it’s clear that a fair trial when it comes to P2P will be impossible to be had any time soon.

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However, Pirate Bay’s spokesman Peter Sunde says that they will not give up that easily. On his blog he writes, “When people think you’re down and out, that you’ve lost and have no way to win… that’s the perfect time to hit them harder than ever before.”

On Twitter Peter announces that their next step is to “file charges against Sweden for violation for Human Rights.”

In order to do so they will have take the case to the European Court of Human Rights, who will then conduct a review to see if the Swedish legal system did indeed violate the rights of the defendants in the Pirate Bay trial.

Peter also points out that Anders Eka, the judge responsible for reviewing the bias case, was biased himself. He is referring to his connection to The Stockholm Center for Commercial law, together with movie industry lawyers Monique Wasted and Peter Danowsky who represented the music industry in the Pirate Bay trial.

The appeal court was well aware of this connection, but said before that there was no reason to take Eka off the case.

“The group Anders Eka is a member of has no connection to copyright issues and the interests that are present in the case. I cannot see how this specific connection could lead to that Anders Eka isn’t suitable to try the question of bias,” Fredrik Wersäll, the president of the appeal court has said.

The exact nature of the charges against Sweden remain unclear. Peter Sunde was not available to comment but we guess it wont take long before we find out. Stay tuned for updates.

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Together with several of the lawyers who represented the movie and music industries, the judge was a member of the Swedish Association of copyright (SFU) and the Swedish Association for Protection of Industrial Property (SFIR). These engagements automatically make him a member of two major international pro-copyright organizations, ALAI and AIPPI.

Because of these connections the lawyers of the Pirate Bay defendants called for a retrial, arguing that the judge was not as objective as he should’ve been. One of the defendants, The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak at the time: “In the best interest of the Swedish people’s trust in the system a retrial should be not only granted, but pushed for.”

Today, the Appeal Court ruled that Tomas Norström was not biased. Although he was indeed a member of organizations that preserve the interests of copyright holders, this has not influenced his judgment, the court ruled.

The Appeal Court argues that the judge’s membership in the copyright associations show an engagement in issues “that to a certain extent is in the interest of the rights holders”. The Appeal Court added that it must be taken into account that the rights of rights holders are recognized by Swedish law. “That a judge agrees with the principles that are fundamental to this law cannot in itself be a reason for bias,” the court said.

Nevertheless, the court criticized the judge for not being open about his engagement in the associations before the trial. If he had done so, the question of bias then could have been tried earlier, they said.

Jonas Nilsson, the lawyer of Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij, is not happy with the decision and he said in a response: “The judge has an obligation to inform the parties about circumstances that could be seen as bias. Since he didn’t do that, it’s a mishandled trial. I’m very critical about the appeal court’s reasoning.”

The Pirate Party’s EU parliamentarian Christian Engström is also surprised and angry with the decision: “It is all part of a pattern. It shows that the Swedish judicial system cannot be trusted in copyright cases anymore. The laws may be wrong as well, but in addition to them the courts can’t even use the laws in a correct way. I have been a lay judge for seven years and I have never seen such a bad case as the Pirate Bay case. And still the court sentenced to unbelievable punishments.”

Engström believes the appeal court’s verdict is positive for the Pirate Party. “This shows that the only way to win the fight is through politics. It’s a political issue and it will be settled in the national elections 2010,” he said.

The verdict in the Pirate Bay trial where the four defendants were sentenced to one year in prison and a combined fine of $3,620,000 will now be appealed through the normal route.

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Her task is to decide whether or not Norström’s verdict could have been biased since this issue must be resolved before they can move on to the appeal request. If it’s determined that Norström was indeed biased, the case will be resubmitted to the district court for retrial, meaning that an appeal is not needed at this stage.

Earlier this week the District Court of Stockholm handed in their statement to the Appeal Court, arguing that they don’t believe that Norström was biased. This was not really a surprise since they appointed him and admitting that he is biased would be admitting to having made a mistake before the “bias case” is reviewed.

However, many publications mistakenly concluded from this statement that a ruling was made on the bias issue, or even worse.

“The four men convicted for operating file-sharing site the Pirate Bay suffered a further setback this week when they failed to get the case thrown out because of alleged bias by the sentencing judge,” the Hollywood reporter wrote.

This was picked up and twisted even further by none other than The New York Times who reported: “A Swedish court has denied the appeal of four men convicted of violating copyright law for their involvement in the Pirate Bay.”

Several other large and smaller publications wrote similar articles this week, concluding that the court “ruled” that the Pirate Bay judge was not biased or that an appeal was off the table. The truth is that the Appeal Court still has to decide whether or not the judge is biased. The only thing that happened this week is that the District Court handed it their statement.

