Responses have been overwhelmingly negative to the news that The Pirate Bay will soon be sold to Global Gaming Factory. But what if there is a method to the apparent Pirate Bay madness — one that, as Peter Sunde has hinted, could actually be good for the P2P community?
After Global Gaming Factory X announced that it intends to buy The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million, the CEO of the company bombarded the press with his revolutionary plans for the site. By paying both the copyright holders and file-sharers the company aims to reshape the digital media landscape. We have our doubts.
Piracy watchdog Nexicon has found the ultimate way to turn piracy into profit for the fresh copyright holders added to their clientele. They offer alleged file-sharers the chance to settle for $10 per downloaded song or an equal amount for a pirated movie. If you decide not to settle, they promise to bankrupt you in court.
Three judges are currently reviewing the judge that handled the Pirate Bay trial to discover if he was biased or not. No decision has yet been made but the New York Times and several other publications report inaccuracies and plain wrongs that claim otherwise. Time to get the facts straight.
For reasons unknown, TorrentFreak is filtered by many organizations, schools and WiFi hotspots spread across various countries. We assume that those who maintain the web filtering databases have grown wary of anything related to BitTorrent, but in some cases it’s even worse than that.
In February TechCrunch rumored that Last.fm had ratted out its users to the RIAA. Now they have another source claiming data was shared with the music industry group, including IP addresses. Without going into the validity of these allegations, we’d like to point out that this data is completely useless to the RIAA, from a legal point of view.
A study conducted by PRS, the British music royalty collection agency, looked into the downloading habits of the average user of file-sharing networks. They found that the most downloaded tracks mimic the music charts. That is, people tend to download music that’s already popular.
In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology.
A handful of studies have shown that those who download music illegally actually buy more through legal channels. But why? Are pirates really this generous or could it be that this is just a side-effect of the failing music industry?
The victory for the entertainment business was Pyrrhic, although this initial success is dampened by a possible mistrial. Nevertheless, four Swedes have been martyred. Yet content creators and consumers are no closer to new business models that solve the problem.
In a few days the verdict in the Pirate Bay trial will be announced, a decision that could have far reaching consequences for fellow BitTorrent trackers and file-sharing in general. Through this poll we’d like to hear what the public believe the verdict will be. Generally in favor of The Pirate Bay Four - or against?
