The Pirate Bay vs Them: Day Four
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Efforts by Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal to confine The Pirate Bay and the people who run it to the depths continue in a court case which is being reported day by day by the mainstream media, and almost minute by minute online.
TPB, in the shape of Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), Gottfrid Svartholm (Anakata) Warg, Peter Sunde (Brokep), and businessman Carl Lundström, have infringed copyrights to the detriment of the corporate music and movie industries, claim the plaintiffs.
TorrentFreak’s enigmax has been covering the trial and today, Day Four, Swediosh prosecutor HÃ¥kan Roswall, fronting for the cartels, kicked off by, “again referencing the case in Finland against the administrators of Finreactor,” he says.
The hapless Roswall has so far been distinguished more by his ineptitude than his skills as a prosecutor.
A Swedish p2pnet reader summed it up like this. Roswall »»»
- Failed to use windows mediaplayer
- Failed to understand bittorrent basics
- Failed to start a powerpoint presentation under 15 minutes
- Failed to take screenshots that were relevant as evidence
- Failed to document .torrent files (LOL)
Now, Fredrik`s lawyer Jonas Nilsson, “requested a copy of the case notes for the defense,” says TorrentFreak, continuing »»»
It seems comparisons of the two cases will be drawn by the prosecution later in the trial.
Carl Lundström`s lawyer Per E Samuelsson continued with his client`s defense, reiterating the weakness of the links between him and the other defendants, and The Pirate Bay operation as a whole. Samuelsson also pointed to Lundström`s email correspondence in 2005 with Gottfrid and Fredrik, where they discussed the possibility of having to move the site to another country. This, he said, was an indication that the defendants kept an eye on the changes in the law and were mindful that they should operate legally within it.
In the meantime, it came to the court`s attention that Tobias Andersson, a future witness in the case, was sitting in the court. He was asked to leave the room, with permission to continue listening on the audio feed next door. He will testify later on.
After a break, the court`s attention switched to Fredrik Neij (TiAMO). The court heard that Fredrik was never a member of Piratbyran and he had no ideological motivation to join TPB. Instead, Fredrik was attracted to the site by the BitTorrent technology. He joined to ..play with The Pirate Bay, just as I wanted, he said.
The defense said that Fredrik was always mindful of the law and had a desire to operate within it, consulting lawyers to ensure his activities were legal.
In a reference to companies like MediaDefender, Fredrik noted that anti-p2p companies access our tracker and manipulate our statistics. He said that although a torrent may have only been uploaded once, these anti-p2p activities inflate the stats on the tracker to indicate that more transfers took place than in reality.
Fredrik was then questioned about his relationship with advertiser Oded Daniel. When the prosecution asked if Oded was involved in the technical aspects of TPB, Fredrik replied.. No, he`s not good at that. He uses Windows, so There was laughter heard on the live audio feed after that remark, not from the court room, but from the listening lounge next door where the bloggers are situated.
Fredrik was asked about the significance of the site`s name, but shrugged and repeated that his interest is merely in the technology.
Fredrik was further questioned by HÃ¥kan Roswall, with the Prosecutor pointing out that during his police interview, Fredrik admitted that there may be links to copyright works on TPB. Fredrik said he knew about these due to the legal complaints the site received, noting that the complaints referred only to inapplicable US laws. He went on to deny having received any of these personally, but while he admitted he saw them he denied creating any of the infamous responses.
Roswall asked Fredrik if he had ever been a seeder on the site. Fredrik admitted to seeding torrents but noted that he only did this with copyright-free material.
When questioned about the situation that some torrents are removed from the site due to bad labeling it was noted that TPB site is uncensored, with thousands of new torrents added every day and it is an impossible task to review them all. The tracker is completely open and anyone can and does add to it regularly, completely without any input or correspondence with TPB staff.
Just before lunch, Monique Wadsted for the movie companies took over questioning Fredrik. After a discussion over the way emails are handled at The Pirate Bay, out of the blue she began to introduce new evidence which had not previously been disclosed to the defense, in what is being viewed as an attempt to unsettle Fredrik.
