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Just three days after filmmaker Simon Klose started a fundraiser to complete his upcoming Pirate Bay documentary, the seed funding goal of $25,000 has already been reached. The Pirate audience has been extremely generous, with a full 27 days left the counter currently sits at $28,099.

A few days ago we reported that Swedish filmmaker and producer Simon Klose had begun to raise money for his upcoming documentary about the founders of the site titled ‘TPB-AFK’.

“TPB AFK is not a fan movie about the Pirate Bay, neither is it a journalistic piece on copyright conflict,” said Klose when describing his film. “It’s an observational, character driven film about three guys whose hobby homepage became the embryo of a global political movement.”

Although the three Pirate Bay founders who star in the documentary are no longer affiliated with the site, it appears that the new Pirate Bay owners would also like to see the documentary released.

Over the past days the fundraiser has enjoyed a prominent link on the Pirate Bay homepage, which in part explains the success of the campaign – the required $25,000 was raised in just three days.

At the time of writing, a massive $28,099 has been pledged and this figure is increasing by the hour.

Now that the funding is in, Klose can hire a professional editor and studio to complete the film. That said, the final premiere date depends on several other factors, most importantly how the upcoming appeal of The Pirate Bay trial plays out.

“The process of documenting processes is unpredictible. If the Swedish court process doesn’t miraculously speed up in The Pirate Bay trials, we’re at least a year away from the opening night of TPB AFK,” Klose comments in a blog post.

In other words, you can expect TPB-AFK to be released sometime in the coming years. Those who want to support Klose and TPB-AFK can still pledge their donation at Kickstarter, as there are 27 days left.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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IT PRO

The Pirate Bay: the state of play IT PRO It's been over a year since a Swedish court ruled against four people behind The Pirate Bay website. So what's been happening, and why is the site still …

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Early 2010, a Swedish court banned Pirate Bay co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij from operating the site. Last month, the site’s former spokesperson Peter Sunde was also banned and faces a heavy fine for non-compliance. He has now appealed that decision, with his lawyer describing the court ruling as “political gagging”.

In May this year the Swedish Court of Appeals confirmed an earlier ruling by the District Court which prohibited two Pirate Bay founders, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, from operating the site. The pair faced a 500,000 kronor ($70,000) fine for non-compliance.

Late last month, Peter Sunde – The Pirate Bay’s former spokesman – received the same treatment.

Sunde said that he was surprised by the ruling and told TorrentFreak that he found it “interesting” that the Court felt it could judge him even though he doesn’t live in Sweden and the site is located abroad. He immediately said he would appeal the decision.

An appeal has now been lodged against the ban which carries the same 500,000 kronor penalty for Peter as it does Gottfrid and Fredrik.

“His involvement with The Pirate Bay has always been limited to the political issues which emerge. A ban would constitute the same thing as a political gagging,” explains Sunde’s lawyer in documents submitted to the court.

The banning order is an interim ruling in force until the appeal of the criminal case against all four defendants in the original trial is settled in the autumn. In the meantime the site remains fully operational.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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myce.com

Swedish Court Bans Remaining Pirate Bay Co-Founder from Running Site Zeropaid The entertainment industry's long battle against Swedish BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay continues with word that a Stockholm district has added … Pirate Bay spokesperson no longer allowed to run the sitemyce.com all 2 news articles »

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Peter Sunde Banned From Operating The Pirate Bay TorrentFreak (blog) Earlier this year The Pirate Bay's co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij were banned from operating the site by a Swedish court. …

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Earlier this year The Pirate Bay‘s co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij were banned from operating the site by a Swedish court. Today, The Pirate Bay‘s former spokesperson Peter Sunde was added to this list, and now faces a fine of nearly $70,000 if he does not comply with the decision.

Directly or indirectly, The Pirate Bay and its ‘founders’ have been involved in a dozen court cases in the past years, most notably the trial in which four people associated with the site were sentenced to one year in jail and hefty fines.

Despite this unfavorable verdict, which will be appealed later this year, the site itself remains online aside from some incidental hosting issues. To change this course, Hollywood movie studios have been going after the alleged operators of the site in court, and not without success.

In May this year, the Swedish Court of Appeals confirmed an earlier judgement by the District Court, prohibiting two of the site’s founding members – Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij – from operating the site. Failure to comply with the court’s decision will result in fines of 500,000 kronor (~$70,000) each.

Today, The Pirate Bay’s former spokesperson Peter Sunde was added to this list by the District Stockholm Court and now faces the same fine as his former colleagues for non-compliance.

