As some of you may or may not know, The Pirate Bay and crew are finally on trial as of today. If you are not aware of what TPB is or why they are on trial I present a primer for you catch up on so you can better understand the case:
http://newteevee.com/2009/02/15/the-defini...rate-bay-trial/
The audio of the case is being streamed live from the courtroom and I am working with TPB as one of the English translators and bloggers for this case. I will present a culmination of different sources to give you the most information available.
You may be thinking "Ah just a bunch of people who want to get away with stealing movies" or what have you, but people like my film company, independent musicians, and other artists depend on The Pirate Bay and the torrent structure to reach audiences they wouldn't normally be able to reach. Game companies have started using the torrent structure for updates. Sharing is a part of human nature, and whether you like it or not this case concerns all of us.
Cheers,
Kensai
Credit goes to all EN translators working on this case.
For more information on the case:
http://www.twitter.com/brokep -Peter's Twitter account
http://www.twitter.com/anakata -Gottfried's Twitter account
http://www.twitter.com/sophia -Sophia, fellow EN translator
http://www.twitter.com/spectrial -Trail related tweets
http://trial.thepiratebay.org -Official trial hub
_____
Day 1
_____
8:35AM
Just after 8:30 AM, three of the defendants, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svarholm, arrived at Stockholm's district court.
They arrived in a pirate-themed bus, named S23K, which will serve as a place to meet for the people around The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån.
The three were met by a large variety of media. Journlists from all around the world are currently gathered at Flemminggatan 14 in Stockholm. Bloggers and Pirate Party members also followed the men. However, the three and their attorneys soon disappeared in anticipation of the start of the trial.
9:23AM
Journalists and the public were let in first, after a bit of delay. Then came the defendants as well as prosecutor Håkan Roswall with companions. The atmosphere is slightly chaotic, yet calm. In the audience are journalists and bloggers -- many of them with a laptop.
After a series of procedural issues it was time for the issue of the day: the prosecutor states his case.
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall opens with stating that The Pirate Bay (TPB) is one of the world's largest Internet file sharing services. It is funded by ad revenues, and the four accused have knowingly and willingly been running TPB. As such, they have facilitated other people's infringement.
9:31AM
Negotiations are being held in room 9, the largest room available to the district court. It has about 35 audience seats. There is also a live audio feed to room 8 where an additional 25 seats are available.
Still, a majority of the attendees won't fit, and have to wait outside.
The prosecutor is currently announcing the complete list of charges. The charges are based on the investigation report, a 1,400 page document excluding appendices.
9:50AM
The defendant's attorneys contest the charges.
Peter Sunde's attorney, Peter Althin, says Sunde's plead is built on different grounds from Svartholm Warg and Neij's. Sunde has not been responsible for the organisation or operation of TPB, says Althin.
Carl Lundström's attorney, Stefan Jevinger, points out that the case is a case of criminal law -- not copyright. To supply a service -- that can be used illegally or legally -- is not illegal, says Jevinger. Even in the case of file sharing.
He also says that this is why Carl Lundström can't be held responsible for anything except what he has done himself. And he has had nothing to do with the web site TPB, he has only supplied a service to them.
9:58AM
Prosecutor Roswall describes the demands for compensation. There are a lot of numbers of different sizes. In the end, the district court will have to take a position on the 117 million crowns [about 13.5 million US dollars] that the industry demands as compensation for their lost revenue.
10:12AM
The defense is contesting the sky high compensation amounts. For the first time, the mood is slightly dampened.
Carl Lundström's attorney Stefan Jevinger points out, among other things, that the defandants cannot be held responsible for all of the damage since there are other users who have enjoyed what the defendants are being held responsible for.
The defendants have said that the demands for compensation do not scare them.
During a press conference this Sunday, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg said "they are welcome to send an invoice". If he gets one, he will frame it and hang it on his wall.
10:14AM
The negotiations will take a 15 minute break.
