Is Pirate Bay Sinking?
Pirate Bay is one of world's largest facilitators of illegal downloading. But now the owners are facing the prospect of huge fines and jail time. Is this the end of the line for online video, music and software pirates? |
In 2003, three young men from Sweden created a website called The Pirate Bay, which was essentially a catalog of all the illegal downloads available on the Internet. The Pirate Bay search engine lets people search for and download BitTorrent files, which contain copyrighted music, movies, TV shows and software. (See my companion article Download With Bittorrent? for more info on the Bittorrent technology, software and legal issues.) class="imgmain" />
Pirate Bay - Grand Theft Audio?
Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde fancy themselves as anti-copyright crusaders. But in a high-profile legal trial that just concluded in Stockholm, they were portrayed by the prosecution as criminals for "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws". The verdict will be announced on April 17, at which time the defendants could face 1-2 years in jail, and fines of over $180,000 USD. On top of that, various motion picture, recording, and software industry groups have filed claims for damages of over $12 million for lost revenue.
Granted, the Pirate Bay site is not directly involved in infringements of copyright laws, since no illegal material passes directly through their servers. They just make it a LOT easier for a LOT of people to distribute and download copyrighted materials. They also make a LOT of money doing that. The website is monetized by advertisements alongside the search results, to the tune of about $75,000 (USD) per month, according Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish newspaper.
The proprietors of The Pirate Bay claim that these revenue figures are grossly inflated, but clearly something attracted the attention of Swedish financier Carl Lundström, who invested in the company, and is now on the legal hook along with the three who started it. And clearly, they knew that their activity could land them in trouble, because of their attempt to purchase the micro-nation of Sealand, in order to skirt Swedish law.
Are Online Pirates Doomed?
So Svartholm, Neij, Sunde and Lundström could be sinking in their own pirate ship. The outcome of the trial is not yet known, but if they do go to jail and incur huge fines, it will be a chlling warning to others who provide similar services -- and to those who use them. What about the 3 million registered users who use The Pirate Bay to locate and download illegally copied, music, movies and software?
Will the courts force Pirate Bay and other sites to cough up their user lists, enabling the MPAA, RIAA and software companies to go after them? You could make the argument that these are the real bad guys in this case. They're the ones who are clearly flouting copyright laws, and unjustly depriving the creators of desirable content the fruit of their labors.
If you don't think that people can get sued for downloading a pirated copy of Coldplay's Viva La Vida, an episode of Desperate Housewives, or Grand Theft Auto, think again. See Download With Bittorrent? and Sued For Downloading? for some background on these issues. There has even been concern about people getting sued for searching for copyrighted material at file sharing sites.
Do you think it's fair for the creators of The Pirate Bay to walk the plank -- to go to jail or pay huge fines for providing this service? Are you concerned that individual downloaders could be next in the crosshairs? Post your comments below!
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Posted by Bob Rankin on 3 Mar 2009
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Most recent comments on "Is Pirate Bay Sinking?"
(See all 29 comments for this article.)Posted by:
Pumpkin
05 Mar 2009
Has anyone mentioned the legal downloads avail. from TPB ? Will down-loaders be penalized for old-time radio and other public domain stuff??
Posted by:
Rello
06 Mar 2009
Ted, what you are saying has flaws as well. What if that writer had been paid a rediculous sum of money to write that book and for it to be published. Money that comes from people like us being ripped off? I bet you are one of these people who has a really well paid job and is rolling in cash. What about the people that are not. Here in England going to the cinema is extortionate so why should we miss out on stuff because off rip off Britain. A country that screws us but doesn't like it when we screw back.
Posted by:
Ted
06 Mar 2009
You and your fellow Brits chose a socialist government, hoping that they would "redistribute wealth", "tax the rich", "create a more just society", blah, blah, blah. Surprise... Britain is bankrupt, healthcare stinks and the middle class suffers. Class warfare never works. Socialism brings everyone down.
Whining about what other people have, and using that as an excuse for stealing from them is not the answer. Only the principles of liberty, personal responsibility and hard work will bring prosperity and satisfaction. It can start with you...
Posted by:
Deke
07 Mar 2009
Is it possible that people could stop banging on about stinking rich media companies as an excuse for ripping them off? When you go to do your food shopping at Tosco or wherever, you're making the people at the top very rich indeed, but that doesn't mean that the shelf stackers and checkout staff are getting paid much above the minimum wage, and likewise, just because the media companies are similarly run by fat cats doesn't make it right to rip off all the people at the bottom of the pile.
More to the point it doesn't give you the right to rip off my brother for his miserable point one of a penny or whatever he gets per unit shifted, and no, like most musos, he's never played on a million seller...
Posted by:
Pessimist
07 Mar 2009
Even if this ship sinks, there will be others, including Russia, China -- especially China, who already owns half of the US and does not give a damn about suicidal US laws. And guess who made it possible? Well, of course, Americans! They sold their country to the last stone to the Chinese communist government (free trade is untouchable), but they arguing about how to save every penny for media companies and Hollywood. Wake up! You will not be able to pay a dollar for a CD soon!
Posted by:
Bassim
07 Mar 2009
Good news for jobless tech. gifted people.
The ardent crackdowns on different torrent
sites and even innocent individuals in many
cases has brought to the front a new/old flourishing business called anonymity or anonym-yzing where you are offered a paid service to surf the web unidentified, download pirated digital "merchandise" either directly or by torrents from servers only God knows their location without being identified even by your
own ISP according to the bidders.
As usual, there will be tremendous advances in this respect within the coming months and not years, may be we will see free services just like free unlimited file type or size storage/hosting offered now which was a dream a year ago.
So, technology progress and innovation has no limits and can not be stopped by ruthless measures as long as there are people eager to develop.
A new approach to the digital business is a must.
Bassim
Posted by:
T. Smith
07 Mar 2009
If you download copy right material the best thing to do is buy an external 1tb hd for $100 and put all the down loads on that. Turn the drive on only when you want to listen to some music or watch a movie. In this way if your pc is hacked into they wont find the files that you have downloaded.
Also d/l, and run. PeerGuardian2 whenever you d/l any files from a P2P site. While it wont stop everyone it will hide most of your downloads from prying eyes.
Freedom to download what you want will not be stopped by these greedy corporations!
Posted by:
Colin Bain
08 Mar 2009
Of course there is the rather elegant solution of downloading the item and then donating the usual artist fee through the "guilt" website.
The companie's have made their cash within 1 year or less. The artists get their due (probably more more guilt really adds $ to the donation) and the downloaders get their media guilt free.
In some ways it is like the patent on a drug. Brand name gets time for a profit (I know, there is an argument about how much, but I'm taling principle here!) After a time generics can make their cash without the research costs.
Posted by:
Jehanyar Saleh
08 Mar 2009
When Sony and other big companies steal each others software they get away with it. When corporate robbers steal money from there own banks and then get paid by the government nobody says anything. Wake up people. Your turn to sue.
Posted by:
justin
08 Sep 2009
File sharing is great! why shouldnt it be allowed?
EDITOR'S NOTE: Money sharing is great too! Can I have yours?