It is doubtful that this latest decision will have any impact on The Pirate Bay’s operation. Similar to Fredrik and Gottfrid, Peter has previously stated that he is no longer involved with the site. Even more so, in the past Peter only acted as a spokesperson, he was never in charge of technical operations.

Peter Sunde confirmed this stance to TorrentFreak today, and noted that he was surprised by the ruling of the District Court.

“The interesting thing with the ruling is that the Swedish Court feels that they can judge me even though I do not live in Sweden and neither is the system [TPB],” Sunde said.

Indeed, all of the three people who are now banned from operating the site no longer live in Sweden. This also complicates the enforcement of the rulings since it is pretty much impossible to check whether or not Peter, Fredrik and Gottfrid are complying with their demands.

Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that he will appeal the decision of the District Court. However, this appeal will be most likely scheduled after the appeal of The Pirate Bay trial this autumn so it may already be irrelevant by then.

“I’ve already appealed the decision, so it will have no effect anyhow. The new court case [appeal of The Pirate Bay trial] is coming up even before this will be in appeal…” Sunde said. Until then, Sunde continues to work full-time on his social payment startup Flattr.

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay is serving torrents to millions of people every day.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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In the last year or two the entertainment industries have targeted many BitTorrent sites. The majority of the verdicts against these sites have thus far ruled in favor of the copyright holders. Only in Spain have BitTorrent sites been repeatedly found to operate within the boundaries of the law.

Of all the BitTorrent related websites OpenBitTorrent has been one of the most surprising targets. The tracker, which doesn’t link to or host any torrent files and is not linked to any torrent search engine, merely serves as a facilitator of the communication between torrent users, much like BitTorrent clients do.

Despite this neutral and apparent non-infringing setup, the Swedish Court of Appeals ruled against the site two weeks ago. In a surprising verdict in a case started by Hollywood movie companies, the Court handed out an injunction to OpenBitTorrent’s hosting provider Portlane, ordering it to cease to provide Internet access to the tracker.

Following this decision OpenBitTorrent was pulled offline. TorrentFreak contacted the operators of the site who told us that they would be looking for a new hosting provider to bring back their tracker, so it could continue to coordinate the communications between the millions of people that were using it daily.

Today, we were informed that OpenBitTorrent has finally found a new hosting company, interestingly enough one that is run by a Spanish company. Just hours after the tracker and its website returned, some 20 million peers spread over 200,000 torrents were already connected to the tracker and business continued as usual.

OpenBitTorrent is currently battling for the title of the worlds largest BitTorrent tracker with PublicBitTorrent, another standalone tracker that runs on the Opentracker software. Both trackers handle the communications of between 20 and 30 million BitTorrent users at any given time of the day.

Although it’s good to see that OpenBitTorrent has been resurrected, it’s worth nothing that the majority of all BitTorrent users probably never noticed that it had disappeared. Most torrents today come with several backup trackers that are used in case one goes down, and even without trackers at all DHT ensures that downloads continue to work.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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In July 2009, four movie companies applied to a Swedish court requesting that it force an ISP to hand over the personal details of one of its clients. The application was made under the IPRED legislation introduced in April of the same year, which made it easier to track down and identify alleged copyright infringers.

Svensk Filmindustri, Pan Vision, Filmlance and Yellow Bird in conjunction with Antipiratbyrån (APB) said that the SweTorrents BitTorrent tracker had made five copyright movies available to the public via their site, some of them in advance of their commercial release. To this end they applied to the Södertörn District Court to force ISP TeliaSonera to hand over the details of the account holder behind the site.

In December the Södertörn District Court announced its decision that TeliaSonera must hand over the name and address of the SweTorrents operator to Antipiratbyrån. The ISP didn’t want to breach customer privacy so easily, so it launched an appeal.

Yesterday the Court of Appeal panel – which included forthcoming Pirate Bay appeal judges Christina Boutz and Ulrika Ihrfelt – found that there was probably cause for the existence of copyright infringement and therefore decided to uphold the earlier decision of the District Court.

Not only does TeliaSonera have to pay the movie companies’ costs of 60,000 kronor ($7,715) but failure to comply with the decision will result in it collecting a 750,000 kronor ($96,500) fine.

The company has until June 7th to decide whether to appeal.

“We have not decided yet [whether to appeal], but it begins to honestly get a bit tedious dealing with IPRED,” Patrik Hiselius, Director of Public Affairs at TeliaSonera, told AFB. “We would prefer to sit and talk about film premieres being available on customers’ home sofas to curb copyright violations.”

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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Pirate Bay appeal judges are not biased, says Swedish Court Computerworld By Mikael Ricknäs IDG News Service – Sweden's Supreme Court has found that two of the judges scheduled to hear an appeal in the Pirate Bay case are unbiased … and more »

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