10:40AM
The participants took a 15 minute break. At least, kind of a break. In fact, there was probably more happening in the quarter out in the hallways than what has happened in the negotiations so far.
The defendants, with Sunde and Svartholm Warg in the lead, were crowded by media as usual.
Peter Sunde told DN.se that he has a good feeling about it all. He was a little nervous earlier today, but it has passed.
-- You can't be nervous all this time, he said, and admitted that he wasn't even sure about which day he will be heard by the prosecutor.
Attorney Peter Althin agreed. Thirteen days without breaks, a little too much in his opinion:
-- You need a little time to absorb everything.
Beyond that there was not much to say. Althin said "everything's moving along". Monique Wadsted, representing the big Hollywood companies, said the exact same thing.
The bigwigs were not the only ones to attract attention. The hallways swarm with young people dressed as pirates and, well, all kinds of stuff.
Coffee in a thermos bottle or not was definately the lowest common denominator. [meaning that the bigwigs did not have them, while pirates did]
10:52AM
Time for a movie. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall demonstrates how The Pirate Bay actually works. The technology is not the simplest -- but important to understand in a case like this.
11:13AM
The next feature: How The Pirate Bay's site works. Everyone's eyes are on the white screen behind Sunde/Althin.
"This is how you click", says a computer-like voice while showing what it looks like after clicking on the movie "Shark Tale". Statistics, information about torrent files etc. is shown.
The audience appears uninterested.
11:37AM
The prosecutor is now describing his view of the development of The Pirate Bay (TPB).
- According to some archives, the address became visible on the Internet for the first time on July 15th 2004, he says.
The company PRQ with contact Fredrik Neij is behind the site.
The site has also had legal activities, notes the prosecutor, implying that The Pirate Bay is not one of them.
At first, the site was small, but they wanted more users. In October of 2004, Fredrik Neij met Carl Lundström, who operated the company Rix Telecom, says the prosecutor. With his help, they can configure a larger number of computers.
- Lundström also supplies Neij and Svartholm Warg with two servers. Both are seized in the spring 2006 raid.
The prosecutor believes that Lundström initially saw himself as a sponsor. However, he would eventually own 40 percent of the company. According to the prosecutor, Svartholm Warg and Neij got 30 percent each.
11:48AM
Sunde is brought into the picture when the site is being rebuilt. Among other things, more search functions will be added.
- Now, I'm not saying that Peter Sunde did all the programming himself. But it's being supervised by him, says the prosecutor.
The new, updated and more modern site is launched in 2005.
On July 1st 2005, Swedish law is changed to make it illegal to download copyright-protected files from the Internet. According to the prosecutor, Carl Lundström among others are aware of this.
12:00
Break for lunch. The trial will resume at 1:00PM.
1:15PM
The trial is resumed.
1:35PM
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall talks about the Pirate Bay raid:
- All in all we confiscated about 195 computers. After this, the police have been going through these and found, among other things, e-mail, he said.
The e-mail will be brought up later in the proceedings.
Håkan Roswall rejects the claim that this is "the first time in the world" that the bittorrent technology is being brought up in court:
- That's not true. There's a verdict in Finland from 2008. I'll be getting to that case later.
2:15PM
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall shows the court how various file sharers can be tracked.
Among other things, he shows the audience that at a certain point in time, 81 people made the movie "Den svaga punkten" available. An additional eleven people had parts of the work on their computers, making these available.
Another one of Roswall's examples is the movie "Mastermind".
The prosecutor shows the amount of downloads, at one point 4,137. He also has screenshots from some downloads. He shows how the torrent technology works in practice.
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall is trying to establish charge number two: Assisting in copyright infringement.
2:43PM
The prosecutor is still walking the court through the downloads, currently music.
The total is the works of 20 artist, nine movies and four computer/video games. Among the artists that have seen their work illegally downloaded are Backyard Babies, Joakim Thåström, Amy Diamond and Håkan Hellström.
