Endless Paradigm

TorrentFreak Wrote:There has been high drama on the second day of the Pirate Bay trial. Due to serious shortcomings in the prosecution evidence, around 50% of the charges in the case are going to have to be withdrawn. The defense describes it as a ’sensation’, seeing half of the charges being dropped on the second day.

pirate bayWhat has been shown in court today is that the prosecutor cannot prove that the .torrent files he is using as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay’s tracker. Many of the screenshots being used clearly state there is no connection to the tracker. Additionally, prosecutor Håkan Roswall didn’t adequately explain the function of DHT which allows for so called “trackerless” torrents.

The flaw in the evidence was pointed out by Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), who requested to comment on Roswall’s explanation of how BitTorrent actually works. Fredrik said that the prosecution misunderstood the technology, and told the court that the evidence doesn’t show that the Pirate Bay’s trackers are used.

This has resulted in prosecutor Håkan Roswall having to drop all charges relating to “assisting copyright infringement”, so the remaining charges are simply ‘assisting making available’. “Everything related to reproduction will be removed from the claim,” he said.

The defense was happy to see that already half of the charges were dropped during the morning session of the second day. “This is a sensation. It is very rare to win half the target in just one and a half days and it is clear that the prosecutor took strong note of what wee said yesterday,” said defense lawyer Per E Samuelson.

Peter Althin, representing Peter Sunde said, “It is clear that this is an advantage for the accused.”

“EPIC WINNING LOL,” Peter himself later commented on Twitter.

IFPI was quick to release a statement where they try to spin the dropped charges into something good. “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,” IFPI’s legal counsel said.

During the remainder of the morning session it was mostly prosecutor Håkan Roswall talking. Among other things he explained in detail how email works (made no mistakes there). Several details on the hardware that was taken during the raid in 2006 were discussed, as well as invoices and email conversations about server costs.

After the lunch break, around 1:30pm the court decided to end the day early. Tomorrow morning the prosecution will continue to build (or break) their case and on Thursday the defense will have its say.

BBC Wrote:Half of the charges levelled at the founders of the Pirate Bay file-sharing site have been dropped.

Swedish prosecutors dropped charges relating to "assisting copyright infringement" leaving the lesser charges of "assisting making available copyright material" on trial day two.

Pirate Bay co-founder Frederik Neik said it showed prosecutors had misunderstood the technology.

The music industry played down the changes as "simplifying the charges".

Peter Danowsky, legal counsel for the music companies in the case, 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."

The Pirate Bay was launched in 2003 and quickly established itself as the world's most high profile file-sharing website. In February 2009, it reported 22 million simultaneous users.

At the start of the trial in Stockholm, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi and Carl Lundstorm were facing a large fine and up to two years in prison, if convicted.

"This is a sensation. It is very rare to win half the target in just one and a half days and it is clear that the prosecutor took strong note of what wee said yesterday," defence lawyer Per E Samuelson told the TorrentFreak website, which reports on developments in the BitTorrent file-sharing community.

BitTorrent is a legal application used by many file-shares to swap content because of the fast and efficient manner it distributes files.

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users computers.

- Source: [here]

Good News Everyone!


ARG!!! Ninja'd....Again

Wave the flag

EPIC LOL!!!

to me downloading something from TPB is exactly the same as borrowing a films or  cds from your friends and ripping them to a pc.... it's stupid that they call it 'copyright infringement' just because it's over the internet.....

andrewcc Wrote:to me downloading something from TPB is exactly the same as borrowing a films or  cds from your friends and ripping them to a pc.... it's stupid that they call it 'copyright infringement' just because it's over the internet.....

I see your point but borrowing a CD or DVD and ripping is illegal. When you buy a CD you don't own its content, simply the right to view it... The law these days is pretty fudgeed up...

GO TPB!
Haha I am SO surprised that half the charges are already dropped!

Hurray for Pirates! lol