Appeal Court Judge Ulrika Ihrfelt, who was taken off the bias case previously, but will be involved in an eventual appeal told a local newspaper this week: “The biggest challenge will probably be the enormous amount of media attention at the trial. I haven’t been in media’s spotlights before, so this is a new experience for me.”

The biggest challenge for the media on the other hand, is to get their facts straight instead of writing up nonsense. Props to our friend David Kravets at Wired who was one of the few who got it right.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Mininova’s lawyer argued that the site is already taking measures to ensure rights holders can protect their content, and this amounts to more than they are required to do under the law. The site has a ‘notice and takedown’ policy and recently started offering an infohash filter where content owners can blacklist torrents.

Mininova’s case against BREIN was heard at the Utrecht court. Three judges have been appointed to the case. One of them is a replacement for a judge who was taken off the case a few weeks ago because he was connected to the entertainment industry. The hearing started at 1 PM with BREIN’s lawyer Dirk Visser.

Visser began by informing the court that Mininova has over 5 million daily users who use the site to download copyrighted content. A brief look at the site’s homepage clearly shows that they link to illegal content, and their business models is to make money off the millions of ads that are displayed, he said.

Mininova’s attempt to offer a distribution platform to publishers through their “featured content” section is nonsense, BREIN’s lawyer insisted. According to research conducted by BREIN 92% of the torrents on Mininova point to ‘illegal’ content, and the tag cloud with popular searches also shows that illegal content is what people are mainly looking for on the site.

In 2006 and 2007 BREIN and Mininova had lengthy discussions on how to deal with copyrighted content, Visser said. Mininova wanted BREIN to come up with specific infohashes that should be in the filter, and BREIN wanted Mininova to cover the costs. They never reached an agreement and the negotiations ended.

All in all Visser is arguing that Mininova aids in distributing copyright infringing works, and BREIN demands that the site installs a filtering mechanism that will put an end to this. Mininova will have to cover the costs of such a copyright filter themselves, they say.

Next up was Mininova’s lawyer Vita Zwaan. She started out by informing the court that this is a landmark case because it’s the first to make a judgment about the legality of the BitTorrent platform in The Netherlands, pointing out that this case obviously has far reaching consequences.

Zwaan further told the court that, while the hearing was taking place, approximately 180 torrents would be added to the site’s database and that Mininova has no knowledge of the content currently tracked by these torrents. In addition Zwaan explained that Mininova has partnerships with content owners to distribute works though their distribution platform.

On top of this, Mininova offers several options for content owners to take ‘infringing’ torrents off the site, the lawyer explained. Together with the Motion Picture Association (MPA), Mininova started experimenting with a content filter through which torrents can taken off the site by the content owners.

The filter trial is a success according to Mininova’s lawyer, who quoted one of TorrentFreak’s recent articles to point this out. BREIN also had to option to participate in the filtering trial so they could see for themselves how it works, but BREIN rejected this offer.

It is unclear what BREIN’s demands actually are according to Zwaan. They want Mininova to implement “preventive measure” but are vague about the details. However, BREIN doesn’t want to provide the info-hashes for the torrents it wants removed, and argues that this is something Mininova should do themselves. This is the opposite of what the MPA (a member of BREIN) is doing now.

According to Mininova’s lawyer, this disagreement on who should provide information on what to filter is what the case is all about.

A keyword filter that was proposed by BREIN is unworkable according to Zwaan because it would result in too many false positives. A filter for the keyword ‘office’, as BREIN suggested, would result in the removal of 92 torrents linking to “Open Office” she said.

Mininova’s lawyer then discussed some of the costs Mininova made thus far to take down torrents upon request from copyright holders (though the old system). She said that 155,876 takedown requests have been reviewed which cost the site 250,000 euro ($350,000). In addition, Mininova invested several thousand euros in the content filter.

Zwaan went on to explain that Mininova is not a necessary nor sufficient part of the BitTorrent download process. Unlike The Pirate Bay they don’t host a public tracker, and neither do they offer a BitTorrent client through which users can download torrents. BREIN argued otherwise and this is incorrect Zwaan said.

Towards the end of her plea, Zwaan argued that Mininova is not infringing the rights of various copyright holders as BREIN stated. She cited several cases in and outside The Netherlands to make point out why, and pointed out that The Pirate Bay may not have been found guilty if they had a notice and takedown policy like Mininova has.

After a short break the hearing continued briefly and the judges asked both lawyers for clarification on some issues. Mininova’s lawyer was asked about the moderators that Mininova has, and why they remove porn but not copyrighted content. Mininova explained that the moderators handle problem reports from users (about virusses, porn, etc.), while the Mininova admins handle the copyright complaints. The site has around five moderators, a number which the changes from time to time.