The Pirate Bay is considered the Internet's largest place for downloads of movies, music, games and application. Between 22 and 25 million people use the site's so-called tracker service that connects the file sharers.
3:49PM
The court takes a break. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall announces that he's done with about half of the documented music downloads.
3:24PM
The afternoon has been considerably more calm than the morning, inside the courtroom as well as outside. During the break, several of the defendants were able to walk around freely, without being overly crowded by journlists with questions.
Carl Lundström may be the defendant who received the least attention today. He doesn't belong to the same group as the three others, and mostly keeps to himself.
Moreover, he won't say a word.
- My attorney loves to talk. I don't want to take that pleasure away from him, he told DN.se during the break.
The attorney he speaks of is named Per E. Samuelsson. But he has another one, Stefan Jevinger, expert on copyright. Upon being asked why he's the only one with two attorneys, he answers:
- I don't want to lose.
3:26PM
This morning, people were almost fighting for the seats in room 9 in Stockholm's district court. Now, the rows are relatively empty -- even though there is only three of them.
There have been many reports of the international attention, and there are several reports in foreign media. The attendance is not quite as good. Neighboring country Norway seems to have the most journalists on the scene. According to a reporter from Dagens Näringsliv, two of his colleagues are in Sweden to cover the proceedings. During yesterday's press conference, there were the occasional English-speaking journalist. The rest are remarkably anonymous.
3:56PM
The trial was adjourned at 3:45PM, and will be resumed Tuesday (tomorrow), at 9:00AM.
_______________________________________________________________________
QUOTE OF THE DAY:During the afternoon, Peter Sunde sent a message: “How the hell did they think this was going to be something else than EPIC FAIL for the prosecution? We’re winning so hard.” Peter points out that the prosecutor is having difficulty working out the difference between megabits and megabytes.
UPDATE: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tri...t-day-in-court/
Torrentfreak just posted their summary, lulz found inside
PS: Sorry for the late post on this, I've been busy in the chat's helping to translate the audio feed.
http://newteevee.com/2009/02/15/the-defini...rate-bay-trial/
The audio of the case is being streamed live from the courtroom and I am working with TPB as one of the English translators and bloggers for this case. I will present a culmination of different sources to give you the most information available.
You may be thinking "Ah just a bunch of people who want to get away with stealing movies" or what have you, but people like my film company, independent musicians, and other artists depend on The Pirate Bay and the torrent structure to reach audiences they wouldn't normally be able to reach. Game companies have started using the torrent structure for updates. Sharing is a part of human nature, and whether you like it or not this case concerns all of us.
Cheers,
Kensai
Credit goes to all EN translators working on this case.
For more information on the case:
http://www.twitter.com/brokep -Peter's Twitter account
http://www.twitter.com/anakata -Gottfried's Twitter account
http://www.twitter.com/sophia -Sophia, fellow EN translator
http://www.twitter.com/spectrial -Trail related tweets
http://trial.thepiratebay.org -Official trial hub
_____
Day 1
_____
8:35AM
Just after 8:30 AM, three of the defendants, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svarholm, arrived at Stockholm's district court.
They arrived in a pirate-themed bus, named S23K, which will serve as a place to meet for the people around The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån.
The three were met by a large variety of media. Journlists from all around the world are currently gathered at Flemminggatan 14 in Stockholm. Bloggers and Pirate Party members also followed the men. However, the three and their attorneys soon disappeared in anticipation of the start of the trial.
9:23AM
Journalists and the public were let in first, after a bit of delay. Then came the defendants as well as prosecutor Håkan Roswall with companions. The atmosphere is slightly chaotic, yet calm. In the audience are journalists and bloggers -- many of them with a laptop.
After a series of procedural issues it was time for the issue of the day: the prosecutor states his case.
