Day 4 Of ThePirateBay Trial
Day 4 Of ThePirateBay Trial
February 19, 2009
" I though this was very interesting what the prosecution is trying to do, say TPB is child porn trafficking. :noes:
Day 4 of The Pirate Bay trial has seen the focus on Fredrik who was questioned at length. When it was movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted’s turn, she wasted no time in unexpectedly introducing new evidence. Both the defense and the court complained at this point, with Wadsted choosing to shout down the judge.
Prosecutor Håkan Roswall began the day by again referencing the case in Finland against the administrators of Finreactor. Fredrik’s lawyer Jonas Nilsson requested a copy of the case notes for the defense. It seems comparisons of the two cases will be drawn by the prosecution later in the trial.
Carl Lundström’s lawyer Per E Samuelsson continued with his client’s defense, reiterating the weakness of the links between him and the other defendants, and The Pirate Bay operation as a whole. Samuelsson also pointed to Lundström’s email correspondence in 2005 with Gottfrid and Fredrik, where they discussed the possibility of having to move the site to another country. This, he said, was an indication that the defendants kept an eye on the changes in the law and were mindful that they should operate legally within it.
In the meantime, it came to the court’s attention that Tobias Andersson, a future witness in the case, was sitting in the court. He was asked to leave the room, with permission to continue listening on the audio feed next door. He will testify later on.
After a break, the court’s attention switched to Fredrik Neij (TiAMO). The court heard that Fredrik was never a member of Piratbyran and he had no ideological motivation to join TPB. Instead, Fredrik was attracted to the site by the BitTorrent technology. He joined to “..play with The Pirate Bay, just as I wanted,” he said.
The defense said that Fredrik was always mindful of the law and had a desire to operate within it, consulting lawyers to ensure his activities were legal.
In a reference to companies like MediaDefender, Fredrik noted that “anti-p2p companies access our tracker and manipulate our statistics.” He said that although a torrent may have only been uploaded once, these anti-p2p activities inflate the stats on the tracker to indicate that more transfers took place than in reality.
Fredrik was then questioned about his relationship with advertiser Oded Daniel. When the prosecution asked if Oded was involved in the technical aspects of TPB, Fredrik replied.. “No, he’s not good at that. He uses Windows, so…” There was laughter heard on the live audio feed after that remark, not from the court room, but from the listening lounge next door where the bloggers are situated.
Fredrik was asked about the significance of the site’s name, but shrugged and repeated that his interest is merely in the technology.
Fredrik was further questioned by Håkan Roswall, with the Prosecutor pointing out that during his police interview, Fredrik admitted that there may be links to copyright works on TPB. Fredrik said he knew about these due to the legal complaints the site received, noting that the complaints referred only to inapplicable US laws. He went on to deny having received any of these personally, but while he admitted he seen them, he denied creating any of the infamous responses.
Roswall asked Fredrik if he had ever been a seeder on the site. Fredrik admitted to seeding torrents but noted that he only did this with copyright-free material.
When questioned about the situation of some torrents being removed from the site due to bad labeling, the court heard from the defense that TPB site is uncensored, with thousands of new torrents added every day and it is an impossible task to review them all. The tracker is completely open and anyone can and does add to it regularly, completely without any input or correspondence with TPB staff.
Just before lunch, Monique Wadsted for the movie companies took over questioning Fredrik. After a discussion over the way emails are handled at The Pirate Bay, out of the blue she began to introduce new evidence which had not previously been disclosed to the defense, in what is being viewed as an attempt to unsettle Fredrik.
She asked about Fredrik’s connections to other torrent sites, namely OscarTorrents and EurovisionTorrents and he denied being personally connected to them. Noting the breach of protocol, the judge asked if it was acceptable for the court to be considering evidence that was not already presented pre-trial. Monique Wadsted tried to shout down the judge, but that didn’t really help much. The court then took a break.
After the lunch break IFPI’s lawyer Peter Danowsky continued with Fredrik’s questioning. He tried to pin something on him, but Fredrik pointed out that the email he’s referring to is a reply, and that the quotes mean that he didn’t write that part of the email.
Fredrik’s lawyer is next up to ask questions, and the prosecution was educated on the subject of open BitTorrent trackers, BitTorrent swarms and the fact that torrent files can be distributed through means other than the TPB, like email or FTP.
Then the Prosecutor handed over a printed page from TPB and said: “This is a printout from a part of your web page. You call this a screenshot?” Fredrik answered: “This isn’t a screenshot, just a printed page.” Fredrik then explains what’s on the print (a Pink Panther torrent), and how the upload process on TPB works.
Next it’s Gottfrid’s turn to answer questions. The prosecution emphasizes the financial issues, and specifically the link with Oded. When asked if Gottfrid was in charge of ad sales he answered: “No, I tried to get away from that because of time issues. I had a business to run before you came and took it all away.”
