“We do not accept the Appeal Court’s ruling,” Lundström’s lawyer Per E. Samuelsson told Swedish radio when confirming his client would take his case to the Supreme Court.

It is claimed that Lundström, who is the millionaire heir to the Wasabröd crispbread empire, provided computers, bandwidth and server rackspace for The Pirate Bay in its early days through his company Rix Telecom. He rejects the decision of the Appeal Court on a number of grounds.

Firstly, Lundström questions why The Pirate Bay should be held liable for promoting infringements when other Internet services, such as Google, can be viewed as doing the same.

Lundström also writes that the prosecutor has failed to prove that he operated “jointly and in concert” with others in respect of any crimes potentially carried out via The Pirate Bay.

According to Realtid, Lundström says the Court of Appeal’s conclusion, that he must’ve known that his company had provided equipment free of charge to The Pirate Bay, is wrong. He insists he had no knowledge of any such arrangement.

But above all, Lundström insists that since he was a provider of bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, he must therefore have been their Internet service provider.

“Assessing the criminal responsibility of ISPs should be the target key precedent in this case,” he explains.

Lundström wants the Supreme Court to consider if an ISP should be held liable for assisting in crimes committed by their customers. His lawyer, Per E Samuelson, says that to his knowledge no one has ever been found guilty on this basis before.

The appeal lodged by Lundström also questions the huge damages awarded by the Appeal Court against him. As an ISP with no knowledge of the alleged infringements, he feels a share of $6.5 million in damages is excessive.

It is believed that Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde will also file appeals with the Supreme Court in due course.

The fourth defendant, Gottfrid Svartholm, is behind in the process due to illness. His case will be handled by the Appeal Court at a later date.

Source: Pirate Bay Supreme Court Appeal “Should Consider ISP Liability”

BREIN won the case and the founders were ordered to block Dutch users, a decision they chose to appeal. The trio denied current connections to the site but the Court rejected this defense as the defendants could not name the current owners or provide any documents proving that the site was sold to Seychelles-based company Reservella.

Last month the earlier ruling was confirmed in a full trial at the Amsterdam Court, a hearing none of the founders attended.

The Court ruled that Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter will now have to pay penalties of 50,000 euros per day for non-compliance. However no action has yet been taken by the site to block Dutch users.

Perhaps concerned that the founders aren’t aware of the Dutch ruling, today BREIN boss Tim Kuik embarked on a remarkable mission.

As we reported earlier, the Green Party hosted a panel discussion titled “Art in the Digital Age” in Vienna, Austria, this week. One of the invited panel guests was Werner Müller, boss of the Austrian film and music industry trade association. Müller withdrew his participation after he discovered that Peter Sunde was going to be there.

Tim Kuik, however, saw pinning down Sunde’s location as a golden opportunity.

“Just explained new Dutch verdict to Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde in Vienna and handed him a copy of it: stop or pay 50K a day,” said Kuik tonight.

In order to document the event, Kuik also had their meeting filmed and recorded.

In a statement BREIN said that Sunde “was spotted on a terrace near the open air debate venue”. There he was approached by Kuik who explained the Amsterdam Court’s ruling and gave him a copy.

“He is aware of the verdict now”, says Kuik, “so the terms are running, he has to show up or pay up.”

Source: BREIN Tracks Down and Serves Pirate Bay Founder, On Film

Sunde discussed in detail how they responded to threats from copyright holders, mockings that can be read in detail in the Pirate Bay’s legal section.

Aside from responses to takedown notices, The Pirate Bay crew has pulled off other ludicrous pranks, such as scooping the domain of IFPI to found the International Federation of Pirate Interests.

There is of course also a downside to all the hilarity as Hollywood and the music industry, helped by the US Government, managed to convince Swedish authorities to raid the site’s servers back in 2006. The raid eventually led to a criminal trial where Sunde and three others were sentenced to a year in prison, a verdict that will be appealed later this year.

For those who haven’t seen Sunde’s previous public performances, the talk gives a good overview of what motivated a group of friends to maintain a file-sharing platform that has become a major threat to the entertainment industry.

Towards the end of the talk Sunde, who is no longer associated with the site, gives his thoughts on the future of the BitTorrent giant. Here, he reiterates what he has said before. The Pirate Bay has served its purpose, and it’s time for something new to take its place.

“The Pirate Bay should die, really. Nobody works on The Pirate Bay, it’s just there and it works all the time. And it’s still growing,” Sunde said. “If you see the site, nothing has happened in five years and still more and more users are using it, which is bad.”

“We need some form of new technology. So, that’s kind of the future for The Pirate Bay, hopefully dying, and being replaced with something better of course, because the Pirate Bay really sucks,” he adds.