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall opens with stating that The Pirate Bay (TPB) is one of the world's largest Internet file sharing services. It is funded by ad revenues, and the four accused have knowingly and willingly been running TPB. As such, they have facilitated other people's infringement.
9:31AM
Negotiations are being held in room 9, the largest room available to the district court. It has about 35 audience seats. There is also a live audio feed to room 8 where an additional 25 seats are available.
Still, a majority of the attendees won't fit, and have to wait outside.
The prosecutor is currently announcing the complete list of charges. The charges are based on the investigation report, a 1,400 page document excluding appendices.
9:50AM
The defendant's attorneys contest the charges.
Peter Sunde's attorney, Peter Althin, says Sunde's plead is built on different grounds from Svartholm Warg and Neij's. Sunde has not been responsible for the organisation or operation of TPB, says Althin.
Carl Lundström's attorney, Stefan Jevinger, points out that the case is a case of criminal law -- not copyright. To supply a service -- that can be used illegally or legally -- is not illegal, says Jevinger. Even in the case of file sharing.
He also says that this is why Carl Lundström can't be held responsible for anything except what he has done himself. And he has had nothing to do with the web site TPB, he has only supplied a service to them.
9:58AM
Prosecutor Roswall describes the demands for compensation. There are a lot of numbers of different sizes. In the end, the district court will have to take a position on the 117 million crowns [about 13.5 million US dollars] that the industry demands as compensation for their lost revenue.
10:12AM
The defense is contesting the sky high compensation amounts. For the first time, the mood is slightly dampened.
Carl Lundström's attorney Stefan Jevinger points out, among other things, that the defandants cannot be held responsible for all of the damage since there are other users who have enjoyed what the defendants are being held responsible for.
The defendants have said that the demands for compensation do not scare them.
During a press conference this Sunday, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg said "they are welcome to send an invoice". If he gets one, he will frame it and hang it on his wall.
10:14AM
The negotiations will take a 15 minute break.
10:40AM
The participants took a 15 minute break. At least, kind of a break. In fact, there was probably more happening in the quarter out in the hallways than what has happened in the negotiations so far.
The defendants, with Sunde and Svartholm Warg in the lead, were crowded by media as usual.
Peter Sunde told DN.se that he has a good feeling about it all. He was a little nervous earlier today, but it has passed.
-- You can't be nervous all this time, he said, and admitted that he wasn't even sure about which day he will be heard by the prosecutor.
Attorney Peter Althin agreed. Thirteen days without breaks, a little too much in his opinion:
-- You need a little time to absorb everything.
Beyond that there was not much to say. Althin said "everything's moving along". Monique Wadsted, representing the big Hollywood companies, said the exact same thing.
The bigwigs were not the only ones to attract attention. The hallways swarm with young people dressed as pirates and, well, all kinds of stuff.
Coffee in a thermos bottle or not was definately the lowest common denominator. [meaning that the bigwigs did not have them, while pirates did]
10:52AM
Time for a movie. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall demonstrates how The Pirate Bay actually works. The technology is not the simplest -- but important to understand in a case like this.
11:13AM
The next feature: How The Pirate Bay's site works. Everyone's eyes are on the white screen behind Sunde/Althin.
"This is how you click", says a computer-like voice while showing what it looks like after clicking on the movie "Shark Tale". Statistics, information about torrent files etc. is shown.
The audience appears uninterested.
11:37AM
The prosecutor is now describing his view of the development of The Pirate Bay (TPB).
- According to some archives, the address became visible on the Internet for the first time on July 15th 2004, he says.
The company PRQ with contact Fredrik Neij is behind the site.
The site has also had legal activities, notes the prosecutor, implying that The Pirate Bay is not one of them.
At first, the site was small, but they wanted more users. In October of 2004, Fredrik Neij met Carl Lundström, who operated the company Rix Telecom, says the prosecutor. With his help, they can configure a larger number of computers.
- Lundström also supplies Neij and Svartholm Warg with two servers. Both are seized in the spring 2006 raid.
