Unlike most people might think, piracy is not necessarily a bad thing for copyright holders. In fact, German pirate-tracking outfit DigiRights Solutions shows that copyright holders can earn 150 times more money from illicit downloads than from iTunes and other legal stores.
In August, Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN won its case against The Pirate Bay, and the court ordered the defendants to block access to Dutch visitors. The case was appealed today and rightly so. It appears that the evidence presented by BREIN was faked in an attempt to mislead the court.
The Pirate Bay is going on a road trip through Europe, one they hope to end today in a former NATO bunker. After a move from Sweden to the Ukraine, The Pirate Bay has now arrived at CyberBunker, an ISP that can provide them with a facility that can resist a nuclear attack as well as electromagnetic pulse bombs.
Last Friday The Pirate Bay moved to Ukraine after its Swedish bandwidth supplier was forced to stop servicing the tracker. In the new setup, traffic to TPB is routed through The Netherlands, but anti-piracy outfit BREIN has now asked ISP NForce to stop handling TPB’s traffic. As a result the site is now down for most people.
Following an order from a prosecutor, last year Italian ISPs started to block subscriber access to the Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay was not planning to go down without a fight though – the decision was appealed and TPB won. Now, several months later, this victory has been nullified by the Supreme Court.
Little over a month ago, Global Gaming Factory (GGF) announced that its shareholders had agreed to buy The Pirate Bay – the only thing that stood in their path was the actual money transfer. Today the deadline to transfer the money passed silently, putting an end to the deal and three turbulent months.
The Pirate Bay appeal is coming up in November and just as with the initial trial there is a lot of controversy surrounding the background of the various judges. Today the Appeal Court has decided to disqualify one of its lay judges because of his involvement with the music industry.
Earlier this month we warned that there could be extended downtime at Demonoid, one of the Internet’s most popular BitTorrent trackers. Worried users are keen to see the site return soon, but staff at the site are warning that not only will it take time but months of data could be lost in the process.
This week Lily Allen’s views on file-sharing have been the hot topic. While some agree with her calls to ’save’ the industry from a fate worse than death, others did not subscribe to the doomsday scenario. One of those is UK musician Dan Bull who has written a brilliant song-come-open letter to Miss Allen. We hope you enjoy it.
Canada has had its very own Pirate Party for a few months now. The party is currently trying to get federal approval, a goal that should be achieved in the coming week. In the meantime the party’s members haven’t been sitting still and today sees the launch of their very own BitTorrent tracker.
Earlier this week TorrentFreak reported that there had been objections over one of the proposed lay judges set for the Pirate Bay appeal. Now there are yet more claims of possible bias, this time with two of the main judges who have both been members of pro-copyright groups.
