For those people who read this blog regularly, it is no secret that the so called ‘warez scene‘ is not a fan of BitTorrent sites – private or public. They feel that latest pirate releases should be kept within their exclusive group, and file-sharing services such as BitTorrent are seen as a threat, generating unwanted attention.
On Thursday, Gottfrid Svartholm explained this to the Court, which resulted in an interesting exchange of information. It started with Per E Samuelsson, the lawyer of one of the other defendants (Lundström), who questioned Gottfrid:
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Samuelsson: Do you have any idea of how many of the works that the charges relate to, that have been uploaded by ordinary users that have bought a DVD or a CD and then made it available at The Pirate Bay?
Anakata: No, but from the file names, these typically look like they are from organized piracy, so-called warez groups.
Samuelsson: Sorry, I don’t understand?
Anakata: There are groups that specialize in making copyrighted content available. And they mark the torrent’s file name with their signature, kind of like a graffiti tag.
Samuelsson: So, there aren’t physical people somewhere in the world that buy legal copies and then make them available at The Pirate Bay?
Anakata: That could happen, but in these particular cases it doesn’t look like that.
Samuelsson: And that would mean these works could have been made available to the public a million times before and that the torrent on Pirate Bay is number one million and one?
Anakata: Yes, exactly.
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Peter Danowsky, one of the prosecution’s lawyers representing the music industry, was apparently intrigued by these mystical figures who specialize in copyright infringement. He later followed up on this issue and asked Anakata some additional questions.
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Danowsky: You have identified that there are certain piracy groups that have released the works in these cases…
Anakata: …not identified, but it appears to be that way.
Danowsky: Do these groups typically hire The Pirate Bay’s services?
Anakata: No, they hate The Pirate Bay.
Danowsky: (silence) Why?
Anakata: They like to keep their releases within a selective group of people.
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It seems unthinkable that the IFPI could believe that ‘The Scene’ would hire The Pirate Bay to spread releases, but presumably this is just more of those “Epic LOLs” from the TPB trial that Peter spoke of earlier. It’s doubtful we’ve heard the last of them.
