The Pirate Bay trial
Encyclopedia
Criminal law
Criminal law, is the body of law that relates to crime. It might be defined as the body of rules that defines conduct that is not allowed because it is held to threaten, harm or endanger the safety and welfare of people, and that sets out the punishment to be imposed on people who do not obey...
and civil
Civil law (legal system)
Civil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law and whose primary feature is that laws are codified into collections, as compared to common law systems that gives great precedential weight to common law on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different...
prosecution in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
of others with the torrent tracking website The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
. The criminal charges were supported by a consortium of intellectual rights
Intellectual rights
Intellectual rights is a term sometimes used to refer to the legal protection afforded to owners of intellectual capital...
holders led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)
IFPI
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is the organisation that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. It is a not-for-profit members' organisation registered in Switzerland...
, who filed individual civil compensation claims against the owners of The Pirate Bay.
Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
s filed charges on 31 January 2008 against Fredrik Neij
Fredrik Neij
Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij , a.k.a. TiAMO, is a co-founder of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent index site and tracker. He also owned the web host PRQ, which previously hosted The Pirate Bay....
, Gottfrid Svartholm
Gottfrid Svartholm
Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg , alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde...
, and Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi is an IT expert with Norwegian and Finnish roots. He is best known for being a co-founder and the spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracker site.-Personal life:...
, who ran the site; and Carl Lundström
Carl Lundström
Carl Ulf Sture Lundström is a Swedish businessman.Carl Lundström is the son of Ulf Lundström and the grandson of Karl Edvard Lundström, founder of the world's largest crisp bread producer Wasabröd. When his father Ulf Lundström died in 1973, Carl Lundström was one of five heirs to Wasabröd and its...
, a Swedish businessman who through his businesses sold services to the site. The prosecutor claimed the four worked together to administer, host, and develop the site and thereby facilitated other people's breach of copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
law. Some 34 cases of copyright infringements were originally listed, of which 21 were related to music files, 9 to movies, and 4 to games. One case involving music files was later dropped by the copyright holder who made the file available again on the website of The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
. In addition, claims for damages of 117 million kronor
Swedish krona
The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...
(US$13 million) were filed. The case was decided jointly by a judge and three appointed laymen.
The trial started on 16 February 2009 in the district court
Tingsrätt
Tingsrätt , käräjäoikeus or tingrett is a term used for district courts in Sweden, Finland and Norway...
(tingsrätt
Tingsrätt
Tingsrätt , käräjäoikeus or tingrett is a term used for district courts in Sweden, Finland and Norway...
) of Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. The hearings ended on 3 March 2009 and the verdict was announced at 11:00 AM on Friday 17 April 2009: Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were all found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine of 30 million SEK
Swedish krona
The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...
(about €2.7 million or US$3.5 million). All the defendants appealed the verdict, and in November 2010 the appeal court shortened the prison sentences, but increased damages. The verdict was again appealed, and the Supreme Court is expected to give a response during 2011.
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate BayThe Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
is a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
that indexes
Index (search engine)
Search engine indexing collects, parses, and stores data to facilitate fast and accurate information retrieval. Index design incorporates interdisciplinary concepts from linguistics, cognitive psychology, mathematics, informatics, physics, and computer science...
and tracks BitTorrent files. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker
BitTorrent tracker
A BitTorrent tracker is a server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. It is also, in the absence of extensions to the original protocol, the only major critical point, as clients are required to communicate with the tracker to initiate downloads...
" and is ranked as the 85th most popular website by Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
. The website is funded primarily with advertisements shown next to torrent listings. Initially established in November 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright
Anti-copyright
Anti-copyright refers to the complete or partial opposition to prevalent copyright laws. Copyright is known as the owner's right for copies to be only made by the owner or with his/her authorization in form of a license....
organization Piratbyrån
Piratbyrån
Piratbyrån was a Swedish organization established to support people opposed to current ideas about intellectual property — by freely sharing information and culture...
("The Piracy Bureau") it has been operating as a separate organization since October 2004. The website is currently run by Gottfrid Svartholm
Gottfrid Svartholm
Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg , alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde...
("anakata") and Fredrik Neij
Fredrik Neij
Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij , a.k.a. TiAMO, is a co-founder of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent index site and tracker. He also owned the web host PRQ, which previously hosted The Pirate Bay....
("TiAMO"). Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi is an IT expert with Norwegian and Finnish roots. He is best known for being a co-founder and the spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracker site.-Personal life:...
("brokep") is the site spokesperson.
Police raid on The Pirate Bay
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Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
(MPAA), was reported as a success by the MPAA in the immediate aftermath but with the website being restored within days and file sharing now firmly in focus in the Swedish media, The Pirate Bay considered the raid "highly unsuccessful" for the site's operation.
The police however conducted a preliminary investigation on the confiscated material and by interrogating associated people. In late 2007 a four thousand page report was produced by the prosecutor in preparation for a trial, containing email and SMS
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
messages, payment documents, police interrogation records, and screenshots of The Pirate Bay site.