The prosecutor believes that Lundström initially saw himself as a sponsor. However, he would eventually own 40 percent of the company. According to the prosecutor, Svartholm Warg and Neij got 30 percent each.
11:48AM
Sunde is brought into the picture when the site is being rebuilt. Among other things, more search functions will be added.
- Now, I'm not saying that Peter Sunde did all the programming himself. But it's being supervised by him, says the prosecutor.
The new, updated and more modern site is launched in 2005.
On July 1st 2005, Swedish law is changed to make it illegal to download copyright-protected files from the Internet. According to the prosecutor, Carl Lundström among others are aware of this.
12:00
Break for lunch. The trial will resume at 1:00PM.
1:15PM
The trial is resumed.
1:35PM
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall talks about the Pirate Bay raid:
- All in all we confiscated about 195 computers. After this, the police have been going through these and found, among other things, e-mail, he said.
The e-mail will be brought up later in the proceedings.
Håkan Roswall rejects the claim that this is "the first time in the world" that the bittorrent technology is being brought up in court:
- That's not true. There's a verdict in Finland from 2008. I'll be getting to that case later.
2:15PM
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall shows the court how various file sharers can be tracked.
Among other things, he shows the audience that at a certain point in time, 81 people made the movie "Den svaga punkten" available. An additional eleven people had parts of the work on their computers, making these available.
Another one of Roswall's examples is the movie "Mastermind".
The prosecutor shows the amount of downloads, at one point 4,137. He also has screenshots from some downloads. He shows how the torrent technology works in practice.
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall is trying to establish charge number two: Assisting in copyright infringement.
2:43PM
The prosecutor is still walking the court through the downloads, currently music.
The total is the works of 20 artist, nine movies and four computer/video games. Among the artists that have seen their work illegally downloaded are Backyard Babies, Joakim Thåström, Amy Diamond and Håkan Hellström.
The Pirate Bay is considered the Internet's largest place for downloads of movies, music, games and application. Between 22 and 25 million people use the site's so-called tracker service that connects the file sharers.
3:49PM
The court takes a break. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall announces that he's done with about half of the documented music downloads.
3:24PM
The afternoon has been considerably more calm than the morning, inside the courtroom as well as outside. During the break, several of the defendants were able to walk around freely, without being overly crowded by journlists with questions.
Carl Lundström may be the defendant who received the least attention today. He doesn't belong to the same group as the three others, and mostly keeps to himself.
Moreover, he won't say a word.
- My attorney loves to talk. I don't want to take that pleasure away from him, he told DN.se during the break.
The attorney he speaks of is named Per E. Samuelsson. But he has another one, Stefan Jevinger, expert on copyright. Upon being asked why he's the only one with two attorneys, he answers:
- I don't want to lose.
3:26PM
This morning, people were almost fighting for the seats in room 9 in Stockholm's district court. Now, the rows are relatively empty -- even though there is only three of them.
There have been many reports of the international attention, and there are several reports in foreign media. The attendance is not quite as good. Neighboring country Norway seems to have the most journalists on the scene. According to a reporter from Dagens Näringsliv, two of his colleagues are in Sweden to cover the proceedings. During yesterday's press conference, there were the occasional English-speaking journalist. The rest are remarkably anonymous.
3:56PM
The trial was adjourned at 3:45PM, and will be resumed Tuesday (tomorrow), at 9:00AM.
_______________________________________________________________________
QUOTE OF THE DAY:During the afternoon, Peter Sunde sent a message: “How the hell did they think this was going to be something else than EPIC FAIL for the prosecution? We’re winning so hard.” Peter points out that the prosecutor is having difficulty working out the difference between megabits and megabytes.
UPDATE: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tri...t-day-in-court/
Torrentfreak just posted their summary, lulz found inside
PS: Sorry for the late post on this, I've been busy in the chat's helping to translate the audio feed.