Half the charges dropped in Pirate Bay trial
Published: 19 Feb 2009 09:07 GMT
On the first day of the long-awaited criminal trial involving The Pirate Bay file-sharing site, Swedish prosecutors unexpectedly dropped half of the charges against the site's operators.
Prosecutors previously accused the defendants, who have insisted that their website is legal under Swedish law, of assisting in the distribution of copyrighted material. The amended charges focus on the act of making the material available.
This represents a preliminary win for defendants Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi and Carl Lundström, who have argued that no infringing content is located on their servers. Instead, The Pirate Bay acts as a search engine that points visitors to files — many of which are Hollywood films, music videos and commercial software — available through the BitTorrent protocol.
"A sensation," said defence attorney Per Samuelsson, according to The Local news site in Sweden. "It is very rare that you win half the case after one-and-a-half days, and it is clear that the prosecutor has been deeply affected by what we said yesterday."
The four men behind the file-sharing site face up to two years in prison and a fine of 1.2 million kronor (£100,000) if convicted. A civil claim brought by a group of the word's largest media companies is also being heard with the prosecution. The plaintiffs — Warner Bros Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI — seek 120 million kronor in compensation for lost revenues.
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The IFPI association that represents the recording industry (the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) said in a statement that the dismissed charges will have little effect.
Peter Danowsky, legal counsel for the music companies, said: "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."
For the rest of the first day of the trial, prosecutor Håkan Roswall described how internet email works and offered details about the computer hardware seized in a 2006 raid, according to TorrentFreak.com. The trial resumes on Wednesday, with the defence attorneys having a chance to respond on Thursday.
Credit: Some charges dropped against The Pirate Bay from CNET News
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