Trial and courtroom charges
On 31 January 2008 Swedish prosecutors filed charges against four individuals they associated with The Pirate Bay for "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws". One of the artists represented by IFPI, Max Peezay, withdrew from the case, decreasing his distributor's compensation demand by 120 000 SEK. Peezay hadn't been asked about participating in the case, and he in fact supports file sharing for private use. Peezay noted however that being unfamiliar with the site, his withdrawal shouldn't be interpreted as a sign of support for their case. The trial began in February 2009. The evidence used in the trial was based on the material acquired in the 2006 raid.The Swedish national television broadcaster Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television AB , Sweden's Television, is a national television broadcaster based in Sweden, funded by a compulsory fee to be paid by all television owners...
considers the trial important and provides a live online feed of the entire trial, which has never been done in Sweden before. The live audio and archive sections done in cooperation with Dagens Eko
Dagens Eko
Dagens Eko – often shortened to Ekot – is the news service of Swedish national radio broadcaster Sveriges Radio. It provides news bulletins of variable length which are known as Ekonyheter and broadcast at the top of most hours on the P1 and P4 networks...
are part of the 24 Direkt program, which became one of their most viewed online content during the trial, second only to Melodifestivalen
Melodifestivalen
Melodifestivalen is an annual music competition organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television and Sveriges Radio . It determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, and has been staged almost every year since 1959...
. The trial was also broadcast live by Swedish public radio
Sveriges Radio
Sveriges Radio AB – Swedish Radio Ltd – is Sweden's national publicly funded radio broadcaster. The Swedish public-broadcasting system is in many respects modelled after the one used in the United Kingdom, and Sveriges Radio - like Sveriges Television - shares many characteristics with...
.
The defendants referred to the trial as a "Spectrial", which is a portmanteau of "trial" and "spectacle"
Spectacle (Situationism)
The spectacle is a central notion in the Situationist theory developed by Guy Debord. Guy Debord's 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle, attempted to provide the Situationist International with a Marxian critical theory...
, and set up a blog to inform users on the event. The term has also caught on with some bloggers and supporters.
First day of the trial
On 16 February 2009 defense lawyer Per E. Samuelson stressed to the court that "file sharing services can be used both legally and illegally". Samuelson argued that "it is legal to offer a service that can be used in both a legal and illegal way according to Swedish law" and that The Pirate Bay's services "can be compared to making cars that can be driven faster than the speed limit". Defense attorney Jonas Nilsson insisted that "the individual Internet users who use Pirate Bay services... must answer for the material they have in their possession or the files they plan to share with others."Second day of the trial – charges partially dropped
On 17 February 2009 (the second day of the trial) half of the charges against The Pirate Bay were dropped. According to defense lawyer Per Samuelson, "This is a sensation. It is very rare to win half the case in just one and a half days and it is clear the prosecutor took strong note of what we said yesterday". Peter Danowsky, legal counsel for the music companies, stated "It's a largely technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay. In fact it simplifies the prosecutor’s case by allowing him to focus on the main issue which is the making available of copyrighted works." The prosecutor was unable to prove the .torrent files brought as evidence were actually using The Pirate Bay's tracker. Furthermore, prosecutor Håkan Roswall did not adequately explain the function of DHTDistributed hash table
A distributed hash table is a class of a decentralized distributed system that provides a lookup service similar to a hash table; pairs are stored in a DHT, and any participating node can efficiently retrieve the value associated with a given key...
which allows for so-called "trackerless" torrents. These shortcomings in the evidence resulted in prosecutor Håkan Roswall having to drop all charges relating to "assisting copyright infringement", leaving "assisting making available" as the remaining charge. Roswall stated that "everything related to reproduction will be removed from the claim". Sanna Wolk, a doctor in law and researcher at Stockholm University observed that "this is not surprising, at least for those who follow the matter. We knew that The Pirate Bay wasn't making any copies directly".
Third day of the trial
On the third day of The Pirate Bay trial, prosecution witnesses claimed damages on the basis that it should have obtained worldwide licenses for the content it distributed. Where content wasn't officially available, a Beatles song, for example, it should be charged at 10 times the going rate. This calculation underlines the prosecution's demand for 117 million SEK (US$12.9 million, €10.2 million) in compensation and damages."King Kong" defense
On day three of the trial, defense attorney Per Samuelson presented an argument later dubbed the "King Kong defense":Samuelson is referring to a real Pirate Bay user who posts via the username "King Kong", who Samuelson hypothesizes could be in Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
. He used this scenario to illustrate that Lundström had no control over the actions undertaken by Pirate Bay users. His main objection was that although the prosecutor had said that the accused would be tried individually, he had not once referred to them individually, but always as "them", "they" or "Pirate Bay". Samuelson said the persons behind The Pirate Bay could not be held collectively responsible for a crime committed by other identifiable individuals, such as King Kong.