After roughly three hours the hearing ended and it’s now up to the judges to come up with a decision. The verdict is due on July 15. Erik Dubbelboer and the other Mininova founders think they have the law on their side. “We have confidence in the outcome of the case and we believe Mininova will continue to exist,” Erik told TorrentFreak.

This is a developing story, info might be added.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Interestingly, the bands and artists, including Advance Patrol, were never informed that they were to feature in the trial. Even worse, Advance Patrol feels that they were abused by the labels, as they are using BitTorrent themselves, and encourage their fans to do the same.

“We never asked to be plaintiffs in this case,” Gonza from Advance Patrol explains. “They used us as scapegoats in a fight in which we don’t wish to participate. We refuse to be used in a war against our fans.”

Gonza further explains that the people who download and share the band’s music are some of their most dedicated fans, not some criminals. To show how wrong the music industry was in targeting The Pirate Bay, they have decided to share their latest album “El Futuro” for free.

The Pirate Bay crew is delighted with Advance Patrol’s statement. “In the case against us the music industry used many artists without asking them first. The cooperation between us and Advance Patrol shows that not all of those who were plaintiffs wanted to be a part of the Spectrial circus.”

“Earlier we’ve seen the hip hop artist Max Peezay drop out of the trial proceedings, and when we’ve spoken to other artists they were upset as well. This shows that artists really like the internet, and of course – we love them right back,” we were told.

More and more artists are speaking out against the harsh anti-piracy efforts of the music industry lobby and the alienating effect it has on fans. Several top artists including Robbie Williams, Radiohead, Iron Maiden and Travis even founded their own lobby group, the Featured Artists Coalition – to stand up for their own rights and those of their fans.

Advance Patrol’s latest album can be downloaded via The Pirate Bay, and they encourage everyone to share it with as many people as possible.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, the ties to these lobby groups might also cloud his judgment and thus the verdict, some claim. It is therefore highly dubious that Norström was handpicked and not randomly assigned as is normal procedure in cases like this.

Defense lawyer Per E Samuelsson has now sent a letter to the Court of Appeal where he addresses the issue and seems to confirm earlier rumors he shared with the press. “The young generation’s trust in the judicial system is at stake here,” he told the Swedish news agency (TT) in a comment.

“I don’t want to say that the randomness of judge selection has been fixed, but the case has been handed to Norström mainly because he is considered an expert on copyright. That raises questions since this is a criminal case. A large majority of the young generation believes that what is going on here is a farce,” Samuelsson added.

According to Samuelsson, there is no doubt that all the suspicious connections to pro-copyright groups indicate that Norström had preconceived ideas on the issues addressed during the Pirate Bay trial.

“I have a hard time to let go of the thought that he kept quiet about this because he had the intention of using his opinions in the case. I don’t hesitate for a moment when saying that this is bias,” he said.

Henrik Pontén, lawyer at the anti-piracy bureau didn’t want to comment on Samuelsson’s letter to the Appeal Court, and said he will await the court’s decision due to be announced a few weeks from now.

The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that the current developments amount to yet another plot twist in the tragicomedy that their trial has turned into. “We will win in the end,” he said, promising a happy ending.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In front of an audience of music industry insiders the Minister commented on the Pirate Bay verdict. “This may not be appreciated by everyone, but I was one of those who was pleased with the verdict in the Pirate Bay case,” she said.

While some of the audience cheered after hearing the Minister’s statement, others frowned, probably realizing that she is not supposed to give her personal opinion on an ongoing court case. In Sweden there is a so called rule of ministers (Ministerstyre) which makes it unconstitutional for ministers and other members of parliament to influence individual cases handled by government agencies. This means that Adelsohn-Liljeroth may have overstepped the line with her recent comments.

The Minister of Culture gave the speech during a dinner attended by 450 guests including copyright holders, artists and legislators. The atmosphere, including some of the other talks, was already pretty hostile towards everything file-sharing related. So, in a way the Minister’s comments fitted in nicely. However, the Minister’s statement could have political consequences.

Marie Demker, professor of political science at University of Gothenburg told SVD in a comment, “Since the verdict has been appealed, the process of justice isn’t concluded. In that case, it’s a very gray area to take side in an issue that’s politically discussed, both with the issue of bias and as an important topic in the EU elections.”"

“This will spread throughout social media and it will affect voters. The Minister’s comment is like an elephant stomping through a china shop,” Demker said. Indeed, it is not unlikely that the Swedish voters will distance themselves even more from established politicians such as Adelsohn-Liljeroth, which may benefit the Pirate Party’s march towards Brussels.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.