It is hard to disagree with Sunde here. Although The Pirate Bay has played a major role in popularizing BitTorrent, the site itself has brought few innovations recently, aside from installing pop-under ads maybe.

The fact that it’s still the largest torrent site shows how strong the brand is, but in its current form it is hard to imagine that the site will still be as big as it is now in a few years. Whether another torrent site takes over, or even a new technology, an era is about to end.

Source: “The Pirate Bay Really Sucks,” Says Co-Founder

Among the invited panel guests are politicians such as Eva Lichtenberger, who’s a member of the European Parliament for the Green Party, as well as Werner Müller, boss of the Austrian film and music industry trade association. The latter was looking forward to venting his thoughts on the future of entertainment in the digital age, until he found out that a former adversary was also coming to Vienna.

“On Friday, I was informed of the requested list of panelists and only then I learned that Peter Sunde, a convicted co-founder of the BitTorrent download portal The Pirate Bay, will participate in this discussion. For this reason, I would like to hereby withdraw my participation,” Werner Müller wrote to the organizers.

Although Peter Sunde discontinued his connection to The Pirate Bay a long time ago, and moved on to found the social micropayment startup Flattr, Müller refused to sit at a table with such a defiant voice. The fact that Sunde has different beliefs about copyright is not a problem, Müller said, but he is against inviting convicted criminals to the panel discussion.

“I find it a problem that the Greens have invited a criminally convicted co-founder of a file-sharing portal to a debate – a portal that is used by professional thieves to illegally enrich themselves using the creative work of authors – actions that as you noted in the statements, are still ongoing,” Müller wrote.

The Green Party, which organized the panel, is obviously disappointed with Müller’s cancellation. Organizer Marco Schreuder, who posted Müller’s cancellation letter in full on his weblog, notes that the time is not yet ripe for this matter to be discussed by the content owners, although the clock is ticking.

Peter Sunde on the other hand does not seem to be bothered with one less opponent in the upcoming discussion, and sees it as a small victory instead. “The best win you’ll have is when your enemies don’t even dare to show up, and have a lame excuse like that,” he tweeted yesterday.

“The case is not final so no final judgment is made. He’s just afraid of losing face. And he just did anyhow,” Peter added, referring to the fact that Müller ignored that the conviction of Peter and the three others associated with the Pirate Bay will be appealed later this year.

Plenty of discussion still to come, but in court.

Source: Copyright Boss Refuses Debate with Pirate Bay Co-Founder

Late last month, Peter Sunde – The Pirate Bay’s former spokesman – received the same treatment.

Sunde said that he was surprised by the ruling and told TorrentFreak that he found it “interesting” that the Court felt it could judge him even though he doesn’t live in Sweden and the site is located abroad. He immediately said he would appeal the decision.

An appeal has now been lodged against the ban which carries the same 500,000 kronor penalty for Peter as it does Gottfrid and Fredrik.

“His involvement with The Pirate Bay has always been limited to the political issues which emerge. A ban would constitute the same thing as a political gagging,” explains Sunde’s lawyer in documents submitted to the court.

The banning order is an interim ruling in force until the appeal of the criminal case against all four defendants in the original trial is settled in the autumn. In the meantime the site remains fully operational.

Source: Pirate Bay Founder Appeals “Political Gagging” Court Order

Despite this unfavorable verdict, which will be appealed later this year, the site itself remains online aside from some incidental hosting issues. To change this course, Hollywood movie studios have been going after the alleged operators of the site in court, and not without success.

In May this year, the Swedish Court of Appeals confirmed an earlier judgement by the District Court, prohibiting two of the site’s founding members – Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij – from operating the site. Failure to comply with the court’s decision will result in fines of 500,000 kronor (~$70,000) each.

Today, The Pirate Bay’s former spokesperson Peter Sunde was added to this list by the District Stockholm Court and now faces the same fine as his former colleagues for non-compliance.

It is doubtful that this latest decision will have any impact on The Pirate Bay’s operation. Similar to Fredrik and Gottfrid, Peter has previously stated that he is no longer involved with the site. Even more so, in the past Peter only acted as a spokesperson, he was never in charge of technical operations.

Peter Sunde confirmed this stance to TorrentFreak today, and noted that he was surprised by the ruling of the District Court.

“The interesting thing with the ruling is that the Swedish Court feels that they can judge me even though I do not live in Sweden and neither is the system [TPB],” Sunde said.

Indeed, all of the three people who are now banned from operating the site no longer live in Sweden. This also complicates the enforcement of the rulings since it is pretty much impossible to check whether or not Peter, Fredrik and Gottfrid are complying with their demands.

Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that he will appeal the decision of the District Court. However, this appeal will be most likely scheduled after the appeal of The Pirate Bay trial this autumn so it may already be irrelevant by then.

“I’ve already appealed the decision, so it will have no effect anyhow. The new court case [appeal of The Pirate Bay trial] is coming up even before this will be in appeal…” Sunde said. Until then, Sunde continues to work full-time on his social payment startup Flattr.

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay is serving torrents to millions of people every day.

Source: Peter Sunde Banned From Operating The Pirate Bay

Musicians and movie makers can share their work with the rest of the world with very little investment, something that was impossible little over a decade ago. Similarly, weblogs are able to provide news and information much faster than old media at relatively low costs.

The Internet has brought us a tool to share and consume content, but up until now there has been no really easy way for the consuming side to reward content producers. Flattr, a new venture started by The Pirate Bay’s former spokesman Peter Sunde, opts to change this.

Flattr has been in development since 2007 and finally opened up in Beta this week. It is best described as a mashup between social content discovery sites such as Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon, and an online payment service like Paypal.

“It’s a new revenue stream for people who share their content! It’s a combination of a donation system and a quality list of interesting content online,” said Peter Sunde describing the service to TorrentFreak.

Users who join the site can use it to discover interesting articles, great music and useful software, like on the aforementioned social discovery sites. If they see something they like they can give it a thumbs up, which is nothing new either.

The innovative part is that users of Flattr set a monthly budget they are willing to donate each month to the content they like. This can be as low as $2, or whatever the user is willing to share. At the end of the month the money is shared between the creators of the content they liked, who are all Flattr users as well.

In other words, Flattr allows consumers to flatter content producers for a flat-rate fee, and offers a revenue stream to those who create and share content.

The idea behind Flattr is innovative, but for the service to be a success the user base has to be significant. If Sunde and friends succeed in that they have an ideal solution to pay off the people who share their work for free.

Those who want to give Flattr a try can sign up for a Beta invite.

Source: Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde Starts Money Sharing Site

But of course, being involved with the running of The Pirate Bay means there is little time for anything else and this is the main reason cited by Peter behind his decision to quit – he wants time to do other things.

“I want to build something new and I want to focus my energy in a different direction. I have projects waiting to be finished, a book is waiting to be finalized and many more books are waiting to be read,” he said.

Touching briefly on the challenges facing the site’s operators, Peter – who is known to millions of Internet users as brokep – said that they had “been raised to another level” adding that it’s “time for biological dispersal.”

Promising not to give up his battle in pressing for a better Internet, Peter says his resignation marks the end of an era, “..but I am simply leaving a role in order to be a person instead,” he said.

BitTorrent will miss you – Good luck Peter!

Source: Pirate Bay Spokesman Peter Sunde Resigns

Now that things have settled down a little, we took the opportunity to ask one of the defendants some questions of our own. We spoke with Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde about the trial and the future of the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.

TF: Before the trial started, you said that it was going to be a theater – Hollywood style. Looking back at recent weeks, did your predictions come true?

Peter: Yeah, some days it was a really weird show outside! A lot of stuff happened in secret too, and those events will probably come out in the documentary. It’s been great theater!

TF: Are you satisfied with how the trial played out? Do you still predict an EPIC WIN?

Peter: Right now, yes. I’m very happy about it and I still predict an EPIC WIN for sure. But you never know. We expect a win but we’re prepared for the worst case scenario, so that we don’t get too beaten up if that happens.

TF: During the trial, the prosecution was heavily criticized for their lack of knowledge about BitTorrent, and how people use it to transfer files. Would you agree with this?

Peter: Yeah. We actually presented our own video ‘how-to’ to the court during the final day, to make sure the jurors got the right knowledge on how it works. The prosecution has tried to show BitTorrent as something bad and suspicious and we wanted to show that it’s legitimate and has a broader use than just STEALING FILES FROM THE POOR COPYRIGHT LOBBY…

TF: A lot of people are worried about the future of The Pirate Bay. However, the trial seems to be against four individuals, not against the site/tracker. Worst case scenario: Is there a possibility that people will have to do without TPB in the future?

Peter: If TPB is not used in the future, it is because there’s a new technology available that makes TPB obsolete.

TF: Do you think there’s a future for BitTorrent as it is now, or do you expect that file-sharing will change in the future?

Peter: I think it will evolve of course, but BitTorrent is on the right path to stay relevant for a while. The problem with a decentralized tracking system is that there’s no way (right now) to keep spammers and IP-stealers away from the network, which one can do on TPB for instance. Media Defender was a good example of that, TPB could find their IPs and lock them away rapidly without having to tell the users to update files.