The term "King Kong defense" was quickly popularized by blogs, file sharing
File sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
news feeds, and media reports on the Pirate Bay trial. It has been compared to the Chewbacca defense
Chewbacca defense
The Chewbacca defense is a legal strategy used in episode 27 of South Park, "Chef Aid", which premiered on October 7, 1998, as the fourteenth episode of the second season. The aim of the argument is deliberately to confuse the jury by making use of the fallacy known as ignoratio elenchi, or a red...
from the TV series South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
, citing a reference to the "jungles of Cambodia" as "the kind of extraneous detail that makes the Chewbacca defense hilarious".
In its April verdict, the court found that because the defendants indeed had collective responsibility of the site and knew that some torrent files on it point to copyrighted material, the EU directive does not apply.
Fourth day of the trial
On 19 February 2009, the fourth day of the trial, Fredrik was questioned several times. It came to the court’s attention that Tobias Andersson, a future witness in the case, was in the court where he was later asked to leave the room. When it was movie industry lawyer Monique WadstedMonique Wadsted
Monique Wadsted is a Swedish lawyer. She represented the Scientology movement in their copyright case against Zenon Panoussis and later Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Mars Media, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment and Activision Publishing in The Pirate Bay...
’s turn, she introduced new evidence without warning. Noting the breach of protocol, the judge asked if it was acceptable for the court to be considering evidence that was not already presented pre-trial.
Fifth day of the trial
Day five of the proceedings saw conflict as the prosecution again attempted to introduce evidence that had not been shared with both the court and the defense during pre-trial. The defense objected vehemently with defense lawyer Peter AlthinPeter Althin
Peter Althin, is a Swedish attorney and politician and a member of the Swedish parliament for the Christian Democrats from 2002 to 2007....
equating the tactic to something out of the old Perry Mason
Perry Mason
Perry Mason is a fictional character, a defense attorney who was the main character in works of detective fiction authored by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason was featured in more than 80 novels and short stories, most of which had a plot involving his client's murder trial...
TV show. “Suddenly, the door opens and in walks an entirely new witness.” The judge stopped the case to deliberate the matter and found in favor of the defense, instructing the prosecution to immediately hand over all material they planned to use.
The prosecution and the defense spent the remainder of the day delivering conflicting portrayals of the Pirate Bay. The prosecution attempted to show the Pirate Bay as an immensely profitable business that made its money helping others violate copyright law. The defense attempted to show the Pirate Bay as nothing more than a search engine, no different from Google and thus subject to the same protections.
Seventh, eighth and ninth days of the trial
On days seven to nine, the court heard expert witnessExpert witness
An expert witness, professional witness or judicial expert is a witness, who by virtue of education, training, skill, or experience, is believed to have expertise and specialised knowledge in a particular subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially and legally...
es called by the prosecution and the defense. They cited contradicting academic research
Academic publishing
Academic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted is often called...
on the effects of file sharing on sales in the music and film industry globally
and regionally in Sweden.
Verdict and reactions
The four operators of the site were convicted by Stockholm district court on 17 April 2009 and sentenced to one year in jail each and a total of 30 million Swedish kronorSwedish krona
The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...
(approximately US$3.5 million, €2.7 million) in fines and damages. The court found that the defendants were all guilty of accessory
Accessory (legal term)
An accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal...
to crime against copyright law, strengthened by the commercial and organized nature of the activity. The court, however, never presented its corpus delicti
Corpus delicti
Corpus delicti is a term from Western jurisprudence referring to the principle that a crime must have been proven to have occurred before a person can be convicted of committing that crime. For example, a person cannot be tried for larceny unless it can be proven that property has been stolen...
(that is, it never attempted to prove that a crime was committed, but it succeeded in proving that someone was an accessory to that crime). Prosecutor Håkan Roswall cited in his closing arguments a Supreme Court of Sweden
Supreme Court of Sweden
The Supreme Court of Sweden is the supreme court and the third and final instance in all civil and criminal cases in Sweden. Before a case can be decided by the Supreme Court, leave to appeal must be obtained, and with few exceptions, leave to appeal can be granted only when the case is of...
opinion that a person holding the jacket of someone committing battery
Battery (crime)
Battery is a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact, distinct from assault which is the fear of such contact.In the United States, criminal battery, or simply battery, is the use of force against another, resulting in harmful or offensive contact...
can be held responsible for the battery. In its verdict, the court stated that "responsibility for assistance can strike someone who has only insignificantly assisted in the principal crime", referring to a Supreme Court precedent where an accountant was sentenced for accessory to crime even though his actions were not criminal per se. The court rejected the charge of preparation to crime against copyright law. The lawyers of all four defendants appealed the verdict, with Lundström's lawyers filing their appeal immediately on the day the verdict was given. The entertainment industry lawyers appealed as well, on reintroducing the dismissed charge and on the method of calculating damages, which in their opinion does not fully cover the lost income.
