Pirate Bay Still Afloat

The German court injunction that Hollywood studios won against bandwidth provider CB3ROB kept The Pirate Bay offline for only one day, as Sweden’s Pirate Party came to the rescue.

The district court in Hamburg ordered discontinuation of service for The Pirate Bay May 17 because it was linking to six torrents for movies from Walt Disney Studios.

If CB3ROB didn’t comply, the demands of the injunction won by the Motion Picture Association against CB3ROB could have resulted in its owner Sven Kamphuis facing a euro 250,000 fine for each copyright infringement and up to a couple of years in jail.

Kamphuis doesn’t agree with the German court’s ruling and says he sees no harm in providing bandwidth to the torrent site, arguing this is core business for Internet service providers. He’s demanding compensation from the MPA because he says the decision has cost him a paying customer.

The move may also lead to The Pirate Party getting into a legal issue with the country’s government, which has already ruled that the file-sharing site is illegal.

Later this year, a Swedish court is expected to rule on an appeal made by the four founders of The Pirate Bay, who were found guilty of copyright violations, sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay the equivalent of $3 million to the major music companies.

However, coming to the Pirate Bay’s rescue may keep the party in the political limelight. It’s seen its popularity dwindle since it won 7.1 percent of the votes in elections for the European Parliament last year, according to a spokesman at market research company TNS SIFO.

That’s been attributed to the fact that copyright issues haven’t been high on the Swedish political agenda. But if that changes, the Pirate Party’s fortunes could as well.

The battle between The Pirate Bay and the entertainment industry continues in various countries. A case that led to the site being blocked in Denmark is to be heard in the country’s Supreme Court.