The prosecution further questioned Gottfrid about moderation issues, replies to copyright holders and his involvement in developing the site. The prosecutor pushed hard on whether Peter Sunde had worked on the layout and graphics for the site. “To my knowledge, he is neither designer nor graphic artist,” Gottfried replied.
Wadsted later asked Gottfrid how they handle torrents that (allegedly) link to child porn. He said that in such a case they would inform the police. She then asked if they removed those torrents. He said “some”. “Not all?” was Wadsted’s reply. Gottfrid explained that it is not up to them to investigate crimes, but that they do inform the police. “We can’t do investigations of our own. And if the police say we should remove a torrent, we will,” he said.
Gottfrid further said that Peter Sunde has nothing to do with technical administration, design, layout, ad sales or any hands-on stuff with the site. He’s just been a spokesperson for The Pirate Bay. “Neither me or Neij work well in furnished rooms. Peter was better on the verbal issues and media,” he said.
Around 4 PM the Prosecutor announced that he wanted to bring in additional evidence, some actual torrent files on a diskette (he probably meant CD). The Prosecutor demanded a statement on it at 9 in the morning tomorrow. The defense wasn’t too happy about this, and Gottfrid demanded all torrents instead of four.
This is a developing story, check back for updates
Update:Just a passing thought…..While Wadsted may have thought she was being clever mentioning possible child porn tracked by The Pirate Bay earlier, it’s not beyond reason that when Gottfrid said that they don’t remove all such torrents, this could be on the instruction of the police - presumably so they can track any offenders. In this situation, the police must understand that Pirate Bay neither committed any offense, nor encouraged it, nor know the people involved. Is there something important here? I guess the court will decide. "
:source: Source: Day 4 Of TPB Trial
Re: Day 4 Of ThePirateBay Trial
It looks like a Pyrrhic victory for pirates. We will win, but the awareness will generate more hostility than acquiescence towards piracy.
Re: Day 4 Of ThePirateBay Trial
:lol:
Anakata Explains in Court How ‘The Scene’ Works
Quote:
The Pirate Bay trial has opened a whole new world for the Stockholm Court. When Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm (Anakata) was questioned about the upload habits of the site’s users, the prosecution was baffled to hear that “The Scene” doesn’t like The Pirate Bay either, and that they are actually on their side.
gottfridFor those people who read this blog regularly, it is no secret that the so called ‘warez scene‘ is not a fan of BitTorrent sites - private or public. They feel that latest pirate releases should be kept within their exclusive group, and file-sharing services such as BitTorrent are seen as a threat, generating unwanted attention.
On Thursday, Gottfrid Svartholm explained this to the Court, which resulted in an interesting exchange of information. It started with Per E Samuelsson, the lawyer of one of the other defendants (Lundström), who questioned Gottfrid:
—
Samuelsson: Do you have any idea of how many of the works that the charges relate to, that have been uploaded by ordinary users that have bought a DVD or a CD and then made it available at The Pirate Bay?
Anakata: No, but from the file names, these typically look like they are from organized piracy, so-called warez groups.
Samuelsson: Sorry, I don’t understand?
Anakata: There are groups that specialize in making copyrighted content available. And they mark the torrent’s file name with their signature, kind of like a graffiti tag.
Samuelsson: So, there aren’t physical people somewhere in the world that buy legal copies and then make them available at The Pirate Bay?
Anakata: That could happen, but in these particular cases it doesn’t look like that.
Samuelsson: And that would mean these works could have been made available to the public a million times before and that the torrent on Pirate Bay is number one million and one?
Anakata: Yes, exactly.
—
Peter Danowsky, one of the prosecution’s lawyers representing the music industry, was apparently intrigued by these mystical figures who specialize in copyright infringement. He later followed up on this issue and asked Anakata some additional questions.
—
Danowsky: You have identified that there are certain piracy groups that have released the works in these cases…
Anakata: …not identified, but it appears to be that way.
Danowsky: Do these groups typically hire The Pirate Bay’s services?
Anakata: No, they hate The Pirate Bay.
Danowsky: (silence) Why?
Anakata: They like to keep their releases within a selective group of people.
—
It seems unthinkable that the IFPI could believe that ‘The Scene’ would hire The Pirate Bay to spread releases, but presumably this is just more of those “Epic LOLs” from the TPB trial that Peter spoke of earlier. It’s doubtful we’ve heard the last of them.
Re: Day 4 Of ThePirateBay Trial
Cheers to The Great Mystical Figures
LOL
Re: Day 4 Of ThePirateBay Trial
Appreciate the posting Sons., has certainly been an interesting story. Amazing, the kind of angles prosecution has taken... Are they that dry of true, material evidence...
Gogo Pirates ;)