| Company | Nationality | Type of Industry | Compensation for damages (SEK Swedish krona The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value... ) |
Costs of litigation (SEK Swedish krona The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value... ) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20th Century Fox 20th Century Fox Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios... |
 |
Motion Picture | 10,867,460 ($ United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... 1,285,354.91) |
333,500 ($ United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... 39,444.89) |
| Mars Media |  |
Motion Picture | 4,450,991 ($526,443.45) | 333,500 ($39,444.89) |
| Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies... |
|
Motion Picture | 4,184,444 ($494,917.45) | 333,500 ($39,444.89) |
| Yellow Bird Yellow Bird (company) Yellow Bird is a Swedish film and television production company founded by best-selling novelist Henning Mankell and film-producers Ole Søndberg and Lars Björkman. The company was founded to produce films based on Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels. Yellow Bird was sold to Danish media house Zodiak... |
 |
Motion Picture | 3,150,000 ($372,568.01) | 484,920 ($57,354.18) |
| Warner Bros | |
Motion Picture | 2,898,225 ($342,789.18) | 592,000 ($70,019.13) |
| EMI Music Sweden | |
Music | 1,798,975 ($212,774.77) | 264,000 ($31,224.74) |
| Warner Music Sweden | |
Music | 1,616,759 ($191,223.07) | 54,000 ($6,386.88) |
| Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer... |
|
Motion Picture | 1,394,831 ($372,568.01) | - |
| Universal Music | |
Music | 814,339 ($96,316.40) | 156,000 ($18,450.98) |
| Sony Music Entertainment Sweden Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation.... |
|
Music | 457,675 ($54,131.76) | 468,000 ($55,352.96) |
| Playground Music Playground Music Scandinavia Playground Music Scandinavia AB is a Scandinavian based record label and is currently owned by Jonas Sjöström.... |
|
Music | 310,794 ($36,759.33) | 156,000 ($18,450.98) |
| Nordisk Film Nordisk Film Nordisk Film , established in Denmark in 1906 by Danish filmmaker Ole Olsen, is the oldest continuously operating film studio in the world. Olsen started his company in the Copenhagen suburb of Valby under the name "Ole Olsen's Film Factory" but soon changed it to the Nordisk Film Kompagni... |
 |
Motion Picture | 225,000 ($26,612.00) | 53,880 ($6,372.68) |
| Bonnier Amigo Music Group Bonnier Amigo Music Group Cosmos Music Group is an independent record company based in Stockholm, Sweden.Bonnier Amigo Music Group was formed in 2001 when record company and distributor Amigo Musik merged with record company Bonnier Music. BAMG claims to be the biggest independent record company in Scandinavia with a... |
|
Music | 47,349 ($5,600.22) | 102,000 ($12,064.10) |
| Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce and currently owned by French company Activision Blizzard... |
|
Video games | - | 25,000 ($2,956.88) |
| Activision Activision Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles... |
|
Video games | - | 12,500 ($1,478.44) |
| Total: | 32,216,842 ($3,810,465.01) | 3,368,800 ($398,446.70) |
File sharing researcher Daniel Johansson called the ruling the most important file sharing related verdict in Europe so far, comparing it to the Napster
Napster
Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
verdict in the US. The sentence is the longest ever awarded under Swedish copyright law, and the prison time and damage compensation high by Swedish standards. While most legal experts expected the court to find the defendants guilty, they were surprised at the harsh verdict. Sociology of law
Sociology of law
The sociology of law is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies...
professor Håkan Hyden criticised the exceptionally harsh sentence on both the prison time and large amount of compensation awarded, and some legal analysts expect the punishments to be radically lowered in higher courts.
The international public following the trial received the verdict with varying opinions. Some high-profile copyright holders publicly defended the verdict, with former Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
vocalist Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
commenting to the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
that "if you get on a bus, you've got to pay. And I think it's fair, you should pay for your ticket." Mark Mulligan from Forrester Research
Forrester Research
Forrester Research is an independent technology and market research company that provides its clients with advice about technology's impact on business and consumers. Forrester Research has five research centers in the US: Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York, New York; San Francisco, California;...
considered the verdict very important for music industry PR
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
, and copyright holder organisations indeed praised it as a landmark verdict. Likewise, The European Association of Internet Service Providers welcomed the verdict, commending judicial resolution to copyright infringement issues over internet filtering or three strikes policies. The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
went further by criticising that the sentence might not have been strong enough to act as a deterrent for setting up similar services in the future.
Some copyright holders took a different view however: Snow Patrol
Snow Patrol
Snow Patrol are an alternative rock band from Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland. Formed at the University of Dundee in 1994 as an indie rock band, the band is now based in Glasgow...
vocalist Gary Lightbody
Gary Lightbody
Gary Lightbody is an Northern Irish musician and songwriter best known as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the alternative rock band Snow Patrol.- Early life :...
commented in interview that "they shouldn't have been jailed... the punishment doesn't fit the crime." In a column in Dagens Nyheter
Dagens Nyheter
is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It has the largest circulation of Swedish morning newspapers, followed by Göteborgs-Posten and Svenska Dagbladet, and is the only morning newspaper that is distributed to subscribers across the whole country. In 2009 DN had a circulation of 316,000, reaching 881...
