Pirate Bay On Trial

Pirate Bay doesn’t actually host copyrighted material. Instead, it hosts “torrents,” those little chunks of code pointing users’ torrent-based P2P clients to goodies on the net.

Someone looking for, say, a particular TV program episode might search Pirate Bay for the torrent, and after inserting the torrent into their P2P software, establish contact with all the computers on the file-sharing network hosting that episode and then download pieces of the show from various uploaders.

Studios and record companies behind the suit against Pirate Bay include 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, Universal, Warner Bros., EMI, and Sony BMG.

Among the charges brought by entertainment companies is the site makes copyrighted materials available to BitTorrent users.

But on the first day of the trial, Swedish prosecutors had to dial back the charges after agreeing that the site itself did not copy files. Now prosecutors are charging Pirate Bay with complicity to make copyrighted works available, according to InformationWeek.

Pirate Bay operators, on the other hand, have always claimed the site merely acts as a search engine for content.

A lot of people are watching the Pirate Bay trial.

The Wall Street Journal reported that spectator seats in the courtroom scalped for about $60 per and said on the first trial day the courtroom was packed with Pirate Bay supporters and scholars both legal and sociological.

Watchers on both sides of infringement issues are also keeping an eye on the trial, with some predicting less restrictive copyright laws if Pirate Bay emerges victorious, and more stringent regulations if movie and record companies prevail.

But Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde doesn’t expect much to happen if the entertainment industry wins its case against the Web site.

“It does not matter if they require several million or one billion,” Sunde said. “We are not rich and have no money to pay. They won’t get a cent.”