| Pirate Bay Prosecutor Alters Charges |
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Wired, Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 11:15 AM
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Wired has the latest in the copyright infringement case against the four founders of The Pirate Bay, "the world's most notorious BitTorrent tracker." At the outset of proceedings on Tuesday, prosecutor Hakan Roswall announced an alteration of the charges, which experts told Wired would make a conviction more likely.
Until Tuesday, part of the summons, where the alleged crimes are described, read: "The Pirate Bay consists of three sub-components: an index portal in the form of a website with search functionality, a database with related directory containing the torrent files, and a tracker feature. The tracker feature creates a 'peer-to-peer' network of users who want to share the same file. All components are necessary for the users of the service to share files between them."
In the altered version, Roswall removed the last sentence. Legal scholar Daniel Westman said the move suggested Roswall didn't feel certain he could prove all three charges. "The question is whether the defendants fulfill the requirements in the penal code for complicity in a crime. One could maybe argue that the degree of complicity were higher if all three components could be proven, but the court may as well decide that only one or two is enough," Westman said. The Pirate Bay founders' defense is that the site doesn't infringe on copyrighted works, but rather points to locations where chunks of copyrighted works can be accumulated into full copies. However, the four defendants are not accused of committing copyright infringement directly; they are accused of "complicity in a crime" through facilitating copyright infringement.
Read the whole story at Wired.
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