, composer and professor Roger Wallis, who was involved in the trial, condemned the verdict and its effects as paralyzing Swedish IT innovation on new ways of doing business.
At the end of May 2009, Swedish Minister for Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth
Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth
Lena Elisabeth Adelsohn Liljeroth is a Swedish Moderate Party politician, Member of the Riksdag and Swedish Minister for Culture in the Cabinet of Fredrik Reinfeldt since 24 October 2006. Adelsohn Liljeroth is a journalist, a Swedish Moderate Party politician, and has been a member of the Riksdag...
made a speech to The Swedish Society of Popular Music Composers, expressing her opinion that "I was among those pleased about the Pirate Bay verdict." In accordance with the ministerstyre
Ministerstyre
Ministerstyre in Swedish describes a deviation from the rule that individual government ministers in SwedenMore accurately, the Prime Minister, technically the only “minister” in Sweden's government. The heads of government departments are informally called ministers...
in the Constitution of Sweden
Constitution of Sweden
The Swedish Constitution consists of four fundamental laws :* The 1810 Act of Succession * The 1949 Freedom of the Press Act * The 1974 Instrument of Government * The 1991 Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression...
, it is unconstitutional for ministers to influence ongoing cases, and many political commentators criticised the minister's statement. Max Andersson, member of the Committee on the Constitution
Committee on the Constitution (Parliament of Sweden)
The Committee on the Constitution is a committee in the Parliament of Sweden. The committee prepares matters concerning the constitution and the Parliament Act and other matters concerning legislation of a constitutional and general administrative nature, as well as matters relating to radio and...
in the Parliament of Sweden
Parliament of Sweden
The Riksdag is the national legislative assembly of Sweden. The riksdag is a unicameral assembly with 349 members , who are elected on a proportional basis to serve fixed terms of four years...
, requested the committee to review the incident. The committee pointed out the independence of judicial bodies and the government, and reminded ministers to exercise caution in their statements, but saw no need for further action or comment.
Subsequent events
Over 25,000 people joined the Swedish Pirate Party in the ten days following the guilty verdict, raising its membership to over 40,000 members and making it the fourth-largest Swedish party by membership count at the time, and the party with the largest youth organisation.In Stockholm and other cities, the Pirate Party organized protests against the court's verdict. Over 1000 protesters gathered in the streets of Stockholm the following day. Protest leader Malin Littorin-Ferm said "we young people have a whole platform on the Internet, where we have all our social contacts -- it is there that we live. The state is trying to control the Internet and, by extension, our private lives". Pirate Party Chairman Rickard Falkvinge
Rickard Falkvinge
Rickard ”Rick” Falkvinge , born Dick Augustsson on 21 January 1972 in Gothenburg, is a Swedish IT entrepreneur known as the founder and first party leader of the Swedish Pirate Party. He is currently a political evangelist with the party, spreading the ideas across the world...
claimed at the protests that "the establishment and the politicians have declared war against our whole generation,"
Following the conviction, the IFPI demanded that Swedish internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s block The Pirate Bay, but the ISPs have refused to do this. Jon Karlung, managing director of Bahnhof
Bahnhof
Bahnhof is a Swedish Internet service provider founded in 1994 by Oscar Swartz in Uppsala and was the first independent ISP in Sweden. Today the company is represented in Stockholm, Göteborg, Uppsala, Borlänge, and Lund....
, stated that "we will not censor sites for our customers; that is not our job. I am against anything that contradicts the principle of a free and open Internet."
Several Swedish file sharing sites have closed voluntarily with The Pirate Bay verdict as a deterrent
Deterrence (psychological)
Deterrence is a theory from behavioral psychology about preventing or controlling actions or behavior through fear of punishment or retribution...
and as a result of further police investigation.
On April 20, 2009, Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
mobilized "Operation Baylout", which included a DDoS attack on the IFPI International website, causing the site to go offline for a few hours. They released a statement asking supporters of file-sharing to refrain from making any industry-related media purchases during the months of April and May.
Two artists originally mentioned in the indictment, Advance Patrol and Max Peezay, later went on to release their work on The Pirate Bay in spring 2009.