Good solutions like that might appear in the future for end users, but it’s still a long way off. BitTorrent as a technology will be used for the actual sharing, or at least the basic concept of BitTorrent.

TF: There has been a lot of trial coverage online, both by traditional press and bloggers. What are some of the positive and negative surprises?

Peter:There were no real surprises. The media coverage of TPB has been somewhat the same over the past years. There are no secrets surrounding TPB that could come out and harm us, which keeps it easy to maintain a good relationship with the media. I’m just happy that people take part in the discussion about the Internet’s future, which has been promoted to debate by this spectrial.

TF: We’ve heard rumors that Anakata traveled to Cambodia after the trial. Is he meeting King Kong there or is there another explanation?

Peter: I’m not sure if he’s in Cambodia – he travels a bit for a customer that he’s working with. But, I think he’s in Asia at least. And yeah, he’s probably drinking cider with King Kong one of these days.

TF: Finally, do you have any good advice for the judge while he’s reviewing the case?

Peter: Don’t trust the prosecution – they don’t know what they’re doing.

—

The verdict is due on April 17. Links to our previous Pirate Bay trial coverage can be found below.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Summary.

Source: Pirate Bay Interview: EPIC WIN Prediction

“Today, piracy has become more and more like, someone who likes freedom, someone who likes information exchange” says Peter. “It’s only positive, it’s only, only good and you know, that is piracy according to some people, and you get labeled as a pirate.”

Peter then goes on to state some of the objectives and motivation behind running the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker: “We’re fighting, The Pirate Bay is fighting for freedom because we don’t want to be information slaves, we don’t want to have someone else decide what we should and shouldn’t think.”

Despite massive effort by the music and movie industries to create a negative image of piracy, for some, the term ‘pirate’ has lots of positive connotations these days and Peter is happy to be labeled as one: “We call ourselves pirates because the recording industry is calling us pirates and we think it’s a cool thing to be a pirate. It’s people today that want to share information and the internet has changed how people actually distribute music and movies so the industry is very scared of the change.”

Most modern-day media pirates would agree, piracy hasn’t always been easy. Tools haven’t always been readily available nor priced in a way that makes piracy accessible to all. The internet – providing worldwide communication and information interchange for everyone who accesses it – has changed all of that. Putting that genie back in the bottle may prove impossible, says Peter:

“Previously we wanted to have information free but it was hard and the Internet has made it easy. This is an evolution that’s needed and I think in a hundred years we’re gonna look back at this period and say: “We were so stupid to even try and stop it”

But the movie and music industries are attempting to stop it and they do not consider themselves stupid for trying. Indeed, the movie industry in particular is putting huge resources into trying to curtail piracy and has put significant amounts of effort into shuttering The Pirate Bay.

“Getting all of the industry against you makes it very hard,” says Peter, “it is so important that the people can communicate and they want to stop this for, you know, economical reasons – and they’re not even right about the economical aspects.”

The BBC interviewer questions Peter on this point: “You say they are wrong about the economical aspects but they would say: ‘I own this film, I own this music, and you are stealing this from me’. How are they wrong about the economical aspect?”

“Well, what we’ve seen in the music industry is that interest is growing, more people are interested in music and they spend more money than ever on music, but the record industry is shrinking because nobody wants to buy CDs anymore, it’s an inferior product, you can’t put the CD directly on your MP3 player.”

Indeed, the music industry has been incredibly slow to adapt to the digital revolution, in the main preferring to insist that people continue to buy their music on plastic discs, instead of the incredibly popular, flexible (and easily copied) MP3 format. Peter believes it’s about control:

“They don’t want to sell MP3s because they feel they don’t have the control they used to have, so they don’t understand that they are losing out on money because they are not following how the industry is changing.”

But it’s the ‘reproduction pirates’ – file-sharers – that are taking over the ship now. They’re everywhere says the BBC, and they’re multiplying. Tarleton Gillespie, assistant professor at the Department of Communication, Cornell University explains:

“The generation that scares the music industry more is the next one, the one that’s coming up now because they’ve never known anything different. There’s always been peer to peer [for them], there’s always been very easy ways to get on whichever service you want and the music is there. So the question of how to get it…it’s not backroom dealing or someone setting up a table on the street corner, it is always there, so the music industry is struggling because they have to figure out how to convince that generation to think of anything other than “this is the easiest and most free way to get my music.”

The full 3-part article accompanying the podcast can be found here.

The podcast itself can be downloaded here, and is packed with lots of information, provided free of charge, without DRM, and in convenient MP3 format. How media should be.

Source: The Pirate Bay to BBC: We Don’t Want To Be Information Slaves