In October the Stockholm District Court banned two of The Pirate Bay’s founders from operating the site. If they continue to work on The Pirate Bay, both will have to pay fines of $71,000. The two founders immediately decided to challenge the verdict and the Appeal Court has now announced that it will grant the appeal.
After initially being taken offline by Swedish authorities, and after its first escape route failed, The Pirate Bay has returned with all guns blazing. With a modified copy of one of Churchill’s most famous speeches, The Pirate Bay team tells the public that they will defend the Internet, with or without the site.
To determine if the verdict in the Pirate Bay case was biased, the connections of Judge Tomas Norström to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups will be reviewed by another judge. However, the judge that was initially appointed has already been replaced because she was linked to the same organizations as Norström, and her replacement is not exactly unbiased either.
The Pirate Bay recently got a new range of IPs and to everyone’s surprise they are now linked to several movie and music industry lawyers involved in the TPB trial. According to the Pirate Bay’s Wikipedia entry the change was due to a hostile takeover, but most people know better.
Support for The Pirate Bay doesn’t stop at the Swedish border, nor it is limited to blogs and forums. Today, a group of Russian Pirate Bay supporters will throw a street party at Pushkin Square in the center of Moscow, with the full approval of the Russian government.
Earlier this week a Danish court decided that an ISPs have to block access to The Pirate Bay. In response to the judgment, three ISPs have already announced that they will take the case to the Supreme Court. In addition, The Pirate Bay itself now says it will sue the anti-piracy outfit IFPI if the ISPs fail to overturn the ruling.
The Pirate Bay has just released a Google-powered map of the tracker connections per country. The map is only the start of a much larger project that will cover more detailed statistics on the tracker’s users. However, it already reveals some interesting data.
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Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
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