Bias allegations
In mid 2008 after the indictment had been served, it was discovered that the main police investigator in the preliminary investigation had started working for one of the plaintiffs, Warner Brothers, before the date of the indictment. Sunde's lawyer Peter AlthinPeter Althin
Peter Althin, is a Swedish attorney and politician and a member of the Swedish parliament for the Christian Democrats from 2002 to 2007....
questioned the neutrality and reliability of the preliminary investigation in the event that the investigator had entered the new employment during the investigation, and suspected the job might have been a reward for good work in The Pirate Bay investigation. Althin believed that the investigation might have to be redone if that was the case. The prosecutor Håkan Roswall responded that it wouldn't have posed problems for the investigation because the police were working under his directive, and the investigator's superior officer brushed off the incident as nothing remarkable. Warner Brothers commented merely that the investigator hadn't received any compensation during the time he worked for the Swedish police. According to Roswall, this type of concurrent employment would not be an individual incident, but that the decision of possible bias would be for the court to decide, and that the investigator is not a key witness in the case. The investigator could not be reached during the trial and was taken off the witness list.
Only days before the trial began, one of the three appointed laymen was discovered to be a member of a composers' association that among others works on protecting copyright. After discussing with judge Tomas Norström the problem the membership could pose to the trial, the composer recused himself from acting as a lay judge in the case and he was replaced with another.
In the aftermath of the trial, presiding judge Tomas Norström, the same judge that ordered the 2006 raid
The Pirate Bay raid
The Pirate Bay raid took place on 31 May 2006 in Stockholm, when The Pirate Bay, a Swedish website that indexes torrent files, was raided by Swedish police, causing it to go offline for three days. Upon reopening, the site's number of visitors more than doubled; the increased popularity attributed...
on The Pirate Bay's servers, came under scrutiny after allegations of bias. Sveriges Radio P3 News organized an investigation that found on April 23 that Norström had several engagements with organisations interested in intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
issues. Peter Danowsky, Monique Wadsted and Henrik Pontén
Henrik Pontén
Henrik Pontén, born October 17, 1965 in Kalmar, Sweden, is a jurist active in the organization Svenska antipiratbyrån , and is often seen representing the organization in the media. He became well known in Swedish media during the Bahnhof raid and the raid against The Pirate Bay...
from the prosecution side are also members of one of the organisations, the Swedish Copyright Association (SFU). Wadsted commented that all intellectual property lawyers in Stockholm are part of the association. According to Norström, the organisations are involved in discussion about copyright, while the earlier layman's organisation advocates further copyright protection. Norström however also sits in the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property, which along with the SFU are the Swedish branches of International Association for the Protection of Industrial Property
International Association for the Protection of Industrial Property
The International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property or AIPPI, an acronym for Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle in French , is a non-profit international organisation whose members are intellectual property professionals,...
(AIPPI) and Association littéraire et artistique internationale (ALAI). AIPPI's website states that "the objective of AIPPI is to improve and promote the protection of intellectual property on both an international and national basis", and ALAI's president Victor Nabhan commented that his organisation is dedicated mostly to defending copyright holders' interests. Several legal experts have commented that the judge should not have taken the case because of the potential conflict of interest
Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other....
or should at least have mentioned it in the beginning of the trial, and that there are grounds for a retrial. The district court itself however defended judges' membership in these types of organisations.
Following the discovery on April 23, Peter Sunde's lawyer Peter Althin announced that he would request for a retrial. The Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman
Parliamentary Ombudsman
The Parliamentary Ombudsman is the principal ombudsman authority in Finland, in Sweden and Iceland, charged with the supervision of the public authorities...
decided not to investigate the bias since the question had already been requested to be taken up in the Svea Court of Appeal
Svea Court of Appeal
The Svea Court of Appeal , located in Stockholm, is one of six appellate courts in the Swedish legal system. It was founded in 1614 and was the highest court in Sweden until 1789, when the Supreme Court of Sweden was established....
. The court of appeal received the case on May 18 and assigned it to judge Ulrika Ihrfelt. On the question of bias, Ihrfelt stated she was a member of the Swedish Copyright Association in 2005 when working in the supreme court, but didn't consider herself biased because of this. The president of the court was requested to reassign the case, and on May 20 it was reassigned to three judges from another court of appeal department. The district court along with the prosecutor formally defended judges' memberships in these types of organisations as a way to gain knowledge on copyright issues. The court of appeal considered it a priority case, and ruled on June 25 that the judge's memberships do not constitute bias and that there would be no retrial in the district court.
During the preparation for the appeal trial, bias allegations were also made on the court of appeal. In Swedish appeal proceedings for criminal cases where the sentence is greater than a fine, the court usually consists of three jurist
Jurist
A jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
judges and two laymen. Judge Ihrfelt, again appointed to the case, informed the parties in mid September 2009 that one of the appointed laymen is working for the music streaming service Spotify
Spotify
Spotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had...
, which is partly owned by record companies. The layman himself didn't feel biased because of his work, but prosecuting attorney Danowsky commented that anyone both judging the case and working for Spotify has a conflict of interest. Later on the same week, defense attorney Samuelsson submitted allegations to the appeal court of Ihrfelt and another jurist judge being biased for their membership in the same interest groups judge Norström was investigated for. In the court's opinion, the judges' memberships did not constitute bias, whereas the layman's impartiality was questionable and he was dismissed. The court's decision was appealed, and in May 2010 the supreme court affirmed the appeal court's decision on the bias question.
