I have recently become very engrossed with following the ongoing trial in Stockholm, Sweden against the website thepiratebay.org which is probably going to be one of the most important cases ever witnessed by the file-sharing community.
The basis of the case is that the major media corporations: Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal are suing four of the people behind The Pirate Bay for "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws".
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is leading the charges in the trial which started on February 16th and is scheduled to finish on March 4th and is being broadcast live on Swedish public radio.
34 cases of copyright infringements are listed, 21 of which are related to music files, 9 to movies, and 4 to games. On the second day of the trial 50% of the charges were dropped.
The pirate Bay has received a huge level of support that has taken everyone by surprise. They are the biggest BitTorrent site in the world. Hackers attacked several of the IFPIs websites today and there are people outside the court translating the case for others, others have released a documentary, whilst many others have been following the events and every development online and posting words of support on blogs and forums.
A news report of the website hacks can be found here.
To read an overview of the trial, its history and to get an understanding about the whole case, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial.
Or follow on the Pirate Bay's Spectrial website trial.thepiratebay.org
This case provokes thought and shows how American media corporations and government feel that they can police the internet and control everyone's activities on it. These US businesses are suing over what is illegal in America but in their ignorance have not taken into account that it is not illegal in Swedish law.
What I find quite interesting is that in Sweden, there is a political party called The Pirate Party, who support people opposed to current ideas about intellectual property. They believe in freely sharing information and culture, although are not involved in illegal activities. The party has 9,000 members and its youth organisation has just over 4,500 and they are currently in the process of preparing for the 2009 European Parliament elections.
Some noteworthy documentaries to check out on the subject of copyright and piracy are Steal this film and Good Copy Bad Copy. Both are free and legal to download and distribute and I thoroughly recommend watching them.
some interesting links:
Torrent Freak: torrentfreak.com
Timeline of file-sharing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_file_sharing
Piratbyran: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piratbyrån
The Swedish Pirate Party: http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party
Steal this film: http://stealthisfilm.com/trial/
Good Copy Bad Copy: http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/
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