Aηdy
January 31st, 2008, 12:56 PM
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/PirateBay55.jpg
The four operators of Pirate Bay, one of the biggest file-sharing Web sites, have been officially charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden, their home country and home to servers that power the site. Despite the charges against the site operators Pirate Bay is still operating.
The charges stem from a 2006 raid of Pirate Bay which included the confiscation of servers. Pirate Bay operators have maintained the charges are "idiotic." Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told the Reuters news agency, "There is no legal ground (for the charges)."
Pirate Bay doesn't host copyright protected files, rather it helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files by matching file seekers with PCs that host the files. Seekers punch in a keyword search, for example "Kanye West", and Pirate Bay creates what's called a torrent file for download. That torrent file is then loaded into a third-party software program that downloads the file from multiple PCs. The site is free to use, however it does earn revenue through advertising, which is considered commercially exploiting copyright-protected work, according to Swedish prosecutors.
Pirate Bay has consistently and defiantly refused to shut its site down. Despite the legal troubles, the site is still going strong with new torrents being uploaded for sharing every minute. On a page that contains links to all of the legal threats slapped against The Pirate Bay, the site is quick to point out that "0 torrents has been removed, and 0 torrents will ever be removed."
This comes immediately after a recent "Celeb-ration!" (http://thepiratebay.org/blog/100) by Pirate Bay celebrating tracking over 1 million torrents, have 10 million simultaneous peers sharing files and 2.5 million registered users.
The charges being faced could land the foursome in jail for a maximum of two years. The charges may be a chink in the armor of Pirate Bay, but something tells me these guys won't go down easily - nor will the site.
The four operators of Pirate Bay, one of the biggest file-sharing Web sites, have been officially charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden, their home country and home to servers that power the site. Despite the charges against the site operators Pirate Bay is still operating.
The charges stem from a 2006 raid of Pirate Bay which included the confiscation of servers. Pirate Bay operators have maintained the charges are "idiotic." Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told the Reuters news agency, "There is no legal ground (for the charges)."
Pirate Bay doesn't host copyright protected files, rather it helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files by matching file seekers with PCs that host the files. Seekers punch in a keyword search, for example "Kanye West", and Pirate Bay creates what's called a torrent file for download. That torrent file is then loaded into a third-party software program that downloads the file from multiple PCs. The site is free to use, however it does earn revenue through advertising, which is considered commercially exploiting copyright-protected work, according to Swedish prosecutors.
Pirate Bay has consistently and defiantly refused to shut its site down. Despite the legal troubles, the site is still going strong with new torrents being uploaded for sharing every minute. On a page that contains links to all of the legal threats slapped against The Pirate Bay, the site is quick to point out that "0 torrents has been removed, and 0 torrents will ever be removed."
This comes immediately after a recent "Celeb-ration!" (http://thepiratebay.org/blog/100) by Pirate Bay celebrating tracking over 1 million torrents, have 10 million simultaneous peers sharing files and 2.5 million registered users.
The charges being faced could land the foursome in jail for a maximum of two years. The charges may be a chink in the armor of Pirate Bay, but something tells me these guys won't go down easily - nor will the site.