Plaintiffs
The criminal charges against The Pirate Bay are directly supported by the following prosecution witnesses:- IFPIIFPIThe International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is the organisation that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. It is a not-for-profit members' organisation registered in Switzerland...
representing:- Sony BMG Music Entertainment Sweden AB
- Universal Music AB
- Playground Music Scandinavia AB
- Bonnier Amigo Music GroupBonnier Amigo Music GroupCosmos Music Group is an independent record company based in Stockholm, Sweden.Bonnier Amigo Music Group was formed in 2001 when record company and distributor Amigo Musik merged with record company Bonnier Music. BAMG claims to be the biggest independent record company in Scandinavia with a...
AB - EMIEMIThe EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
Music Sweden AB - Warner Bros.Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
Music Sweden AB
- Antipiratbyrån representing:
- Yellow Bird Films AB
- Nordisk FilmNordisk FilmNordisk Film , established in Denmark in 1906 by Danish filmmaker Ole Olsen, is the oldest continuously operating film studio in the world. Olsen started his company in the Copenhagen suburb of Valby under the name "Ole Olsen's Film Factory" but soon changed it to the Nordisk Film Kompagni...
- Henrik Danstrup
- MAQS Law Firm Advokatbyrå KB representing:
- Warner Bros.Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
Entertainment Inc - MGM Pictures Inc
- Columbia PicturesColumbia PicturesColumbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
Industries Inc - 20th Century Fox20th Century FoxTwentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
Films Co - Mars Media Beteiligungs GmbH & Co Filmproduktions
- Blizzard EntertainmentBlizzard EntertainmentBlizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce and currently owned by French company Activision Blizzard...
Inc - Sierra EntertainmentSierra EntertainmentSierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
Inc - Activision PublishingActivisionActivision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
Inc
- Warner Bros.
Feature films included in the case
- Kurt WallanderKurt WallanderKurt Wallander is a fictional character created by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell. The protagonist of several mystery novels, set in and around the town of Ystad, 60 km south-east of the city of Malmö, in the southern province of Skåne...
:- Wallander - Den svaga punkten
- Wallander - Afrikanen
- Wallander – MastermindWallander – MastermindWallander - Mastermind is a 2005 film about the Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander directed by Peter Flinth.- Cast :*Krister Henriksson as Kurt Wallander*Johanna Sällström as Linda Wallander*Ola Rapace as Stefan Lindman*Angela Kovacs as Ann-Britt...
- Pusher IIIPusher IIIPusher 3 is a 2005 Danish crime film written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. It is the final film of the Pusher trilogy and released in August 2005.-Plot:...
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of FireHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (film)Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a 2005 fantasy film directed by Mike Newell and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the fourth instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by David Heyman...
- The Pink PantherThe Pink Panther (2006 film)The Pink Panther is a 2006 American comedy film and a reboot of The Pink Panther film series. In this film, Inspector Jacques Clouseau is assigned to solve the murder of a famous soccer coach and the theft of the famous Pink Panther diamond. The film also stars Kevin Kline, Jean Reno, Emily...
- Walk the LineWalk the LineWalk the Line is a 2005 American biographical drama film directed by James Mangold and based on the early life and career of country music artist Johnny Cash...
Television dramas included in the case
- Prison Break (first season)Prison Break (season 1)-Critical reception:Metacritic gave the season a Metascore—a weighted average based on the impressions of a select 32 critical reviews—of 65, signifying generally favorable reviews. Based on its strong opening, The New York Times dubbed Prison Break "more intriguing than most of the new network...
episodes 1 to 13.
Personal computer games included in the case
- Call of Duty 2Call of Duty 2Call of Duty 2 is a first-person shooter video game and the second installment in the critically acclaimed Call of Duty series. It was developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. It was released on October 25, 2005 for Microsoft Windows and on November 22, 2005 as a launch game for the...
- Diablo IIDiablo IIDiablo II is a dark fantasy/horror-themed hack and slash, with elements of the role playing game and dungeon crawl genres. It was released for Windows and Mac OS in 2000 by Blizzard Entertainment, and was developed by Blizzard North. It is a direct sequel to the 1996 hit PC game, Diablo.Diablo II...
- F.E.A.R.