She asked about Fredrik`s connections to other torrent sites, OscarTorrents and EurovisionTorrents and he denied being personally connected to them. 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. Monique Wadsted tried to shout down the judge, but that didn`t really help much. The court then took a break.
After the lunch break IFPI`s lawyer Peter Danowsky continues Fredrik`s questioning. He tries to pin something on him, but Fredrik points out that the email he`s referring to is a reply, and that the quotes mean that he didn`t write that part of the email.
Fredrik`s lawyer is next up to ask questions, and the prosecution is being educated on open trackers, the BitTorrent swarms and the fact that torrent files can be distributed through other means than the TPB, like email of FTP.
Then the Prosecutor handed over a printed page from TPB and said: This is a print out from a part of your web page. You call this a screenshot? Fredrik answered: This isn`t a screenshot, just a printed page. Fredrik then explains what`s on the print (a Pink Panther torrent), and how the upload process on TPB works.
Next it`s Gottfrid`s turn to answer questions. The prosecution emphasizes on the financial part, and specifically the link with Oded. When asked if Gottfrid is in charge of ad sales he answered: No, I tried to get away from that because of time issues. I had a business to run before you came and took it all away.
The prosecution further questioned Gottfrid about moderation issues, replies to copyright holders and his involvement in developing the site. The prosecutor pushed hard on whether Peter Sunde has worked on the layout and graphics for the site. To my knowledge, he is neither designer nor graphic artists, Gottfried replied.
Wadsted later asked Gottfrid what they would do if a torrent (allegedly) linked child porn. He said that they would inform the police. She then asked if they removed those torrents. He said some. Not all? was Wadsted`s reply. Gottfrid explained that it is not up to them to investigate crimes, but that they do inform the police. We can`t do investigations of our own. And if the police says we should remove a torrent, we will, he said.
Stay tuned.
minute by minute online – The Pirate Bay vs Them: Day Three, February 18, 2009
TorrentFreak – Day 4 – Pirate Bay Defense Calls Foul Over Evidence, February 19, 2009
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February 19th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
you can add to that list of fails “ability to understand the format of a regular email reply” since it was mentioned that he thought fredrik typed the sections that were clearly quotes
February 19th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
This reflects part of what is really wrong with the major labels today. The CEOs that run these labels are all elderly. They don’t understand the technology that goes on today and how it comes about. They are indeed trying to hold back the dam to the days of yore. To them everything has a price. If someone is doing something then it has to be for money.
When money as profit could not be pointed at for the reason for file sharing, they got the definition changed on what constitutes profit. Instead of reading that someone had to make a buck to be termed making profit, it now reads to basically deny the rightsholder payment as the profit motive. That’s a small wording but big difference in meaning. At the same time, the profit motive begins to look like nickle and dime, inflated by wording to have the same context as some of President Regan’s proclamations. Regan was well known to inflate the meaningful value of something far beyond what reality was.
Again it is shown in this trial that the profit motive that is sought, is being looked for by those with no understanding of reality of how many websites are run. Most are run on a shoe string without major financial backers of any sort. The contributions of members that see value in a site is plowed back into keeping the site on line. None of the staff nor members see a dime of payment for activity. It is a shared collective of efforts that make it work, from staff right down to the lowest member that sees a site keep up and running. The bigger the site, the bigger the bills for hardware and internet connections.
Fame from any sort of activity by itself does not constitute financial gain in and of itself. This misconception that there must be money to be had is again reflected in the attempts of the prosecution to find some sort of trail leading to financial gain. No concern is really there for the actualities of what really is. All this shows in the between lines that the majors have tried their best to paint TPB as a sort of huge store with everything for sale and there must be profit somewhere in there to the prosecutor. The prosecutor in turn expects to find a link to some huge offshore banking system with all the riches and gold of a buried treasure. That’s the expectation coming into the trial and the reason for the attempt to find a link. The majors want it all, when there is no all to be had.
