In 2009, the founders of The Pirate Bay lost their court battle against the music and movie industries. Despite receiving heavy sentences, their site continued to operate and the appeals process could drag on for years yet.

Determined not to wait for this process to play out before crippling the site, in May 2009 music companies Universal, EMI, Sony and Warner applied to the courts for fines to be imposed on Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde for as long as they continue to infringe their copyrights through the operation of the site.

In July 2009, this lead was followed by the movie industry with Columbia, Disney, NBC, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner taking legal action against the same three individuals in Stockholm, demanding that the court stops the site from continuing to infringe their copyrights on more than 100 named movies and TV shows.

In common with the music industry action, the Hollywood studios also named The Pirate Bay’s bandwidth supplier, Black Internet AB, although that ISP is no longer involved with the site and is now presumably excluded from the action. However, there was another line of attack for the entertainment industries.

At the end of October 2009, the Stockholm District Court ruled that two of the site’s founding members – Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij – were now banned from operating the site in the future. If they failed to comply with this decision, they would face a fine of 500,000 kronor ($71,600) each.

Earlier this year the record companies wrote to the Stockholm District Court demanding that the penalties for the pair continuing to run the site were imposed. In a new application, the movie companies are also insisting that the Court makes good on its threats. But as with all things Pirate Bay, there are complications.

Not only do Fredrik and Gottfrid live outside Swedish jurisdiction, both of them insist that they have nothing to do with the running of The Pirate Bay anymore. They say they transferred the site to Seychelles-based company Reservella in 2006. Needless to say, the entertainment companies don’t believe a word of it and insist that the founders are still running the site.

“Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg should easily be able to present evidence showing that it is as they claim, namely that there are other people who took over control and operation of The Pirate Bay. They have not done so,” say the studios in the application.

In any event, what is clear is that in the eyes of the studios, little has changed, even after The Pirate Bay shut down its tracker last year.

“This change has no impact on file-sharing service function,” they conclude.

At this stage it is unclear where the burden of proof lies. Is it up to the founders to prove that they aren’t involved with the site, or is it up to the studios to prove that they are? If it’s the latter, this could be the hardest job in the whole world – even harder than the founders proving a negative.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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It’s day seven in the copyright infringement case of AFACT – representing several Hollywood studios – and Aussie ISP iiNet (earlier coverage of day one, day two, day three, day four , day five and day six).

Today iiNet’s lawyers cross-examined representatives from 20th Century Fox, Disney, Warner and Paramount via video link.

After being accused earlier in the trial of having deals in place with BitTorrent Inc, ZDNet reports that Paramount admitted it had a deal with the company for it to prevent illegal copies of its movies being shared via its BitTorrent software. However, this seems more likely to be a filter applied to search results on the BitTorrent.com site, rather than any obstruction in the software itself. Any notion that BitTorrent Inc spied or spies on users of its software in order to restrict their activities would be a disaster for the company.

Paramount could not confirm if the deal prevented piracy or not but acknowledged that it ran from October 6 2006 until October 6 2008, and had now expired. Paramount had an option to extend it for a further year, but did not.

As mentioned in our earlier coverage, iiNet lawyers suggested that the publishing of studio logos (including that of Paramount) on the BitTorrent.com website could have caused some confusion for potential BitTorrent downloaders.

However, according to a report, Paramount could be set to lodge a formal complaint with BitTorrent Inc over what it described as “unauthorized use” of its logo. This development seems to be somewhat of a cheap shot by Paramount. Their logo has been on the BitTorrent.com site for a very long time (and remains there today) so the ‘revelation’ in court that it exists there should hardly come as a surprise – they were business partners after all.

iiNet lawyers put it to 20th Century Fox anti-piracy boss Ronald Wheeler that making material available online helped to reduce piracy. While he could not confirm that immediately, he did say that because content is available online, it counters the argument that the only way to obtain the content is illegally.

Warner representative David Kaplan confirmed that his company also had a deal with BitTorrent Inc but although he couldn’t be certain, he felt the deal had expired since the MPA hadn’t kept him updated about it.

iiNet lawyers also produced a document which was alleged to be license agreement between Warner and the defunct Wurld Media, to distribute content via P2P. While Kaplan admitted the deal was now dead, he confirmed the authenticity of the document.

A further interesting development came after AFACT chief Neil Gane admitted that his organization’s investigative techniques – hiring someone to pretend to be a regular iiNet customer in order to engage in file-sharing of copyright works with other iiNet customers – could be construed as copyright infringement in itself.

In last week’s court sessions, iiNet lawyers put it to Gane that AFACT could have been involved in condoning copyright infringement, referring to the actions mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Gane admitted that there would have been occasions where AFACT’s own investigators had undertaken an activity which had been described by iiNet lawyers as “an infringement of copyright”.

“And that’s something you will tolerate happening at your own premises?” said iiNet lawyer Richard Cobden.

“It’s an investigative technique,” Gane replied

The case continues.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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