- World of WarcraftWorld of WarcraftWorld of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
Appeal
After sentencing, the defendants decided to appeal the verdict of the first trial. The appeal started on September 28, 2010 and concluded on October 15, 2010. On November 26, 2010, the verdict was announced. In the verdict, the court found that “The Pirate Bay has facilitated illegal file sharing in a way that results in criminal liability for those who run the service.” Under the verdict, the sentences of three of the defendants would be reduced and the total fines would be increased. The fourth defendant, Gottfrid Svartholm, was not present at the time due to medical reasons. His time for appeal expired on 14 October 2011, and the original 2009 sentence became legally binding for him.The sentence from the appeal traded jail time for increased fines. After the initial trial, each defendant was to serve a year of jail time and pay fines just under 1 million dollars each. After the appeal, Fredrik Neij was sentenced to 10 months, Peter Sunde to 8 months, and Carl Lundstrom to 4 months in prison. The Svea Court of Appeal decided to grant all Nordic companies their full request in compensation for copyright infringement due to The Pirate Bay, with outside companies being granted smaller gains in compensation. The total fine for the three defendants was increased from 32 million Kronor to 46 million Kronor (US$6.5 million) Each defendant was issued different sentences because of individual contribution toward facilitating illegal file sharing. Instead of issuing all defendants the same sentence, they were each judged on their contribution and sentenced accordingly. However, the fine is to be paid by the three defendants present at the sentencing. The verdict was appealed to the Supreme Court.
Support campaign
On 18 February 2009 the NorwegianNorway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
socialist party Red
Red (Norway)
The Red Party is a Norwegian far-left political party and the leading party to the left of the Socialist Left and the Labour Party in Norway. Since 2007 the party has sought a seat in Parliament; the only counties in which they have a realistic chance of earning a seat are Oslo and Hordaland...
began a global campaign in support of The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
and filesharers worldwide that lasted until 1 May. The campaign was timed to coincide with the trial. Through the website filesharer.org individuals were encouraged to upload their photographs, as "mugshots", to "let the music and movie industry know who the file-sharers are." The site encourages participation urging people to "Upload a picture of yourself and show them what a criminal looks like!". Red politician Elin Volder Rutle is the initiator of the campaign and she states to the media that "If the guys behind Pirate Bay are criminals, then so am I, and so are most other Norwegians."
IFPI website hack
The website of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) was hacked and defaced with a message to Håkan Roswall, the prosecutor in the trial. The website subsequently became inaccessible, possibly owing to a denial-of-service attackDenial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
. It was shortly brought back online. Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi is an IT expert with Norwegian and Finnish roots. He is best known for being a co-founder and the spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracker site.-Personal life:...
, one of the defendants, responded to news of the attack with the comment "Our case is going quite well as most of you have noticed. In the light of that it feels very bad that people are hacking web sites which actually puts us in a worse light than we need to be in." To the perpetrators of the attack he also pleaded, "If anyone involved in the acts going on is reading this—please stop, for our sake. We don’t need that kind of support."
Flower storm
During the ninth day of the trial, after the testimony of professor emeritus Roger WallisRoger Wallis
Roger Wallis, is a musician, journalist and researcher. He is a resident of Sweden since 1963, and has been an adjunct professor of multimedia at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and is now an emeritus....
had been completed, he was asked according to Swedish court procedures if he wanted any compensation for appearing in court. He declined this but commented to the court that they were welcome to send flowers to his wife if they wished. This was rejected by the judge but quickly caught on amongst supporters of The Pirate Bay following the proceedings via live feeds and other Internet services. A channel was started on the EFnet network on IRC and a website followed and by the evening flowers for almost SEK
Swedish krona
The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...
40.000 (US$5,000, €3,000) had been ordered for the couple through Internet florists such as Interflora
Interflora
Interflora is the most commonly used name for a group of organisations worldwide, providing florists with a brand under which flowers can be purchased and delivered to 140 countries, most with their own partnership, or unit.- History :...
and local florists.
Bonnier Amigo website hack
The website of independent record company Bonnier AmigoBonnier Amigo Music Group
Cosmos Music Group is an independent record company based in Stockholm, Sweden.Bonnier Amigo Music Group was formed in 2001 when record company and distributor Amigo Musik merged with record company Bonnier Music. BAMG claims to be the biggest independent record company in Scandinavia with a...
was hacked on March 1. A similar message as the one on the hacked IFPI
IFPI
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is the organisation that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. It is a not-for-profit members' organisation registered in Switzerland...
website was published, but this time directed to prosecuting attorney Peter Danowsky representing the record labels:
See also
- Judicial system of SwedenJudicial system of SwedenThe judicial system of Sweden consists of the law of Sweden and a number of government agencies tasked with upholding security and rule of law within the country...
- Timeline of file sharing
- File sharing and the lawFile sharing and the lawThe legal issues in file sharing involve violation of copyright laws as digital copies of copyrighted materials are transferred between users.The application of national copyright laws to peer-to-peer and file sharing networks is of global significance...
- Telecoms PackageTelecoms PackageThe Telecoms Reform Package is a law of the European Union, aimed at updating the EU Telecoms Rules of 2002 and unifying Europe's tele-communications market for all 27 EU member states...
External links
2008-01-31 (modified 2009-02-24), International Public Prosecution Office Stockholm- Sveriges Television 24 Direkt audio archive of the Pirate Bay trial (Unofficial English translation commissioned by IFPI) – 2009-04-17, Stockholm district court - 2010-11-26, Svea Court of Appeal