It was remarkable to see how thousands of people were following and contributing to an ongoing stream of information on the Internet. Through live blogs (in Swedish and translated), Twitter, live audio from inside the court and live video from outside, the coverage was massive.

The hash tag #spectrial was the most searched term on Twitter, The Pirate Party’s servers went down and it was nearly impossible to get access to trial.thepiratebay.org, which collects the various streams of information.

One of the defendants even contributed, as Peter Sunde (aka brokep) wrote on Twitter: “Might this be the first twitter from within a court case? It must be a #spectrial.” This might indeed be one of the first tweets from a defendant in court.

As the court went in recess for lunch, the gathering outside grew, in spite of the cold February day in Stockholm. Pirate Party flags marked the street corner, a band played and candy was handed to passers-by while being told that “sharing is caring”.

In the crowd we found Christian Engström, Vice Chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party who are currently heading towards getting seats in the European Parliament in June’s elections.

“This is a political trial,” he told TorrentFreak. “Firstly, the trial itself is political because the prosecutor wrote a memo in 2005 and said that it wasn’t possible to prosecute from the evidence. This trial only occurs because of political pressure from the United States on the then Minister of Justice.”

The trial, as Engström explains, is more than just a prosecution of The Pirate Bay. It is a question of the future of communication.

“Should the Internet be a place where everyone can communicate or should it not? That’s the question of this trial, and no court can answer that question. Even if The Pirate Bay would be freed all the way through the court system, the problem isn’t solved. The Copyright Lobby will demand more restrictions and tougher laws and the only way to protect social media culture in the long run is to work politically.”

When asked if the trial had any significance at all, Engström told TorrenFreak that he finds it incredibly fun as a spectacle.

“Hollywood knows how to stage a show, I’ve got to hand them the credit for that. And I think that’s very positive because it means that for the following weeks, there will be lots of media focus on these important issues.”

After the lunch break, the proceedings continued as well as the coverage online. On Twitter Sofia did an outstanding job translating the audio feed into English, but she was just one of many. It is truly remarkable how many people committed themselves to covering the trial. For now we still live in a society where information is open and free.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Most recently, Ovum researchers surveyed a large group of broadband Internet subscribers who also own a TV, and polled their video download habits. The video trends survey found that nearly one third of the respondents watch illegally downloaded video. Because music and software wasn’t included, it is safe to say that the overall piracy rate among broadband subscribers is even higher.

Most people do not download copyrighted videos on a regular basis though. The survey found that only 4% of the total sample admitted doing so. Interestingly, two thirds of the sample – including the ones that never download illegally – didn’t see it as morally wrong. This discrepancy between the perceived morality and the legal status lies at the core of the ever increasing piracy rate.

Despite the continuous efforts of the anti-piracy lobby attempted to change the public’s attitude towards piracy, without much success. The infamous “You wouldn’t steal…” campaign is a prime example of such a failed campaign. There hasn’t been much of a change in the attitudes of the public. Instead, TV and movie insiders themselves have regularly made fun of the strategy.

For several years the entertainment industry has ignored the endless possibilities the Internet has offered them, while striving to preserve their outdated business models. Thereby they ignored the cause of the problem. The rise of illegal downloading is clearly a signal that customers want something that is unavailable through other channels.

So, should sharing copyrighted material be legalized? Not per se, but the entertainment industry should focus on monetizing filesharing networks instead of bringing them down. The movie industry has said many times that it treats piracy as just another competitor, so one day it will hopefully see that sharing is not only a good thing but also an unstoppable thing – with a multitude of profit-making possibilities attached to it.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“Our hearts go out to the Scantleberry family for their loss,” says RIAA mouthpiece Jonathan Lamy unblushingly in what will certainly go down as one of the most disgustingly fulsome statements ever to be issued by an organization that’s infamous for its bald-faced lies.

“We had decided to temporarily suspend the productive settlement discussions we were having with the family,” says Lamy, quoted in Boing Boing.

“Mr. Scantleberry had admitted that the infringer was his stepson, and we were in the process settling with him shortly before his passing. Out of an abundance of sensitivity, we have elected to drop this particular case.”

“Query,” posts Ray Beckerman on Recording Industry vs The People.

“What do they mean by ‘this particular lawsuit’? The lawsuit against the decedent would have had to be withdrawn anyway. Are they going to now sue Mr. Scantlebury’s son? Or have they given the Scantlebury family enough grief’?”

Stay Tuned…

P2Pnet

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

We all know that “copyright holders” means “MPAA, RIAA and other anti-piracy groups”, that will claim their representing the copyright owners. So, in effect, if this bill is passed, Swedish legislation has given room for a situation where special interest groups can demand personal information from companies to conduct their own private investigations. So the new law will give the anti-piracy lobby more power, at least in Sweden. On the other hand, not far from Sweden, the Dutch anti-p2p organization BREIN recently lost a case where they demanded personal info about filesharing ip’s.

This new law would be in line with how Sweden has worked before. Last year, the police made a bust on a large Swedish ISP called Bahnhof, after an investigation from the Bureau of Anti-Piracy (a Swedish copyright owner interest group). The interest group filed a report almost immediately after the bust, indicating they had exclusive information from the prosecutor. The ISP then released all their logs, which indicated that it was the interest group that had hired a mole to use their computers to commit copyright crimes. Of course, this didn’t lead anywhere. And the Pirate Bay bust on May 31 should be proof that it did not discourage Swedish police and prosecutors to walk errands for copyright “representatives”.

But what frightens me is the prospect that this kind of behavior is getting legally sanctioned.

I made a translation of Linander’s blog entry and provide some further arguments on Piracy Unlimited.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.