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PIRATE BAY

Music body cautions Pirate Bay suitor

IFPI, a British-based association that represents the recording industry worldwide, has issued a word of warning to Global Gaming Factory (GGF), the Swedish firm set to purchase file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.

Published: 7 August 2009 10:24 CEST

In a letter addressed to GGF CEO Hans Pandeya, IFPI stated that it “will be forced to take legal action against GGF” if the site continues to be operated in its current form.

Earlier this week, Pendaya revealed that a deal between GGF and one of the “Big Four” record labels was almost closed. The CEO explained that the idea behind the deal was to sell the record label’s content and back catalogue through the Pirate Bay, which it agreed to buy at the end of June.

In the letter to Pendaya, IFPI’s General Counsel Jo Oliver wrote that while “we are delighted when a copyright-infringing service announces its intention to convert into a legal and licensed operation”, it would hold GGF management and financiers legally and financially responsible for any ongoing copyright infringement. The letter’s intention was to inform GGF of the “legal risks that may arise from the proposed transaction.”

Oliver continued that although IFPI supports GGF’s discussions with member organisations in its aim of obtaining licences, “the Pirate Bay in its present form is still enabling mass infringement.” Four major record companies have filed in the Swedish courts for an injunction requiring the Pirate Bay to cease operation, and such legal action “will continue unless and until The Pirate bay is operating with all appropriate licences.”

Oliver also informed GGF that IFPI has petitioned the Swedish Enforcement Autority (Kronofogden) to prohibit GGF from paying the purchase sum to the current owners of the Pirate Bay and instead turn the money over to the the agency for the benefit of the Swedish firms named in the Pirate Bay lawsuit.

In April, the Stockholm district court sentenced the Pirate Bay’s three founders and the site’s main financial backer – Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström – to a year in jail and ordered them to pay a total of 30 million kronor in damages.

Founded in 2003, The Pirate Bay makes it possible to skirt copyright fees and share music, film and computer game files using bitTorrent technology, or peer-to-peer links offered on the site.

None of the material can thus be found on The Pirate Bay server itself.

Charlotte West/AFP

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PIRATE BAY

Sweden now owns Pirate Bay domain names

The Swedish state became the unlikely new owner of two domain names used by The Pirate Bay after a court ruling on Tuesday.

Published: 19 May 2015 14:31 CEST
Sweden now owns Pirate Bay domain names
The Swedish state now owns two Pirate Bay domain names. Photo: Vilhelm Stokstad/TT

In its ruling the Stockholm district court awarded Sweden the domain names piratebay.se and thepiratebay.se. 

The case marked the first time a Swedish prosecutor had asked for a web address to be wiped off the face of the internet, Dagens Nyheter reports. 

“A domain name assists a website. If the site is used for criminal purposes the domain name is a criminal instrument,” prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad told the Swedish daily earlier this year. 

Sweden’s Internet Infrastructure Foundation, which controls the Swedish top level domain .se, opposed the prosecutor’s move to prohibit any future use of the two Pirate Bay addresses.

The court agreed that the foundation had not done anything wrong and conceded that it could not force the group to block certain domain names, Dagens Nyheter reports. But by awarding the addresses to the Swedish state the court effectively ensured that they will not be sold on to another owner. 

The file-sharing service was temporarily knocked off line in December after police seized servers hosted at a data centre in a nuclear-proof bunker deep in a mountain outside Stockholm.

But seven weeks later the resilient file-sharing behemoth was back on its feet and Tuesday’s ruling is unlikely to knock it off balance for long, as the court cannot prevent The Pirate Bay from continuing to run sites on other domains.

The Pirate Bay, which grew into an international phenomenon after it was founded in Sweden in 2003, allows users to dodge copyright fees and share music, film and other files using bit torrent technology, or peer-to-peer links offered on the site – resulting in huge losses for music and movie makers.

In 2009 four Swedes connected with The Pirate Bay were found guilty of being accessories to copyright infringement by a Swedish court. 

They were each give one-year jail terms and ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in compensation.