The only profit in all this is that the members gain from interaction. Some give a donation just to say thank you. That is hardly a way to get rich.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
well, she is (according to a TPB frontpage logo and trialreprots a lawyer for s.) what do you expect from a person like her?
quote:
âMonique Wadsted, an attorney for MPAA was next. She has also represented the S. movement in their copyright case against Zenon Panoussis.
She started out by asking about his personal email and how he responded to those who emailed him concerning requests to remove copyrighted material. He told her that.. âEvery email containing DMCA in it, is auto-forwarded to Sunde and Svartholm Varg, I dont want anything to do with those emails, they are spam.â Wadsted asked, âHow do you consider email from copyright holders as spam?â He said aptly, âSpam is mail I donât want or have not agreed to receiveâ. Well played Neij, well played.â
February 19th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
lol, mentioning THEM gets your post into the moderation Queue.
That is cool!
February 19th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
@ kdsde: There were 2 comments. Certainly, neither one should have ended up in the moderation queue.
As I think you know, I had to put a stop to 100% uncontrolled posting, but it’s still 98% pure. The other 2% are chiefly people trying to hijack comment posts for their own purposes. Or rants from people who are stoned and/or drunk, maybe. heh
I’ve given up trying to figure out what triggers Akismet and what doesn’t. It seems to have changed since I first started using it. Or maybe it’s my imagination, But I think I’m going to have to come up with plan C, pretty soon.
Trouble is, I don’t know what plan C is
Cheers!
February 19th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
well, it seemed to be that in the first one i did not wrote S. but cientology behind it too.
No harm done though, cheers Jon!
February 20th, 2009 at 4:20 am
“This reflects part of what is really wrong with the major labels today. The CEOs that run these labels are all elderly. They donât understand the technology that goes on today and how it comes about. They are indeed trying to hold back the dam to the days of yore. To them everything has a price. If someone is doing something then it has to be for money.”
Almost (but not quite) correct:
1. You’re right that they don’t understand the technology. What makes them REALLY dangerous is that they not only don’t WANT to understand the technology: they don’t want anybody ELSE to understand (or use) technology, either.
That’s why that idiot Valenti declared the VCR to be the equivalent of the Boston Strangler, and that’s why he tried to get the VCR banned.
At base, the corporate “content” industry is anti-innovation, anti-creativity, and just generally antithetical.
Why do you think they keep ramming copy”right” extensions through every few years? It’s damn sure not about “the artists” — it’s about THEM getting to keep their pwecious pwecious monopolies, thanks to their cronies in government.
2. As to “everything having it’s price”, that’s ALMOST accurate as well.
These vultures ARE about money, but — and here’s the really important part — they are also about power:
What power, you ask?
The power to be the “trend-setters”, by manufacturing what gets to be “popular”.
I use the term “manufacturing”, because that’s exactly what they always did — and would dearly like to continue doing:
Yeah, they had the world by the balls a few years ago.
Fortunately, people like Steve Albini began to wise up and reconsider whether signing with a “label” was a good deal (it wasn’t — and isn’t).
It didn’t help that people actually figured out “Mili Vanilli” were two talentless pretty-boys, and that everything done by “them” was really done by a bunch of (uncredited) session musicians doing “work for hire”, such that they never actually got the royalties or other perks associated with the RIAA “bidness model”. (Our resident RIAA fanboy, “Sam I Am”, likes to pretend that the copy”right” extensions and shakedown tactics of the RIAA are about “benefiting the artists.” Some of us aren’t that stupid, however.)
That’s what makes the RIAA and their cronies in government so damaging: the fact that they can manage to delude people into really believing their lies.
Whatever happens (even if they DID manage to stamp out p2p, which is both technologically impossible and — due to the sheer scale and numbers of people involved) — whatever happens, they’ll NEVER regain their former place as “trend-setters”. To my way of thinking, “pop culture” in their sense of the term is dead. It died with Milli Vanilli’s “Career”.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:59 am
i made an xvid of steal this film – the trial edition because the
original is in crap mp4.
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4732172/Steal_This_Film_2009_-_XVID_TRIAL_EDITION
February 20th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Thanks, Catflap.